so, i totally heard everyone who was commenting on how confusing a lot of this was getting, so i wrote this invisible (invisible becaue it’s not actually apart of the action) sort of filler that basically highlights where everyones at in the fic right now.) on that note, yeah, it’s wicked short but it’s a chapter. the chapter i am, as we speak, working on

Twenty-two days—That’s how long it had been since Spencer’s twentieth birthday, since the scene in Spencer’s (or was it Kate’s?) car in the Harvey’s parking lot, since, well—Ashley. To say that life in the aftermath of her arrival was simple would be equivalent to telling the most vile, factually disputable of lies, because let’s be honest—Now, life was anything but simple. It was maddening—Confusing—So incredibly enigmatic and racing, you could hardly pinch its fleeting edges between the rolling peaks of your fingertips before it would slip through and past your hands again—No one was untouched—Not even Paula. It seemed she, since her daughters two decade celebration, had turned a new leaf, thus leaving one to wonder as to the true implications and machinations of her previous conversation with Aiden, her most recent with Madison, and whether those plans then made still stood. Kate was, well—Kate. Kind, caring, cautious, nervous, and incredibly indecisive to the point of self-imposed inadequacy—She was unfurling, stuck between a rock and a hard place, balancing the south and north poles of life: Friend and family. Aiden, the past-described first and last male conquest of Spencer’s childhood, lurked shadowed in the background, his arrival in Weston not yet even a blip on Spencer’s social radar. Nor was Madison, the infamous (infamous to me, not yet infamous to you) Ms. Duarte—But then, why would she be? Spencer had yet to meet her and as such her existence sat at the pinnacle of unimportance. But, Ashley knew her—As a matter of fact, Ashley knew Madison in the most intimate of ways. They were in love—Two gorgeous, head strong girls basking in the sun of a Puerto Rican summer, neither then so much as assuming their romance would blossom into the two year love it then became. But then again, nothing is as it seems—A phrase, a sort of mantra, that you, the reader, should press, hold, and play on repeat for the remainder of this story, because I can’t begin to convey to you those five words’ indisputable truths. For now, Ashley remained in Weston, a not so welcome guest in Kate’s loft; Spencer residing twenty futile minutes away, spinning, surviving in the ways she understood how—They were the ying to the other’s yang, the butter to the others toast, the aged love your grandparents swore didn’t exist anymore— Everything about these girls fit and melded into one another in the tightest and most intimate of ways possible, even if they themselves had yet to decipher this epic fact. Whether or not they chose to embark on that journey towards one another was a choice all their own, but one thing was for certain— the seeds had been sown.