Free at Last: which is basically just a regular party that we would call “Free at Last” in order to make it clear that we are happy and to show you that your submitted themes do not have to contain the word “Jo” in order to be considered.
You know what writing this has done for me? I am in such a good mood now that I am feeling generous. I’ll send an evite to the top five themes I like (and I’ll let the winner make a toast at the party). We’ll announce the winners next week. Yay! Can’t wait to see you there – well, some of you, anyway.
Until next time,
Abbie
24
Abbie hated lying to her readers, but sometimes you had to do things you didn’t want to do in order to dole out justice. That is where she was now: doling out justice and, with the stated exception of deceiving innocent bystanders with her blog posts, loving it.
After the meeting in the park, Abbie had Toby right where she wanted him, and she was going to hold on to him as long as she could before she crushed him. And by holding onto Toby, she was going to drive Parker crazy. What could be better? Two birds, one stone as the saying goes.
After she and Toby left the park that day, they had gone to lunch. And she didn’t lie when she wrote about how much talking she made him do. They talked about how badly they felt about how they had treated one another (Abbie genuinely meant this part) and how they planned to treat each other better in the future (she did not at all mean this part genuinely). They talked about their family and their childhoods and their hopes and dreams. They talked and they talked until neither one of them wanted to hear the other’s voice. Only, at that point, Abbie put on a smile and pretended she wanted to talk more.
She had decided when she wrote her “forgiveness” post that she was going to take a How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days approach. Only, instead of having the Matthew McConaughey character stick around because of his own bet, Toby was going to stick out all of her annoying tendencies because of stupid male pride. After treating her poorly, begging her for forgiveness and fighting with his best friend (not to mention beating his best friend out for the girl), it was going to take a lot to get him to admit defeat. And Abbie planned on pulling all the stops to make the relationship as miserable for him as possible without going so far to make him break. And if she began to think he was getting so frustrated that he would break up with her, she would give him just enough hope to keep him hanging around for more.
In the spare time she had between work, planning a party, and torturing Toby, she would write posts broadcasting her purported happiness with the knowledge that Parker was out there reading her posts. He was stubborn – though he would never admit it, and he told her he would not give up easily, and she believed him. Part of his way to connect with her would be to read her posts (she knew this because in one of his texts, he told her that, even though he didn’t get to talk to her, at least he could keep up with what was going on in her life through her blog). So he was out there somewhere reading her post, and she hoped his heart was breaking a little just like hers had. Only, there was a part of her that didn’t want to hurt him and made her feel just a little bit nauseated at the thought. However, that was the part of her that still maybe could have fallen in love with Parker, and thus was the part of herself that she pushed so far into her subconscious that it could never be revived.
The doorbell rang shortly after she published her post, she knew it was Toby there to pick her up and she was 100% ready, but she was back to her old tricks, so she made him wait. Only when she felt it was time to make her appearance did she open the door.
“Hello, Toby,” she greeted him, reminding herself once again to smile.
“Abs,” he said and leaned into kiss her. She pushed him away gently. He gave her a frustrated look before saying, “You look amazing.”
“Thanks, so do you,” she told him.
“Abs?” Maggie called from inside the door. “I have a question about the…Oh. Toby. I didn’t know you were here.” Maggie stammered to a halt and paused before the door. She blushed. Abbie knew Maggie was embarrassed because she no longer felt comfortable taking advantage of someone no matter how badly they had treated her friend.
Abbie had been requiring Maggie to stick around her and Toby so that Abbie had an easy way to force Toby to keep his distance. Maggie had been on Abbie’s side at first, but just the night before, she had asked Abbie if maybe what they were doing was a little harsh.
“Do you think maybe you’ve made your point, Abbie?” Maggie had asked her. “Do you think maybe you can just cut Toby loose and know you were the one that ended things? He really isn’t that bad, right?”
But Abbie wasn’t ready yet to end things. She was still hurt. So Maggie had sighed, shut up about it, and said she was still there for Abbie. Still Abbie could tell Maggie’s heart wasn’t in it. She wasn’t the type of person who willingly hurt others, and it really was not fair of Abbie to ask her friend for help in this way. That is why tonight they were going out sans Maggie. Maggie, after all, deserved the night off.
“Yep,” Abbie told her friend. “Toby’s taking me out. He’s surprising me with where we’re going.”
“Oh.” Maggie said, “That’s so nice.” Abbie frowned. She couldn’t have Maggie thinking more nice things about Toby, or Maggie would decide enough was enough. If Maggie wanted to end this game, Abbie was 100% certain her friend could talk Abbie out of it. And that wasn’t something Abbie was ready for yet.
“Bye, Mags,” she said. She needed these two apart.
“Bye, Maggie,” Toby told her friend, “You look nice tonight too.”
“Thanks,” Maggie blushed more. Inwardly, Abbie groaned. She had to separate these two fast.
“See you later,” she told her friend as she pulled Toby towards the car.
She had gotten in the habit around him to make as much as a spectacle of herself as possible. What better way to make an attention-hating jerk unhappier than subjecting him to as much attention as she could?
She skipped around in public and laughed at the top of her lungs. When they met somewhere, she greeted him so boisterously, that it was impossible for people not to look over and stare. A couple of times, namely once when she asked a fast food employee to bring out the chef so that she could ask him for the recipe of the chicken dish she was eating, she could tell he wanted to ask her to reign it in.
“This is the best chicken I have ever eaten, sir,” she said in a booming voice. “Please let me compliment the chef.”
“Um,” the cashier had said.
“Really, bring out the cook. He deserves praise.” She was being an idiot, and she knew it.
“Well, it’s just kind of the company recipe. There really isn’t a person to. Um. You could maybe fill out a survey online?” Clearly, this was a first time request for the kid.
“Oh believe me,” Abbie had told him, “I will.” She smiled over at Maggie and Toby, and she could tell, they would rather be anywhere else but there. Toby started to say something about her embarrassing behavior, but that’s where the talking came in handy: in one of their many speeches, she had made it clear she would not tolerate him trying to change her.
“I am what I am,” she told him, “and I don’t like when people want to make me different.”
So he held his tongue, blushed, and tried to avoid the stares. Maggie, however, did not feel the need to keep quiet. As soon as they got back in the car, Maggie started in on her.
“Abigail, if you are going to parade yourself around in public like a clown, please do so when I am not with you. I don’t want people thinking we know each other when you act like that.”
“Alright, alright, Margaret, I’ll try to keep that in mind.” She saw her ‘boyfriend’ and best friend roll their eyes at each other in the rearview mirror, but she didn’t care. Maggie could say what she wanted so long as Toby kept his mouth shut.
So on this night, she made a big deal of yelling out greetings to neighbors as she marched Toby to his
car and asked everyone she saw if they had met her new boyfriend yet. She grinned over at him and almost felt bad when she saw how hard this was for him, yet he still forced himself to grin back as if what made her happy made him happy as well. She hopped into his car, and bounced up and down in the seat like an excitable child.
“Where are we going?” she asked him.
“I found one of those paint at a bar places, and I thought it would be cool,” he informed her. “I know you are into all of that artistic stuff and watching you in your element is always a lot of fun.”
Abbie grinned, and it wasn’t fake, which was a fact she hated. Despite her high resolve to hate him, sometimes he still surprised her with something like that, and she couldn’t help but kind of, a little, like him again. It sucked. It made being mean to him that much harder. And while she felt she had really good reasons to make him pay, it didn’t mean she had to like that side of herself.
“It sounds amazing,” she told him in reply. And fight it as she would, it was amazing.
The paint by the numbers that the bar was using was a starry sky, and Abbie knew as soon as she saw it that it was going to hang over her bed. In fact, she was so sure of this, that she told Toby right away.
“If you need help hanging it,” he told her immediately, “just let me know. I need more excuses to get into your bed.” He said this with wagging eyebrows and despite herself, Abbie had to admit he was adorable. She giggled up at him and painted a blue stripe across his nose.
“Hey,” he howled and grabbed the brush from her hand. The couple wrestled around with Toby trying to get her back.
“Don’t you dare,” she squealed, as he came after her with the paintbrush.
“It’s only fair of you to let me since you did me,” he told her, moving towards her once more. She brushed his hand away, and reminded herself that he was the enemy.
“You don’t want to make me mad, do you?” she asked him. “Not when you want something from me so badly.” He put down his brush immediately and smiled at her.
“So, are you going to ask me into your bed,” he asked again after a minute.
“Not yet,” she told him.
“Why not?” He was pouting, and even that was adorable.
“Because,” she informed him yet again in a tone normally reserved for children, “we have to create a firm and solid friendship before we have anything else. We learned our lesson about jumping straight into a more sexual relationship last time.” She did not lower her voice as she said this, and several eyes looked over to listen in at the words. Toby blushed, and ducked his head to avoid the stares.
Damn, she thought. He was even cuter when he was embarrassed. Keeping up this ruse might just be a lot harder than she imagined.
“How about if you just let me in to hang your painting? Like a friend would do,” he asked her after the public scrutiny had passed.
“That would be very nice of you, friend,” she told him. Then they finished painting.
At the end of the night, when Toby dropped Abbie off on her front porch, he gave her a hug, and that was it. He was respecting her wishes. If he tried too hard to please her, Abbie realized, he just might succeed.
25
Toby and Parker had reached a tentative truce. They both understood where the other was coming from, even if they didn’t like it, and, since neither one of them had any intention of moving out, harmonious living arrangements dictated they had to reach some sort of agreement.
Toby himself was fully capable of forgiving Parker because in the end, it was him who had won. It is easy to be a good sport when you are the champion. So while Parker politely made it clear that he was going to do everything in his power to win Abbie back, Toby could just tell himself that he did not blame his friend for wanting the very desirable Abbie, and as long as he didn’t succeed in his mission, and Toby had every reason to believe that Parker wouldn’t be successful, Toby could look on at him with tolerance.
“Can you pass the milk?” Parker asked from the kitchen table as Toby stood right next to the fridge.
“Sure,” Toby responded.
“Thanks,” came Parker.
“No problem.” Truce or not, this overly formal, polite exchange was one of the best conversations they had had all week. And that was a fact that made Toby feel ashamed at the way they were both behaving.
Toby handed Parker the milk, and sat down at the table across from his friend(?) former friend(?) roommate(?) He wasn’t sure what to call him quite yet, but he sat down in front of him anyway because they had been friends for a long time and they couldn’t let a girl, no matter who the girl was, mess with their relationship.
“Listen, Park,” he started. “We have to talk.” Parker put down the paper he had been reading and looked up at Toby.
“Yep,” was all Parker said in response. The sat there, both hoping the other would start, and finally, Parker did.
“Bros before hos, right?” Parker tried to laugh at his words, but both he and Toby winced instead.
“Yeah,” Toby told him. “Are we good?”
Parker hesitated, and Toby began to think he was going to say no. But Parker just nodded.
“We’re good,” Parker told him, “but we have to come up with a compromise. You don’t rub Abbie in my face, and please don’t talk about her to me. And, while I can’t say I will give up trying to win her back, I’ll try to not undermine you while I do it. Deal?”
Toby could live with that, he supposed, if it meant slowly getting back to the place he and Parker had been before the Abbie drama had taken over their lives.
“Deal,” he told him, and then they shook on it. Which, in the gentlemen’s code, was basically a legal and binding contract.
Toby went into the office on Monday and tried not to look at Abbie. In the interest of self-preservation, they had decided to keep their relationship on the down low at work. They did not, he had told her and she had claimed to agree, want everyone in their office to be in their business. As hard as he could tell it was for ‘Gabby Abbie,’ as Maggie referred to her, to keep her mouth shut, she had done her best. She had, however, insisted on telling Tyler. Of course, that was pretty much eradicated by Abbie’s most recent post, where, while she did not use his name, she made it pretty clear who she was talking about. As much as it pained him to think about what their coworkers would be saying about this newest development, he had to admit he was happy he had had a whole week before they found out. He had not thought she would make it that long.
“Way to go, Toby,” Nathan said to him as soon as he entered.
“Thanks,” Toby did not even try to pretend he didn’t know what Nathan was referring to, “I appreciate it.” Let them think you aren’t bothered by anything they say, he told himself, and they will leave you alone.
“A whole week?” Ms. Rachel scolded him before he had even made it to his desk. “A whole week, and you didn’t tell me about this happy event?” She used the word happy, but her tone indicated that she meant disgusting. “I thought we were friends!”
“Sorry, Ms. Rachel,” Toby put on his best apology voice, “we just really wanted to keep it a secret until we were more sure. We realized how big a problem our on again off again relationship was causing the whole work environment last time, and we wanted to spare you all our drama this time around.”
Ms. Rachel wanted to argue and scold, he could tell, but his speech had done exactly what he had intended it to do, which was to put her in a place where she couldn’t respond. He smiled at her before moving past the reception desk and on to his seat. When he passed Tyler, who still did not trust him no matter what Toby did or said (or what Abbie did or said for that matter), he avoided eye contact. It was better than the scary disapproval that was written on Abbie’s protector’s face day after day.
Finally he made it to his desk with Abbie just across the divide. She looked at him like a puppy who had been caught eating his owner’s shoe.
“Sorry,” she told him an
d smiled hopefully. “I didn’t think about how everyone still reads my blog.”
“It’s okay,” he told her. “Nothing you can do about it now. We’ll just suck it up, grin, and act like we are happy they know everything about our personal lives.” And that is what they did for the rest of the day.
The first few days after Toby and Abbie had gotten back together, they had hung out a lot with her best friend, Maggie. At first, it had annoyed Toby because it meant that he and Abbie were never alone. However, he soon learned to appreciate her company. For the first part, she was funny and he just generally liked her. Most importantly, though, she kept Abbie in line in ways Toby couldn’t. As much as he liked Abbie, she could be embarrassing. And she had made it pretty clear that she didn’t want Toby trying to rein her in. He understood this. Nobody wanted to be changed, but on top of broadcasting their relationship to the world, did she have to sing in public, ask everyone she met where they got their shoes, and play a continuous game of ‘step on a crack, break your mama’s back’ every time they walked on a poorly paved sidewalk?
Even when she wasn’t trying to make a scene, she somehow did. Like the night before when the three of them were at the mall, and Abbie tripped and fell into a fountain. She actually fell into a fountain. Instead of discreetly pulling herself out and hoping nobody noticed, she started cackling as if it were the funniest thing ever. Then she started splashing them until a security guard had to come and ask her to remove herself. Toby had wanted to ask her to behave herself. He had wanted to tell her to act like an adult. But he couldn’t. Not if he wanted to keep her in his life.
“Abbie! Stop messing around. You can be the most embarrassing person I know. Act your age, for once, please, if you want to continue enjoying my company in public.” And that right there was why Toby no longer minded having Maggie tag along on their dates.
The pair had quickly developed what Toby secretly referred to as The Abbie Code. When she was at her worst, they’d look at each other and roll their eyes. When she was borderline embarrassing, they had a look that meant, just leave it alone for now. Sometimes, he would look at Maggie with a pleading expression, and she’d know it meant he couldn’t take anymore and she needed to step in and intervene. Sometimes, they didn’t need a look. Maggie just calmed Abbie down without any direction from Toby. Those times were his favorite.
The Abbie Diaries: The Complete Series Page 14
