Please excuse my skipping over of You Are Here for the time being. I'm kind of at a dead end with that one, and when I got the inspiration for this I just had to roll with it. I will finish You Are Here though, I promise. I would like to cite a certain scene in a certain fantastic TV show for partial inspiration, although I don't want to give the story away so I'll keep it at that. If you know/recognize it, cool beans, if you don't, cool beans as well. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. :)

Box (Part One)

"You're a bitch."

"No, I'm actually not. That'd be you."

"Fuck you."

"Excuse me?" She turns around to face me now, her face incredibly red, eyebrows scrunched together, fingers balled into fists. For the first time, I think she might actually hit me. "What did you just say."

"You heard me," I seethe, my teeth clenched as I lean towards her.

"Oh. Oh, you, don't use that fucking language with me." She whips her head back around, her blonde hair flying in all directions. She is basically stomping down the sidewalk, swinging her ugly-ass red crocodile skin purse, or whatever the fuck it is, back and forth. She knows I'm close to her, and she knows she's basically whipping me with it.

"Stop hitting me with your ugly-ass purse, Spencer."

She ignores me. She ignores me a lot when we get into fights. Fights that are seemingly never ending. I don't know what it is. Maybe being together for so long has really just torn us apart. Maybe we've had too much of each other, like an overload. Maybe all we need is a break. I fear adding the word up to that statement.

"Just, shut up Ashley. Always whining, bickering, complaining, bitching."

I roll my eyes. "Those are the things you're supposed to tell the therapist, Spencey-poo. Stop telling me them."

"Then shut the hell up."

"Maybe you need to stop trying to control everything I do, all the time, all day long, every fucking single sec-"

"Okay!" She yells, turning her head my way once again. Her gorgeous, sparkly, blue eyes are squinting severely at mine.

Spencer and I make our way through the fancy glass doors of the building. We're used to it by now, we've been here, together and separately, at least a dozen times. It's either because she's too strung out to have sex, or it's that I'm away for work too much to help with anything, or it's that I paid the bills late, or sometimes it's because she locks me out of the apartment and won't let me back in for hours. Hours.

Her high heels click against the shiny, smooth tiles of the floor, and I nod at the security guard. I feel ashamed that he even knows who I am. Going to therapy, with your girlfriend, is definitely not something to be proud of. What worries me is that we continue to go just because we're too scared to leave each other. Because maybe that's what needs to be done.

And she's wearing this tight, black pencil skirt, with this flowy, almost purple-ish blouse. I say this because it's hard not to notice. Especially when all I'm wearing is a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

When we get to the elevator, I smash my hand against the up button, and it lights up. And we wait.

"Is all that force seriously necessary, Ash?" Spencer asks me roughly.

"I had to let it out somewhere," I mumble and turn my head away from her. "I hope you know I'm missing a meeting for this bullshit."

"Yeah? And you were gunna just wear that to a meeting. Jeans and a t-shirt. Fancy."

I stare at the side of her head and plead with God to let laser beams come out of my eyes and my nostrils, penetrating her stupid blonde head and neck. Maybe then she'd beg for me to be nice to her and help out. Whatever.

"Why is this taking so long, ugh." I close my eyes and tap my boot-covered foot on the floor. I tilt my head up towards the ceiling, where I can feel cold air from the air-conditioner being pelted out. It feels refreshing, because it's incredibly hot outside. I try to calm myself, to take deep breaths, to count slowly to fifty or whatever number I decide. It kind of works. I feel my heartbeats slow down, steadying. I feel my shoulders and fingers and mid-section relax.

I open my eyes slowly and level them straight ahead, and I see Spencer standing in the elevator with her hands crossed over her chest. I stop the door from closing with my hand just inches before it does.

"You're an ass," I spit out at Spencer who has an obnoxious, snarky smirk on her face. Then I hit the button for floor sixteen. It lights up.

"It's nineteen," Spencer says, pointing the already lit up number nineteen.

"No, it's not," I tell her. "I wonder what type of tie he'll be wearing today," I muse out loud.

"Maybe that ugly puke green checkered one," Spencer chuckles, loosening her arms from around her.

"I like that one."

Spencer laughs lightly. "You would."

I smile at her. No matter how much we fight, we always seem to be able to go back to us and I like us. It is essentially, the reason why we stay together. Because we both love us.

"You have the check, right," Spencer says as she checks the watch on her wrist, the one I gave her for our two year anniversary present.

"Uh," I trail off. "What?"

Spencer turns to me, and I can see it in her eyes. "Ashley. The payment we owe him, it was on the kitchen counter."

I meet my eyes with her. "You said you got it," I say slowly.

Spencer's eyes look up quickly and then they come back to mine. They're darker, and I'm guessing it's not because she's turned on. "I asked, got the check?"

"No, you said, got the check," I say seriously.

The blonde lets out a growl of anger. "Ashley! You had one job, to bring the check, that's all.

"You said you had it! I'm sorry if I didn't fully realize the difference between a question mark and a period in your voice!"

I see her open her mouth to say something angrily back, but at that moment whatever she says gets drowned out by an absolutely awful noise. A noise which seems to coincide with the extreme jerking of the elevator box we're standing in. I hit the wall, slamming my arm into the little bar attached to the wall for people to hold onto, or lean against.

"Fuck," I hiss, holding the place where I hit my arm. And then the lights flicker, and the sixteen and nineteen buttons are no longer lit up. And it's dark. And we're going to fucking suffocate in this small box.

"Oh my God. Oh my God," I mumble. " What the fuck is going on?"

"Ash, calm down," Spencer tells me, taking step closer to me. "I just think it got stuck, or broke down, or something."

"Shit balls. We're gunna run out of oxygen, oh my God Spencer I can't breathe-" I get interrupted by a hard slap to my cheek. My eyes widen in surprise and shock.

"Calm down and shut the fuck up," Spencer says in a weirdly soothing voice. And so I do.

She steps in front of me to press the emergency button. Nothing happens. She presses it again. Still, nothing happens. Then she starts to repeatedly press it, and that's when I grab her hand away form it.

"Hey," I say quietly. "Spencer." I take her hand and pull her into me so she's now leaning against my body. And I can feel her nervousness radiating off her. "It's okay." I fight back my urge to laugh, this is so not the time.

After a moment, Spencer steps away from me and takes a deep breathe. "I'm fine." Again, we're standing apart from each other. Her short moment of panic and nervousness makes me think of the first time I met Spencer. I look over at her, moving my head slowly.

The first bell had already rung and kids were shuffling, quickly, to and from the classrooms they needed to be in. I had no intention of getting to class on time, I never really did. So I moved slowly, easily, dragging my Converse covered feet across the conrete. Even though there was shade, the sun was still shining down on the lockers outside quite harshly.

I didn't feel like carrying my books around today, so instead I opted for carrying my guitar over my should on its strap. And then the second-bell rang. Stragglers made their way down the hall quicker than before, classroom doors slammed closed, and blinds were rolled down.

I was still about half-way to my English class when I turned a corner and bumped right into someone. Actually, they bumped into me. Probably because this particular person had their head down, but was moving quickly around the corner. At first contact, the person's books flew all over the floor and my coffee, the only other thing I was carrying, splattered all over the ground.

"Shit," the girl, I now noticed it was a girl, uttered loudly. She just stood in place, looking at the dropped books and spilled hot liquid. "Shit," she said again. "I'm so sorry."

She had blonde hair tied back in a loose ponytail. And her eyes were blue and sincere when they apologized. I noticed her long legs, emerging from a pink-ish short skirt resting on her hips. She was quite gorgeous, and I was surprised I hadn't seen her before.

"Hey, no worries," I smiled at her, but she wasn't looking. She was already bending down, trying to pick up her books and wipe the coffee off her papers.

I knelt down beside her, and that's when she looked at me. Her eyes blinked.

"I'm sorry," is all she said, but it looked like she was intently focusing on my face. She was even prettier up close.

"Please, it's okay. I swear. Just coffee. I'm sorry your papers got ruined."

The pretty blonde shook her head. "It's…okay. I'm sorry, I'm new and a little topsy turvy."

I smirked and raised my eyebrows at her strange expression. It was very cute. "We all get a little…topsy turvy sometimes," I told her.

When we both stood up, I wanted to keep talking to her and not let her run off to class. "I'm Ashley." I held out my hand for her to shake.

And for the first time since she'd bumped into me, she smiled. Her smile was, for lack of better words, breath-taking.

"Spencer, Spencer Carlin," she said with a shy smile. Her hand slid into mine, and right then, at that moment, I was convinced. I had to have her.

The next day, I found Spencer Carlin looking at the bulletin board outside the main office. It was a pretty day, and I had again decided against books and for my guitar. When I reached her, I tapped her on the shoulder.

"Hey," I said, giving her a smile as well.

"Ashley," is all she said, and smiled back.

I held out a notebook to her. "Um, I thought you might want a new one since yours got covered in my coffee."

Spencer smiled wide at me and I think, I think she might have blushed. "Thanks, that's so sweet of you. But I was the one who bumped into you, so I don't know if I deserve this. I feel like I owe you a coffee."

I laughed. "That's okay. But, I was going to go get coffee anyway, so you could come with me, if you want."

Spencer nodded. "Yeah, okay."

I am now sitting cross-legged on the floor of the broken elevator box, taking slow and easy breaths. Spencer is sitting across from me, against the wall. Her knees are lifted up, her arms around them. She looks so much younger.

"What are we gunna do?" I ask her quietly.

Spencer shrugs, her eyes penetrating mine. "I mean, it's gotta be fixed sooner or later, right? They must know people are in here, they have cameras and stuff, right?"

I tap my fingers against my jeans. "I guess."

I try not to think about how nervous I'm getting. And about how hot it is inside this small, stupid, fucking box.

To Be Continued...