✓ | BETTER WITH YOU → richie tozier ³

sixteen

"HEY, ASH, I'm going out to get food, alright?"

Ash didn't answer Mike, who sighed, coming into the spare bedroom and leaning against the door frame, looking at her.

"Ashley."

This time, she glanced up, smiling thinly. "Okay."

He stared at her for a couple more seconds, before she looked away, turning the cigarette package over again and again in her hands.

"Ashley, we talked about this," Mike said exasperatedly. "He made his choice."

"But I'm the one who fucked up, Mike!" Ash exclaimed, throwing her head back onto the pillows. "I fucked up. I kissed you. I fucked up."

Mike cast his eyes somewhere else and was silent, and her forehead creased as Ash sat up quickly.

"Oh my God, you're still mad, aren't you?" She said incredulously, and when he didn't answer, she said, "Oh my God! You are! Do you know how low it is of you to be mad because I wouldn't have sex with you?"

Mike finally looked at her. "I just meant- I don't know! Jesus, Ashley, it just doesn't seem fair that he gets to have sex with you and I-"

"Fair?" Ash's nostrils flared, and Mike at least had the decency to look embarrassed. "Fair!? Richie and I were in love, Mike! We had been separated for three fucking years and dated for practically one! Of course I was going to have sex with him! And you, acting like a fucking asshole because I don't love you and I don't want to have sex with you-"

"Okay, okay!" Mike said, putting his hands in the air defensively. "Calm down, okay? I'll stop. I'm going to get food, alright?"

She glared at him, and then nodded before Mike exited the room and she sank back onto the bed, putting her face in her hands, hearing the door slam behind him.

This was all her fault.

If only she could go back to the summer her and Richie were first together, before Spencer Allen, before she moved away, before Richie tried to kill himself, before Mike. . .before everything.

And suddenly, a burst of pain shot from the back of her head and she let out a scream, her body trembling, the muscles on her neck twitching-

-and then, it stopped.

~

Ashley was walking down the hallways of Derry Middle, trying to read the confusing map of the school.

God, she hated being new. It sucked.

Two weeks into the semester, and here she was, walking down the hallways like a fucking-

SLAM.

She felt her legs give way from underneath her and she toppled to the ground, her books clattering to the floor and air getting away from her breath as she opened her eyes and saw a boy.

Fuck.

This could have only happened to her.

Instead of, "Oh my God, I'm sorry!" The first words out of her mouth were, "Watch it, dipshit!"

The boy, who had thick, glasses and black curly hair that curled over her ears did a double take.

He raised an eyebrow at her, his eyes scanning her body, and then a smirk twisted his lips as he uttered, "Well, aren't you gorgeous."

That was her first encounter with Richie Tozier.

~