1:54PM Saturday, September 14, 2013

“Spence?” 

“Huh?  Yeah?”  Spencer slowly realized her mind had been in an earlier time…a better time.  “I, uh, I gotta go.”  She shot up off the couch and quickly started gathering her things.  “Mind if I wear these home?” referencing the clothes of Vanessa’s she was currently wearing.  “I’ll get them back to you later.”

“Yeah, sure.  Are you okay?”  Vanessa stared at the blonde intently.  “You don’t look so good.” 

“I’m fine.  Seriously.  I have to…I just have to go.” Spencer reached the door.  “I’ll talk to you later.” 

The door slammed.  Vanessa’s gaze lingered upon the door and then, slowly with a frown upon her face, she turned back to her textbook. 

2:01PM Saturday, September 14, 2013

Spencer stared at her computer screen.  Her eyes glazed over.  Not really seeing the screen, but seeing through it.  Opened on the screen was Spencer’s email.  The cursor blinked over a folder aptly named “Ashley.”  All the emails still had the bright blue dot next to them.  Blue eyes blinked and palms pressed hard against them.  Her hands left her eyes and her right thumb settled on the left mouse button on the touch pad.  A deep breath.  Another.  She clicked on “Ashley.” 

It contained 65 emails:  all the emails Ashley had sent her after Tokyo and before her undergraduate email account expired.  The first few she had immediately deleted; she had even thought of going to IT and asking for a new email address.  But then, at the beginning of August when the emails stopped coming once a day and instead only came on Sundays, she plucked all of the old emails out of the Trash folder and transferred them to an “Ashley” folder.  Since then, receiving them had become a ritual for Spencer.  She would get home from Vanessa’s apartment on Sunday mornings, turn on her laptop, and, just like magic, there was Ashley’s email.  The subject lines changed from “I miss you” and “Please let me explain” to blank when Ashley had stopped emailing daily and Spencer always hesitated just briefly to think about what those emails contained before moving them to the “Ashley” folder.  Sometimes she’d even feel momentarily guilty over spending the previous night at Vanessa’s.  But then she wouldn’t think about it again…until the next Sunday.  When Spencer’s UCLA account expired, she transferred the entire folder to a new gmail account.  Consciously, she wasn’t quite sure why she still held onto the emails when she had never read a single one, but she never deleted them.  Even after her undergraduate account expired, Spencer somehow thought she’d magically receive emails from Ashley at her new account – like Ashley would have her personal assistant find out her gmail address.  But after a month of no correspondence, Spencer started to forget.