When she first came back people would ask me “why do you still care, other than Ky I think she hurt you the most? Why bother?” At the time I didn’t have an answer, other than ‘because’. In retrospect the answer’s quite simple: I love her, I’m in love with her. When I saw her again sure I saw the same jaded, coked up bitch everyone saw, but at the same time I saw the girl I loved and grew up with. The girl who would give my brother Glen a wedgie when he was mean to me, or share her ice cream when mine melted off the cone from the intense L.A. heat.

It wasn’t until later that I found out what caused the drastic change in her and made her push us and run in the opposite direction, but I knew that that summer, I, Spencer Ann Carlin, was going to get my Ashley back. This time I wouldn’t let her go without a fight, no matter how much or how hard she pushed. Love makes us do crazy things, but it can also give us courage. And hopefully when all was said and done, I’d finally be able to tell her how I really felt about her.