Ashleigh made one of her unimpressed faces as she watched Higgs rub his nose against the cat's face. This, like his choice to holiday in a location where there was nothing to do was one of those things she would never understand. Fortunately, it in no way made them incompatible as friends, provided they didn't try to go on holiday together. (And why would they, when Ashleigh could rely on Aisling for that?)
"I do," she assured him. "I'm a little jealous." The space, and the view, were things she could certainly get used to. One day, she would own her own house. It would be trickier, on one person's salary, but since she didn't need to live in London it - She caught herself. While she was in no way ready to think about sharing living space with Axel, or with anyone, her expectation that she would live alone was a lot less certain in her mind than it had once been. The slight anxiety - of not knowing what future to plan for - left her mouth a little dry an she wished she had said water or juice, rather than coffee.
At his insistence that they have dinner, she briefly frowned, then consciously cleared her expression as she tried to think of a way out of it. She knew she should eat. She didn't quite understand how, but she'd dropped weight in the last few weeks - and she didn't have much to lose in the first place. That knowledge did little to change the fact that the thought of food made her stomach feel distinctly unpleasant. "Really," she tried. "I'm not hungry. I don't mind watching you, so don't feel like you're not being a good host." She wouldn't dream of asking Higgs not to eat if he was hungry.
In answer to his question about her relationship, she hummed. "More smoothly than I expected it to." They hadn't broken up yet, which was frankly surprising. Their dates had been pleasant, if a touch awkward, and spending time with him alone and in private felt rather easier now that they weren't both dancing around their feelings for one another. Ashleigh still worried, of course, about any number of things, but Axel usually forced her to laugh it off. He could be surprisingly comforting. That didn't answer the question of how she'd been, though. Not really. Because the truth was that aside from Axel, she hadn't been great. She'd been more anxious than she could remember being since she was a child, jumping at shadows, afraid to sleep without a light on. (Or rather, unable to sleep on those nights that she forced herself to turn all the lights off, because she refused to let her anxiety rule her.) "How've you been?" she asked, hoping he wouldn't notice she'd only answered half his questions.
"I should have," she argued. "It's polite. And besides, you're going to need this one if I'm spending time here." She pushed the smaller of the boxes towards him. It contained a blue glass ashtray, charmed so that the smell of cigarettes would be unable to escape its confines. (She would, of course, smoke outside, rather than actually in his house, but she still didn't want to leave ash all over his and Marcus's property.)