"Stupid shitty traffic!"

Ashley Davies hits the steering wheel and she is not a multi-millionaire.
Not yet anyway.
But the meeting she is late for, with record execs that caught her little show in some little dive two weeks ago, will be the turning point.
And it'll be a good turning point alright, the kind you dream of as a little kid when all the world needs to do to make you happy is to give you all the big and bold things – a pony, a sports car, a mansion on the hill and servants and so many toys.

She doesn't know this meeting will change everything. It's just a meeting. She's just running late.
The traffic in L.A. is murder at any hour and she didn't think ahead enough.
And the fumes are heavy in the air of a thousand cars ahead of her and behind her.
Ashley doesn't know that this meeting will shove all other disappoints out of her head for years. Ashley doesn't know that her life is about to catapult into another stratosphere.

She just knows that she is running late, as usual.
Late to meetings and late to school and too late to fix problems of her own making… that's Ashley Davies, in traffic and sunglasses on and cursing the stand-still of what she believes to be her life.

And she'd call and complain to Kyla, if Kyla wasn't helping the homeless and the foodless and the lifeless. And she'd call and complain to Aiden, if Aiden wasn't in love with her and wasn't always waiting on the sidelines for her.

Ashley would call Spencer, if Spencer wasn't avoiding her and wasn't shutting Ashley so completely out.
She'd call Spencer and wait for the girl to say something – not like anything anyone would consider special or epic, just calm and just right and just so much something Spencer would say… like 'chill out' or 'don't worry, they'll love you' or… or anything at all.
Ashley would listen to anything at all from Spencer.

"God, finally…"

Ashley Davies cuts off a couple of cars and speeds ahead, going through a red-light and earning a few disgruntled honks of horns.
And she is late, so damn late for so many things.
Just like this meeting.
Just like this meeting that will forever change her life.

Spencer picks up a paper and reads it slowly.
She drinks her coffee slowly and leans back in her chair.
She slowly rotates the chair back and forth as the travel section falls to the floor.
She lets the entertainment section drift to the floor as well, not bothering to check the times to movies she has no interest in seeing or the art shows she's already walked through.

And she doesn't want to see Ashley Davies face.
Because some wounds don't heal.
They fester and they fragment into something dangerous.
Some wounds never leave you, they never turn to faint white swatches on your skin and they never just ache with the coming of rain.
Some wounds carry too much muscle memory, a limb lost but still tingling with life, and Spencer feels the throb of something long gone.

Seven years to the day, where some art studio held the two of them for the last time and where Spencer Carlin took a knife to that connection.
She had to cut Ashley loose from her body, she had to save herself from more heartbreak and just let the girl go… just let her go, a breeze never to be captured…
And Spencer Carlin walked away. She ignored phone-calls in the middle of the night and told the world at large that she was just fine and told herself that 'you can't keep living with poisonous love'…

It's funny, to think of it now, the dramatics of it all and the sorrow of it all.
And it's funny, because, somewhere… it still matters and it still hurts and it still causes Spencer's hands to form fists.
The paper gets torn and she drops it all to the floor.
The coffee is left cold on her desk and she gets her phone, dialing familiar numbers.

She doesn't want to see Ashley Davies face back in this town, in L.A. with minions and with whores.
And she doesn't want to feel bitterness well up in her blood like a fever.

But she can only solve one problem at a time.

"Hey Phil, yea… yea, I wanted to talk to you about that position in Kenya… well, you don't have to flatter me like this… Then consider it mine… Yes, I'm sure… My mother can do that, no worries and I've got my passport… yea, well, it is a serious topic and I didn't think I'd have the time to do that and my project, but I do…"

Spencer Carlin will fly out of California at six p.m. and then out of the States around nine p.m., missing the biggest concert to hit the west coast and she sighs out in relief.

**** **** ****

TBC