"Hence the sudden desire to go rock climbing," Ashleigh said. She had no problem with Axel wanting to do rock climbing, or scuba diving - she just didn't want to go do them with him. "Why don't you go with Ken?" she suggested, since he seemed the member of Quake most likely to appreciate Axel's taste in adventures, at least from what Ashleigh knew about them. "Or Andrew, or Toby." If Axel needed to do something new, something that was new to him, Ashleigh wasn't really sure what she could offer. She'd been serious about the Cabrio cable car in Switzerland, but she assumed Axel's lack of comment meant he wasn't interested in that. Probably it wasn't active enough, since it was mostly standing around looking at views.
Ashleigh liked active things, she liked to dance and she'd gone hiking with Alicia, and she thought her ballet training might even mean she'd be quite good at figure skating, but none of those things were new and exciting to Axel, who'd been raised with significantly more money than Ashleigh's family had ever had. Ashleigh liked fixing things. It was what she was good at, what she felt valued for. She was good in a crisis, sensible, excellent at research. If she'd had time to go to the library and come up with a list of activities, she was sure she could think of something Axel would enjoy and she... wouldn't hate. On the spur of the moment, though, she wasn't very imaginative. Ashleigh liked the things she liked, she didn't need to try new things unless she thought it likely she'd like those too. Not being able to think of anything was as good as failing, and after their last serious conversation, Ashleigh already felt a little bit like she was failing.
She pulled Axel down into a kiss again, briefly tempted by how easy it would be to just distract him with sex. Then, she could go research at her leisure until she found a solution to the problem. She stopped, because it was a cheap trick and Axel deserved better. "I'll think of something better than skiing," she offered. "Tomorrow." She could rearrange her day to fit in a library trip.