"I'm sorry. I didn't realise you were there," Ashley squeezes her eyes shut. "Fuck, sorry, I wouldn't have even called if I knew you were—"
"Shelly, it's okay," Awsten cuts her off, gently. "I'm still here for you, it doesn't matter where I am. Just come over, it'll be fine," he insists, clearly picking up on the fact that she clearly needs someone right now.
"I, uh— okay," Ashley gives in, letting out a short breath. "Okay, uhm— Could you send me her address? Is that okay? Is she alright with this?"
Awsten looks up to find Grace stood in the door way, clearly having been listening in on the conversation— he raises an eyebrow and she nods, begrudgingly.
"Yeah, she's alright with it," he relays, shooting his girlfriend a grateful look.
"Okay, I'll uh— Tell her thank you. I'll be there soon," Ashley rushes, before ending the call.
"She says thank you," Awsten tells Grace, with a soft smile, to which she only hums in response, before wandering off. "Hey, don't do that— Come on," he sighs, standing up and following her into the kitchen. "Why do you hate her so much? I don't get it."
"I don't hate her, she just—" Grace pauses, trying to piece together decent enough reasoning.
"Come on, what is it?" Awsten asks. "You can tell me, you know that."
"She's just a little weird," she shrugs. "It's like," Grace pauses again, and Awsten doesn't understand why it's so hard for her to articulate something that she's clearly felt for so long. "It's like she knows everything."
"What do you mean?" He presses, clearly confused.
"Like— She's just very observant, and it's kind of off-putting," Grace explains, earning an odd look, since Awsten doesn't see how Ashley being observant is a bad thing at all; if anything, it's one of the things he's always admired most about her.
"So...You think that she like— notices too much?" His eyebrows dip together, as he tries to wrap her head around her reasoning, but he's still unbelievably confused.
"Yes! That's it. She notices everything," she nods, as if he's hit the nail on the head; but really, she's just going with whatever he seems to grasp. "And she just seems like she's got all of these problems, you know? Like, all that shit with her parents— which really seems like nothing to me, and then whatever this thing with Jake is," Grace lists, despite feeling like she's digging herself a hole.
"Hey, let's not—" Awsten rethinks his sentence, refraining from getting too defensive. "Her relationship with her parents is complicated, and she doesn't deserve to be treated the way that they often treat her. It's not her fault," he explains, calmly. "And she's shaken up about the Jake thing, okay? You understand that, right?"
"Yes, of course I understand it," she concedes. "I'm not heartless, Awsten."
"Just— please don't bring it up. It wasn't really my place to tell you anything about it, but I did because you're my girlfriend, and we're supposed to talk about things, okay?" He adds, earning a short nod in response. "I still want her to feel like she can come to me."
"Thats exactly it, though. I'm your girlfriend," Grace responds. "Surely she knows that you tell me everything. That's what you do in a good relationship," she emphasises, and almost as if she feels the need to overcompensate for something— but Awsten brushes past it. "Just because she hasn't had a good relationship, doesn't mean she can't see that other people are in one."
