“It was my strength that pushed you through the window back into our classroom.”
“My knight in shining armor.” She flutters her eyelashes at me before finishing the water.
None of this happened as we haven’t even known each other a year yet, but Abby spins stories of a past we never shared and I go with it. Sometimes, she’s so convincing I begin to question my own memories. Maybe she’s not so convincing and it’s more that I would prefer her version of our make-believe past over my real life.
My cell buzzes and it’s Ryan, my best friend from Bullitt County. Abby bumps my hip so that I’m out of her way and she confiscates my cell. I grin because the girl is incorrigible and I love it.
“Let’s see.” Abby angles the phone so I can’t read Ryan’s text. “Ryan says he’s been eaten by alligators and that he’s left you a million dollars.”
“That so?”
“That’s so.” She taps buttons on my cell and she glances up from dark eyelashes to see if she’s found a way to push my buttons. She can keep trying. It’s tough to find buttons I care enough about to be pissed they were pushed. “I just told Ryan we eloped.”
My cell buzzes again, and I’m immersed in her sexy grin. “He’s pissed you skipped the bachelor party. He said you promised him naked chicks before you got married. Wow—I didn’t know guys actually had those conversations.”
She scans my face and when nothing she said fazes me, she slides my cell back in my direction. “Can I go?”
I study the convo between Abby and Ryan. He’s confirming that I’m going to Chris’s grandfather’s farm in southern Kentucky again and baling hay for the week. We’ve been doing it for the past few years. It’s backbreaking work, but we make nice money. Abby demanded we take her along, signing her text as Abby, Queen of Logan’s World. Ryan told her she had to talk to me.
“It’s boys only,” I say.
“Rules don’t apply to me. You should know that by now. Anyhow, you guys let me hang when you baled hay at Chris’s farm.”
“That was one day and this will be for a week. Camping and dirt your thing, Abby?”
“I can make anything my thing.”
I believe that.
“I heard that Noah and Isaiah are going. Noah’s going to use that money to buy Echo an engagement ring.”
I heard the same thing from Noah, Isaiah’s best friend, but it’s not my business. “Point?”
“If Noah gets to go, I want to go. Maybe I want to buy myself a diamond ring.”
“You’re going to help bale hay?”
Abby scowls. “Hell, no. I just want to go and get paid.”
I laugh, she smiles and the drummer of the band onstage begins the count. For the third time this evening, the electric guitarist comes in late and starts off beat. I came here tonight because I heard this band was on the verge of kicking him out. I’ve been searching for a new high, at least for the summer, and this just might be it.
“Dance with me, Logan.”
That rips my attention away from the guy making a fool of himself onstage. I examine Abby and wonder what piece she just moved on the chessboard. Wouldn’t put it past Abby to sacrifice a pawn in order to kill a queen. Abby is nothing if not strategic.
“I don’t dance.” I don’t.
She slowly raises her eyebrows, and I fight the tilt of my lips. Abby doesn’t like being told no. “You’ll dart into traffic to run after a stranger’s balloon, but you won’t dance with me?”
I ran into traffic because I was curious if I could make it to the other side. The balloon made it interesting. “I don’t dance with anyone.”
“You were the one that suggested we come here.”
I shrug. I’m here because an opportunity presented itself and I’m fascinated by the new and shiny.
“Dance with me, Logan,” she says again, and I have to admit I like how her hips sway to the music. “Why else would you come here if it wasn’t to touch me on the dance floor?”
I chuckle because that caught me off guard and Abby laughs, her real laugh. It doesn’t happen often and I like when it does.
“Rachel said she wanted to dance,” I say.
And she is, with Isaiah. While everyone else is grinding it out to the hard beat, Isaiah is slow dancing with his girl. Her head’s on his shoulder, his arms are wound tight around her waist. They look