I took a moment to study her face – it was the same as I remembered although her eyes were a little colder, harder… definitely distant.  But I was hardly surprised by that.  Who knew what she’d been doing for the last five years of her life, how much she’d changed, and what she’d witnessed?  I’d been making it my duty to be sure I never found out, but my plan had failed – I’d never thought it’d be her stumbling across my path.

“Are you all right?” she finally spoke, the sound of her voice making the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.  I didn’t let her see my own surprise at my reaction to her presence, my eyes remaining guarded to her.

“Why are you here?”  I asked coldly, my face and voice devoid of all expression to the point that suppressing my desire to scream and run was making my limbs ache and head spin.

“I came to see if you’re okay,” she stated simply, not once meeting my eye in the mirror I was using to study her.

“I meant in the larger sense,” I clarified, locking my arms at the elbow while gripping the edge of the sink, providing myself more stability as I felt my legs weaken beneath me.

“I needed a job, and DJC needed staff,” she said, almost arrogantly.

“Small world,” I said bitterly, sarcastically.  “How strange you come to work in the very department that I myself work in.”

“Get over yourself,” she sighed, finally meeting my gaze and taking me by surprise.  “It’s not like I woke one morning and thought ‘hey, I know, I’ll apply for a job at DJC cos Ashley Davies works there, and, man, working with her again would be a dream!’ ”

“Fuck you,” I spat.

She looked slightly hurt, taken aback by my outburst, but the expression was gone as quickly as it presented itself, replaced by a mask of stoicism.  She cleared her throat and continued as if I’d never cursed her.

“Look, we’re going to be working together closely now – can we at least try to be civil to one another to make our lives a little easier?” she asked calmly, trying a new tact.

“My life was easy,” I stated, “then you just had to show up in it again.”

“An awkward situation, I know – but a coincidental one, I swear,” she insisted.

“Whatever,” I replied, running cold water over my hands before wiping my mouth with them.  I rinsed the dry trail of tears from my cheeks and drew myself to my full height, catching my own eye in the mirror.  I hoped that she couldn’t see in them what I could – the confusion, the resurfacing of old emotions I thought were long gone, the fear and the apprehension.  I hoped she couldn’t hear how hard my heart was thumping in my chest, hoping the sound wasn’t reverberating off the bare bathroom walls, and I prayed she couldn’t see me swallowing back the urge to be sick again.  I looked up to see if she had any intention of responding, but all my eyes fell upon was the empty space where she was once standing, and the sight of the bathroom door slowly swinging closed.  She’d gone.

I felt an odd combination of relief and disappointment at her disappearance and let out a deep and lengthy sigh.  Life had an odd way of twisting and turning, dropping bombshells on us that weighed us down to the point we would surely crack under the pressure.  I told myself, in that moment, that I would never allow Spencer to break me… not now and not ever again.

That was when it dawned on me:

 
All bets were most certainly off.