ABBY
IT’S AFTER NINE by the time I’m heading up to my apartment. Mom was good, the strawberry M&M’s not so good, and Dad was essentially the same. It’s been two years since the stroke that wiped away the man who was the only father I ever knew, leaving a shell in his place. We visit three days a week and talk like we’re sitting around the little table in their eat-in kitchen, always including Dad in the discussion, addressing him directly and letting him know what a kick he’s going to get out of some bit of news we have to share.
It still breaks my heart every time I walk through the door to his room and there isn’t even a flicker of recognition. But I know it’s worse for my mom, because every once in a while his eyes will sharpen when he sees her, and for a few seconds she feels like she has her husband. It’s just enough to keep her waiting and hoping, wondering if this will be the day she sees it again or if those fleeting seconds of familiarity were the last… and no matter how long she waits, she won’t see them again.
I know what that kind of waiting is like. I remember all the meetings with social workers, the reports about the woman who wasn’t fit to be my mother… yet. How she was working to improve herself so one day soon she’d be able to come back for me. I remember the foster families who wanted me but had to let me go because my mom, the woman who couldn’t prioritize me above her addiction, wouldn’t.
I remember telling myself not to get my hopes up, not to get attached… but making the mistake again and again.
That kind of waiting takes a toll on a heart, and it kills me that the woman who ended that futile cycle of waiting for me fourteen years ago has to suffer it herself now.
I’m feeling a little bruised after our visit tonight, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to bribe Helen into hanging out with an episode of Castle. When I get to our floor, Helen’s door is open and the laughter spilling out into the hallway sounds girlish and delighted. It makes me feel lighter just hearing it.
Another tickled laugh, only this one is answered by a deeper, gruffer laugh. One that’s too familiar to ignore, even if I’ve only recently been hearing it again.
I lean into Helen’s apartment and find Hank at her kitchen table, a plate of cookies and a glass of milk in front of him as she turns the pages of one of her countless photo albums.
Hank rocks back in his seat, giving Helen one of those deeply masculine once-overs and a mischievous smile.
“Helen, you little devil.” He shakes his head, looking from the photo album back to his beaming host. “That dress is giving me ideas, woman.”
Oh my God, he’s flirting Helen up and she’s blushing like a schoolgirl. It’s so sweet I almost want to stand there and watch, but then Hank’s eyes find mine like I’ve called his name.
His impish smile spreads wider.
“I’m trying to convince Helen to run away with me.”
“Well, she’s quite the catch,” I agree, and from the looks of it, he isn’t going to have to try too hard.
“You two.” Helen giggles, returning the book to its shelf. “I found this nice young man lost, wandering the halls when I got home from hot yoga.”
Replacing the crinkled cellophane on the plate, Hank shrugs. “I heard all the most beautiful women lived in this building and wanted to see for myself. Turns out the rumors are true.”
He gives Helen a kiss on the cheek and, pulling on his leather jacket, thanks her for the hospitality before leading me into the hall.
Hands stuffed in the pockets of his dark jeans, he props a solid shoulder against the wall as I unlock my apartment. No man should look as good as he does.
“Didn’t realize you had plans tonight. Out with Wilson?”
I fight a smile, liking that he’s asking—almost as much as liking this sort of rugged thing he’s got going on dress-wise.
“What brings you out to Bearings, Hank? Since we already established it wouldn’t be dinner.”
“Already ate.” He plants his hand on the door past my head so he can hold it open even though I’m letting myself in. He always had the best manners. “Seemed like a nice night for a ride and I figured maybe you’d enjoy one too.”
My heart does a little hiccup as I set my purse on the table by the closet and turn. “A motorcycle?”
“You ever been on one?”
He’s walking through my apartment, and I’m trying to see it with his eyes. The taupe microfiber couches that are in good shape, but years old. The knitted throw my mom made me, and the secondhand glass-top coffee table with a shelf for my board games beneath. The floors are hardwood but scuffed with age and the walls are a buttery yellow, hung with black and white posters of Paris and Prague, Venice and Barcelona. Hank’s probably been to them all.
“Abby?”
I haven’t answered him about the bike.
“I’ve never been on one. I mean they look very exciting, but I’ve always been a little scared. When did you learn to ride?”
“College.”
When everything changed. For him at least.
“You should come with me, just give it a try. I’m a good rider. Safe. I bet you’d love it.”
There is nothing safe about being with this man. But the idea of the wind in my hair seems too seductive to pass up.
“You know what? I’d love to go.”
HANK
HAVING ABBY ON the back of my bike is better than I could’ve imagined. Her hold on me is hard, her body soft and the hug of her thighs around my ass so hot that I’m losing it just a little. She clings tighter through each turn and her laughter slips into my head, making me wonder just what I was thinking seeking her out.
Because I’m a guy who likes control and with every mile we ride, more slips away.
Which means it’s time to change things up. Leaving the main streets of Bearings, I head toward the far side of town, crossing the bridge over the river and then skirting around to the back side of the preserve where there’s parking by the lagoon.
Abby crawls off the back of the bike and hands me her helmet before walking toward the water’s edge. I rock the bike up on its stand and follow her to where the water meets the reeds. Not much of a lake by Chicago standards, but back in high school this was one of the places we spent our summer nights.
Now it’s October and the parking lot is deserted, leaving us alone in the relative quiet, the only noise the hum of cars from the road beyond the turning trees.
Abby pulls her low ponytail from her denim jacket and it streams down her back, taunting me to come closer and lose my fingers in it.
She looks back, our eyes holding. “I haven’t been out here since the last time I was with you.”
It was before everything went to hell, back when she’d still been mine to bring to the deserted little lake for the privacy that had been harder and harder to come by.
“Same.”
She laughs quietly, looking out over the water that seemed bigger in my memories.
“What are we doing out here? I mean you just got home from spending the better part of a month away. I’m surprised you aren’t rolling around on your apartment carpets, singing to the ceilings that you’re back.”
I laugh into my hand, then come to stand beside her. “Sometimes it takes me a few days to re-acclimate. I walk through the space that ought to be a comfort, but it’s been so long since I’ve been there, my apartment feels less familiar than whatever hotel room I’ve just left. It’s the reason I don’t always bother stopping back at my place when I’ll only be in the city for a night or so before leaving again.”
“That sounds miserable. Like some kind of hospitality-based Stockholm syndrome.”
Jesus, she’s priceless. “I suppose it does.”
Those eyes are searching mine again, seeing all the things I stopped showing people years ago. “Do you ever feel at home?”
I clear my throat and shove my hands into my pockets so I don’t reach out and touch her face or play with her hair. “Yeah, sure.” Just not like I do when I’m around her.
I don’t know what it is, or how it could be the case after all this time, but being around Abby still feels like the closest thing to home I can get. I moved my parents down to Florida about seven years ago, and even before that I’d only been back to Bearings a few times since I left for school. Maybe that’s all this is. A hankering for home and being around Abby, here, meets that need.
It makes sense if I ignore the fact that I live two floors beneath the guy who’s been my best friend since I was six years old. But being around Jack doesn’t feel like being around Abby. And for more than the obvious reason that Jack doesn’t get me hard.
There’s a short dock off to the right, and I watch Abby walk down to the end, crouch low, and run her fingers through the water. We borrowed a canoe once and took it out from here. Looking at the lagoon now, I wonder what we were thinking. Where we thought we could actually go with the borders of the shore pressing in so close. But at the time, I thought there was nothing better than cutting through the water, paddling around from one shore to the other and back again. Going nowhere without even realizing it. Loving every minute of it.
Abby stands and turns back to me, the pale moonlight playing with the shadows of her face. “Why do you keep calling me?”
I knew the question was coming. Hell, I’ve been asking myself the same thing, but I still don’t have an answer. Maybe that’s what I’m doing here, trying to figure it out. Or maybe I’m making bullshit excuses to justify something that hasn’t changed since the first day I saw Abby Mitchel hugging her books to her chest outside Novak’s office. I just want to be closer to her.
“Because you like it,” I offer instead, flashing a grin that promises I know what an ass I sound like.
She laughs, her fingers trailing over one of the worn pylons, and then because she deserves it, I give her the truth.
“Because I like it.”
“I like it too,” she says quietly, walking the rest of the way up from the dock, and I want to give her more. An answer or explanation. Hell, maybe she’d like a new car. Something.
But all I can think of is the way the night breeze is playing with those few strands of hair that slipped free of the band. How I want to be the one stroking across the creamy contours of her cheeks and making those long, dark lashes flutter.
I walk over to her and, giving in to those base needs, brush the soft flyaway strands behind her ears. My fingers curve around the back of her neck and my thumbs find the line of her jaw to gently tip her head back. Her lips part and all I want is to get lost in the soft press of her mouth, the catch of her breath, the clutch of her hands in my clothes. I want to taste her, feel her body melting against mine.
But then her eyes close and she pulls away. “I like it… but I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
I watch as she walks toward the gravel lot, giving us both a second before I follow her.
“What is it you want from me, Hank? You keep calling, flirting. And I know my actions after the reunion might have given you the idea that I was game for anything, but I’m not. Not with you.”
“What does that even mean? And what exactly do you think I’m expecting? I mean, I showed up on a bike, not driving some full-sized van with a mattress in the back.”
She cuts an apologetic look over her shoulder. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know.” I feel like shit. I’m the man who always has the answers, who has the vision and sees it through. But with Abby, I have no fucking idea what I’m doing. All I know is that I can’t stop.
“I’m over you. I am. I have been for a long time.” She looks at me with shimmering eyes that cut at my soul, and I can see her need for me to understand what she’s saying, to believe her. “But being around you again, like you are now? It confuses me.”
I take a step closer, my hand out. “I don’t know what’s happening. I just know I like being with you. You make me laugh. Hell, you make me feel like the guy I used to be.”
She nods, her smile soft. “That’s the problem, Hank. That guy doesn’t exist anymore and neither one of us can afford to pretend he does.”