“They were good. I had fun, I guess. I missed Nick,” Ashley replied. “Did you guys have a good time? What did you do?”
A pang of guilt hit Lila when she thought about what she and Nick had been doing while his girlfriend was away. “Yeah, we did. We went out for pizza and hung out and that was about it.”
“He isn’t upset about anything, is he? When I got here, he seemed kinda distant, like there was something on his mind. I asked him about it, but he said it was nothing. Do you know anything about that?”
“He’s probably just tired. He’s been pretty busy for the past couple of days,” Lila lied. “And I’m sure he’s nervous about the tour coming up.”
Ashley sighed. “Speaking of the tour, I need some advice. I was the public relations director’s assistant on the tour before. That was basically an internship because I’m going into public relations. For this leg of the tour, the public relations director doesn’t need an assistant, which was supposed to work out fine because I didn’t want to miss any more school.”
“That makes sense.”
“Last week, he asked me if I wanted to go with him on tour. I don’t know what to say, Lila. I sort of wanna go, but that’s a really big thing. The idea of a serious relationship scares the hell out of me. If I go with him, I think that qualifies this as a serious relationship, and that’s another semester of school that I would be missing. The tour is four months long, and two of those would be during the school year. He says if I don’t wanna do it, it’s no big deal. He actually said he’d invite you to go with him.”
Ugh! This was getting more and more confusing by the minute. Lila didn’t wanna tell Ashley to go if she didn’t want to, but she also didn’t wanna spend four months with Nick, and she knew she couldn’t turn him down. “You have to do what’s in your heart, Ash.”
“I think I’m gonna skip on it because I’m not ready to take our relationship to that level.”
“Well, it’s kind of already at that level, since you’re basically living with him,” Lila pointed out, hoping she would change her mind.
“I don’t know. To be honest, I’m not even sure this thing is gonna work out. It just doesn’t look too promising,” Ashley said glumly.
“What makes you think that?”
“He doesn’t seem to really care about me…at least not in that way.”
“He does care about you, Ash. I’m not sure about in what way, but he definitely does care about you.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if I care about him in that way. I want to, but I don’t think I do.”
“Do what’s in your heart, Ash,” Lila repeated.