My eyes drop, along with my heart. I can’t fault him for falling for her for that. Abby does listen. It might be what forced me to finally see her through different eyes. Through possible eyes. While Hayden was opening up to her about the things happening in our family, I was shutting down, but it doesn’t mean I wasn’t talking to her. I talked, just in my own way. While we bonded over Lucas and June, I made snide jokes about love being a farce and she made them right along with me. But she was always sure to leave me with a glimmer of hope before we parted. Like when Lucas and June finally got together and she leaned into me and said, “See, some people get their happy endings.” She’s not as cynical as she pretends.
“Did you love her, at least?” I wasn’t sure about asking this question tonight. It feels like an overreach, a step maybe neither of us is ready for. But now that I’m in the moment, my belly hungry to be settled, my heart anxious to be soothed, I have to ask.
“I thought I did,” Hayden admits, sinking down in his seat and leaning his head against the window to look up at the stars. I do the same. The sky’s lit up again, like it was the night Abby came over.
“You still think so?” I ask.
“Nah,” he responds quickly. I’m a little surprised to hear his answer, and I roll my head against the glass to look at him through the corner of my eyes.
“No?” I echo.
He shakes his head.
“I think I needed her, and that’s not quite the same,” he says, rolling his head to look at me.
“How about you?” I figured this question would come. I’ve been ready to answer it for a while.
“Yeah. I did. I do.” I shift to look at him more head on. I can tell my admission catches him off guard as he sits up and pulls in his brow.
“You love her?” He makes it sound so impossible.
“I love her. I was about to ask her out the day you showed up holding hands,” I confess.
“Fuuu—” His mouth hangs open as it hits him. “The flowers.”
“The flowers.” I nod. “The motherfucking flowers.”
We both lean back into our windows and stare up at the stars. My window is fogged from my breath, so I pull my sleeve down over my wrist and rub it clear.
“I’m really sorry, Tor. If I had known—”
“It’s all right. I never said,” I cut in. I hold my fist out in the space between us without looking to him, and he reaches over to pound mine just by feel. We’re back in step. I don’t know how long we were out of it, but in a strange way, it was Abby who put us back together.
22
Abby
Christmas in Toronto is unreal. I’ve seen snow lots but never like this. It’s more like someone came through at night and replaced everything in the city with frozen blocks of ice. It’s beautiful, but it’s painful.
I’ve slipped twice so far. Not bad falls, but enough to leave a bruise on my hip. Mom wasn’t so lucky. She fell and cracked her wrist on a curb. I guess if you’re going to be stuck in a cast for four to six weeks, it might as well be in the cold.
Mom and I promised each other no holiday gifts, but I did get her this pack of cast wraps so she could bling out her plaster arm. She seems to have taken to the rainbow peace symbols for her first week of wear.
She broke the rules and got me a gift, too. Hers was a package too, but a major step above some pack of fun acrylic sticker. She gave me a settlement package. In my favor. She’d hired a private investigator the moment I confessed about the nude photo bribe. It took the guy a while to earn his fee, but he finally came through in spades. Seems Jake from the party got a payday a week or two before he met me—a wired deposit from my dad. The chips fall into place easily when you’re willing to really look at them, but even as my mom was telling me, I didn’t want to see things clearly. It was too ugly. Regardless, it was true.
My dad paid Jake to dupe me into those pics—to the tune of twenty grand. The hundred