Abby Age Nineteen

“What do you mean, you’re spending the whole summer abroad?” I grasp the phone tightly, glaring at Abby who is on the other side FaceTiming me. “You said it was only a few weeks in the Dominican Republic.”

“Well, that’s for the volunteer program,” she says. “Afterwards, I’m going to Exeter.”

Her eyes brighten, and I swear, she’s glowing. Since she left Denver, she’s changed a lot. It’s as if everything bad that happened to her stayed on this side of the Rocky Mountains.

“Where the fuck is Exeter?”

“It’s in the middle of Oxford, England.” The screen goes dark, and the only thing I can see is the word pause.

She fucking paused me.

“There, I sent you a picture of the place,” she says as my phone buzzes.

“Linda approved of my choice. She said that the place is exquisite. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Mom agreed?” I arch a brow as I think of ways to convince her to come back home.

We were supposed to spend the summer together. I miss her. I’ve seen her five times since she graduated high school. The first one was when I joined her and Mom in Spain, and we spent two weeks traveling through Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Valencia, and Granada. Afterwards, we stopped in Portugal before we came back to Denver, and I helped her drive her car to Berkeley. The second was during fall break. I had to fly to California because the coffee shop where she was working wouldn’t give her the week off.

On Thanksgiving weekend, Mom decided to indulge my brother, and we all flew to New York where we had dinner together at Sterling’s. For Christmas, we traveled to Aruba, and for spring break, I met Abby in San Diego where she interned for a week at the zoo. It’s a quick program that helped her realize that as much as she loved animals, she didn’t want to work with them.

“Of course, she’s so excited.” Abby’s voice squeaks slightly with excitement. “Exeter is a school full of history. Do you know that Tolkien was an undergraduate there?”

“How could I miss that important piece of information, Abbs?”

“Mr. Sarcasm just showed up. What’s going on, Wes?” She twists her mouth. “You seem a little upset. Is it the new girl?”

She narrows her gaze and rolls her eyes. “Please, don’t tell me you broke up with Marissa.”

“I told you it wasn’t serious.”

“It’s never serious, Wes. One of these days you’re going to meet the woman of your dreams, and you’ll let her go because work is more important.”

“I’m only twenty-five,” I protest.

“Something tells me that in a couple of years, we’ll have this same conversation.”

“How about you?”

She shakes her head. “Boys are idiots,” she claims.

“What happened with the last one?”

“It didn’t work out,” she says with disdain.

I sigh with relief. The thought of Abby dating doesn’t settle well. She’s too far away, and if someone hurts her I couldn’t be there to comfort her.

“Yeah, he expected to hit a home run without buying me dinner.”

“Are we using baseball analogies now?”

“Why not?” She shrugs one shoulder.

As I browse the website for Exeter College, I ask about her plans. “What are you going to study in England?”

“I’m taking just a couple of credits. Literatures of Modernity and Mathematics for Physical Sciences and Engineering.”

“When are you coming back to Denver?”

“Thanksgiving … Christmas or maybe next summer,” she says, with a voice void of emotion.

We spend the next hour talking about the places she could visit during the weekends while in England. I begin to check my schedule and email Sterling about this new development. He’s fond of Abby, and maybe he could visit her too. As much as I trust Abby, I don’t want her to spend the summer alone in another country.