Ash burst through the door of the bar and out into the night. Her hands still curled in tight fists, she started heading left but stopped and switched directions, unsure where she wanted to go. She wasn't sure what she was doing. She wasn't even sure why she felt so mad.

All she knew was that she was mad and she was mad at Zach.

Every single fiber of her body seemed to vibrate with anger and no matter how hard Ash clenched her fists, she wasn't able to contain it. This overwhelming feeling was making her mind go blank and lose all rationality. It was infuriating and only strengthened her overall anger.

"Hey," someone called behind her.

She turned towards the voice and found Zach walking towards her.

"Stop," she said, holding out her hands so he wouldn't come any closer.

"Ash," he said as he ignored her warning and continued to walk towards her. "What are you doing?" His tone was light.

"I said stop!" she said firmly, moving backward with every step he took towards her.

He stopped moving towards her. "Are you mad?"

His face showed concern but she knew it couldn't be genuine if she could so easily read it.

"Am I mad?" she shot back. "Why don't you tell me since you're the CIA trained mind-reader."

"You're mad," he said.

"Yeah! I'm mad!" she said loudly. "Why?" She didn't give him a chance to respond. "Because you think it's okay to disappear whenever you feel like it and just leave me waiting for you to decide when you want to talk to me again."

"Ash, I'm right here," he said. He said it like she was acting crazy.

"No!" she shouted, pointing an accusing finger at him. "You aren't here. The moment Cal made that stupid comment, you left mentally and that infuriatingly calm look came back on your face. And the crazy thing is, I knew you would leave before I even looked at your face. You always leave. At frisbee football, I made that remark about Jason's mom and you stormed off."

"Who's Jason?" he asked, but Ash kept going like she hadn't heard him.

"At the comedy club, they made some off-handed matriarchal joke and you left. This is how it goes. Something sets you off, and you disappear. And I'm left all alone. Waiting."

"Are you talking about my invisibility powers again?" He smiled like she was talking about an inside joke of theirs.

Something about his easy smile broke the anger inside of her. He never smiled like that. The smile meant he was really gone.

In truth, she had known it the moment Cal had made the remark about his mom. She hadn't been able to put it into words before, but now she could see a pattern.

But why was it making her upset? Why did it matter if he disappeared for days? Or weeks? Her father used to stay out all night and Ash would go to school not knowing whether he was alive or dead somewhere behind a bar.

People let you down. She knew that better than anyone.

She clenched her fists tighter. She did know that better than anyone and had spent most of her life building a wall between herself and everyone else, and yet somehow Zach had gotten through that wall. Or else she wouldn't care when he left. She had given him too much power.

This was her fault.

She released her fists and her hands fell limply by her sides. She looked at him, at every curve and divot on his face, searching for something real, but every angle was perfectly in place to reveal nothing. There was nothing for her to connect to.

"Go back to your friends, Zach," she told him calmly.

"Ash..." he started, the same light-hearted smile on his face.

"Don't," she said quietly, shaking her head. "Go. Disappear for a couple of days, or weeks. I don't care."

Or at least she wanted to pretend she didn't care.        

"I don't..." he started to say.

She looked him directly in the eyes and her gaze cut off his words. "Show me enough respect and don't lie directly to my face, okay? And, whenever you decide you're ready to come back again, do me a favor, don't come to the Busy Bean. Don't find me in class. Leave me alone."

"Ash," he said, taking a step towards her, concern on his face again, but it didn't feel real.

It felt like he was mimicking concern because that was what he should do in this situation and not because he genuinely felt it.

"I'm serious," she said, as she turned to go. "Leave me alone."

*****

Over the next couple of days, Ash did everything within her power to not think about Zach. She even told Dr. Ellerson a story from her childhood in order to avoid talking about Zach. And to his credit, Zach left her alone. At least for the first few days.

By the fourth day of not seeing Zach, Ash was beginning to feel more confident in her ability to right her wrong and relegate Zach back into the category of customer and classmate, when she walked into him outside the Busy Bean.

"Sorry..." she started to say until she realized who she had bumped into and froze.

"Hey," he said, reaching out a hand to steady her.

Survival instinct had her dodging his grasp and taking two steps away from him in under a second. She planted her feet to steady herself and looked at him. He was giving her an open and friendly smile. She hated it. She turned and walked away, unwilling to look at his fake expression.

"Hey! Ash!" he called after her but she didn't stop.

She moved as quickly as she could without turning her walk into a jog, and he didn't catch up with her until she reached the quad.

"Hey, will you wait a minute," he said, cutting in front of her so she had to physically stop or else she would run into him.

"No," she said flatly as she maneuvered around him and kept walking.

"Ash, stop." He cut in front of her again, and when she tried to move around him, this time he was ready and matched her movement.

For a minute, she moved left and right, trying to get around him but he blocked her at every move. She could feel her annoyance rising, and she knew it would show on her face, so she stopped trying to get around him and took a step back.

She let out a slow breath and looked at him flatly. She knew she could never be as unreadable as he was, but she would try her best to give him as little as possible. He had already taken too much from her.

He waited for a minute to see if she would try to run away again. When she didn't move, he took a hesitant step towards her.

"Ash, will you just hear me out?" he asked.

There was the slightest hint of begging in his tone, but she didn't believe it. She would never believe a single word or facial expression she ever got from him again. She knew what he was capable of and his words and looks meant nothing.

He took another step towards her, and when she didn't run away, he took another step so they were standing a few feet apart. He looked at her and she only stared back blankly. She had nothing to say.

For a long minute, they just stood there in the quad, looking at each other without saying a thing. As one minute turned into two, she could feel her fingers want to twitch with a restless energy, but she held them stiff. Silence was uncomfortable, but she had been through worse. She could make it through this. She watched as his eyes moved over her face assessing.

Finally, he spoke. "How are you?"

She only stared back.

"Cal and Henry were worried when you left in such a rush the other night," he tried again.

Still, she said nothing.

"They thought you were funny," he said.

"They wanted to say goodbye themselves, but..." He let her quick exit hang unspoken between them.

"Did you finish the social psychology paper?" he tried again.

Ash said nothing. Her eyes were still on Zach, but she wasn't looking at him. Inside her brain, she was running through every minute detail of her schedule for the next few days. It was a trick she had learned to do when she had to sit through someone talking, but she didn't want to listen.

Her teachers in elementary school used to call it her "dead look". They always asked her where she went when she looked at them blankly, but she never gave them an answer.

Her father had never noticed when she had given him the "dead look", but by the time she had to use the "dead look" he was usually too drunk to notice anything. He would yell and scream and Ash would work out math problems in her head or mentally go through the inventory of food in their cabinets.

On a good night, her dad would eventually run out of energy and fall asleep on the couch. On a bad night, no amount of running through details in her mind could save Ash from her father's blows.

"...I asked Huxley about using Dr. Howard's 2004 study and he said that would work," Zach said. "Did you run your evidence by Huxley?"

Ash wasn't sure what he was talking about, and she didn't care. The less she gave him, the sooner he would give up and the sooner she could leave.

"I saw an ad for a kickboxing class," he said. "I thought that could be a fun activity to try. I know I'll be good at it from my time with the "company", but I thought maybe you would like it too." He smiled as he used air quotes when he said "the company", but Ash was barely aware of it. She had already reached her plans for the weekend and her long list of homework she needed to complete before Monday.

"Ash, come on," he said softly.

He took a small step forward and reached his hand out. For a second, Ash was scared he was reaching for her and she snatched her hand to her chest in repulsion.

Something like surprise passed across his face briefly, but she didn't care. Even if it was real, it didn't matter. He let out a heavy sigh and dropped his head. She let him stay like that for a few minutes before she turned and walked in the opposite direction. She wanted to go home, and she would go the long way around if it meant she got away from him.

To her disappointment, he appeared at her side as she left the quad.

"You have to give me something," he pleaded. This time he didn't try to block her path but walked alongside her.

"Come on, Ash," he prodded again. "I can't have a conversation all by myself."

"On Sunday," she thought, "she would do laundry early because most people slept in after partying on Saturday night so the laundry room wouldn't be that crowded. It would also be quiet so she could do her reading for Huxley's behavioral psychology class. Each load, with washing and drying, would take an hour and a half, which would give her enough time to read all three chapters for that class. If she had extra time she could review the notes for her test in European history."

"...we can't call this a friendship if I am the only one putting effort into it," Zach said.

The hypocrisy of his statement made Ash come to a sudden halt. Her Sunday plans were put on hold. Zach stopped a few steps ahead of her and turned back.

"What?" he asked.

"You're the only one putting in effort?" she repeated back to him. "Really?" A cold anger came over her and she tilted her head as her focus brought him into perfect clarity. "Are you talking about all the effort you put into disappearing? To avoiding me in class and on campus? Is that the 'effort' you talking about?"

He suddenly looked like he wasn't sure he wanted to be having this conversation, but she didn't care. He had just pestered her to say something for the last twenty minutes. If he didn't want this conversation, he should have accepted her silence and walked away.

"And don't mention the word friendship," she continued. "Whatever is between us is not a friendship. Friends talk to each other and are honest and open. Friends communicate when they need space.

"They don't just disappear without a single word. They don't ignore your calls and texts for days when you are worried something happened to them. Friends don't just reappear and act like nothing happened."

"So you're the friend expert now?" he joked.

"No. I don't have any friends," she said, and this conversation reminded her why.

"Maybe you don't have friends because you have impossible standards."

He didn't say the comment with malice or anger. He said it casually, with his hands in his pockets. He said it like he was just talking off the top of his head about nothing, and that somehow made the comment twice as hurtful.

"Maybe," she admitted. There was no point denying the possibility. "The thing is, there has been a lot of hard stuff in my life I had to go through and I had no choice but to go through it. But that's not true anymore. I have a choice here. I can choose to be friends with you, or I can choose not to be friends with you."

She clenched her fist once and then let them go. She looked him directly in the eyes. "I don't want to be your friend."

**********************************************************************

OH DOODLING DIDDLES!!

Do I side with Ash? Zach has gone AWOL at times. But then again I love him so completely and irrationally that I don't think my head will win against my heart.

Whose side are you on? Zach or Ash? 💬🗯💭

On team Zach, obviously he has issues, Mommy issues, and that's legit. But just because you have issues doesn't mean you should be a bad friend.

On team Ash, she's cutting him off completely. If that fair? Is that actually a sign that she's getting better because she's not letting herself be played with? I don't know.

Do I wish for them to just be friends and healed from their damage? Obviously! That's all I want! I just want them to be happy and never face hardships ever ever again!

But sadly that's not how life or books work. So we must soldier on and hope that there is hope in the future, hopefully.

Vote, comment, follow but only if you have hope. We don't want to be hopeless here.