Ashley had to look down to make sure her jaw hadn’t dropped to the floor.

What… what just happened?

One second Dana and Cory had been going at it in front of the whole table, the next Cory had dumped the girl onto Instagram-dude’s lap and jumped to her feet. The world had slowed a little as she raised her arms to scream her revenge; Dana was squirming a little uncomfortably but not actually making any attempts to back herself up. Ashley was a little sad to see it confirmed that Dana had just been using Cory for the attention, but she was sadder still to see the heat in Cory’s cheeks. Hot rage burning on the coals of being just another straight girl’s “experiment”.

Ashley stood up herself once Cory marched out, meeting Dana with her best disappointed frown. She hadn’t known the ins-and-outs of Dana and Cory’s makeshift relationship – only that it hadn’t been anything serious – but it still wasn’t fair of Dana to have used Cory like that. She shuddered to think of how much Cory had spent on drinks for the two of them in their short time together.

“CORYELLE? HEY, CORYELLE!”

It was surprisingly difficult to battle her way back out into the main club, and once she was there it was even more difficult to spot Cory. She figured the young DJ wouldn’t have fancied hanging around, however, and so she made a beeline for the exit.

Bursting out into the night, she spun in a full circle and called Cory’s name once more.

“If you can hear me, come back!”

She searched her mind, trying to think of something that would suitably console Cory without patronising her. There was no way she wanted Cory to spend the rest of the night miserably seething by herself.

“Pizza and Nintendo?! Does that sound good?”

Ashley still hadn’t spotted Cory, so she started to walk down the pavement towards the taxi rank. “C’mon Coryelleee, you know you can’t resist whooping my ass at Mario Kart..!”

“Oh wow, that’s amazing!” Ashley caught Senri’s challenging tone and grinned broadly in response. “I’m a singer, so I like to think my lungs can handle a lot. I’ll walk wherever you take me so long as it’s not like, an 80 degree slope or something. And maybe let’s not run the whole way,” she added, giggling. She may be fit, but she’d already been to the gym this morning and she didn’t exactly want to push it in case she wrecked herself for the rest of her time in New York.

Her eyes flipped up briefly as Senri said some kind of additional grace in what sounded like Japanese. She wanted to learn the language some day – her music was popular over there too and she was eager to push herself more firmly onto the market. Relying on interpreters the whole time wouldn’t be fun. If she had the time, next year maybe, she’d enrol herself in a beginners class or something.

She watched in envy as Senri carefully selected the turkey sandwich. It looked heavenly.

“So it’s your day off, right?” Ashley asked, partly to distract herself from staring at the delicious looking sandwich. “What do you do?”

The girl was obviously in great shape – she wouldn’t be surprised if she was an athlete of some kind. Then again, she seemed to have the appetite of an unsupervised child at a birthday party – highly unlikely that a professional athlete would consume all that bread so happily in one sitting. Ashley tilted her head in curiosity as she waited for Senri to finish her mouthful.

It seemed that Dana had managed to spot her after all, and Ashley had a split-second to react to the incoming drunken cannonball. Considering her level of inebriation, Dana still had remarkably good aim. It wasn’t easy picking out a small brunette from a crowd of people pressed together as they waited for drinks. A couple of them had probably received some elbowing as Dana made her way through, but you could forgive her for that once you heard the sheer joy in her “MACDADDY” yells.

“A game! For sure!” Ashley’s eyes sparkled mischievously, already knowing what game they were about to play and just how sorely Dana was surely going to lose. There were some people who were the “try-anything-once”-type, and then there was Dana, who was more of a “try-absolutely-everything-once-even-if-it-kills-me” queen. It made for some great entertaining stories, but Ashley was hardly tempted to try the lifestyle for herself. Observing from the side-lines was dramatic enough, thank you very much.

They didn’t rush off immediately – Cory generously offered to buy Ashley a soda before turning her attention to her phone – so she took the opportunity to get herself a cranberry juice (“That’s right, nothing else! I mean it, no vodka!”) before they went to join Dana’s friends. Or maybe they were complete strangers – Dana had a knack for forming fast friendships.

“Thanks, Coryelle,” she said cheerily, raising her glass. “And duh, I’m totally ready. You might be a pro at Dana-duty but I wrote the book on it.”

Sure enough, the group’s fingers were all raised once more for a game of Never Have I Ever. Dana was perched on some guy’s knee, her legs kicking lazily back and forth. Ashley giggled and pulled Cory’s hand down from her eyes so she could see.

An argument was taking place on the far side of the table.

“You have not dated my little sister!”

“Dude, look at everyone’s fingers, she gets around.”

Ashley cringed, half-anticipating a fight to break out, but the two seemed to suddenly resolve their conflict over a shared interest in the large cocktail pitcher before them.

Dana wriggled excitedly, beckoning for Cory to come closer. “My turn, my turn!”

Ashley squeezed her way onto the seat opposite, ready to see what Dana was about to come up with. She recognised the guy from Instagram posts that Dana had shown her – this was somebody Dana really wanted to impress. And that meant she was going to bring up something that she thought was particularly wild so she could confess to it. The group watched in anticipation as Dana pulled an exaggerated thinking face.

Then, her eyes lit up.

“Yah, fortunately my roomie’s a chef!”

Ashley laughed at her own living situation. It was pretty fantastic to be living with someone whose cooking was actually worth paying for.

She didn’t pretend to know what a traceuse was – Ashley assumed it was at least somewhat related to running, but her knowledge of parkour was so limited that she could barely distinguish it from free-running if asked. Still, it was nice to get the invite for a run down some trails. “That would be awesome! No promises I could keep up,” she added, a teasing smile on her lips.

There was a brief interruption for Senri’s food to arrive. And then more food. And then more. And more still.

Ashley’s eyes widened – she quickly tried to disguise her shock as envy, realising that it was probably quite rude to seem judgemental about somebody’s lunch options. But still, that was a lot of food for not a lot of girl.

She nodded enthusiastically at Senri’s dreams of hiking the Appalachian Trail. “Plenty to see, huh? Do you-”

Ashley’s attempted request for a tour guide was interrupted by Senri’s sudden question. She smiled happily. “Sure, can I join you?”

Although Ashley’s faith was very important to her, she didn’t often find herself saying grace in public – or even much at home, except quietly in her head. It was something she had done lots with her parents but she didn’t like to feel like she was forcing it on those around her. It was refreshing for Senri to ask her, and she hoped that it wasn’t too weird to be saying grace mid-soup.

Ashley sighed longingly. “It sure was. I am so jealous of people who can cook well.”

Since moving away from home, Ashley had cooked a lot more – mostly under Alice’s supervision, but sometimes it was just her left to fend for herself in the apartment. It was always basic stuff – recipes she had to follow as part of her dietary plan – but at least she’d stopped making so many mistakes and accidentally burning things. Ashley was still a long way off from mastery however. She just didn’t have the knack for knowing which flavours brought out the flavours in other things, when something was perfectly crispy rather than dry and charcoaled underneath. Practice would get her good at certain dishes, but she probably wasn’t destined for the chef life.

“Woah, you really put in the miles, nice work,” Ashley said approvingly. “Maybe I’ll catch you on one of those trails… or I guess, maybe you’ll catch me.”

She really hoped that there would be time this week to go out into Central Park, but her schedule seemed pretty packed. Her manager was making the most of this week up in the city that never sleeps. It was a worry that she’d have any energy left by the time the show rolled around. Good thing McKenna’s crowds were always so infectiously lively.

“Sen,” Ashley echoed, enjoying the sound of it. “Great to meet you too. I’m originally from San Francisco! I’m here for work this week, then all over the East Coast. Should be a blast,” she said happily. “This afternoon is off for me too, so I was planning on seeing some sights while I can. Feels a waste to come all the way here and not even get to know the city, you know?”

It wasn’t too surprising to find the seat across from her suddenly occupied, but it was a little surprising to see a friendly face beaming radiantly at her, making cheerful introductions. Ashley felt her mood lift even higher, and she set the soup down on the table to give the stranger her full attention.

“Hi! How are you?”

The woman seemed to be her height, even smaller, actually, and had the gentle flush in her cheeks of somebody who had just been exercising. Ashley recognised it from her own face earlier, though she was sure that the only remnants now of her earlier workout were the gentle satisfying aches in her muscles. Either that, or this person was an avid, avid fan of Panera and had run at full speed to get here before the last seat was filled.

Considering the popularity of the place, Ashley couldn’t entirely rule it out, but she figured it was a far safer bet to assume that they too were refuelling following a workout session of some kind.

“This soup smells so good, I’m dying for it to cool down enough for me to actually eat some of it,” Ashley said, laughing at herself before giving her soup a blow. “All my cardio today has been leading up to this very moment.”

With that, she gathered a small spoonful of soup and sipped on it hesitantly. Satisfied she wasn’t about to burn her tongue off, Ashley gulped the rest of the spoonful down and met her table partner with a satisfied grin. That’s some good soup…