Here’s what I’m feeling: I get it. Kind of. I get why Toby would want to do this to me. I did, after all, do something horrible to him. And so what that I was drunk and didn’t mean to? It’s not about not meaning to, it’s about meaning not to. And I did it, so I should have to pay some consequences, right? But not this. Surely what I did doesn’t justify hurting me in such an atrocious way, does it? I just don’t know. I do, however, know that there’s no way I am going to be able to have a normal relationship, or even a frosty work relationship, with Toby after this.
On Monday, I am planning on going to Mr. Rolan’s office, and I am going to ask him to move me to another part of the office. If this makes him think that I am not an adult and that I cannot handle things like a grown up, then so be it. I cannot look up and see him every day. It’s just too hard. That makes sense, right?
Here’s what I’m also feeling: I don’t get it. Not at all. I don’t get why Parker would want to do this to me. I didn’t do anything to him at all. Did I? I try to tell myself that I would do whatever it took to get revenge on some guy who hurt Maggie. I try to tell myself that this is the same. But I really don’t think it is. After all, I need to say one more time: everything I did was to someone I barely had a relationship with in a manner that was clearly unintentional. It would have been different if I had done something like this after Toby had fallen in love with me and my actions broke his heart. It would have been different if it was intentional. But under the circumstances, this was just not the equivalent. And Parker, as the unaffected one, had the responsibility to show this to Toby and be the reasonable one. The responsible one.
Right? Right? Am I right? I keep asking myself this over and over, and I just want people to read this and tell me that they agree with me. I need people to reassure me that I’m not the horrible, cold-hearted bitch they would have me be. I need to know I didn’t deserve to be treated this way. Because I’ll tell you what the result of this whole situation has been: I have lost all faith in myself. I have lost all faith in men. Maybe I’ve lost faith in all of mankind. I don’t know who to trust. And that really sucks. I’ve come to the conclusion nobody deserves to have their faith in life shaken, and so that answers my own question, but since I no longer trust myself, I can’t even trust that conclusion, and now I’m rambling. But wouldn’t you if you had just found out this had happened to you?
Here’s what I am feeling most of all: betrayed, lonely, sad. You see, Parker did his job really well. Too well. Because I think I really did love him, or at least I loved the person I thought he was, the perfect man he pretended to be. And now here I am, heartbroken, with something horrible to write about. Good job, Parker. I hope you feel satisfied.
Post saved.
Publish | Trash
20
Abbie hovered over the publish button telling herself to just do it and get it over with, and then over the trash telling herself it wouldn’t help, that she shouldn’t do anything she would later regret. No matter what she told herself, nothing seemed right. She just couldn’t do either. So she turned off her monitor, and went to bed. She had been in bed a lot of the last couple of days asking herself the same question she had posed in her blog over and over: did she deserve this?
For moments, she wallowed in self-pity and self-doubt and considered she had done something horrible, and deserved the consequences. Still, for the most part, she knew nothing she had done was half as bad as what had been done to her in return. She was the innocent, or at least less guilty, party here, and she deserved retribution. So it was her time to get payback, she just wasn’t yet sure how.
When she first found out that everything Parker had … and to an extent even Toby had … told her was a lie, she hadn’t thought anything at all. Her brain just stopped functioning and everything surrounding those first moments was a blur. She vaguely remembered pushing the guys out of the house, and going to the couch to cry. The next thing she knew, it was much later that night, and Maggie was home asking her what was wrong.
“Everything,” she replied and buried her head in her best friend’s lap. Maggie patted her head and asked her to be more specific, so Abbie told her about her night.
“I’ll kill them both!” That was the first thing Maggie said when Abbie was done with her story, and while it was tempting to let her go do it, having an incarcerated Maggie would only hurt Abbie more.
“Murder would only end the suffering I’m going to cause them way too prematurely.” Abbie decided instead and pulled Maggie back down beside her on the couch. Maggie put her arm around her best friend and pulled her into a hug.
“That sounds good to me,” Maggie told her. “What’s the plan?”
Only Abbie didn’t know yet. She hadn’t gotten that far.
“It’s okay,” Maggie comforted her, “you take a few days to recover, and we’ll think of something. They won’t get away with this. Besides, you don’t want to plot revenge right now, you need time to calm down and get collected if you want to really make them pay.”
And Abbie did want to make them pay. She wanted to make them pay for what they had done to her more than she had ever wanted anything else, and when she really, really wanted something, she found a way to make it happen.
Abbie had taken the next day off of work. She was not ready to see Toby. It was possible she would never be ready to see him, but she would find a way to deal with that later. However, she thought it was reasonable to want to avoid him less than 12 hours after she had found out that he was the worst person in the entire world. After she had found out he was the second worst person in the entire world, she corrected herself. So she had called off work, and she didn’t feel badly about it.
Instead, she spent all day in her pj’s, watching television and trying not to cry. She also spent the day trying not to read her texts and email, which were both being bombarded with messages from both of the ex-men in her life.
Parker: Please call me, please.
Toby: You aren’t coming in? Thought we’d talk at lunch. We need to talk, Abs. Please.
Parker: Abbie, I can explain. Please let me explain.
Toby: Abbie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you like that. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m so, so sorry.
And so it went all day until Abbie had finally just turned it off. Jo had been at her boyfriend’s house almost exclusively the last week or so since Abbie’s Jo posts had come out, and Abbie had never been more thankful. There was no way she could’ve dealt with Jo on top of everything else. So she spent the day home by herself.
Abbie was hurt, but she was also bored. She had never been good at sitting around moping even when she didn’t have the energy to do anything else. She wanted a drink. She had made Maggie lock up the liquor because she didn’t want to do anything she would later regret. Maggie had listened. So a drink was out. She went for a run to clear her head. It didn’t help.
So she opened her laptop and did what she always did: wrote out her feelings. Without the alcohol, she actually reread what she wrote and thought about all the various consequences. It just didn’t feel right. So she slept on it. Then she read it again in the morning. It was Saturday, and that was normally when she posted, but she might just miss this week.
She had originally thought putting up her post about how horrible Parker and Toby were would help. After all, it was a small town, word would get around, and the guys would be put on the girl blacklist. See how she turned the tables on their dirty little game? She bet they hadn’t thought of that little side effect when they created their vicious plot. This was her thinking while she wrote.
After her post was written though, her feelings changed. It felt too much like letting them win, which was, after all, what they wanted her to do. Abbie didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. So she didn’t. But just because she didn’t post what she really thought, didn’t mean she couldn’t post anything at all.
The beginning of an idea danced through her brain, and she smiled for what was probabl
y the first time since Toby had entered her house Thursday night. She turned her monitor back on and began to type. If they wanted her to write about them, she would do it. And she would say exactly what they wanted to hear.
21
Toby had gone home when Abbie told him to leave her house, and he prepared himself for a confrontation with Parker. But Parker didn’t return. Toby didn’t know where Parker had gone, but he did know he didn’t care. His former friend could go to hell.
After he told Parker everything was fine and took off, he went to the park where Abbie went to run. He traced the path they had taken the first time they met there and the second, and he thought about their relationship. He wasn’t ready for it to be over. It was possible, he realized, one day he would be. Maybe they would date and it wouldn’t work out and they’d break up sometime down the road. And they’d meet other people, and never think about each other again. He didn’t think so, but he knew it could be true. But if it ended that way, then it ended that way. But it shouldn’t end this way. And he wasn’t going to let it.
The first thing he needed to do was break up Abbie and Parker. That would be easy to do. All it required was the truth, and Toby had decided that Parker or not, Abbie deserved to know the truth. So that is what he was going to give her.
The next step was getting her to forgive him. Not so easy. But even here, he had two things in his favor. The first was that he could honestly tell her that in the heat of the moment he had acted irrationally and didn’t think about what he was doing – just like she had done in both of her posts. Abbie was, when it came down to it, reasonable. He felt like he could convince her, with time, to see that what they had done to each other wasn’t that different. The second was that he was the one to call it off and come clean. There had to be points for that, he told himself. And once she forgave him, he could convince her to give him another chance.
Before he drove to her house, he practiced what he was going to say. He had a whole speech planned. His goal was to break it to her gently and do his best to make sure how wrong he knew his actions were. He had it all planned. And then he saw Parker.
When Abbie had first opened the door, he had not thought much about her appearance. His mind was on more important things. But when he saw how she looked and how Parker looked and just the fact that Parker was there, he knew. He knew something had been happening between them that he didn’t want to think about. It made him feel sick. It made him feel jealous. It should have been him there with her, not Parker. Parker should not have ever even met her. And he wouldn’t have if it wasn’t because of a stupid dispute between her and Toby. And in that moment, he wanted to hurt Parker so much, that he forgot to think about Abbie. The story came spewing out of his mouth in a rougher, meaner way than he had meant it to, and he could tell that it struck Abbie strongly. Good, he thought. There was no way Parker could recover from this. But then he thought, could he?
Abbie had asked him to leave, and so he had. Parker was an idiot for trying to talk to her, even briefly, at the moment. It would have to wait until she calmed down. And that was another place where Toby had the advantage. Eventually, she would reach a point where she wasn’t as mad, and then she would go to work where Toby would be waiting for her. She couldn’t avoid him forever. She could, however, avoid Parker.
So Toby left knowing he would talk to her at work the next day only she never showed up, and maybe he should have realized she wouldn’t, but it still surprised him.
“Toby, you don’t look well at all today,” Ms. Rachel said in a voice more curious than caring.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled and turned back to his desk. He had been unable to concentrate all morning. At first, it was because he expected Abbie to walk in and he was nervous. Then it was because he realized she wasn’t and he was scared that maybe this was all a lot worse than he was telling himself. Abbie never missed work, and now here she was, doing it twice in one week.
“Are you sure?” Ms. Rachel said, and he wanted to yell at her, maybe punch a wall. Obviously he was upset about something, and Ms. Rachel could barely contain her glee at the potential gossip storm she saw on the horizon.
“Yep,” he said pointedly and turned back to work, or turned back to trying to look like he was working, at any rate. Ms. Rachel finally gave up and returned to her seat. She wasn’t the only one he had to worry about in the office, though. Joyce kept looking over and Nathan smirked every time Toby looked at him and Tyler glared at him nonstop.
“Where’s Abbie today, Toby?” he asked him in the break room. Tyler’s voice did not disguise the fact he blamed Toby for Abbie’s absence.
“I’m not sure,” Toby hedged, and tried to walk by. Tyler wouldn’t let him pass.
“I’m going to lay it out for you,” Tyler told him. “Abbie is my friend, and this is what I know. She liked you. She did something dumb. You claimed to have forgiven her even though I never bought it. She started to like you even more. She did something dumb because she wanted to make up for her first dumb thing. And you made her pay for it. Then, for no apparent reason, you forgave her and wanted her back. And now she’s not here and you’re not happy, and I have a little trouble believing those things are unrelated. So let me tell you right now, if she’s gone because you hurt her again, you will regret it. And that’s a promise. Understood?”
Toby didn’t know what to say. He did understand. And Tyler was a scary man. And he was also a good friend who wouldn’t hesitate to punish someone who had hurt Abbie. So Toby just nodded his head and got out of there as fast as possible.
If he left work early that day, then nobody was going to say anything to him about it. It gave them the freedom to gossip amongst themselves anyway.
Parker didn’t return again that night. Toby still didn’t care other than maybe just a little thought that hopefully he wasn’t dead. They had, after all, been friends for a long time and even if Parker had hurt him, Toby didn’t wish him dead in a ditch. But he figured somebody would have called him if Parker had been in an accident or anything like that, so he felt like he was safe in not caring where his friend was. And honestly, he didn’t really want to see him that much anyway.
On Saturday, Toby went to the park and waited all day, hoping Abbie would come but she never showed. She never answered any of his texts or calls or emails either. He didn’t know what to do, so he went back home. He’d go back to the park on Sunday, he told himself, and work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, every day. And she would turn up eventually, and they would have it out. Fighting was better than no communication at all.
If he couldn’t talk to her directly, though, he would at least be able to see her thoughts on the matter. When he got home, he turned on his iPad and searched for Abbie’s Outings. She always had a new post on Saturdays, and he wanted to know what she had to say about the whole situation – or if she wasn’t going to talk about it since she hadn’t been talking about her dating life, then he wanted to know what she had to say about anything. He just wanted to see that she was alright.
There it was he saw right as he opened the blog: her new post.
“One Abbie, Two Assholes,” he read the title of the post out loud. She had decided to write about them after all. And the fact that she had a joke title showed him they had not broken her. He smiled, and as he read, his smile grew. Abbie was going to forgive him after all.
22
When Parker left Abbie’s he went to the hospital. He couldn’t face Toby right then. He couldn’t blame Toby for what he had done, but he couldn’t be happy about it either. So instead of getting in another fight, he decided to stay at work for a few days. It wouldn’t be so bad, he told himself. In fact, he would take on some extra shifts and the work would take his mind off of things until he could come up with a plan to get Abbie to forgive him.
So far, the only thing he had come up with is the friendship card. He could convince her to put herself in his shoes with Maggie being the one that had been badmouthed to the world. Once he mad
e her see a good friend would do anything to help a hurting pal, she would understand even if he had done what she thought he had done, it wouldn’t have been that bad. Then, once she was on speaking terms with him again, he would prove to her he had never been fake and she truly did know the real Parker, not a made-up, Abbieionized version. He would then show her what he had done was for the best. Not just for him, but for Abbie and Toby too. They weren’t right for each other, and how could nobody but Parker realize this? Parker and Abbie, though. He could tell himself this over and over, and he did, but it didn’t really matter if he couldn’t convince the two most important people in his life it was the truth. Since neither of them liked him enough to listen to what he had to say right now, convincing them of anything was going to be difficult.
Parker finished his shift and went to change out of his scrubs. During those hours working at the hospital, he could put all the pain in his own life on hold, and focus on healing the people that came to him for help. Now with work over, the thoughts came flooding back into his head and he was right where he started: with no Abbie, no Toby, and no idea how to change either of those facts.
He knew this is where Toby had the advantage: he got to see her at work. It was likely, Parker realized, that Abbie would take a day or two off of work in an effort to avoid Toby, but at some point she would have to return, and then Toby would be there, sitting beside her, waiting for her to not be so mad. And then he would do whatever it took to win her back. Parker, without having this connection, was going to have to think of something else to do.
He could go to the park and wait for her? Would that seem too much like stalking? Probably, but it might be worth it anyway. The real problem he saw with this was, if she saw him there, she might decide to go somewhere else to run and then he would have taken something else from her that she loved and he still wouldn’t be able to see her. So this idea seemed off the table, at least until he grew desperate.
The Abbie Diaries: The Complete Series Page 12
