A/N: Thank you all muchly for leaving feedback! De-lurkers make me all sorts of happy.

If it helps anything, the present is totally linear. The flashbacks (italics) are randomly ordered as corresponding to the present or whatever the heck I feel like writing.

Enjoy.

"Spencer. Talk to me."

Her hand is warm on my elbow – where the fabric has been worn to threads, where I didn't have enough to spare money to buy a sewing kit.

She hadn't meant anything, but I wrench my arm away, awareness increasing tenfold by that one simple benign touch in the wrong place. She frowns and doesn't try to touch me again.

"I paid everything off, but the landlord already found a new tenant," Ashley lets on gently, moving her hands like she needs contact.

"But everything was already evacuated by the time I got here." Ashley looks at my feet, rambling anxiously. "I tried to convince him to take you back, throw a few names around, but he didn't believe me."

It doesn't feel as if she's trying to comfort me. It feels as she's just waiting. Waiting to catch me, and it just makes my resolve collapse. I almost want blame it all on her, but I would never be able to. It's my fault for thinking I'd ever deserve anyone like her.

I'm not sure who deserves who anymore. Who I am. Who she is. Why everything is that has ever mattered and needed to matter disappeared in hardly more than a year. Just never my life, because this ridiculous morbid cruel world wants to see me on my knees.

"Oh God, oh God." I can't breathe again, but I don't want her to catch me.

"Spencer!"

She'll just turn around and drop me.

"So where do you think we'll be after we're out of this hellhole?"

My fifteen year old self rolled over on the grass, eyelids heavy with lazy warm summer afternoons and soothing words and promises of best friends.

We were away from the rest of the students, under a tree behind the school, so I didn't hesitate to smile and speak firmly, knowing how many implications there would be if anyone else heard that one word that could mean so much, "Together." I smiled and extended my arms into a full-body stretch lazily and moaning as the kinks left my muscles.

I clapped a hand over my mouth at the silence that followed, not having realized the suggestive sound at left me at all. Ashley coughed, like she had a tickle in her throat.

"Well, Captain Obvious to the rescue," she chuckled quietly and reached across the cool grass, tugging my shirt back down over my exposed abdomen. Ashley didn't take her hand away, settling on smoothing out invisible wrinkles on the cotton fabric. "But what do you think we'll be doing? We both know you'll be in a swanky art college and stranding me here."

My hands came back to link behind my head, resisting playing with Ashley's hands now as they were still across my abdomen, her eyes unfocused in a future she seemed so able to see. I looked hard and tried to see if her face would give anything away, but all I saw was her.

"Nah, I'll be a flat broke artist drawing lame caricatures for tourists. You'll be singing. Famous. Millions of fans, worshipping you," I deadpanned. She smiled smugly at me, and I grinned impishly back and pushed further. "Not to mention I'll have to see your ugly mug all over the place all the time!"

She took back all her hands, all the warm touches I missed, drawing them back to her chest. Sliding out her bottom lip, she feigned hurt. Still I could see a flicker of insecurity in the languid pools of brown, slipping out before she could catch it, before she maybe even realized it was even there. That was Ashley, hardly knowing what insecurity was, when I knew it so well because I had to be around her. But I'd never seen that before, not even when the rumours were at their most merciless, not even when their words ought to draw blood.

"Geez, Ashley." I carefully hid my revelations glibly. "You're gorgeous, you know that? Not fake like – like them, the cheerleaders or some of the other girls. You're so real. The boys are all over you, you know? I hear them in the halls sometimes. Ashley this, Ashley that. You're not one night to them. You're probably the most beautiful girl they'll ever lay their eyes on." It wasn't eloquent, not the way I wanted it to be, only little shining fragments of truth hidden behind the broken sentences of my fifteen years.

I wanted it to mean so much.

"Am I?"

"Are you what?"

She shrugged, looking away. I could swear her cheeks were a shade pinker than they usually were. "The most beautiful girl you've ever laid your eyes on?"

"Girls, the bell rang five minutes ago!"

I paused before I entered the cool shade of the school and Ashley turned back, forehead creased.

"Spence, what's wrong?"

Smiling inwardly at her concern, I gestured grandly. "The most beautiful woman I've ever laid my eyes on, first."

"You two!"

She looked at the waiting hall monitor and over at me, the hard, roguish exterior of her eyes falling in to a softness that matched the state of my insides.

She linked our fingers in a sudden fit fondness that I had never known. She smiled and squeezed, leaving me feeling faintly giddy and with a smile that hurt.

"Sometime today, girls?"

She never took her eyes off mine. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

I turn around and head out the door. Down the steps I've slipped on countless times in my haste to get away from the men smoking in the lot. Crossing the street where there's never enough lighting. Past the apartment complex at the end of the street where I've seen a little girl wait outside in the rain for her mother to take her to school. It's so dark now, but I can't remember the last time I haven't seen these things.

She's in her car with the window rolled down, catching up to me, but she could've easily passed me if I ran if she hasn't changed. "Spencer, stop. Where are you going?"

"I don't need your help, Ashley."

"I know." Her tires screech, following me as a turn a sharp corner. "Stop walking."

I deliberate running off into an alley or the park I know is up ahead, but I don't want her to follow me and get hurt. "Stop following me."

"You're not really in the position to tell me what to do right now, Spencer."

"And you're not in the position to play best friend," I bite my lip but it just doesn't stop me from saying these things that I would've never said. "Or any kind of friend, really."

She's silent, following me slowly in her car. I even start considering apologizing when she speaks. "When you said penniless artist, I didn't quite imagine this."

"I'm not an artist either. Imagine that."

"You're an artist," Ashley says strongly. "You've always been."

The wheels of her Porsche crunch on gravel, she's in her thousand dollar jacket and I shiver until it hurts. "You're one to talk. Look at you. Look at me."

I don't even have to look to know she's her fingering the wheel restlessly, the way she used to when something was bothering her. "You've always been more of an artist than I've been, Spence."

I hate that I can't tell if she's lying, the way I used to be able to. Whether she's just sweet-talking me or means what she says. I consider telling her I hate her, but she'd tell me I don't mean it and I'd believe her.

"Don't call me that!" My hands are fists and my fingernails dig into my palms, but it does nothing to distract from the burning in my throat. "What do you want from me?"

"Ashley, I… wow, this must be like the hundredth message." I knew, I had been counting.

I sighed out, before I figured it that if she ever listened to this, she would've heard. I was still running my fingers over the black sweater on the dresser, all Ashley left behind when she left for Hollywood. It's a been awhile since she stopped calling me every night from Hollywood, and when I bring the fabric to my nose I'm think I must be desperate enough to think I can smell her.

I pressed my phone into my shoulder, holding it in place as I continued fingering the soft fabric, not even registering what I was doing. "I don't know Ashley, you probably don't even bother listen to these things anymore."

"I guess I should be feeling pretty pathetic, but I really don't. I don't feel pathetic for missing you Ash, I just feel pathetic if you don't miss me too. I know you still remember me Ash, why won't you call me back?"

"Is… is there something wrong with me? Am I not good enough for you?"

I felt like I was falling at the speed of light from best friend status to one night stand. The one night stands she never called back, either. The one night stands she took from and never gave back to, only I wasn't sure what she had taken. All I knew was I wanted it back. I wanted it back in words and touches and promises that wouldn't be broken.

God, did I ever want her back.

"When are you coming home, Ash?"

Half a sob manages to claw it's way out of my throat before I slam the phone back down into the receiver.

Exactly one hundred messages, only one way to still be ignored. I felt pathetic that if she ever listened to me that night, she might have heard it.

She never did call me back.

"I want you to be safe tonight. Come with me, Spencer."

I'm seething, not noticing I've stopped walking. Anyone looking out a window at this ungodly hour will see a girl in her Porsche and a too-thin girl in an excuse of a coat.

How I've always felt around her.

"I'm not your charity case."

"I know."

"So why?" I scowl, keeping my eyes on the streetlight that's bathing our moment in amber light.

"Because I'm –" She pauses, I think maybe I can hear a sniffle. Or maybe it's just one of the loose pieces of litter, skittering under my feet. "Look around you."

I look around and I see black lonely nights and compost and flickered-out lamps.

"Get in the car, Spencer. Please."

I look at her and I see warm brown eyes and a smile and hands that have touched me now and again. Hands I had needed to touch me now and forever.

Do I really still need her? Have I ever stopped needing her?

"Well, what are you waiting for?"

I don't notice I'm crying until she's out of the car, touching my elbow where the fabric frayed.