"Is it?" Ashleigh asked, raising an eyebrow. To her, that didn't make any sense. "Why?" She didn't doubt that Aisling believed it, if Aisling had been the type to respond to Ashleigh with meaningless platitudes she didn't actually believe herself, they probably wouldn't still be friends. "And that's assuming that a relationship would make me happy." Ashleigh might want it, for reasons she couldn't comprehend, but she didn't actually know how she'd feel if she got it. She wasn't stupid, she had seen other people's relationships, she knew that Higgs made Alicia happy, but she couldn't imagine being in a relationship with Higgs herself. Even with Axel, she couldn't conceptualise what would actually change. Outside of the sexual, what would they even do? In an ideal world, she would stop being upset by his interactions with other women and she would learn to stop upsetting him in general. That would be better, but Ashleigh was fairly certain people didn't get into a relationship just to make existing friendships run more smoothly. "And it's assuming that you're right and Axel does want that." Which Ashleigh had believed, had even thought they might - slowly - be working their way towards, until Axel had pointedly and publicly bragged about Chastity.
As much as she wanted to immediately jump to her own defence and say that of course she could see shades of grey, she stopped. She respected Aisling's intelligence enough to give her words due consideration. Enough time to be reminded of the 'all or nothing' mentality that she'd read about in her mental health books. Possibly Aisling had a point. Possibly there were options in life between 100% sensible and 100% reckless. And maybe, even if a relationship with Axel did ultimately fail, even if it did ultimately hurt her, she would at least learn something. Even if that something was just that she wasn't cut out for relationships. She chewed on her lip for a moment before stopping to take another sip of wine instead, the pasta left forgotten entirely in the face of something so much more interesting. "I'm still scared." Of losing Axel as a friend, of the pain being more than could be justified by what she might learn, of admitting to Axel that she might want what she'd always insisted would never happen, of Alicia's judgement if Ashleigh did something so illogical.