“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 thinks 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.