pulled on his boxer briefs. Then he dropped to the floor and began to do push-ups, making sure to keep his form viciously straight. If Sarah thought him mad, she didn’t say so, remaining silent as he fought the clawing darkness that wanted to haul him back into the abyss.
Abe wasn’t about to go. Never again.
He spoke on an upward push. “But no matter how many drugs I took,” he said, “as soon as you walked into a room or even if I suddenly thought of you—and I thought of you a hell of a lot, especially when we were apart—my heart would wake up, start to beat your name, and part of me hated you for it. For having the power to call me back, to keep me from drowning in numbness.” He went down, his nose almost to the carpet, pushed up again, repeated the movement, waited for Sarah to speak.
“I didn’t know you felt anything for me.” Her voice shook. “Even before you said what you did that night, deep inside I thought I was just a convenient sex partner. Forgotten as soon as I was out of your sight.”
“Never that.” He did three more push-ups before he had the emotional control to continue speaking. “I wanted you from the instant you told that silly knock-knock joke at the party where we met. You laughed so hard at your own joke and there was such joy in you… I wanted that for myself. I wanted you to look at me with that open delight.”
SARAH STARED AT ABE’S MUSCLED BODY as he continued his punishingly strict movements, not a single part of his body out of alignment. “I didn’t tell you the joke,” she whispered, the events from that night unspooling in her mind like a film reel in full color.
She’d crashed the Beverly Hills party with a girlfriend she’d met at the minimum wage job she’d been working at the time, her earnings barely enough to cover her tiny room in a terrible part of town. Graffitied hallways redolent with the smell of alcohol and other noxious substances, gunfights in the street, screaming matches between couples and family members that came right through the paper-thin walls, that had been her reality.
It had still been safer than her childhood home.
However, determined to better herself and not scared of working hard, she’d kept putting on her cheap but neat “interview suit” and applying for jobs that paid a little more. That day she’d had one rejection too many—and the interviewer had leered so hard at her she’d had to go home and shower before her shift at work. The asshole had all but licked his lips as he spoke to her chest.
So when her work colleague said she had a contact who could get them into a fancy party, Sarah had said, “What the hell. At least they might have some nice finger food to eat—I can save a few bucks on groceries.”
Sarah had dolled up in a little black dress, figuring most people wouldn’t be able to tell at a glance that it was a knockoff of a knockoff—and black dresses fit in everywhere in LA. That much she’d learned in her time in the city.
Her colleague had been as good as her word; she’d gotten them into the party courtesy of a friend who was on the catering staff. But the other woman had disappeared with an older man not long into the party, leaving Sarah alone and feeling out of place and not sure how she’d get back home since her friend was the one with the car and they were outside the public transport area she knew well.
She’d decided to wait, see if the other girl came back.
Feeling stupid hiding in a corner, she’d made herself approach a group of people who didn’t look too snotty, told them the silliest knock-knock joke. And when one of the women had laughed, she’d laughed too, so happy and relieved that she wasn’t being rejected.
Abe hadn’t been in that group.
“I know,” Abe said, his muscles rigid as he held himself in position using only one arm, his other one folded over his back. “I was standing behind you at the time.”
Sarah frowned; she hadn’t met Abe until almost fifteen minutes later. They’d run into one another at the bar when she’d gone to get a glass of water after the group with which she’d interacted had all separated to see other people. Men had come on to her