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Abby’s shaking her head, yet her fingers knot in my hair, dig into my back. “You should go.”
“I will,” I say against her mouth. As I breathe out, she breathes in and our mouths meet. It’s soft and innocent in a way that creates a warm haze. The type where there are slight pulls, the type that will make our lower lips swollen, the type where it shows I care.
Abby’s slow to follow along, almost as if she’s learning how to kiss...as if she’s learning how to kiss like this.
Abby
My heart is drumming so loudly Logan has to hear it, has to feel it, but then a part of me is wondering if this is another dream, another moment where my mind has wandered into areas of fantasy...into the places that feel real, but when I wake up realize none of it had existed.
Those moments hurt—the dreams that felt real, to hold in your hands all that you secretly wish for and then open your eyes and experience the devastating loss of knowing that it was never mine.
Logan’s lips are strong, yet soft. Kissing me like I’ve never been kissed. Kissing me like I’m worth kissing. Kissing me in a way that causes my groggy soul to flutter its eyes open from its constant state of sleep, kissing me in a way that causes my body to melt into his, kissing me in a way that makes my blood that’s always cold to feel very, very excitably warm.
He caresses my face and the touch tickles and causes my cheeks to flush. Logan holds his body over mine, just the right mixture of weight and heat, but he’s careful, so careful. As if he’s frightened to break me, as if he’s hesitant to ask for more.
I shake. A quiver that starts in my head and roars down to my toes and I hold on to Logan, unsure of the reaction, terrified of what it means, more scared to let it go.
Logan lifts his head and his dark brown eyes are full of concern as they flicker over my face. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
He goes to shift off of me, as if his closeness is the reason I could be in pain. Am I okay? No, and my hands hold him tighter, keeping him near, because deep within me I understand the problem. I don’t want him to go. I don’t want him to leave. I like Logan way too much.
Did he hurt me? He will. When he leaves my room. When he walks out the door. When he finally does what I ask.
Logan continues to study me for a moment, and against my wishes, he rolls off of me and is across the room to my dresser. I lean up on my elbows. “What are you doing?”
The shaking of pills out of a bottle. Logan returns with a closed fist and a bottle of water. I fall back on the bed. “I already took my antibiotics.”
Logan sits on the edge of the bed and holds out the painkiller and the bottle of water. “Take it. You’re in pain.”
Until he said it, I had still been living in that kiss, but the pain in my head and shoulder washes over me again. I close my eyes. I was right the first time, that kiss was a dream, just the type I had while still awake. “I can’t.”
“You’re not a junkie,” he says. “If that’s what you’re concerned about.”
“You don’t know if I’m a junkie or not.” I open my eyes. “And neither do I.”
“I know.”
“Logan...” I sigh. “You can’t know because I have absolutely no idea who I am. Me knowing first feels like a requirement for anyone else knowing anything about me at all. I’m not you. I don’t have myself figured out. I’m a girl with a fake name and a fake social security number and a fake birth certificate. I’m a ghost. I always have been. Occasionally, I just pretend to be real.”
Logan
Just pretend to be real... Her words are like a sharp knife to the throat. The pretending part—I get. More than she could understand. I often don’t feel real. Feel like a lie so I tell her the one thing that’s the truth. “I care for you, Abby.”
Abby reaches over and places her hand over mine, the one that still fists her pain medication. “I don’t have the luxury of being the girl who’s cared for or being the girl who can care back. I need money to pay for those nurses.”
The water bottle crackles in my hands. I’m stuck on how to ask this without it being insulting. “My grandpa had a stroke. After he got out of rehab, he lived at home with us for a while and when that didn’t work we put him in a nursing home.” A pause. “Medicare paid for it.”
Abby releases an annoyed breath and withdraws her hand. “How long was he there?”
My answer isn’t going to help my defense. “A few weeks.”
“Before he died?” she probes.
I nod, still hurting for my dad. It killed him to lose his father.
“I’m not talking a few weeks. She’s been this way for years.”
“There has to be another way,”
