Chapter 10
"It's beautiful out here at night." Ashley says as we walk the trail. I turn and look at her, letting a small smile escape my lips. I'd been thinking the exact same thing. There are a bunch of flood lights along the path lighting it up.
"Why'd you hate me so much when I got here?" I ask suddenly.
"I didn't hate you." I stop walking and turn to look at her. She clearly hated me. There's no use denying it. "Okay, so maybe I hated you a little bit." She smiles.
"Why?" I question, as we start back walking.
"It isn't anything you did. It isn't even your fault really. You just..." She pauses and looks at me. "You just happen to now occupy the bed that my ex-girlfriend used to sleep in." She tells me. I take a moment to process the information, making sure I don't say the wrong thing.
"I'm sleeping in Sarah's bed?" I breathe out—not knowing that fact before this moment. Now I see why she hated me so much when I got here. I was occupying a bed that once belonged to the girl she loves.
She nods. "Yeah. She was adopted." She sighs before continuing. "They were a really nice family. They lost their daughter when she was four. They'd been wanting to adopt for years but said they hadn't found the right girl. They instantly fell in love with Sarah." She stops as we approach a bench and both take a seat. "She's real easy to love." She adds.
"How long were you two together?" I ask, turning to look at her.
"Three years." She turns to me and says. "But we'd been friends since we got roomed together about five years ago. She was nine when she got here and I was ten." She tells me, looking down.
"Could she come visit?" I ask.
She turns at looks out at the pond. "No." She shakes her head. "The family that she lives with, they stay in Texas."
"Oh." I breathe out. I really feel bad for Ashley. Falling in love is hard enough without having to deal with losing the one you love. Trust me, I would know.
"It's hard..." She pauses and I look at her as we take a seat on a bench. "You know... being here without her. Living without her." She tells me without looking at me.
"Is that why you cry all the time, cause you miss her?"
"More or less." She turns to me. "It's like..." She trails off and looks past me, almost as if she's looking though me. "Before you got here." She pauses again as if she's trying to find the right words in her head to convey what she's feeling right now but she's having a difficult time.
"I'm not trying to replace Sarah with your friends, Ashley." I tell her and she sighs. I guess I hit the nail on the head.
"It's not that, so much."
"Then what is it?" I ask as she continues to stare though me.
"I'm forgetting." She breathes out. I'm not sure what she means, but the look on her face is not one of solace.
"Forgetting what?" I ask. She sighs and turns her body away from me to face the trees in front of us.
"Her." She says simply.
"I don't think I-"
"I promised her I wouldn't forget her." She cuts me off. Finally turning her attention to me. "I promised her I wouldn't but here I am... forgetting her." I purse my lips not knowing exactly what to say in this moment, Ashley and I are starting to get to know each other and I don't want to say the wrong thing to mess it up.
"I'm sure you're not doing any of this on purpose." Slips out of my mouth. She stares at me intently before her lips curl up into a small smile.
"You're a peculiar one, Spencer. You know that?" She turns back away from me, smile still playing at her lips.
"No. I didn't know that." I breathe out and let a smile escape my own lips.
"I've never met someone that would try to make the person who has practically tried to make their life a living hell since the moment they got here, feel better." She pauses and shakes her head. "Strange."
"Can I ask you something?" I turn so my entire body is facing her, putting my feet up on the bench—tucking them underneath me. She nods. "Is Sarah the reason you don't let people in or is that something that you've always done?"
"People leave, Spencer. It's like... I'm a force field or something that always seems to push the people I love away." She pauses and glances at me for a brief moment. "Except Kyla of course." She smiles a little. "I can't seem to get rid of her." She adds.
"You not a force field, Ashley. If anything you have this gravitational pull about you." I tell her and she bites the inside of her jaw to stop from smiling. "No matter how mean you were to me when I got here, look at us now... here—talking."
"I think it's only because you feel bad for me." She says, then chuckles a little. "I think they call it pity." She looks at me and smiles.
"No. Not pity." I shake my head and she playfully glares at me. "Okay, maybe a little pity." I admit, rolling my eyes. We both grin. A comfortable silence overtakes us before I finally speak again. "You know... you're pretty easy to like, that is, when you're not going out of your way to be mean to people."
"Can I ask you something personal, Spencer?" She asks and I nod my head for her to continue. "When your parents died...how did you deal with it?" I give her an inquisitive look, trying to figure out exactly what it is that she's asking me. "I mean like... how are you able to be here now and not be like totally depressed?"
I shrug before answering, "I think that it's because I've come to terms with what is, and I've stopped dwelling on what was."
"Do you miss them?" She squints her eyes like asking me this question pains her.
"All the time." I sigh. "But living in the past won't bring them back. There's nothing I can do, so I try not to think about it." I answer honestly and she nods. Silence overtakes us again as we watch the scenery around us, through the thick darkness inside the grove.
"I miss my mom a lot." She blurts out suddenly. I turn my attention back to her, not saying anything but letting her know that she has my attention. She sighs and begins again. "I mean, I don't really remember much about her, but the things I do remember—I miss them. I miss her tucking me in at night, and kissing me goodnight." She lets a small smile escape her lips. "She used to sing to me, every single night. I remember not being able to sleep until she got home and sang that song to me. If only I could remember what that song was called." She shakes her head and looks down. She begins to hum a tune that sounds vaguely familiar but I can't place where I know it from. "My mom did a lot of bad things when Kyla and I were kids." She starts again when she stops humming. "But overall she was a good mom. She just... she couldn't kick her addiction. I feel like...maybe if I had been older I could have helped her. I could have saved her... I could have done something—anything." She finishes with another sigh.
"What about your dad?" I ask in a low voice. I remember Kyla saying something about him never being around but Ashley's older so she may remember more about him.
"We never knew our dad. And my mom wouldn't tell us who he was. She said that he'd abandoned us, which baffled me because if Kyla and I had the same father then he would have had to make at least one more appearance for my mom to have had Kyla two years later. But my mom swore to me that I'd never met him and that he'd said he never wanted to meet me—or Kyla for that matter."
"That sucks."
"Yeah." She glances over at me. "It does."
"Have you ever thought about going out and trying to find your dad?"
"Yeah, quite a few times actually. I thought about running away from this place before, but I could never leave Kyla behind but then I could never take her either. I wouldn't want that type of life for her. Living on the streets, scrounging for food to find a man that probably wants absolutely nothing to do with us like my mom said. I just didn't see the point."
"I'm not sure which is worse. Never knowing your father or losing him in a car accident." I say dejectedly. I guess Ashley could sense the mood changing.
"It's getting kinda chilly out here, you wanna go back inside?" She asks standing up, holding out her hand to help me up from the bench.
"Sure." I answer, taking her hand—lifting myself up from the bench. Once I am on my feet I am surprised when Ashley doesn't release my hand—instead she turns our hands so that our fingers can intertwine. I drop my head and look away as a small smile escapes my lips. I glance back her to see a small smile playing at her lips. She held my hand the entire walk back.
"It was nice talking to you tonight, Spencer." She tells me once we reach our door—finally releasing my hand.
"Yeah, it was." I say realizing how that sounded. "I mean, it was nice talking to you too." I rush out and she giggles.
"I knew what you meant." She laughs a little again before turning to open the door to their room.
"Oh shit, right there baby. Yes! Oh my God, keep going like that." Echos throughout our pitch black room and Ashley and I glance at each other—barely able to see one another—share a look. We just walked in our two friends having sex. And by the sound of it Rachael is doing really good.
Ashley and I both back up from the room and Ashley shuts the door behind us. We look at each other again before we both burst out laughing.
"Do those two ever stop?" I ask with a smirk on my face.
She shakes her head. "Not since I've known them. I'm honestly surprised they were able to keep it together your first night here. But then again they probably went off and had sex in the study room or something after we were all asleep." She giggles again.
"Where the hell is Madison?" I ask realizing that she couldn't have been in the room. Not with that going on. I know she's probably used to it by now, but if I could leave the room, I wouldn't willingly sit through a Stacy and Rachael fuck fest. I mean... depending on the circumstances. If you catch my drift.
"She's probably in the library or something, avoiding this." She smiles thumbing towards our door.
"So what should we do until they're done?" I ask as we both take a seat on the floor next to our room.
–
We sat outside our room for a full thirty minutes before they were done. Ashley and I talked a little more to kill the time quicker. She's a very interesting person. I love just... getting to know her. After Stacy and Rachael were done they came out of the room—sweaty and giggly.
"We're gonna go shower." Stacy tells Ashley and I as we stand up from the floor.
"Sorry we took so long." Rachael says trying to be polite but Ashley and I both know that she doesn't mean it. Ashley and I share a look before Stacy and Rachael giggle their way down the hall towards the showers.
"So um... goodnight." Ashley says as we make our way into our room.
"Goodnight." I reply with a smile. We both stand close to her bed awkwardly before I shockingly grab her and pull her into a hug before placing an amatory kiss on her cheek. I pull back and see that I'm not the only one that's surprised by my actions. Ashley opens her mouth to speak but I cut her off, "Um.. yeah, goodnight." I say quickly before making my way over to my bed. I quickly kick off my pants and hop into bed. I pull the covers over my head, unnecessarily, to shield the world from seeing the biggest grin on my face.
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.