God help for saying the following. “They aren’t all like that. The place my grandfather was at, it wasn’t like that.”

“I know.” The weariness in her tone only underscores the burden she carries. “But I’ll bet you the money hanging out in my cubby those places are filled and, in the end, I can’t take that risk.”

A cloud must have passed over the moon as the light streaming in through the blinds fades and then strikes Abby again.

I state the obvious. “You need an out.”

“There is no out.” She motions with her chin to the hand I still hold the pain meds in. “Except for stuff like what you hold in your hand. My job is a testament to that. Lots of people find an out in a high, but that’s not really an out, that’s just another form of pretending your reality is different.”

My stomach knots. “I care about you.” And from that kiss, she cares about me.

“None of this changes anything. I sell drugs and I refuse to hang around any of you anymore. There is nothing you are going to say or do to change my mind.”

I roll my neck as it tenses. “You care about me.”

“Yes,” she admits. “But I care about Grams more.”

I respect that. Drives me further to discover the out she needs. I leave the water bottle on the nightstand then dump the pill back into the bottle. “Still don’t think you’re capable of being a junkie.”

“I’ve learned that none of us are really aware what we’re capable of until we’re confronted with the options.”

The bunny I gave Abby at the hospital, the one she kept tight in the crook of her arm as she slept, sits on the dresser. I pick it up and pull the covers down. Abby tilts her head as she smirks. “Am I two?”

I smirk right back at her. “Two-year-olds are easier.”

That gains her genuine smile and she slips her legs under the covers then settles so that she’s lying down. “Remember that time when you snuck into my room night after night during third grade and stayed with me because you were scared of the monsters under your bed? We stayed up late and read comic books under the covers.”

“I didn’t sneak in because I was afraid.” I hand Abby the bunny and try to imagine what it would have been like to be friends with Abby when we were younger. Considering I’ve always been gasoline and Abby’s a raging inferno, we would have been the elementary school version of Bonnie and Clyde. “I snuck in because I liked hanging out with you.”

Abby’s fingers circle my wrist. “I’m going to miss you.”

She’s given up, but she doesn’t know that I haven’t. That Isaiah hasn’t and that when West and Rachel hear the news, I’d bet my left ball they won’t give up, either. I kiss her lips, softly, briefly and it aches how tenderly she kisses me back.

I caress her face with my thumb. “You need to rest. Your wounds aren’t healed and you’re still weak from the blood loss. Take it slow, and do me a favor, stay out of trouble.”

“Why not ask me to stop breathing? That could be easier,” she mumbles as she turns away from me, folding into a fetal position, that bunny cradled in her arms. “I’ll see you around, Logan. Guess when school starts.”

A month away. And she thinks that means from across a crowded room. Abby couldn’t be more wrong. I don’t bother saying anything as I walk out the door because Abby will be seeing me a lot sooner than she thinks.

Abby

Denny slides a Styrofoam container in my direction and I smile when I spot pancakes. I love pancakes. Love. It’s practically cake for breakfast with a bonus of syrup. Because one thing is going right this month, the pancakes are warm and there’s bacon.

“I can’t believe nobody married you.” Using the plastic fork, I cut up the big pieces of fluffy goodness.

Denny choke-laughs as he digs into his eggs on the other side of the nicked bar from me. “Who says I’m not?”

“My bad. I forgot about that heiress you married that has a summer home in the Alps. We should visit her soon. It’s been forever since we’ve been skiing.”

“You don’t even know what skis look like,” he says.

I half laugh. I do know what skis look like, yet I don’t.

It’s nine in the morning and Denny’s bar is empty. It’s a hole-in-the-wall that’s situated toward the end of the aging strip mall in the neighborhood where I do my business. It’s sticky floors, old tables and chairs, a pool table, neon signs at night for light and lots and lots of alcohol for people who have been ridden hard by life.

The front door is wide-open and the muggy summer air creeps in. It’s the type of day where my shirt will stick to me like a second skin before noon and I’ll regret not being a ponytail type of girl.

My stomach grumbles so loudly that Denny raises an eyebrow. It’s a funny look on the towering man. Rachel thinks he looks like Vin Diesel with his shaved head and overly large muscles. A lot of people in the neighborhood think of stone walls and a guy who breaks up bar fights by crashing glass bottles over their heads when his name is mentioned. I see none of those things when I walk in here. I just spot a big, giant teddy bear.

After all, he gave me a quarter of the stuffed animals now hanging in my room.

“Have you seen Mac?” I ask. My great-uncle works in the auto shop near here.

“Will it make you feel better if I say no?”

Which means he has and Mac’s on another bender. It’s an expected disappointment that only surface hurts—the type of pain that only goes right below the skin, but no deeper.

“How’s your grandmother?” Denny’s one of a handful of people who know she exists and that’s because Denny is the only person in the world my father trusted.

“She has a specialist appointment today.” She’s been staring off into the distance lately and it’s different from the times when we just lose her to her mind. It’s a blank, scary look and then she snaps back. “Nate thinks she’s having mini strokes.”

Denny chews on that and his bacon for a few minutes. I can tell by his expression that he thinks the specialist appointment is a waste of my money. She’s ninety, and when I take her into doctors that’s what they say to me as an explanation and as their diagnosis and prognosis.

Grams isn’t just ninety to me. She’s one of the few people I allow myself to love.

“Do you need me to change West’s hours?” Denny switches the conversation and I shake my head as an answer. I’ve been avoiding the bar for dinner for the past week because I’m avoiding West. He works for Denny at night doing odd jobs.

“How is he?”

Denny knows everything—how I’ve cut ties with my friends in order to protect them and Logan from my career choices. Unfortunately, he’s had to deal with some of the fallout.

“Pissed. He’s mad I won’t tell him anything on you. Spent last night slamming near everything around here. Stomping his feet like a two-year-old. It would be funny if I didn’t like him.”

A sickening sensation sloshes around inside me. Denny and West have a messed-up relationship to begin with and I don’t like being in the middle of something Denny thought he lost years ago when West was in diapers.

I push around my food and try to ignore the pain and the desperate need to ask if Denny has heard anything from Logan. Not that they know each other, not that I think Logan would think to stop by here, but maybe Denny overhead West talking to him or just...dammit...I’ve heard nothing from Logan since he left my room last week and that’s not okay. It is, but it isn’t and I understand that girls are confusing.

“I’ll stop coming around here if it will help. The only time West can work with you is at night.” It’s a seriously empty offer, but if Denny agreed, I’d do it.

It’s funny, I had been on my own for so long that I was used to being alone. Fine with just having Isaiah and Denny around on occasion in case I needed decent human interaction, but after making friends then dumping my friends...alone just feels so sickening...lonely.

“Not an option.” Denny could kill with the look he shoots me. “West’s got a lot to learn how this neighborhood works, but he’s smart. Won’t take long for him to figure it out.”

I squish my lips to the side and pick at my pancakes with the plastic fork wondering if West needs to be schooled on this way of life. He’s here because he’s curious about Denny, a man he recently found out he’s related to. West will start college this fall and then will move a long way away from here and on to having a very, very decent life.

“Kid, if you don’t eat, your dad’s going to be pissed and that’s going to make me pissed. No one likes it when I’m angry.”

I roll my eyes. “No one thinks you’re scary. You might as well be running a day care for border collies instead of a halfway house for drunks with a criminal record.”

“Everyone thinks I’m scary.” A shadow falls over his face and I do spot the demons in him that everyone else senses, but considering Satan hangs with me on a daily basis all I see are kittens bathing in sunlight.

I force the food into my mouth and down my throat, not because he’s scary but because I’ll seriously hate being hungry later when I skip dinner for the eighth time in a row to avoid my former friends. Sure, I make money, but I need it all to pay for the nurses, my grandmother’s medical bills that aren’t covered by Medicare and upkeep of the house. Acting adult and responsible sucks and it’s also expensive.