Page 28 of Mine

Abby unlocks the front door and I follow her inside. The open office space doesn’t smell any better than it had the first time I was here. No furniture has been moved. Abby hasn’t touched a thing since she bought the place.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Abby sets the bag of donuts on one of the old metal desks, sitting herself down in the chair behind it. I set my bag on the same desk and pull up one of the other chairs, looking around. “It’s still a work in progress.” she adds.

I dig my laptop out of my bag and sigh. There are more problems on my mind than Abby’s lack of progress on her business space. “You aren’t kidding,” I mutter. I try to give her a small smile, scraping to find any bit of humor I might still have. I come up short.

Abby ignores my comment and opens the brown bag, pulling out two donuts. One is covered in chocolate frosting and sprinkles; the other with crushed cookies on top.

She hands me the one with the cookies and takes a large bite of the sprinkled. “What did you want to talk about?” she asks after swallowing her first bite.

Looking down at my donut, I pick at the cookie crumbs then look over my shoulder to the front door. The windows are still covered in a thick film of dust. The occasional shadow of a passerby flashes across the window. It’s hard to see the street from where I’m sitting.

I turn back to Abby, still leaving the donut untouched. “I wanted to talk to you about last night.”

“Oh,” Abby says, wiping her mouth with a napkin. She waves me off. ” Nothing happened between me and Max.”

“What?” I narrow my eyes, stunned with Abby. We used to be close. We used to be able to tell what the other was feeling without actually having to say it. I thought Abby’s return would bring back the same kind of relationship we used to have. But ever since she’s been back, I feel like were on two opposite sides of the magnet, never quite connecting the way we should.

“Yeah.” She nods, taking another bite of donut. She raises her shoulder, shrugging. “He’s too cocky and arrogant. I’m not into that, you know?”

“Actually, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

“Oh.” She drops her half-eaten donut and it’s as if she’s looking at me for the first time today. “What’s going on?”

“I wanted to talk about what happened last night.”

Her eyebrows knit in confusion. When she doesn’t show any sign of understanding where I’m heading with the conversation, I continue. “Telling Max and Logan about what happened that night at The Dive?”

“Oh, right.” She stops chewing and sits back in her chair, resting her elbows on the arms. “Was that not okay?”

“Well, no, actually.” I tilt my head and breathe out a heavy sigh. “For one, I never told Logan that story because I didn’t want him knowing how Julian punished me for what happened that night. And two, we made a promise to never talk about him again.”

“How was I supposed to know that, Lena?” She points to her chest, sitting back up in her chair. “That was a promise between you and Logan. Not me.” She’s getting more defensive the more the conversation goes on. I wasn’t sure how she’d take it, hoping she would know how talking about it would make me feel. Instead, she had no clue how it felt like she’d severed and reopened an old wound.

I attempt to keep my voice down, not wanting to fight with Abby. The people I had around me were slowly starting to slip away. I didn’t want to lose Abby before I’d even begun to have her back.

I run my hands through my hair, pushing it back away from my face. Resting my elbows on the desk, I look Abby straight in the eye. “Look, I know you didn’t do it intentionally, but I didn’t exactly want my husband’s boss to know that I got drunk and stripped in a club one night. It happened a long time ago. I’m a different person than I was back then. And the part about Julian, I—” I stop myself from blurting out about the emails I’ve been getting from Julian.

I hadn’t even told Logan about them. How could I tell her first over him? If I couldn’t tell my own husband that Julian had reappeared, there was no way I could tell Abby.

“What about Julian?” Abby asks. Her eyes are narrowed once again, only now they’re slightly softer than they were before. She reaches across the desk, placing her hand over mine.

“Nothing.” I shake my head and slide my hand out from under hers, picking at the donut once again. Frosting lands on the tip of my finger. “Forget it.”

“Is everything okay, Lena?” Abby tilts her head to the side, examining me. I look back at her and wonder how we got here. Not necessarily here, in an old musty office building, munching on donuts. I mean in our friendship. It wasn’t long ago when I’d sat next to her in my economics class sophomore year.

“I’m good.” The reassuring smile I give Abby takes more energy than I can give. Still leaving the donut untouched, I slide my laptop out of my bag, hoping to place my mind elsewhere.

I wanted to tell Abby about the not so anonymous emails I’d been receiving. I wanted to talk with her about my suspicions with Logan and Natalie. I knew it would make me feel better, that I wasn’t the only one harboring these secrets. But as I sit with Abby ready to go over the logo I had designed for her business, I realized I would have to keep these secrets for myself.

Opening my laptop to my design file, Abby slides her chair around the desk, pulling it up alongside me. She crosses her legs, pressing her knee up against my thigh and resting her arm on the desk. She’s leaning over, turning herself more in my direction than my laptop. I turn it, moving it to give her a better view.

I click to open the design and Abby’s mouth drops open. “I love it, Lena. It’s perfect.”

“You really do?”

Abby nods her head up and down furiously, her grin spread wide, stretching out her blushed cheeks.

“I wanted to play on your initials.” I point to the screen and move my finger across the lines. “The ‘A’ and the ‘C’ are interconnected. If you don’t like the colors, we can play around with it a bit more. I just figured a deep purple suited your personality but still came across professional.”

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