Page 18 of Rock Strong

“Abby,” I said. “Rule number one…don’t ever, ever listen to any crap this guy has to say. Ever.” I pointed to Tucker, who smiled with his mouth open, a cat panting in the summer heat. “He is only trying to push your buttons, okay?”

“That is so true, Abby.” Tucker nodded somberly. “I can admit that now, because I’m sober.”

She glanced down sheepishly and tucked her dark hair behind her ears. “What about you?” She looked up, straight at me, eyes connected with mine a moment too long. “Should I take offense when you say some girls are not eye candy? Some are just natural?”

Ouch. Um… “I didn’t say being eye candy was all good. And I did say you could be eye candy if you wanted. But why would you? You are a goddess from heaven, a veritable Venus on the half shell, a cello-playing enigma!” I gave that last word a little flair of hand. Shit, I was overdoing it.

Thank God, Abby laughed quietly at that. “Yeah, okay…sounds like complete and utter horseshit to me.” She laughed again.

“Ssszzzz…scorch!” Tucker cried. Then he looked at me, then at Abby, then at me again, and his mouth fell open. Suddenly, he understood. For once in his life, nothing came out. His pointer finger did a little dance between me and Abby, then he shoved his hands into his pockets and turned back the way we’d come. “I’m just gonna get going. I’ll leave you two…alone,” he sang the last word in a Barry White way. “Oh, but before I go…can you tell me what time it is?” he asked Abby.

I almost laughed while she pulled out her phone. “One thirty.”

“Thanks.” He smiled like the fucktard idiot he was.

We watched Tucker leave, and it gave us a few moments to absorb the inevitable—we were going to talk now. “Why was that so funny?” She turned back to me.

“What? Oh, the time thing? He just got you to give him the time of day.” I laughed to myself. “Don’t worry about it. Insider joke.”

“No, I get it.” She shook her head in embarrassment.

“Tucker’s a good guy,” I said. I laid down on the stone bench and stretched out. It wasn’t until then that I realized I was still wearing pajama pants with my tank. I sat back up so I wouldn’t so obviously display myself. “What are the chances that you’d go walking in the garden at the same time I did? Unless...”

“Unless?” she asked.

“Unless it was no accident. You followed me here.” I made spooky, crazy eyebrows that made her giggle. “Abby Chan, you’re not stalking me, are you?”

I was relieved to find that her sense of humor was a little more intact today. “No.”

“Good. Because this just might be a sign.”

“This?”

“This…us meeting here. Kismet, grokking.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” She laughed, shaking her head. I hoped she was finding me silly in a cute way, not stupid.

“It’s the utter horseshit again, remember?” I laughed. “What I mean is, my parents have always believed in signs. And they’ve been married thirty years. Thirty years. Complete and total opposites, my parents are. Fell in love at a U2 concert at eighteen, and they’ve been together ever since.”

“Wow, that’s amazing.”

I nodded. “It really is. They’re very inspiring to me, you know. In this world where everyone gets divorced at the drop of a hat, my mom and dad are still there, still having fun, still proving everybody wrong.”

“Why do you think that is?” she asked.

“Because they have fun,” I said. That was the truth. My parents didn’t take stuff so seriously. They always knew when to say fuck it and go have a beer outside, or fuck it and go make love upstairs, or fuck it, let’s take the kids on a vacation. We don’t have the money, but who cares? Let’s do it anyway.

“You look happy about that,” she said, snapping me out of my daydream.

I was staring at her, her skin so perfectly smooth, shiny, and flawless. I loved her eyes, too, and more than anything, her full, sensual mouth. I imagined it doing sinful things to me. “I am. My parents are the best. I have pretty awesome brothers, too.”

“That’s wonderful.” She fidgeted and started to pick at her cuticles. “Now that I’ve run into you, I just wanted to say something. I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”

I honestly had no clue what she was talking about. I felt dizzy, as if I wasn’t fully awake from a dream.

She went on, “I was completely out of line to tell you that I’m not like one of your groupies. First of all, it was presumptuous of me to even assume that you would have any…” She glanced at me for a nanosecond. I wasn’t going to agree with her. “And secondly, you were just being sweet.” She pressed her lips into a sad smirk. “What I should have said was thank you.”

“Oh. You’re welcome.”

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