“No thanks. I brought my lunch.”
“Okay. I’ll bring mine back and we can eat together.”
Under normal circumstances, this would not have been odd. They frequently ate lunch together and talked about work matters such as who had the worst scare story when they met someone new outside of work and told the new acquaintance that they were accountants.
Abbie told Toby about the time she met a man at a party and he had asked what she did for a living.
“I’m an accountant.” There had been no follow up talk. The man had turned white and slowly backed away.
“It was like something out of a sitcom,” she had told Toby.
Toby’s story was almost the opposite. When people found out what he did, all they heard was “do you want me to do your taxes for you for free?’
These conversations had little of substance, but they helped pass the day. However, this was not normal circumstances, and Abbie had accepted the offer to have lunch together with serious reluctance. And yet it passed without any hitches.
And then at closing time, Toby had playfully punched her arm and said, “Goodnight, Abbie. See you tomorrow,” before leaving in as pleasant a mood as he had been all day. Tyler hadn’t said anything to her at the time, but he did raise an eyebrow at the exchange, and as soon as they started to run, he jumped right into the topic.
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t trust him?” she asked Tyler after she thought about the proceedings of the day.
“No. I’m saying I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I’m saying I would assume he was up to something. I’m not, though, telling you what you should think. You’re a grown up. So think for yourself.”
Seeing she looked sad, he tried to cheer her up.
“Look. Nobody else but the people in the office know both you and Toby, right? So they are probably the only real people that you have to worry about embarrassing Tyler in front of. You are the workplace prankster. Remember when you gave Mr. Rolan that bronzed head for Secret Santa?”
“His scream was priceless when he opened the box. As if he thought I had given him a real head.”
“Yeah. And remember when you kept sneaking into the office every day after our workout and turning on Ms. Rachel’s computer. She thought we had a ghost, she was losing her mind, or both for about a month.”
Abbie smiled at the memories, but had to ask what his point was.
“My point is that maybe I am wrong. Maybe Toby really did take this as one of your many office pranks and really isn’t mad.”
Abbie nodded her head and smiled hopefully.
“But you still better not pull that shit with me, Abbie Baker. Because I will not be as amused as Toby apparently is.”
“Please! You know I’m not brave enough to mess with you.”
5
It had been two weeks since the infamous post, and Toby was thoroughly sick of the jokes.
“Hey, Toby,” Nathan had said while handing Toby a paper, “I printed out this article I saw on the history of anteaters. I thought you might want it to get some more interesting talking points for your next date.”
“I don’t know, Nathan,” Joyce had said, “a lot of people read that post. Even after Abbie removed it, they found it on other sites. If the women in this town figure out it was about him, he might not ever get a date again.”
Toby had gritted his teeth and laughed, needing to keep up his charade in front of everyone.
“Thanks, Nathan. Good one, Joyce,” he had responded, a big smile plastered to his face. He just wished he could make the smile reach his eyes. He searched for Abbie at her desk and hoped she would go to lunch with him off site today.
He had made it an effort to really befriend her since the ordeal. He joked that finally being the subject of one of her famous jokes made him feel like he had passed her initiation test and that now they could truly be friends. And the ironic thing was that lunch with her actually was the best part of the day. Not because his anger was softening. No, that grew with every joke that he heard on the subject.
It’s not that he couldn’t take a joke. He could. It’s just that, while everyone was joking about it, they still believed it was true. And he hated having everyone think he was a rude, boring, arrogant groper. So every remark made on the subject just caused him to get a little more upset and a little more ready to put his plan into action. Eating lunch with Abbie, or even spending any time with her at all, meant avoiding a subject he was getting sick of.
It was all anyone talked about. At work everyone knew. His friends had found out because one of them had read it, recognized the names, put two and two together, and had told everyone else. His family had found out in a similar manner. His friends, while not believing any of it to be true, still teased him mercilessly on the subject and his family kept offering him condolences on his lost reputation and wanted to know if they needed to ‘take care’ of this girl. He could have counted on Parker to be cool, but, because of the plan, they of necessity had to talk about it.
They had been reading all of Abbie’s old posts. They knew her likes, her dislikes, her dating pet peeves, her worst dates, her best dates. And they had been designing the perfect man to meet all of her ridiculously inordinate number of requirements. He was almost worried their plan wouldn’t work, to be honest. How could any guy be as perfect as she expected anyone she dated be? No wonder she had thought their date was awful. She had expected a mythical creature and instead received a regular human male. He was worried that if Parker actually met all of her wants and desires, she would see right through him. Which is why he had to become such pals with her. He needed to know the real Abbie’s opinions, not the online version of her.
Yes, the reason being with Abbie was the best part of his day was because she was too afraid to bring up the incident and Toby didn’t want to risk dropping a hint about his real thoughts on the subject, so the pair never once mentioned it. Because of this, Toby had an opportunity to relax, and let down his guard. If he pretended for short bursts of time that she wasn’t the one who had started the gossip mill, he could really enjoy the break from the insanity. As much as he hated to admit it, real Abbie was a lot less bitchy than blogger Abbie.
He spotted her across the office, and sped over to her desk.
“You want to go out for Indian today?” Abbie looked at him and smiled. He looked off to the side. As much as he hated her, he had to admit she had the best smile. It seemed genuine. He used to think it was. Of course that was before she showed him her true colors. He wouldn’t be sucked in again, though. So when she smiled, and thus made him want to believe that everything he thought about her…no, knew about her…was false and made him want to smile back–a real, genuine smile, not the one he had been employing lately–he had to look away.
“Yeah. Sure. Just let me get my bag.”
They walked quietly down the street to a nearby Indian restaurant, and Toby saw Abbie looking at him out of the corner of her eye. He felt that she did not yet fully trust him. She was still slightly on edge, but every day with his even temper and perseverance she grew a little more relaxed. He was waiting until she felt completely safe, until she put the matter fully out of her mind. Then and only then would he find a way to get her and Parker to meet.
He held the door open for her as they walked in and found it funny when she said ‘thank you’. He had been with many girls who took small actions like that for granted. Yet here he was with his worst enemy, someone he considered a real bitch, and yet she was the one who never forgot her manners. She was one of the most polite people he knew. It had been one of the many things which had attracted him to her before he had learned the truth about her.
He led her to a table, and, when they had both ordered, he asked her about a client she had been having trouble with.
“Ugh,” she started. “I don’t even know where to begin. First, he’s pretty sure he donated a lot of money last year, but he can’t remember just where he put the proof. And then, he made
a lot of financial mistakes in the last couple of years. All in all, he’s probably going to owe money, and he keeps insisting I label things as business related that clearly aren’t business related at all.”
Toby laughed because he had many clients who did the same things.
“I warned him it was illegal,” she continued, “but he wouldn’t listen. He asked to speak to my supervisor, as if Mr. Rolan was going to order me to do something that all of us knew I couldn’t do. So anyway, I got Mr. Rolan to tell him the same thing that I told him, and when Mr. Rolan left, the guy looked down and put on a guilty face. And then he said, and I quote: ‘I’ve been bad. I think I deserve a spanking.’”
She laughed at her own story until her words hit her. They were the same ones she had used to describe Toby’s alleged inappropriate behavior. For half a second, they both looked at each other in shock, but then Toby forced himself to laugh. She joined him nervously.
“It’s okay, Abbie,” Toby assured her. “Like I said, you didn’t offend me.”
“And I still can’t believe it,” she told him. “You, Toby Lakeland, are the best person I know. And I don’t deserve your respect or your friendship. But I’ll take it anyway.” She smiled at him with the same smile that always caused him to avoid eye contact.
He didn’t respond to her comment because the food arrived right at that moment. But he didn’t feel guilty, either. He didn’t. Abbie had just admitted as much. She deserved what he was doing, and he had nothing to feel bad about. And that is what he repeated to himself all through the remainder of their lunch.
6
If there was one thing Parker had learned about himself in the last few weeks it was that he was not meant to be a villain. He read all of the posts in Abbie’s Outings and he listened to all of Toby’s stories about her from work and he began to craft together a character who seemed to be just what she, and thus Toby, wanted him to be. And he slept just fine at night. He didn’t feel sick about what he was doing. Or nervous. Or even as if he was the worst person in the world. Even though he probably was and probably should feel bad about it. Despite all this, though, Parker knew he was not cut out to be a bad guy because he couldn’t help but like Abbie despite the fact that he knew he shouldn’t.
This wasn’t something Toby needed to know. It wasn’t something that would affect what Parker was going to do. However, it did make him realize that if he couldn’t even stay mad, or at the very least indifferent, to the girl who had caused his best friend so much pain, then who could he dislike enough to want to destroy? He realized he hadn’t even had been mad at Becky for very long, all things considered, and what she had done was actually to Parker.
At any rate, Parker begrudgingly, and secretly, thought Abbie was pretty funny even if she was more than a little mean. So she had ridiculous standards. Hopefully a huge part of her blog was a persona anyway. Surely she was not that picky in real life. Or maybe the problem wasn’t that she was too picky. Maybe she just, even if unconsciously, picked guys she knew made good stories. Or maybe she just made up all the stories just like she had done for Toby. It was a lot to think about, and Parker soon realized he thought about it all the time. He sometimes felt like a psychologist and Abbie was his test subject. He had to remind himself that good psychologists did not invest personally in their patients.
In his study of her, this is what he had gathered: she was kind of brave to publicly broadcast her fears and dreams and failures for anybody to read, and she didn’t even use a pseudonym. She was a little insecure, constantly asking her readers for reassurances that she was not alone or that what she felt and experienced was something they too had felt and experienced. She was not afraid to make fun of herself in the same manner she made fun of others. Some of her bad dates, she pointed out in full detail, were caused by her and her alone.
For example, she wrote about the time she tripped on her own two feet, fell down, and, while trying to catch her balance, accidentally hit the guy walking in front of her in the ass. And then, as if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, when the man turned around to see who had just assaulted him and found Mark, her date, standing there, he hauled off and punched him square in the nose without explanation. Blood gushed. There were cries and tears, all from her date. In her words, “Mark could not have beat it out of that place faster if he was in a race for his life. Not only do I not plan on hearing from him again, but I fully expect him to move to another town, if not state, if not country, if not become an astronaut and leave earth completely, just to avoid ever accidentally running into me at a grocery store.”
And if all of this knowledge wasn’t enough, if the photo in her About Me section was anything to go by, she was also pretty hot. At the end of the day, Parker just wanted to give her hug and assure her that she would find love someday, and that was a feeling he was not use to having. How could he get so sentimental about a girl he had never even met?
Abbie’s Amazing Date
Abbie Baker | On April 11, 2015
Recycled from October 24, 2014
I just got back from my date with Corey. Corey was great. I don’t know if we have a future, but I would definitely see him again. Hey, you’ll never guess what we did on our date: we went to dinner and a movie. Wait. I’m sorry. I meant you will definitely guess where we went because it is where everyone goes on every first date ever if they don’t just go out for drinks. And I am bored with it completely.
Why can’t we the single population of the nation get a little more creative? Don’t do the same old same old. Let’s do something that will really make our first date stand out from all the other first dates we’ve ever had. With this thought in mind, I give you the criteria you must have to create my dream first date:
The first criterion in Abbie’s amazing date is one that usually happens on all first dates, but it is so important that it cannot be discarded in this new type of first dating: let’s go somewhere where we can talk and get to know each other. After all, how will we know if we want to go out again if all we know about each other was what we yelled over the amps at a concert where we jumped around in the mosh pit? Mosh pits should be saved for a date when we already know we like each other and/or we are coming down from that glorious stage of dating where we are going at it all the time and we now realize that all we had together was physical but we don’t yet want to admit it because the sex is still good so we need to find non-bedroom (or kitchen table or up against a wall) activities that don’t require us to have to speak to each other. They should not be used for a first date.
The second criterion is to be creative. Do you need to create a new activity that no one has ever done before? No. Do we need to climb Mount Everest or take a motorcycle driving lesson? No. But let’s get out of the realm of dinner and a movie. Or talking over drinks. Take me to the zoo or on a city scavenger hunt. Let’s take a cheap cooking or art class (notice I said cheap. I don’t expect you to spend your life savings on me. I don’t even think you need to pay for me at all. (Pretty please pay anyway, though, because it is the best part about being a girl. I’m cheap, I promise.) I’ll even go cheaper: let’s go to a free concert in a park together. I don’t care what it is, just make yourself stand out from all the other men who have come before you. Put a little effort into the location. (Alternatively: let’s plan out the date together. We can get to know each other and find things we have in common just by getting ready to go out.)
The final criterion (see, I’m not being that demanding, I only have three things I really, really want) is for you to be half way interesting. Whether we have a future together or not, we are about to spend the next couple of hours together. Please keep me entertained. At the end of the night, I need one of two things to be true for me to consider the date great: 1. I need to like the guy enough to want to go out with him again, or 2. He needs to be so bad, that I can amuse all of my dear readers with his antics. If you neither entice me to date you more nor give me an amusing story to tell, then I call the night a bust.
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So, girls (and guys. I don’t mean to discriminate), hit me up in the comments and let me know just what you look for in a dream first date.
Until my next date,
Abbie
7
Abbie hadn't written a single post since the post that would not be named. She was too scared of what she would write. Instead, she was re-running a smorgasbord of old favorites, with a lean towards ones that did not directly discuss any particular person. She had learned her lesson, and while nothing really bad had happened from the whole ordeal, she wasn’t taking her chance in the future. Jo, as understanding as ever, acted as if this was a personal insult to her.
“Abigail, don’t you see how badly this makes me look?”
“No, Josephine. I don’t see how it affects you at all, actually.”
“Because I was the one who passed on your post. You weren’t getting seen enough, and I used my own personal contacts to get the word out about your blog, and now that it isn’t being utilized it reflects poorly on Michelle who vouched for you and on me because now she is never going to trust me again. So I don’t care if you make up a story, go into more detail about this Toby and the aftershock of him finding out what you wrote, or anything else you might type up, but I need you to write something and I need it to be something good.”
“I’m not keeping it empty, Jo. I’m just not putting up new stuff. I haven’t been in a very writer-ly mood lately. I can’t create the good content you demand unless I am inspired.”
“Don’t B.S. me, Baker. I see you writing all the time. Send me whatever it is you have, and if it isn’t your best stuff, I’ll spruce it up some.”
“No. I’ve only been writing up some reports for work. It’s nothing that would interest anyone else, and besides, I have to think about client/accountant confidentiality.”
The Abbie Diaries: The Complete Series Page 3
