The Abbie Diaries: The Complete Series

by Amelie Stephens

  “Yes, Naggie Maggie. What would I do without a mother like you?”

  “If this is how you act with me mothering you, I don’t even want to think about what you would be like without me.”

  She lay down and rested her head besides Abbie’s and ran her fingers through Abbie’s matted hair.

  “What am I going to do, Maggie?” Abbie asked in a sad, little girl voice.

  “I don’t know what you are going to do later, but for right now, we are going to lay here and pretend that the rest of the world does not exist while you recuperate from your allergic reaction.”

  “Okay, Maggie.” And they did lay there all night, both worried about what the morning would bring.

  Abbie woke up with a bad taste in her mouth. She stretched her arms over her head and felt the soft body that was Maggie. This was the first time since freshman year of college, seven long years ago, that Abbie wished her best friend was not there. Maggie being in Abbie’s bed meant that everything Abbie remembered from the day before was true. Maggie being anywhere else in the whole world meant it had been a nightmare.

  It was Monday. She would have to call in sick.

  “You aren’t calling in sick,” said a groggy voice from beside her.

  “But… “

  “No.” Abbie sighed.

  “You are tough.”

  “No I’m not. Or at least I’m not on this.”

  Sitting up, Maggie addressed her. “If this was something I had done. If this was me we were discussing, I would be staying home today, tomorrow, and every day for at least a week. But we aren’t talking about me. We are talking about you. Brave Abbie, the most courageous person I know. You have done more embarrassing things than anyone else I have ever met, and you have faced the consequences of each and every one of them head on and as early as possible. I couldn’t do that, but I love that you can. So I’m not letting you change my Abbie because of one drunken night. Go to work, Abbie.”

  “I’m not brave,” Abbie protested, “I am just so prone to mistakes that I have become immune to embarrassment. But I have thoroughly overcome my immunity this last month and a half. I feel fully capable of hiding from the consequences of my actions on this one.”

  “You can’t hide forever, Abbie.”

  “You don’t know that. I’ve become something of an internet sensation, my friend. I could become a full-time blogger. And now that technology allows us to get groceries delivered, I might not ever have to leave this house again.”

  The raised eyebrow Maggie gave her affirmed just how horrible a plan that was. Abbie’s stomach gurgled with fear at what she was about to do. Still Maggie was right. She was the girl who had gone to class with her dress in her undies and, when it was pointed out to her, laughingly announced to the class that she “hoped they were enjoying the free show.” She was the girl who accidentally caught the curtain on fire at the house of her then boyfriend’s mother and, once she had put it out and offered to pay for new ones, announced that, if they were wondering if their son’s new girlfriend had a criminal record, the answer was she had been questioned for arson once or twice. She was the girl who wrote not one, but two embarrassing posts about a co-worker she may or may not have been a little in love with and then went to work on Monday morning to face the music. She was Abbie Baker, dammit, and nothing was going to change that.

  Before Abbie walked into the office, she took big breaths, she counted slowly to ten, she gave herself motivational speeches, she told herself it was not going to be that bad. She was only procrastinating, she realized, because no self-help activity was going to relax her. When she realized just what she was doing, she whispered a quiet, “Just get it over with, Abs,” and then pushed open the door.

  She saw him as soon as she entered. He was standing in the break room right by the front door, and he was talking to Nathan. Or, more accurately, Nathan was talking to him.

  “Now, son,” Nathan was telling Toby, “I’ve been happily married for a long time now. If you need any help knowing what to do with a girl, you just let me know. I would have thought a guy that looks like you and who is what twenty-eight? Would have gotten over their fear of girls by now. They aren’t that scary, I promise. If you need help learning the basics, you could probably go to a hooker. They’ll teach you all of the moves, and you don’t have to worry about disappointing them. They get paid to like it.”

  Toby was getting redder and redder as the speech progressed, and Abbie was seriously worried that he might explode and hit the older man square in the face.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Toby,” she whispered, “I don’t want you to get fired because of my mistake.”

  “I don’t think he can hear you from here,” Tyler had moved to right behind her and she had been so absorbed in the scene before her she had not even heard him.

  “I suppose you heard?” she asked him.

  “Abigail, I think it made the morning news, possibly the national news. There’s not one person in this whole boondock town that hasn’t heard. You should prepare yourself for that. I suggest wearing a paper bag whenever you’re going out in public.”

  “Why did I have to put my picture up on the site? Now even strangers are going to be recognizing me. This is not how I imagined my fifteen minutes.”

  “That is the action you are questioning? Honey, if there was ever a time to ask yourself why you had done something, it is now, and it has nothing to do with a picture.”

  “Will you help me get through this? I need some inside help if I’m going to make it through this awful day.”

  “And become a social pariah for aligning with the most hated person in the office? Hmm. You're lucky I don’t like anyone here but you anyway.” He put his arm around her shoulder and walked her to her desk.

  Abbie did her best to ignore Toby the rest of the day. Her eyes never left her monitor when he was at his desk, she went out to lunch with Tyler, she put in her headphones so as not to hear the jokes and gossip filtering in the air around her. It was not hard to avoid having to talk to him, though, because he was purposely and without disguise icing her out. If she ever accidentally made eye contact, he would turn his eyes away as if she were a bug not even worth soiling his shoe to be stepped on by him. Knowing she deserved it didn’t make it any easier.

  Tyler, true to his word, was a faithful friend throughout the whole ordeal. Kirby, the summer intern, told her that if Toby wasn’t interested, he could help her out with all the dirty things she wanted to do. “I’m not a good guy, Abbie,” he had said to her, “I’ll do bad things with a bad girl like you.” She had made the mistake of walking to the water fountain by herself when this happened.

  But by the end of Kirby’s speech, Tyler stood there behind him. “What did you just say to her?” he asked, using his muscular six foot something frame to intimidate the younger, scrawnier man.

  “No...nothing,” Kirby had stammered.

  “I don’t want you talking to her again,” Tyler had reiterated. “So make sure that you don’t.”

  Abbie would have cried if she was alone or if it was just her and Tyler. But it wasn’t. It was an office full of people and she deserved everything that was happening to her. She said thanks to her knight in shining armor, threw back her shoulders, and returned to her desk to work.

  No matter how much two people try to avoid each other, if they work in a small space, they are without question going to find themselves alone and together at some point. This point occurred for Abbie and Toby at 10:45 AM the Wednesday after the post had gone up.

  It was in the hall that led to the bathrooms and Abbie was stalking back to her desk when Toby dashed toward the men’s room. They were going to cross paths without any problems. They were both going to ignore each other and act as if the other was not there. It would have been perfect because it was what they both wanted: to ignore it until it went away.

  But Abbie remembered at the last second just what Maggie had said about confronting her mistakes head on.
She couldn’t let this moment pass because who knew when she’d get another chance. She grabbed his arm as they crossed paths.

  “I…Toby, I’m sorr…”

  “Don’t!” he yelled, and then realized where he was.

  “I have to…”

  He pulled her into an empty conference room and shut the door.

  “You have to?” he yelled in a whisper. “You have to? Why do you have to? Because it will make you feel better? Because it will make you feel like you have fixed things? I don’t want you to feel better, Abbie. And since everything has been about what you want lately, I am making this my turn. We are doing what I want this time, Abbie. And I say you don’t get to apologize.”

  “But, Toby,” Abbie felt tears pricking along her lash line.

  “No, no.” Toby hissed at her, moving toward her in a way that scared her, she stepped back until she was up against a wall, and still he got closer. “You don’t get to do that, Abbie. You don’t get to cry and make me feel like a bastard and act like you are the victim here. You had no right. No right to discuss me on your blog as if I was a story whose only purpose was to amuse your readers and get you attention. Do you know how humiliating it is to be me right now? Do you care?”

  She tried to hold back the tears for him, but she could not control them. The first one fell down her cheek leaving a watery stain in its path, but before the second one had a chance to fall, he was on her with a heated, “Damn you, Abbie.” Then all words were forgotten as their lips merged together, his tongue attacking hers. For that is the only way she could describe the soul scorching kiss he planted on her. An attack. It was rough and punishing. It was demanding and taking. This was not a kiss between a nice couple in love. It was the kiss of two people that despite themselves could not stay away. His hands were in her hair and on her shoulder. Then they were on her breasts making her moan softly into his mouth and then he was unbuttoning her shirt and his mouth was moving down, farther down, right there – right where she wanted it. As for her hands, they had somehow managed to untuck his shirt and claw her way up his abs. His perfect abs. She didn’t know how her hands were working well enough to move on their own. Not when his mouth was there doing that. Oh yes, keep doing that.

  But all good things must end, and theirs did when voices in the hall got loud enough to break through their heads. People were filtering in and out of the bathroom. They couldn’t get caught like that. Not in the office in the middle of the day. Not at all. Toby broke away from her, and she wanted nothing more than to say, “Forget whoever’s out there,” and pull him back to her, but she didn’t.

  “Shit,” Toby muttered. Fixing his shirt. “Shit, shit, shit,” he repeated. She tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “Fix yourself up,” he told her, “you look like a whore.” Then he was gone and Abbie was just as confused as ever.

  11

  Toby hadn't even bothered to make excuses when he left. He had just exited the building, hopped in his car and gunned it out of the parking lot. There would be time to think of a reason why he had left work early later. He had no time to think about it now, though.

  What had he done? What had he done? And why did everything Abbie do cause him to do things he would later regret. He had never been one to be a glutton for punishment. He was a quiet guy who liked things simple, without unnecessary complications. Along came Abbie, the biggest unnecessary complication he had ever had to deal with. The part that worried him the most, though, was that she was beginning to feel very much like a necessary complication. He had to put a stop to it before it became too late.

  He could taste her on him. He could smell her on his clothes. If he closed his eyes, he could see her there in that room still. Swollen lips, heaving breasts, tousled hair. She must be a witch. She had put an evil spell on him, and he could not escape. That had to be it. That had to be why he was tempted to turn right back around, march into the office, drag her into an empty room, hell, he didn’t need an empty room, just any hard surface, and finish what he had started.

  He pulled into his driveway and went inside. He had called her a whore. Technically, he had said she looked like a whore, not that she was one. Of course that was just semantics. He had never said that about anyone before and despite what she’d done, she didn’t deserve that. That thought made him angrier than anything before it. She had hurt him in more ways than anyone had ever hurt him, and yet she had him feeling badly and him owing her apologies.

  Pain coursed through his knuckles, through his wrist, and spiraled up his arm as his fist connected with the wall. “Dammit!” he yelled into the empty house. Only it was not empty because right after he yelled, Parker appeared looking worried.

  “What? What is it? What happened?” his friend demanded.

  “What do you think happened?” Toby retorted. “The same thing that has been happening for the last month. Abbie happened. But I’m not letting her get to me again.”

  “What did she do now?” Parker asked, shocked at this new turn of events.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Toby told him. “Because she is not going to do it again. I’m not going to let her.”

  When your arm is caught in a trap, and you can't escape it, when it is holding you back from safety, when it is causing you to fail, when it is sick and diseased, there is only one thing you can do. You have to remove it. It might hurt. Scratch that. It would hurt. But you have to fight through the pain and gnaw it off with your teeth if you have to. Saw through the flesh and bone and rid yourself of the pestilence, the poison, the danger. After it’s over, you will never be whole again, but you will be better off in the long run.

  Abbie was an oozing, cancerous arm, gripping onto him without mercy. There was only one thing he could do to save himself. He had to sever that arm. He had to cut her apart so badly there was no fixing her. He had to remove her so far from him that there was no way he could ever get her back, no way to reconnect them. And there was only one way he knew to do that.

  Parker.

  12

  Parker had known Toby wouldn’t take the newest addition to Abbie’s Outings well, but he hadn’t realized he would take it as badly as he had.

  Parker had once played a game of Would You Rather where he had been asked if he’d rather freeze to death or burn? He had chosen burn because the image of festering, burning skin, the thought of smelling your own burning flesh had seemed like a no-brainer against the numbing pain that lulled you to a sleep from which you would never wake, which is what he associated with hypothermia.

  After seeing Toby’s reaction on the afternoon he first read Abbie’s second post about him, Parker would’ve liked to have gone back and changed his answer. Fire was hot and scorching, it ran its course and burned out. It was painful, but it was quick. Ice on the other hand was slow to burn, it waited and lingered until you felt fine. It tricked you into thinking everything would be okay. And then it stole from you everything you had. It took your breath in the night, and you never even saw it coming.

  Parker had seen Toby get mad before. It was a fiery passion that lasted for a while and died out as quickly as it began. He had never felt scared of Toby, but on that day, he had been. Not that he thought Toby would hurt him, it was not that kind of fear. It was more of a fear that Toby was going to do something that would end up hurting them all, and there was nothing Parker could do about it.

  So when Toby had asked him to fix everything, Parker said no. He wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t because he was feeling things for Abbie that he shouldn’t be feeling because no matter what he felt, he would put it aside to make sure his friend never hurt again like he was hurting now.

  Toby was the most close-mouthed, private person he knew. He barely told Parker anything, and they were practically brothers. To him, having his life broadcast before the world was the worst possible punishment anyone could inflict upon him. So though he felt badly for Abbie, who had once again taken down Toby while she tried to take down herself, he wouldn’
t let that bad feeling affect his friendship with Parker.

  Still, that wasn’t the reason he had refused to help. He said ‘no’ because he knew Toby would only come to resent himself and Parker if they went through with it. Because ice eventually thawed out, and when it did, Toby would see what they had done with new, less frigid eyes.

  “You have to,” Toby had whispered, but there was no emotion behind those words.

  “What happened to the whole ‘it'll die down’ and the ‘she’s not that bad’?” he asked his friend. “Did a couple of paragraphs that were more embarrassing to her than to you change your mind that much?”

  “How do you not get this?” Toby hissed in a chilling voice. “It’s not that she has to be punished for what she has already done, it’s that she has to put a stop to this completely. If she doesn’t pay, then how do I know she won’t get drunk next week or the week after or the week after that and write even more humiliating things about me? Am I supposed to pay for her mistakes every time she opens a bottle?”

  “I’m sorry, Toby,” Parker reiterated despite the speech, “I just can’t do this for you.”

  And now Toby stood before Parker once more pleading with him to change his mind. Parker didn’t know what had happened at work that day, but he knew it must not have been good. It had shaken Toby. He thought about his own feelings for this mystery girl. He thought about his friendship with Toby. He thought about what was best for all of them, and he knew he couldn’t change his answer.

  As he opened his mouth to say that, Toby changed everything.

  “Please,” he begged. And when he said it, his voice cracked. It was small, but it was enough.

  Parker had never stood a chance.