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“I don’t want that,” she mumbles.
Good because I don’t, either.
“If I take this,” she says, “I’ll pay you back. I’ll pay all of you back. Work this damn hay hell of a place all damn summer, every summer.”
“Don’t let Chris hear you say that. He’ll take you up on that offer.”
She lets out a mix between a laugh and a huff. “I mean it. On paying back and working here if I have to.”
“If that’s what makes you feel better then—”
“That’s what makes me feel better.” She sighs as if she’s annoyed, as if she’s exhausted, as if she just dropped a heavy weight. “If I’m not selling, I can get a real job and then I can work real hours and since I won’t have to be gone most the night, maybe I can cut back on the nurses’ hours and that will cost me less, but even still...I’m not sure it will be enough.”
“Do you trust me, Abby?”
Abby stares at me long enough that most men would have pissed on themselves by now. She’s an intimidating girl. Beautiful. Seductive. Deadly if she wanted to be. Abby licks her lips. “Yes.”
I tip my head to the window behind me. “Do you trust them?”
She lowers her head like trust means defeat. “Yes.”
“Then let us worry about helping with what you can’t cover when you go legit.”
“You’re asking me to have more faith in you than I’ve ever had in anyone.”
I am. “Isn’t that what faith is? Believing in something without seeing it first?”
“You suck, Logan.”
“Oh, well.”
I ease onto the car next to Abby and she knocks her knee against mine. “Isaiah’s going to kick our asses for touching his car.”
“I’m not scared of him.”
She half laughs. “You aren’t scared of anything. I’m not sure you even know fear.”
“Used to say the same thing about you.”
Abby raises her face to the deep blue sky above. “I couldn’t afford fear, not for a long time, but being shot...the fear caught up. But it’s not dying that I’m scared of.”
“What are you scared of?”
“Of still breathing but being dead inside. I think that’s a fate worse than death. I was already halfway there when I walked into the car shop to find you and Rachel hanging with Isaiah. I knew then I should have walked away, but I was tired of being numb.”
We’re silent and it feels right and wrong. Right in that her admission deserves the respect of thought, wrong because Abby deserves more than to be the only one putting herself out there.
“A few years after being first diagnosed with diabetes, things went bad. My kidneys freaked and I ended up in the hospital. I was scared then.” Terrified. “When I was better, one of my mom’s boyfriends took me rappelling and I loved the rush. Loved feeling alive. Death scared me so much that I like it when my heart beats too hard for too long. Reminds me I’m still breathing.”
I glance over at her. “I was also scared when I heard shots in the alley, saw you lying face-down on the ground. Death scared me. Losing you scared me. The idea of losing you still scares me.”
This time we both pretend the sidewalk is interesting. One eighteen-year-old and one seventeen-year-old. Both dealing with adult shit. Both having the emotional capacity of children. Wanting to belong to each other, but unsure how to navigate emotions.
“Think we did this to ourselves on purpose?” Abby asks.
“Did what?”
“Became the things we were terrified of becoming. You are always trying to cheat death with the crazy stuff you do. I followed in my father’s footsteps and allowed no one in for such a long time.”
