"Who hurt you?"

The back of her palm met her face before she turned to face me, but she didn't know I had been watching her from the door. She'd made all the tell tale signs – shoulders shaking, quiet noises.

She had obviously been crying. Any other sixteen year old would've been able to tell that.

"No…"

"Cut the bull, Ash," my tone sounded grating even to my ears. Crossing the room and joining Ashley on the bed, I rubbed her bare knee in what I hoped was a consoling gesture. "What happened?"

She seemed to hesitate, pretending to scratch an itch on her face. "The Purple Venom vest my dad left me. It's gone."

I glowered, looking around the room like it would be miraculously lying somewhere in plain sight. "Who do you think took it?"

"I…" She stiffened, I pushed.

"Who, Ash?"

"I had a girl over last night."

I shot to my feet, suddenly disgusted and feeling faintly betrayed, knowing that some girl had her hands all over Ashley. That the bed I was sitting on – it repulsed me, and I didn't know why.

Ashley looked at me, and her eyes were pleading.

In this moment, I could have accepted I couldn't know everything about Ashley. In my right mind, I would've known I didn't want to hear about any of Ashley's dirty little secrets. But in this one moment, I couldn't see.

"Wait here, Ashley."

"Wait – what?" The bed creaked as her weight left it.

"Stay here."

"But –"

The door slammed behind me, in her face. In a flash of clarity, I paused and waited to hear her open it again, but it never happened. Then I didn't even stop to wonder why.

The blonde girl was still in the underground parking, sandwiched between muscle cars and Ferraris. Ashley probably thought she was long gone, but I saw her earlier when I buzzed in, near Ashley's beloved Cayenne.

I even thought she was pretty.

She had moved to stand between the two cars now, Ashley's Cayenne and Carerra. There was something she was twirling in her hands – keys. She had a bag near her feet, Ashley's things.

"Hard choice?"

She turned to face me blankly, too stoic for what she was about to do - steal from my best friend.

"You're the girl from the pictures," she stated plainly.

I frowned, only remembering Ashley having one frame of us on her beside table.

"So?"

"Her best friend." The girl looked down, still twirling the keys. "With benefits?"

"What? No!"

"In denial, huh?" The blonde eyed our reflections in the tinted driver's window and smirked. "I get that. I wouldn't want to be more with a girl like Ashley? One time couldn't be enough. Those hands and God, she can…"

"Stop it!" I demanded, hands clenched at my side in a perfect picture of futility. " She's not a piece of meat."

"I'd be surprised." The girl ran a finger idly along the side of the Cayenne and I felt nauseous.

"What would you know?"

"More than you know." She shot me a quick, indecipherable look. "Did you know she and I were a couple last year? She'd always make sure I left before you got here. I never stopped hearing about you, and the only time I ever saw her was in bed. You can guess why we didn't work out. And I still see her at the club sometimes. I hear she leaves with a guy or girl every night, they come back with their hearts broken, you know? Guess she doesn't do more than one night anymore."

I could feel my jaw slacken.

"She takes things from people," the blonde mused quietly, more as if she meant to say it in her head.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

She shrugged me off. "You must be pretty special."

"I'm not," I replied stiffly, and asked although I knew the answer wasn't something I would want to hear. "Why did she take you back last night?"

"She didn't realize who I was until this morning."

That's how far she got with her flippant tone before my fist found her jaw. But this definitely wasn't a movie, and I wasn't the prince in some twisted fairytale. She grimaced, I doubled over squeezing my knuckles. The throbbing in my hand didn't stop even as she stopped rubbing her jaw, and I realized that I couldn't do anything to her if I wanted to.

I wasn't like Ashley. Wasn't athletic, wasn't brave, wasn't a fighter. It wasn't my duty, running blindly after this girl that had hurt Ashley on white horse I couldn't ride. It was something Ashley would and could do, not me. I was still, up till now, the gullible best friend with kind words and open arms.

That was what I was thinking when the girl swung her fist in retaliation, when my head jerked back and the dimly lit lot exploded with colour. It was the first time I'd ever been punched. She still had the keys in her hand, and they'd dug into my cheek like brass knuckles. Unlike her, I was instantaneously bent over and cupping my face, my fingers warm and crimson.

She watched me warily, crouched over with my hands against my face. "I still love her, you know, and I wasn't trying to take advantage of her. I thought I could take whatever she took from me back. But it's not going to happen." She probably thought I was pathetic. "I know Ashley's amazing. She just doesn't know what she does to people. She's not just one night. "

Those were exact same words I told Ashley, and I had meant them. This girl said them, she had meant them, and I wanted to believe she was wrong.

I finally understood who Ashley really was in a badly lit parking lot with a girl that professed to love her. Why I was always the one she had to go after the boys with threats for, the cheerleaders she had to corner in the locker room for me.

She was the fascinating, heart-breaking, brooding boy to them. The cheerleader with all the words and beauty and nothing else offer.

And I had to accept the reason was maybe me.

"You'll be fine." The girl dropped the keys, letting them jingle on the concrete flooring with certain resignation. "But I wouldn't have so much faith in her."

Then she was gone, leaving me with the keys on the floor, a bag of Ashley's things, and cupping a bleeding face.

That was all it took, ten minutes. Ten minutes to forego our Sunday breakfast for the first time, go a day without answering her calls once, see a Monday we wouldn't be laughing over the inside jokes that had highlighted the weekend.

Just ten minutes I wished never happened.

I rang Ashley's doorbell. Her keys and things were on her doorstep, and I was on my way home with a dizzy head that had nothing to do with bloody faces.

I remember this girl Ashley used to know. I met her in a car park, and I remember her when I see the miniscule scar right below my cheekbone.

She was blonde, blue eyed, almost like me. Except she was taller, more slender, fuller in the front, tanner, and looked she belonged on a catwalk.

I understand how I could have looked to her. Her with her shorter hair and more mature features, me with my long hair and easy blush, my cherry chapstick and her blood-red lipstick, my shuffling walk and her swinging hips.

Yet the way she looked at me was jealously. She talked to me as if we were on the same level, as if she knew me too. I didn't understand then - that one Ashley Davies would make me just like her.

Except she's probably not in Ashley's apartment in West Hollywood at the moment, balled under the duvet on Ashley's faux leather couch and hoping that opening door is just a dream.

"Nice try, Spencer. I know you well en… I know you're not sleeping."

She continues when I sit up. "Do you want a shower or anything? Anything you need… I can put those in the wash." She pointed at what I was wearing, a blouse that used to be white and black slacks so long they dragged on the ground.

"I got you something warm," she offers a mug of weak tea and I accept, noticing the way our fingers readily strain to not touch.

She perches on the edge of the coffee table, her back as straight as mine. "Thanks for coming back with me."

"I should be thanking you," I tell her quietly. "If it weren't for you, I'd be sleeping on my jacket in..."

"Spencer." Her tone is gentle, but firm like she doesn't want to hear me talk anymore. "I'm going to get you some sleep clothes."

I watch her leave over the porcelain rim of the mug. She still has that subtle swagger and fluid stride, things about her I've never really forgotten. Little things I can't help noticing about her, like the raise of her eyebrow when she sees me watching the doorway she left through vigilantly.

She reduces me to a child, the way she looks at me as I reach for the sleep shorts and t-shirt she's offering. I think I might refuse to look her in the eye if she keeps with it.

"I'll um, let you get changed. You need anything else?"

I shake my head and stand awkwardly behind the couch after I finish, she comes back a couple minutes later and stops right at the threshold, holding out a hand front of her as if she's looking for support.

Her eyes rake up my body. I feel the blood rush to my face even though I'm cold from not having worn such skimpy clothes in awhile.

"God, you're so… thin." She swallows visibly. "Spencer…"

I have to swallow convulsively too. "Ashley, don't. Please."

She saw my face from across the parking lot, and I knew right then I wouldn't be able to pretend the bruise on my face was inconspicuous.

Her Porsche disappeared from the student lot and I heard nothing of her until she called in the middle of my afternoon class. As soon as she heard the professor's harsh voice fade and the classroom door closing over the line, she snapped.

"You're an idiot."

"That says a lot about you," I countered, before I thought it through.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

We were silent for moment, contemplating what exactly it was supposed to mean.

"Okay," she conceded over the phone. "What did she tell you?"

"Who?" I asked blankly, moving away from the classroom and outside to perch on a bench in front of the school.

"Seriously, Spencer?" She sighed. "Do you really think I'll believe that you banged up your face on a door or something?"

"This is me you're talking about," I told her lightly, managing to draw a soft, amused sigh over the phone. "So where've you been all day?"

"Ava skipped town."

"You mean the blonde girl who…"

"Who punched you?" She snorted. "Yeah."

"I…I wasn't going to say that."

"Did you seriously think I wasn't going to find out?"

"Not about that."

I could hear her suck in a breath for moment, "What did she say to you, Spence?"

"Nothing."

"Come on now. She got you to punch her, we both know how often that happens," she answered wryly.

"Ash, she didn't…"

I was cut short by cool fingers on my cheek, just over the bruise. There wasn't enough pressure to hurt, just induce this odd, heady tingling. Whipping around sharply, Ashley met me with an amused smile and sympathetic eyes.

"Does it hurt?" She asked, her fingers completely still.

I shook my head, and she grabbed my hand before I could bring it down to my lap, bringing the bruised knuckles up to her eyes.

"You sure?"

"Ashley."

Her short-lived grin faded and she came around the bench to bend down in front of me, hands on my knees, looking up at me in a manner that made me prone to babbling, or worse, mute. "What did she say to you, Spence?"

"I don't…"

"Tell me?"

"It's not…"

"Spence!"

"She told what she was doing at your place," I relayed in the smallest voice. "That she hasn't been the only one."

She sucked in her bottom lip.

"Why, Ash?"

"I don't want to disgust you - I mean, I don't want you to think your best friend is a whore and a liar..."

"Stop." I interrupted shrilly, hands halfway to my ears. "Why aren't you ever with anyone anymore? Why are you just... one night?"

"I just –" She tapped her fingers on my knees nervously, "Well, you can't always be around and when you are… I don't want anything to get in the way. I want to be with you instead of on some lame date and…"

The defeat in her voice made me forego the straight answer I was hoping for. "Don't worry about it."

She smiled softly at me, glad for the reprieve that was as much mine as hers.

It was only because I didn't want to ask her what we were. This connection we shared where there was no line distinguishing friendship from relationship, where she could call in the middle of the night, or claim to own every bit of me and I wouldn't object. I didn't want to know why she looked so relieved right now, what hiding her one night stands from me really meant.

And I didn't want to think of the people she hurt, that the best friend I loved like no other wasn't perfect. I didn't want to think of the people that had fallen for her as easily as she changed the sheets on her bed every morning. The people she left and broke after they had shared an unbelievably intimate connection with her. Or one of the people that needed her that she didn't need back.

Most of all, I didn't want to know where I belonged in all of it. I didn't want to upset the fine balance that hadn't been there before, toy with the idea of being pushed away.

Most of all, I didn't want to be one of them.

So that was the last we ever heard of it.

"Well, tell me what you need, Spencer! Money, a new apartment, a decent job..." She scowled and added softly, "and I can get it for you."

"Ashley, can we just not talk about this right now?"

A beat of silence later, she sets her jaw. Her lips twitch at the sight of my reflexively wringing hands that I hurry to hide and sighs gustily. "The guest room's over there."

"Night, Spencer."

"Night," I mumble. The air feels cold against my skin as I walk away, or maybe it's just her eyes on me.

It's all forgotten I close the door and climb blindly into the bed. The mattress sinks and the sheets smell like fabric softer, silk against my legs.

It's heaven like I've never known.

Until it's not, the room is glaringly bright and Ashley's storming into the room looking fit to kill. She closes the door behind her with a loud bang that means I can't pretend to be asleep, hardly in the right mind to look the least bit apologetic.

"Spencer, I called your house."

I hardly dare to move. The better part of me knows this has been a long time coming, but that part of me decided to be here.

"Why doesn't the number work anymore?"

And every part of me wishes that it isn't true what Ashley wants, she always gets from me.

"I don't…"

"Tell me?"

"It's not…"

"Spence!"