"Cash or check?" the cashier snapped, staring Abby down across the counter, her stiff polo shirt ballooning out to make her chest look enormous. Abby handed her cash and smiled, wondering about the mystery man who'd been watching her.
* * * *
Sebastian's small black car sat in Sydney's driveway.
"Hi, there," he called to her as she trotted up the porch steps.
"Hey," she gushed, grabbing the lawn chair next to his. "I did some research today."
His lithe body was stretched across a padded lawn chair, his arm hanging over the edge and a tall Margarita at his fingertips.
"Yeah?" He sat up and swung his legs around, planting his bare feet on the deck.
"Yes." Abby pulled her notes from her back pocket and folded them on the chair next to her. "Her name was Devin Kent or Blake, she was adopted, so she changed it, but..."
"Whoa, tiger," he said, holding up a hand and then taking a long swig from his Margarita. "I was thinking Mexican."
Abby sniffed at the air, catching the first whiff of salsa and cheese.
"Oh, great," she moaned, holding up the groceries.
"Hey, no worries," he grinned, his laugh followed by a blast of hot tequila breath. Abby shrank away from him.
"Are you drunk?" she asked, surprised.
He raised an eyebrow and licked the rim of his glass, salt flecking his lower lip.
"That depends. Will you love me anyway?" He stood shakily from his chair, leaning hard on the backrest and nearly stumbling over.
"I'm fine, don't worry, I'm fine." He laughed, teetered a bit, then found his balance and wandered into the house. "Let's eat."
She watched him, half in awe and half in horror. She wanted to fill him in on Devin and force him to concentrate, but could clearly see he'd made some progress on his Margaritas, plural. Following him into the house, she watched as he piled his plate with tacos. Cheese and lettuce fell in clumps onto the hardwood floor.
"Oops," he laughed.
"I'm gonna run upstairs and change," she told him, escaping to Sydney's bedroom.
She sat on the bed and stared at her notes, finally folding the sheet of paper and setting it on the bedside table. She didn't mind that he was drunk, in fact, she could understand why he wanted to be, but still, she felt slightly rebuked. Hadn't they planned to investigate–together?
She dug in Sydney's closet and found a knee length red sweater dress. Not, by any means, Abby's normal attire, but all the more appealing because of it. She slid it on and admired herself in the mirror, pulling the sides of her brown hair half up and clipping them with a small green barrette.
"Eat your heart out, Sebastian," she laughed, blushing at her boldness.
In Sydney's bathroom, she dotted pale, pink lipstick on her lips, puckering and smiling. Her skin looked pasty beneath the fluorescent bathroom globes, but her eyes sparkled.
Coffee, she would brew a pot of coffee and force Sebastian to sober up, so they could get to work.
"Nice," Sebastian whistled when she returned to the kitchen.
"Thanks," she mumbled and grabbed a plate.
"No, no, not like that." Sebastian took her sparsely stocked plate. He laid the tortillas flat and loaded them with chicken, lettuce, tomato, cheese and sour cream, carefully folding them and sticking toothpicks in the centers.
Abby watched, tempted to protest, she didn't much care for cheese, but allowed him to continue. He licked his fingers as he worked, humming a tune that Abby didn't recognize, and taking frequent sips from an open bottle of Tequila.
"Let's call it quits on this," she said, grabbing the bottle and screwing the cap on.
"Huh?" He looked up at her bleary eyed, glanced at the bottle and then shrugged. "To the porch!" He held her plate high and walked out the door.
She set the coffee maker and followed him to the patio table, rushing forward to grab her plate when he nearly dumped it on his chair as he struggled to pull it out.
In the center of the table stood a fat cobalt vase filled with red flowers, their petals bleeding orange in the candlelight. She looked at him and then at the flowers, but he only stared dazedly at his food, finally taking a sloppy bite, spilling cheese down his shirt.
"Beautiful," she said, leaning in to smell them as he swiped at the falling food. "What are these?" She pointed to a prickly looking flower with a red tip and yellow base, hoping to start a conversation that might pull him from his drunken reverie.
"Those are red hot pokers," he murmured, running his fingers over the spiky surface. "And the others are geraniums and red nasturtiums."
She smiled, surprised. She had expected something less coherent.
"All red, huh?" she teased. "Got a thing for redheads?"
"Actually, I'm partial to brunettes," he told her, pulling back from the flowers and staring at her. "These flowers are said to protect."
"Protect what?" she asked, though her mind was still stuck on the brunettes comment and the way his red-rimmed eyes burned into her.
"Oh, I don't know, it's just superstition, nothing serious. So, tell me about your day." He stopped eating and folded his hands on the table in front of him, shaking his head once, hard, as if a fog had gathered there.
"Don't worry. Coffee is brewing," she said.
"A necessary evil."
"Yes, less evil than other vices though, I'm sure."
"Uh, oh, the alcohol police?" he asked, lolling his head to the side quizzically.
"No," she yawned, stretching her arms overhead and admiring the rosy sky as evening trickled in. "I just thought that we were going to talk about...
"The girl."
"Yes."
"So, talk then. What did you discover, Sherlock?"
She bristled at his sarcastic tone and considered not telling him anything, suddenly angry that he was drunk and feeling confused about their relationship.
"Never mind," she said dismissively, lifting her own Margarita and nearly draining it. Her brain screamed as the icy drink needled into its center, but she bit back her scowl of pain.
His eyes softened, and he leaned forward, balancing his elbows clumsily on the table.
"Hey, I'm sorry, really. Tequila creeps you up. On you. Up on you."
She laughed and shrugged, ready to forgive. She didn't, after all, have anyone else to talk to, and she liked Sebastian, drunk or not.
"Tell me what you found."
"Well," she started, not bothering to retrieve her notes. "Devin was her name, and she was adopted by a family named Kent. She had an adopted brother and sister, but apparently she was looking for her biological family."
Sebastian nodded, considering.
"That it?"
"No, she also had a boyfriend, whose name started with a T and she was local, went to Trager High School."
"Name started with a T?"
"Yep."
He traced circles on the table, but didn't speak. His eyes went in and out of focus, and Abby wondered if he would remember their conversation tomorrow.
"Tobias? Did you hear that name at all?"
Abby thought back to the grocery store. "No, Tommy or Todd was what these girls said. No Tobias."
"Coffee," Sebastian said suddenly, standing and walking through the screened door to the kitchen.
* * * *
Abby finished her taco, wiped a napkin along her lips and waited. She could hear Sebastian in the kitchen, coffee mugs clanking together. The sound of crunching gravel drew her eyes away from the house. Headlights illuminated the porch and momentarily blinded her.
When she heard footsteps advancing across the driveway and onto the porch, she thought of Sydney and jumped from her chair in excitement. But the silhouette was too large, too broad shouldered, and as Nick's face come into view, she gasped and stumbled backward, her hand striking the vase of flowers, which tipped and shattered. Glass and water dripped through the wrought-iron table, red petals splayed across the dark metal, their dinner plates pooled with the spilled wate
r.
Sebastian ran out of the house, coffee slopping from his mug. He stopped abruptly, eyes trained on Nick, whose fists were balled at his sides.
"What the hell is going on here?" Nick snarled, his eyes on Abby, but shifting repeatedly to Sebastian.
Abby stood paralyzed, registering Nick's rage, Sebastian's shock and the red flowers, dead, wasted.
"Nick," she stammered, finding a child's voice instead of her own.
Sebastian stepped to Abby's side, facing Nick and arrogantly appraising him.
"Everything okay here?" he touched Abby's elbow lightly.
Nick's eyes narrowed in on the small gesture, and he took a reactionary step forward.
Nick, usually cool and collected, looked disheveled. His short, blond hair stood in spiky tufts around his head, and his clothes were rumpled. His meticulously dry-cleaned slacks showed creases from sitting too long, and Abby noticed a distinct smear of something brown on his left knee.
"Yes, fine," she said, quickly moving away from Sebastian and toward Nick, who regarded her with a mingled look of disgust and alarm.
Sebastian understood and backed away, turning to the table to unsuccessfully mop up the mess with their napkins.
Abby took Nick's hand, which shook in her own, and pulled him toward the house.
"Let's talk inside," she said as he twisted to glare at Sebastian a final time.
Nick did not speak, but pulled a chair out from the counter and sat down heavily. His green eyes were spotted with small bursts of red veins, and the usually smooth skin of his face was rough with blond stubble. He shaved every morning, every single morning, but today, clearly, he had not.
Abby searched for words, perhaps an apology, while pulling down two mugs and filling them with coffee. The scalding fluid released tendrils of steam into the air, little phantoms eavesdropping on their conversation, and Abby wished for the power to send them across the room and whisk Nick away into the night.
"Please, speak," Nick demanded, cupping his hands around the mug as if the ceramic were not blistering. "Your mother is worried sick. Do you know that? Do you even care?"
Did she even care? She didn't know. Leaving had been the hardest part, and once that was over, she felt renewed, freed, but now here was Nick reminding her that he still remained, as did her mother and the long snaking threads of her old life, continually trying to pull her back in, to force her into the pattern and make her disappear forever.
Abby sipped from her mug. She could see Sebastian on the porch, his head still as if he were listening.
Nick noticed. "Who the fuck is that?" He pointed his finger angrily at Sebastian, and she felt small and hated him for it.
"None of your business."
Nick's eyes widened in surprise, and he stood roughly from his chair, knocking it backward onto the hardwood floor. It clattered, and Sebastian moved close to the screen door.
"Just stop, okay," Abby snapped, walking around and grabbing the chair, putting it upright.
She held her ground against Nick, who stood a foot taller than her, his square face pinched angrily.
She knew that he had not expected this. Not expected his sweet little Abby to stand up to him, and now he didn't know how to react. He paced away from her, stuffing his hands into his pockets, finally spinning around to confront her again.
"Fine, you're unhappy, explain. Enlighten me, Abby, okay, what makes your life so miserable?"
She hated his tone, his patronizing stare, and could not figure out how she had lasted two years with Nick; Nick and his obsessive cleaning, his infinite expectations, and most of all, his criticism, carefully woven into his every thought, word and action.
"You know what, Nick?" Abby said, suddenly tired. "I'm sick of you. I'm sick of our life. I'm sick of your fake personality and your bullshit friends. I am so sick," she moved towards him then, glad when he started to back away, "of everything that you represent. I'm finished."
He stared at her, and she watched the raging façade crack. His pupils shrank, and the set of his jaw slid down, drooping beneath his mouth, which was turned in painfully. He took his hands from his pockets and held them out flat.
As he crumbled on the outside, she felt a mean little flower bloom in her chest.
"Abby, wait." He swallowed hard, and his eyes pooled with tears. He braced a hand on the wall next to him and looked down, his face flaring again angrily.
Abby realized that his gaze had alighted on a pile of clothes on the floor, Sebastian's and hers, their laundry from the previous day. It looked bad; she could see Sebastian's green boxer briefs nestled against her shorts.
"No." He shook his head, slowly, sickly, and looked up at her, his eyes searching her face.
She started to deny the accusation and then stopped. The petals unfurled beneath her ribs.
"What?" she asked. "That," she jerked her head toward the clothes, "is none of your business."
He squatted down and fingered the fabric of her shorts. She leaned forward and ripped them away.
"Leave," she said.
He looked up, wounded and pitiful.
Jolts of shock and guilt coursed through her, but the flower continued to open and fill the cavity where Nick used to live. He started to cry, and a cruel laugh bubbled inside her. She tried to contain it, but could not. The laugh erupted and poured over his down-turned head. This time, he did not look at her with shock. A change had come over him, a recognition that Abby, his Abby, was gone.
Chapter 8
After Nick's taillights disappeared down the long driveway, Abby returned to the porch where Sebastian sat, gulping his second mug of coffee.
She sat on the step next to him.
"Cheers," he said, clanging their cups together.
Her coffee had grown cold.
"The famous Nick," she said, staring out at the water, dark now, except for an orange moon rising behind the trees.
"Quite charming, especially the murderous glint in his eye," Sebastian joked, stretching his legs out long before him. He set his mug on the step and slapped at a mosquito that landed on his calf.
"Yes," Abby murmured, but didn't have the heart to re-hash Nick. Already, she didn't want to face her viciousness towards him. The bud of cruelty that she'd nurtured, and still felt, throbbed in her chest. Never in their two years had Abby been spiteful towards Nick. Their fights fizzled quickly because she never took him on. If he got angry, she relented, it was easier that way.
Sebastian rifled in his pocket and pulled out some lint, two quarters and a rock. "Quarter for your thoughts? Or a rock?"
She took the rock and looked at it closely, running her fingers along the rough edges.
"Sandstone," he said.
"And you carry it because..."
"Because I am a rock collector, clearly."
"Really?"
"No, but my backseat will make you believe that I'm lying. I have a thing for picking up interesting rocks."
"Hmm," she rubbed the rock along her palm. It left a rusty streak.
"Keep it, might help calm you down."
"I'm calm," she said quickly, handing the rock back.
"No, really," he folded her fingers around it. "Rocks are more powerful than you think."
She considered it, turning the diamond shaped sandstone over. She liked the idea of something so small, so seemingly insignificant, being powerful.
"No pockets," she said, setting the rock on the porch.
"Do you need to talk about this?" Sebastian asked.
She pursed her lips and let her eyes wander along the shore. The water was a flat mirror, black with an expanding cone of light as the moon rose higher in the sky, its red body growing yellow and eventually white.
She didn't want to talk, not about herself anyway.
"Let's talk about you," she said, turning so that her knees brushed against his.
"What's to know?"
"Everything."
"We'll be here for ten years just covering how Rand
y Mull used to kick my ass in kindergarten."
Abby laughed, watching Sebastian as he hopped up and retrieved their Margaritas from the patio table.
"Don't worry, I picked the glass out," he joked.
"I thought we were off Tequila and on coffee."
He grinned.
"Coffee was fine for dinner, but we're having relationship therapy now."
"Ha." She took a drink and grimaced, as this one was stronger than her last. "My love life will not be tonight's feature."
"Oh, curse it," he moaned. "Fine, just tell me then, what you saw in Jack the Jock, I mean other than his rippling muscles."
Abby pulled her dress down, trying to cover her white thighs peeking from beneath the fabric. She searched for the answer, but knew how deeply buried the truth was, and she had no energy for digging.
"No, you've gotten a first hand look at the disaster that is my life. Tell me about yours, preferably something nasty that makes mine seem better in comparison."
"That calls for more Tequila."
He ran inside and out again, carefully holding two shot glasses and the fifth of alcohol.
"Let's make a game of this, eh? One shot gets one answer, for you and me both."
Abby's lip curled as she looked at the amber liquid. She had only a single memory of Tequila shots, and they involved Nick, several of his hoity-toity law school friends and Abby vomiting on the dinner table. Not only did she ruin dessert, cherry cheesecake, but also Nick chastised her every time she had a glass of wine for months afterward.
"Hey, try to contain your excitement," he laughed, setting the liquor on the table and pulling Abby to her feet. He yanked her chair out, and she settled into it, staring at the bottle like an evil Genie might pour forth at any moment. "I'll go first."
He poured himself a shot, the Tequila sloshing over the tiny glass. The fumes rose in the air and tickled Abby's nostrils.
"What is your favorite movie?" He held the shot high and then downed it. "You have to answer because I already took the shot."
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 6
