“We kissed,” I say and that man-eating grin only grows.
“You’re right, we kissed, and we both know it didn’t mean a thing. You and I don’t do attachments and what you’re asking for sounds an awful lot like caring.”
Her words leave a mark and it’s not one I’m proud of. She leans up on her elbow and that mask I’ve seen several times on her face, the one she wears when she works, when she’s on the streets is plastered on her face. “Can you do that, Logan? It’s one thing to play with me, but can you care for me?”
“You don’t think I care?” I rise up, looming over her.
“I think you’re mistaking attraction for caring. I think you’re a good guy who wants to save the girl, but I don’t need saving.” Abby slides into my personal space, her fingers walking erotically up my chest. “Can you fall for the drug dealer, the girl who doesn’t mind kissing one guy and then another, the girl who gets in cars with strangers, rides with them, and then leaves them so they can get high? Can you fall for a girl who stuck a knife in a guy? The girl whose father was a dealer, a killer? Whose mother was a junkie and a whore?”
“You’re more than that.”
“I’m not. You were just hoping for more.” Her fingers reach the collar of my shirt and she eases her head close to mine. So close our noses nearly touch, so close that our lips are a breath’s distance apart. So close my fingers twitch with the idea of grabbing onto her thighs and drawing her body on top of me so that her hips are settled directly over mine.
Abby’s eyes bore into me as she whispers, “It’s attraction, Logan. That’s it. We’ve been a slow burn for months so instead of wasting this time talking about things we can’t change, let’s return to what we’re good at—let’s play.”
Her sweet smell envelops me and my body pulsates with the need to taste her, touch her, find that quick rhythm that was promised in that shared kiss.
Abby skims her fingers along my arm and it’s like fire flickering from her nails. “You scared to kiss me, Logan?”
No, not at all. My arm curls around her stomach and as I sit up, I press her into me. She grins, thinking she’s winning this game, but she’s not. I shift, guiding her body down, covering hers with mine, and right as her back is about to brush against the bed, I slow and make sure the contact with the covers is light, gentle.
I’m careful with her injuries, making sure that the bandaged area on her back is the last to touch and I lower my head, kissing the area above her exit wound, and her breathing hitches. I continue a slow trail along her collarbone and up her neck. Each taste of Abby is sweet and warm and makes me crave more.
When her head fully sinks into the pillow, Abby looks up at me in confusion. Her fingers in my hair, her hand cupping the back of my neck, her foot automatically hooked around mine. Our bodies are exactly where she wants them to be, where I want them to be, but the emotions are off—that’s because there are emotions. That’s because I’m no longer playing.
“No, I’m not scared to kiss you.” I nuzzle her jawline as I run my hand along the length of her waist. “I’m not scared to feel something for you, either.”
Abby’s shaking her head, yet her fingers knot in my hair, dig into my back. “You should go.”
“I will,” I say against her mouth. As I breathe out, she breathes in and our mouths meet. It’s soft and innocent in a way that creates a warm haze. The type where there are slight pulls, the type that will make our lower lips swollen, the type where it shows I care.
Abby’s slow to follow along, almost as if she’s learning how to kiss...as if she’s learning how to kiss like this.
Abby
My heart is drumming so loudly Logan has to hear it, has to feel it, but then a part of me is wondering if this is another dream, another moment where my mind has wandered into areas of fantasy...into the places that feel real, but when I wake up realize none of it had existed.
Those moments hurt—the dreams that felt real, to hold in your hands all that you secretly wish for and then open your eyes and experience the devastating loss of knowing that it was never mine.
Logan’s lips are strong, yet soft. Kissing me like I’ve never been kissed. Kissing me like I’m worth kissing. Kissing me in a way that causes my groggy soul to flutter its eyes open from its constant state of sleep, kissing me in a way that causes my body to melt into his, kissing me in a way that makes my blood that’s always cold to feel very, very excitably warm.
He caresses my face and the touch tickles and causes my cheeks to flush. Logan holds his body over mine, just the right mixture of weight and heat, but he’s careful, so careful. As if he’s frightened to break me, as if he’s hesitant to ask for more.
I shake. A quiver that starts in my head and roars down to my toes and I hold on to Logan, unsure of the reaction, terrified of what it means, more scared to let it go.
Logan lifts his head and his dark brown eyes are full of concern as they flicker over my face. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
He goes to shift off of me, as if his closeness is the reason I could be in pain. Am I okay? No, and my hands hold him tighter, keeping him near, because deep within me I understand the problem. I don’t want him to go. I don’t want him to leave. I like Logan way too much.
Did he hurt me? He will. When he leaves my room. When he walks out the door. When he finally does what I ask.
Logan continues to study me for a moment, and against my wishes, he rolls off of me and is across the room to my dresser. I lean up on my elbows. “What are you doing?”
The shaking of pills out of a bottle. Logan returns with a closed fist and a bottle of water. I fall back on the bed. “I already took my antibiotics.”
Logan sits on the edge of the bed and holds out the painkiller and the bottle of water. “Take it. You’re in pain.”
Until he said it, I had still been living in that kiss, but the pain in my head and shoulder washes over me again. I close my eyes. I was right the first time, that kiss was a dream, just the type I had while still awake. “I can’t.”
“You’re not a junkie,” he says. “If that’s what you’re concerned about.”
“You don’t know if I’m a junkie or not.” I open my eyes. “And neither do I.”
“I know.”
“Logan...” I sigh. “You can’t know because I have absolutely no idea who I am. Me knowing first feels like a requirement for anyone else knowing anything about me at all. I’m not you. I don’t have myself figured out. I’m a girl with a fake name and a fake social security number and a fake birth certificate. I’m a ghost. I always have been. Occasionally, I just pretend to be real.”
Logan
Just pretend to be real... Her words are like a sharp knife to the throat. The pretending part—I get. More than she could understand. I often don’t feel real. Feel like a lie so I tell her the one thing that’s the truth. “I care for you, Abby.”
Abby reaches over and places her hand over mine, the one that still fists her pain medication. “I don’t have the luxury of being the girl who’s cared for or being the girl who can care back. I need money to pay for those nurses.”
The water bottle crackles in my hands. I’m stuck on how to ask this without it being insulting. “My grandpa had a stroke. After he got out of rehab, he lived at home with us for a while and when that didn’t work we put him in a nursing home.” A pause. “Medicare paid for it.”
Abby releases an annoyed breath and withdraws her hand. “How long was he there?”
My answer isn’t going to help my defense. “A few weeks.”
“Before he died?” she probes.
I nod, still hurting for my dad. It killed him to lose his father.
“I’m not talking a few weeks. She’s been this way for years.”
“There has to be another way,”
I say.
“The dealing, this life—this is who I am. Who I was born to be. The reaper with pretty eyes and pretty hair.”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
Abby looks so damn exhausted and her movements are stiff—that pain, it’s there. “I’m not redeemable so stop thinking of me as fixable. I’m not some pathetic girl who needs saving. I’m willingly making these choices.”
“Why not put your grandmother in a nursing home? I’ll help you fill out the paperwork if that’s what your problem is. If you can’t pay for it, Medicare will.”
Abby winces as she props herself up onto the pillows. “Mac and I, we tried the nursing home route and it was a nightmare. Within a week, someone stole her clothes. All of them. The staff said another patient stole them. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but the end result was that my grandmother was freaked out because every time she woke up, another thing of hers was gone. When I kept complaining, the staff began to claim the stuff wasn’t there to begin with. Know the night that really sucked? When I held my grandmother because she woke to find her mother’s diamond ring gone. Gone. Who is sick enough to steal a ring from an old woman in her sleep? You can try to blame another patient on that one, but I ain’t buying it.”
“Abby,” I say, but she cuts me off.
“I switched her facilities, but she was on Medicare and did you know that most decent nursing homes only have so many beds for Medicare patients? That the places where you want your loved one to be, the ones where they give a rat’s ass, cost money we didn’t have? So the new place? Grams fell. Out of her wheelchair. No one was watching her, and in case you’ve never been to one of these places, they strap people into their chairs to keep them from falling out because there aren’t enough people to watch them and somebody didn’t strap Grams into hers so she fell and she was hurt and she was in the hospital for days.
“She went back to the nursing home and I visited her to find her writhing in pain because one of her aids or nurses on duty was stealing her pain medication. Stealing it. And then when I demanded to see her prescription list, I found out that someone was ordering more pain meds than she needed and do you think she saw any of those? Nope, someone had formed their own drug ring at my grandmother’s expense.”
“Abby,” I try again and she keeps going.
“They gave her the wrong meds, they gave her too many meds, they didn’t give her enough meds, they tried to put her on things she didn’t need, doctors we didn’t request came, doctors we did need never showed, they let her piss and shit all over herself and wouldn’t clean her for hours. If I didn’t show up daily, they wouldn’t have even changed her clothes. They would have left her to rot with bedsores.
“She cried, Logan, every time I was there. Not understanding why I locked her up in that place, why I left her with people who yelled, who left her in the dark, and she begged me over and over again to bring her home so I did. I did what I had to do and I brought my grandmother home because they treat animals in zoos better than they treated my grandmother.”
God help for saying the following. “They aren’t all like that. The place my grandfather was at, it wasn’t like that.”
“I know.” The weariness in her tone only underscores the burden she carries. “But I’ll bet you the money hanging out in my cubby those places are filled and, in the end, I can’t take that risk.”
A cloud must have passed over the moon as the light streaming in through the blinds fades and then strikes Abby again.
I state the obvious. “You need an out.”
“There is no out.” She motions with her chin to the hand I still hold the pain meds in. “Except for stuff like what you hold in your hand. My job is a testament to that. Lots of people find an out in a high, but that’s not really an out, that’s just another form of pretending your reality is different.”
My stomach knots. “I care about you.” And from that kiss, she cares about me.
“None of this changes anything. I sell drugs and I refuse to hang around any of you anymore. There is nothing you are going to say or do to change my mind.”
I roll my neck as it tenses. “You care about me.”
“Yes,” she admits. “But I care about Grams more.”
I respect that. Drives me further to discover the out she needs. I leave the water bottle on the nightstand then dump the pill back into the bottle. “Still don’t think you’re capable of being a junkie.”
“I’ve learned that none of us are really aware what we’re capable of until we’re confronted with the options.”
The bunny I gave Abby at the hospital, the one she kept tight in the crook of her arm as she slept, sits on the dresser. I pick it up and pull the covers down. Abby tilts her head as she smirks. “Am I two?”
I smirk right back at her. “Two-year-olds are easier.”
That gains her genuine smile and she slips her legs under the covers then settles so that she’s lying down. “Remember that time when you snuck into my room night after night during third grade and stayed with me because you were scared of the monsters under your bed? We stayed up late and read comic books under the covers.”
“I didn’t sneak in because I was afraid.” I hand Abby the bunny and try to imagine what it would have been like to be friends with Abby when we were younger. Considering I’ve always been gasoline and Abby’s a raging inferno, we would have been the elementary school version of Bonnie and Clyde. “I snuck in because I liked hanging out with you.”
Abby’s fingers circle my wrist. “I’m going to miss you.”
She’s given up, but she doesn’t know that I haven’t. That Isaiah hasn’t and that when West and Rachel hear the news, I’d bet my left ball they won’t give up, either. I kiss her lips, softly, briefly and it aches how tenderly she kisses me back.
I caress her face with my thumb. “You need to rest. Your wounds aren’t healed and you’re still weak from the blood loss. Take it slow, and do me a favor, stay out of trouble.”
“Why not ask me to stop breathing? That could be easier,” she mumbles as she turns away from me, folding into a fetal position, that bunny cradled in her arms. “I’ll see you around, Logan. Guess when school starts.”
A month away. And she thinks that means from across a crowded room. Abby couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t bother saying anything as I walk out the door because Abby will be seeing me a lot sooner than she thinks.
Abby
Denny slides a Styrofoam container in my direction and I smile when I spot pancakes. I love pancakes. Love. It’s practically cake for breakfast with a bonus of syrup. Because one thing is going right this month, the pancakes are warm and there’s bacon.
“I can’t believe nobody married you.” Using the plastic fork, I cut up the big pieces of fluffy goodness.
Denny choke-laughs as he digs into his eggs on the other side of the nicked bar from me. “Who says I’m not?”
“My bad. I forgot about that heiress you married that has a summer home in the Alps. We should visit her soon. It’s been forever since we’ve been skiing.”
“You don’t even know what skis look like,” he says.
I half laugh. I do know what skis look like, yet I don’t.
It’s nine in the morning and Denny’s bar is empty. It’s a hole-in-the-wall that’s situated toward the end of the aging strip mall in the neighborhood where I do my business. It’s sticky floors, old tables and chairs, a pool table, neon signs at night for light and lots and lots of alcohol for people who have been ridden hard by life.
The front door is wide-open and the muggy summer air creeps in. It’s the type of day where my shirt will stick to me like a second skin before noon and I’ll regret not being a ponytail type of girl.
My stomach grumbles so loudly that Denny raises an eyebrow. It’s a funny look on the towering man. Rachel t
hinks he looks like Vin Diesel with his shaved head and overly large muscles. A lot of people in the neighborhood think of stone walls and a guy who breaks up bar fights by crashing glass bottles over their heads when his name is mentioned. I see none of those things when I walk in here. I just spot a big, giant teddy bear.
After all, he gave me a quarter of the stuffed animals now hanging in my room.
“Have you seen Mac?” I ask. My great-uncle works in the auto shop near here.
“Will it make you feel better if I say no?”
Which means he has and Mac’s on another bender. It’s an expected disappointment that only surface hurts—the type of pain that only goes right below the skin, but no deeper.
“How’s your grandmother?” Denny’s one of a handful of people who know she exists and that’s because Denny is the only person in the world my father trusted.
“She has a specialist appointment today.” She’s been staring off into the distance lately and it’s different from the times when we just lose her to her mind. It’s a blank, scary look and then she snaps back. “Nate thinks she’s having mini strokes.”
Denny chews on that and his bacon for a few minutes. I can tell by his expression that he thinks the specialist appointment is a waste of my money. She’s ninety, and when I take her into doctors that’s what they say to me as an explanation and as their diagnosis and prognosis.
Grams isn’t just ninety to me. She’s one of the few people I allow myself to love.
“Do you need me to change West’s hours?” Denny switches the conversation and I shake my head as an answer. I’ve been avoiding the bar for dinner for the past week because I’m avoiding West. He works for Denny at night doing odd jobs.
“How is he?”
Denny knows everything—how I’ve cut ties with my friends in order to protect them and Logan from my career choices. Unfortunately, he’s had to deal with some of the fallout.