I wake up to see the sun streaming through the windows of our bedroom. Apparently, Ashley and I had fallen asleep after my little story. Well, I'd probably cried myself to sleep. She probably just thought she could use a nap after all that taking care of me.

Not that I mind, of course. Waking up snuggled into her. I can tell that she's already awake because I can feel her fingers moving through my hair. I roll over to face her.

"Hey there, sleepy head. Have a nice nap?" She greets me with a kiss on the top of the head.

"Yeah. You?"

She shakes her head. "I didn't sleep. I just sat here. You were having nightmares," she states matter-of-factly. "There was lots of crying and screaming and stuff. It took a lot to calm you down."

I'm overwhelmed by how sweet she's being. "Thanks. It means a lot that you wouldn't abandon me, even when I'm asleep."

"How could I after what you told me? And actually, before that too. I could never leave you." She's looking straight into my eyes and I can swear that we're about to kiss, but before we do, my brain shouts STOP IT! I pull away quickly and turn the other way. I can't see the look on Ashley's face, but I bet she's confused. I know I am. Why can't I let myself kiss her? I can admit that I've totally fallen in love with her, but I can't kiss her. What is wrong with me?

"You okay?" Ashley whispers, breaking up my deep thought.

"Kinda," I mumble. "It's weird hearing myself talk about it. It's weird, that's all. Just weird."

She smiles sympathetically and resumes her playing with my hair. I don't say anything; there's not much to say. I'm tired, drained. I'm holding onto her while everything else feels like it's slipping out of place. Now that I've told her, I feel like the world is going to come crashing down on me. But oddly, as I look up at her still happy face, I can still think that it'll be okay.

"Spencer! Ashley! You up there?" Clay calls from downstairs, shattering the moment that I had already cracked.

"Yeah," she yells back, never once untangling her hand from my hair. "What's up?"

"Luke's calling." She looks at me with a smirk. She's being playful right now, and I can't tell why. I decide to ignore it and go down to talk to Luke.

I shift out of her grasp, but her hand stays in mine as long as possible. I don't know what to make of it. I'm really not sure what to make of anything right now. I feel absolutely numb as I walk out of the room, losing all contact with Ashley. I just know that Luke's voice will make sense, and that he can talk anything out of me, even if I don't know it exists.

I take the cordless phone from a smiling Clay. "You told her, huh?" I guess he can tell by the bittersweet look on my face.

"Yeah."

He shakes his head goodnaturedly at me and then walks off, leaving me in privacy.

"Hey, Luke." My voice sounds dead, even to myself.

"Oh my God. Did you tell her?"

"Yeah." I'm still responding in a monotone, not able to shake the almost comfortable feeling of nothingness that is coming over me right now. I'm not sure where it's from, but if I had to guess, I'd bet that it's from the aftermath of thinking about that day again. From waking up in the arms of a beautiful girl, a place where I feel completely safe, to going out on my own. Walking through a house, talking on a phone, without a safety net.

"Did she, like, shun you or something, because you sound kinda funny." Luke's voice is packed with concern.

"No." I smile, against my will. "She didn't. She... she was really sweet. She just held me until I fell asleep, and even stayed with me then. And when I woke up, she was still there." My voice gains its life back, and I think Luke can sense it.

"Well, I called to talk you about lunch, but now we're talking about Ashley. So sit down, because this is gonna be a long talk." I laugh at him, but inside I'm almost a little scared about what he'll say. Since he came out, Luke has been less afraid to speak his mind, especially to me.

I make sure that there's nobody anywhere near the living room before leaning into the comfortable couch. "Okay, I'm sitting. What's the big deal?"

"First, what the hell is wrong with you?" His tone is joking, but I can tell that he's trying to get to the root of something.

Unfortunately for him, I have no idea what that something is. "Huh?"

"Oh, come on. From what you told me, you and Ashley have this really deep bond and she's all sweet to you and stuff and you care about her and trust her enough to tell her about Elle, and, well, I'm gay and even I can see she's a friggin' sexy beast, and-"

I decide that that would be a good place to stop him. "Luke. Where is this going?"

I hear him take a breath like he's calming himself down. "You are totally smitten with Ashley. And it's pretty damn obvious she's into you too."

I sigh. "You're right, at least about me. I'm pretty sure you're right about her, but I just can't."

"Why do I get the feeling you've had this conversation with a couple of people, not to mention yourself, multiple times?"

"Because I have. It was only just a couple of hours ago I even recognized that I liked. I can't go from 'I like Ashley' to 'Ashley and I making out with no shirts on' in a matter of hours."

"I never said anything about you too making out with no shirts on, or making out, or even kissing in general." He snickers evilly. "You have a dirty mind, Spencer Carlin."

"And the first thing you think about when I say the word 'Mitch' is-"

"How hot he is without a shirt on when he BBQ-ing," Luke replies with no hesitation.

"Who has the dirty mind now?" I pause. "Wait, why does he BBQ without a shirt?"

"It's not important, and you probably don't want to know."

"Knowing you and your dirty mind, I probably don't."

"And now we're back to talking about Ashley." He starts talking in a heavier manner. "Why can't you even consider dating her?"

"Because... I don't know why. Something to do with Elle, and all that, and, and, and..." I think on it. What exactly do Ashley and Elle have in common? The fact that they're gay girls. That's about it. So what could Ashley have to do with Elle and Ohio?

Luke seems to sense my dilemma. "I'll give you a hint. It starts with 'H.'" I roll my eyes. How can he have it figured out if I don't?

So I start thinking about all the words relating to that situation that start with 'H.' For about five minutes, all I can come up with are homophobia and homosexual. And then it hits me. "Hurt. I don't want her to hurt me."

"Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner," he says in an unexcited, serious voice. "I respect that, but one day, you'll have to realize that getting hurt is part of life, and you can't prevent it. It will happen."

I sniffle. Tears threaten to fall. Again. "But I don't want it to."

He thinks for a moment, trying to remember what he's going say. He does this a lot, collecting his thoughts before he says something really important so that it'll come out right. "In college, there's this grounds keeper. He's always out in between two classes I have that are about an hour apart. Going back to my dorm would be pointless, I so I would sit around and wait in front of class. That was his shift. He would clean the grounds while I sat, and eventually we got around to talking.

"We formed a pretty good friendship, that man and me. His name is Jenkins. He's kinda old, so he's seen a lot of the world. I got a lot of advice from him.

"So one day, I don't even remember what I was moping about, but Jenkins, he told me something that I've taken to heart and lived ever since. He said to me, 'Luke, I'm about to toss around some wisdom, so listen up. I know you're feeling bad. I know you feel like you're dead, but that's okay. Because I believe that you can't really live until you've died inside.

"'You have to be hurt hard enough to know what it's like to feel true happiness. Once you know what it feels like to be dead, you'll find real life in someone else. You'll find love, and you'll be able to fully understand it because you'll know what it's like to live without it. But there is a catch. Sometimes you die, and you can't come back because you won't let yourself. You're so afraid of dying again that you don't even realize you're already dead. Ain't no point in sitting around being dead, because even if you find yourself alive for only a second before you die again, you were alive for that second, and in the next, you're back where you started. You've got nothing to lose by trying to live again, but everything to lose if you try and stay dead.'" Luke pauses and clears his throat. "That's you, Spencer. You're dead, figuratively speaking, of course. I assume you got that whole thing was a metaphor. So you're dead, and you just wanna stay there. You look at Ashley, and there's that spark of life that makes you alive again. You're already in a nasty place. Having Ashley and then losing her would just put you back in this same place, no better, no worse, just numb. But if you have her, and you keep her, then, well, it could lead to many happy moments. And you'd be alive, Spence. You'd be the girl I've been missing for the past five years."

I choke on my tears, sorting out my emotions, because I know he's right. "It's good to have an old friend to talk to, Luke. Because even though you're closest to your best friends of today, your old friends knew you in your younger days. When yourself, your personality, was at its rawest. Now, years later, it's been deluded, affected by other people. It's when you're a kid that you really have your distinctive personality, and old friends know about that."

"But there's that one person who can turn you back into you," Luke adds with a serious chuckle. "You still wanna do lunch sometime?"

I nod. "Sometime. But for now, I need to focus on Ashley. I need to focus on my feelings for her. I need to figure them out."

"I kinda expected that. If you need anything, give your old friend a ring, eh?"

"What are you, Canadian?"

"My boyfriend is," Luke says. "And speaking of said boyfriend, he's yelling something at me, and I should probably go check it out. That is, if you're okay?"

"Peachy. See ya later, Luke. Love you."

"Love you too."

I spend about a minute searching for the off button on Clay's ridiculously complicated phone before hanging it up. It doesn't occur to me that hanging it up will turn it off, I'm so dazed. Everything that Luke says just starts to sink in.

I know that I'm afraid of starting a relationship with Ashley because of being hurt. Not just by her, but by everyone else. Not having to face homophobia at college was a welcome breath of fresh air after the Ohio incident. But it's also been a lonely existence. The only time I've really felt anything is around Ashley or Aiden or Madison, but mostly around Ashley. Everything I felt with Elle, I feel around her, only about ten thousand times stronger, more intense. My logical brain is telling me to listen to wise old Luke and go for it, because I'll never be happy if I stay single and/or date guys my entire life. But my heart is telling me that it's still too broken to be touched, too fragile to be held again. I don't know what to do. Well, I do know what to do: get Ashley to be my girlfriend. I just don't know how to do it, how to get past all the obstacles in the way. It's not even Elle that's standing in my way any more; it's me. Giving myself up completely, wholly, unconditionally to another person scares me after what it's led to before. I've already given all that to her in a platonic way, so how hard can it be to do it in a romantic way? Okay, hard. But because of that, because of our deep platonic bond, somewhere in me, I think that I can try.

And sometimes all that we can do is try.

A/N: Okay, so this chapter, I know was kind of un-action packed, but it needs to be here, for Spencer to get out of her emotional state... er, being "dead"... that she's been in the entire story since the chapter is the chapter you've all been hoping for. Or, at least, I think it's the one you've all been hoping for :)