Flashbacks in italics.
It was the type of night where Ashley and I used to curl up on the couch, go through my collection of comedies, and forget the rain and the thunder outside.
The type of night, tonight, that I curled up in bed and wondered where I put my comedies. All it took was for the phone to light up, displaying a call ended from Hollywood, Los Angeles when I picked it up, and I was tearing down the stairs through the dark house to the front door.
Undoing the lock, I knew I wasn't prepared for what came next, for what I saw. There were traces of mascara down Ashley's cheeks, mingling with the rain and maybe tears, her almost sheer blouse, bare feet as she held her heels together in one hand.
What I saw was how she was far more gorgeous than I could've ever remembered her as, and how my memory failed me in remembering this single most important thing.
Then I thought of the magazine that was on my bed upstairs, with Ashley's name and face splashed across the cover and even though Ashley had a skin thicker than any I had ever known I read the article and felt my heart break. I thought to call her, but then maybe she didn't want to hear from me.
Ashley Davies stepped into my house, and closed the door behind her. "Don't," she said softly when I opened my mouth to say anything, and I knew without a doubt she'd been crying. "Can I just stay with you tonight?"
I stopped to remember the countless times she'd asked me the same thing, but that day was different. That day was the two week mark since she stopped calling, and I briefly considered my options. I considered crawling back into a cold bed for a sleepless night waiting on a phone that wouldn't ring, or a night with Ashley.
Needless to say, there were no options and nothing to consider.
"Come on." I turned to go upstairs, lacing my fingers through hers.
She resisted, freeing her hand. "Paula and Arthur, are they home?"
"Yeah, but…" I tried not to give her a strange look, but she had never asked me that before. She had never cared who they were, in fact, but she got along just for my sake.
She wiped her cheeks roughly with the backs of her hands. "But if they find out I'm here…you know how Paula is, does she know? She might not want me here –" She tried to be subtle about it, but the way she avoided touching me sent every word she said that was not supposed to mean anything tugging at my heart.
"They're not important," I told her decisively, and believed every word I said. "Ashley, you know you're still the same person to me." I didn't understand how that could've ever been a question from the beginning. Only, I wondered if I was the same person to her, and I tried not to answer my own question.
When she didn't answer, I took her hand in mine again and led her upstairs, leaving her on my bed to get dry clothes and a towel. When I got back, with everything bundled up in my arms, she was already asleep, sprawled out on a bed I tried to stop picturing her on every time I saw it.
Halfway through unbuttoning her blouse, I felt her shift drowsily, arching her back and pushing her chest into my hands as she pulled out the magazine from under her, cracking open her eyes to look at it.
"Ashley Davies comes out," she read quietly, eyes searching mine. "Her one night stands and…"
I flushed and grabbed it out of her hand, dropping it to the side of the bed. "Tabloids."
"You know it's true." She murmured. After all, that was why she was here, away from everything. I was her away from everything, and it felt good, that I could be anything after all this time.
"They're saying things," she continued softly. "A lot of things."
Things that hurt me as much as they hurt her. "I don't believe any of it."
"What do you know?" She propped herself up on her elbows, eyes shining in the dark. "I sleep with a new girl every week. Roadies, crew, fans, whatever. I don't even have any standards. I'm slut, a whore. Whatever they're calling me these days. What do you know, Spencer?" She sounded irate, maybe at herself, maybe at me. I didn't understand.
So I met her gaze so evenly, holding my breath. "Whose fault would that be?"
No time to take it back, the last contact broke as her eyes left mine and she rolled over, away from me, sitting up on the opposite side of the bed. I didn't know if she was trying to leave or not, but I wasn't about to chance it.
"Sherlock." That was it, the term of endearment that rolled so easily from my tongue, fell so easily from my lips. My heart fell so quickly and painfully for a split second as I wondered if I had said the wrong thing –
"Einstein." She responded so readily, and turned her face, her profile silhouetted by the streetlight through my bedroom window.
I tried in vain to see her expression ."I'm sorry."
"No, you're not." She said, although I was. "You have nothing to be sorry for. We both know whose fault it is. For not calling, for not talking, for not visiting. Mine."
"Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough, maybe –"
"Shut up, Spencer." She snapped, roughly. I thought maybe it was the harshest way she had ever spoken to me.
And she covered her mouth, trying to seal everything in. "Oh, God. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Her voice quivered and broke as I covered the last little bit of distance between us, and as I instigated contact I hadn't even known I craved, I wondered who really was hurting tonight, her or me.
Who this embrace was really meant to comfort.
She felt cold, wet through the thin fabric of my shirt, but her lips were warm when they brushed against my cheek as she rested her head on my shoulder, just missing my ear. Her hands were warm as they came around my back, stroking down my spine to the hem of my shirt and bunching up the fabric there, holding me in place. I wondered if this would be the last time I'd see her, if I should treat it as such.
"God, Spencer. You're everything." Her lips brushed against my neck, the vibrations from her voice traveling straight through me.
"Everything."
I shivered then, and decided it wouldn't matter.
It isn't because I don't know that Ashley Davies has been standing outside my room for the past hour. I heard her apologize when someone in the hall walked into her, heard the sounds of her pacing, even that tuneless little song she used to hum when she was nervous.
The same tuneless song she used to hum down the phone when I couldn't sleep.
And I can't stand it. "Ashley, stop it."
I could easily believe time stops the second she stops humming. Then she appears at the doorway, and I forget to blink or breathe. I look at her and she looks like my memory has failed me, again.
"You called?" She asks, approaching the bed.
"No, I think you did."
She nods, slowing to a standstill beside the bed, stuttering a few times before she finally speaks. "Look. I didn't know it was you when I called. I was just going check if whoever it was, if they were okay, you know, if I could do anything for them – you. Then I heard them talking about you." Looking away from me, I still caught the motion of her forehead creasing. "You were under for awhile, I almost thought…"
"I died."
"If I knew it was you –" She looks at me fiercely.
"You wouldn't have done anything, either."
"Maybe couldn't, but I would've tried."
I briefly consider where this conversation is going. "Why are you still here? I'm okay. I'm sure you're busy and…"
She interrupts me then, her voice harsh and loud in the empty room. "What did you think you were doing, Spencer? Did you even think?"
It hardly takes anything for me match her tone, match the way she feels. God knows for how long I've felt this way, longer than her for all I know. "I could ask you the same thing."
She visibly takes a step back, utter guilt overwhelming her features. But I can't stop, the floodgates are open and more than a year's worth of things I need to say rush out. "You can't possibly expect to walk back into my life and pretend nothing's changed! You can't walk back in after a year and who knows how long and start caring again. You can't just walk out and waltz back in again. It doesn't work like that, Ashley! We aren't the same, we aren't friends, and you're not…"
The high pitched ringing in my ears changes into the high pitched ringing of the machines crowding the room.
My chest heaves, but I don't feel. "I can't breathe, Ashley." And she can't save me this time.
Complete horror written all over her face, she breaks into a sprint out of the room.
An hour later, when all the nurses aren't standing around my bed trying to fix me, it'll be like nothing ever happened.
It's dark when Ashley comes again. We don't speak. I don't move when the bed dips when she sits on the end, as far away as she can.
"You should call home, you know," she starts so quietly. "They'll be out of their minds by now."
"What do you know?"
"They won't."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"People – things change, Ashley." We both catch my double entendre, but speak nothing of it. We both catch the stilted way I say her name, the split second pause between the first syllable of Ashley and the last that no one else would've thought twice of.
"What's changed?" She asks quietly, crossing every line.
Just like that, every highest and widest wall I've put up since she left crumbles. All it takes is for her to step into my life and say the things she says, things she doesn't need to think twice about. Things that can shatter and break my world, things that jerk at my heart with puppet strings. She's my everything, and I hate her as much as I love her.
I almost wish I never met her, almost, so she can never walk in and out of my life as she pleases. So she wouldn't be standing in front of me right now, and I wouldn't be so ready to give myself up again.
It would be so easy, after all.
"Everything."
"Everything."