Chapter 1

As the last bell rings, everyone jumps up from their chairs and runs out of the school as if it was burning down. The last day of school is finally over, and Abbey is preparing herself to say a very sad and angry goodbye to her friends. Every year Abbey is sent to stay with her grandmother in what she calls “Gods waiting room” of Florida. She isn’t looking forward to it this year, her older brother Brad normally goes with her, but he got out of it because he is in college and decided to stay on campus and work.

 

Abbey is walking towards her locker to clean it out saying goodbye to some classmates along the way. She uses the typical “yeah call me over summer! I’ll miss you” BS to them and keeps on moving.  Abbey has a million friends at school, but only a few select good friends. Abbey never really fit into any of the “cliques” of high school, she cannot be bothered with the politics of being in one. Abbey starts to walk out of the school, with a smile on her face; she is ready for a break from school and the nonsense that goes on there.

 

As Abbey was walking out of the school, her ex Shaun came running out after her. Shaun is tall, with dark hair and light blue eyes. He is a Lacrosse player and has the build to prove it. All of a sudden she feels arms around her waist, and a sexy voice whisper, “Hey babe, you need a ride home?” Abbey pulls his arms off from around her and turns towards him and shoots him a look.

 

“Hum... So first of all I don’t appreciate the arms around my waist, and secondly not only am I NOT your babe, but NO I do not need a ride, thanks” Abbey awkwardly steps away from him.

 

Taken aback Shaun replies “wow someone took their b***h pill today”

 

“No, I just am sick of your s**t, Shaun. How long is this crap going to go on? It’s been 8 months, time to move on.”

 

 “I don’t want to move on, Abs… Why won’t you let me make it up to you? Ever since we broke up all I have been thinking about is how my life is not complete anymore. I miss you and I love you, still more than you know… ” Shaun voice cracks as he says it and his eyes watered a little.

 

Abbey turns away, and is silent for a minute. She is smart enough not to fall for it. She whips back around and not only shoots daggers with her eyes, but with her words as well. “Look, YOU cheated on ME remember? I don’t care how much you love me, and I sure as s**t don’t care how much you miss me, you should have thought about it before you fucked Sarah and lied to me about it. You played me for a fool, and....” she was about to finish him off when she got teary eyed herself… “Shaun… what we had was great, until YOU let us go. And you know what? You are wrong... It was I who loved YOU more than you know. I have finally put the pieces together, and I don’t need this.”  She paused for a second, to catch her breath. “Have a nice life, Shaun.” Abbey walks away before he has a chance to respond, leaving Shaun speechless and heartbroken. Shaun was graduating, and going to school in Colorado, she is pretty sure that is the last time they will see each other.

 

Abbey couldn’t have gotten on the bus any faster and she tries to keep her cool. She slides into a seat and slouches down. She is on the verge of breaking down and is trying to catch her breath. Besides some tears, she held it together in front of him but she felt herself slowly turning to mush. What they have is complicated, to say the least. For the last few months, they have had some friendly exchanges, and Shaun has flirted a lot, but something struck a nerve. Maybe being the last day of high school for him, and knowing that it really was the end, caused the truth to come out.

 

Abbey pulls out her latest James Patterson book, and is determined to distract herself until she gets safely in her room so she can break down. As she is walking from the bus stop, she sees her moms car in the drive way and says to herself “of f*****g course, the one day she gets off early is the one day I just want to be alone”

 

Abbey has a complicated relationship with her family; she is the youngest of the original siblings. She was the favorite up until her little sister was born when she was thirteen.  That’s when her mother stopped having time for her and focused all of her energy on the baby. Abbey is a lot like her father, no matter how much she tries not to be. The older she gets the more apparent it is. She has his temper and his ability to find fun and humor in anything. Abbey has a conspiracy theory that her being like her father is the reason she doesn’t get along with her mother. Abbey’s dad isn’t really in the picture, he left when she was 2 and hasn’t been back. She sees him on occasion; however he has a new family and doesn’t care much for his other kids. Or so it seems. Her dad, Brian, lives in Florida, fairly close to her grandmother.

 

Every summer Abbey and Brad would go visit their grandma and end up seeing their father. They never felt at home in his house. I guess sleeping on the couch or sleeping bags does that to a person, who is supposed to be at “home” where at her grandmothers they each had their own bedroom. Brad wants nothing to do with his father, and usually doesn’t even visit with him when they are in Florida; Abbey on the other hand has certain sensitivity towards him. No matter what he has put her through, she still loves him and wants so bad to be closer to him but he does nothing but push her away. For the last year or so, Abbey has started to realize what a slime bag he is and has been pushing him away as well… her visit to Florida should be interesting, to say the least.            

 

As much as they don’t get along, her mother is always there for her and knows her pretty well. Which makes it difficult to lie to her, so she will take one look at her and know she is upset. Abbey takes a deep breath and opens the door. “Hey mom, wow! Long day. Ugh I am tired! I am going to take a nap“ Abbey doesn’t give her mother much of a chance to respond, she is already half down the stairs to her bedroom.

 

 “Okay hunny, sleep good”

 

Wow that was easy, Abbey thinks to herself as she walks down the stairs to her bedroom. Abbey has the basement of the house to herself. She has her own living room too. She would use it if she was allowed to have friends over. Her parents are extremely strict with her having company. She shuts her bedroom door and turns up her music and lies on her bed, grabs her bear that she has had since she was an infant and just starts crying… She was so sure she was over him but seeing him and hearing him say he loved her just broke her.  They needed to have that talk, even though it broke both of their hearts.

 

Abbey jumps a little from her phone vibrating in her pocket, and sees that she got a text from Shaun. “Hey, I just wanted to say I am sorry I ever let you go. I know I will never find anyone like you again. I should have treated you right; I will always love you, Abs.” Abbey closes her phone and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t deserve a response, so she doesn’t give him one.

 

Abbey ended up crying herself to sleep, until she is woken up suddenly when her phone vibrates in her hands. She looks down at it with groggy puffed out eyes; it is from a good friend, Ricky. “Hey Hun, you ok? I saw you fighting with the d****e today after school.”

 

She quickly replies “hey. Yeah I am okay. We needed to have that talk. I can’t believe I am actually excited to go to FL now to get out of here!”

 

“Okay well get ready because I am coming to getcha!”

 

Abbey usually doesn’t try too hard, when it comes to looks. She is comfortable being herself. She is far from perfect, and she knows it but she doesn’t care. She looks down at her cute pink pajama pants and yellow tank top, shrugs and says out loud to herself “okay, this works.” She glances in the mirror to fix her hair and dab a little makeup on to try and make her face look a little less like she had a severe allergic reaction.

 

Abbey runs upstairs and into the kitchen and lets her mom know she is going out for a little and steps outside to avoid the fun game of twenty questions. Ricky pulls up and Abbey runs out to the car. Ricky and Abbey have a special friendship, most people their age can’t be friends with the opposite sex, and she believes they have mastered the art. Although at times they have this weird overbearing ownership of the other, mostly Ricky of her. They met at work a few years ago, and have been inseparable since. They met before she started dating Shaun, Ricky hated Shaun with a passion and it was mutual. Ricky never thought Shaun deserved Abbey and always made sure she knew it. He and Abbey are so close some of their friends forget that she was with Shaun for such a long time. Especially in the past few months, Ricky’s attention has heightened with Abbey.

 

Out of their group of friends, Ricky was the one who every other guy was jealous of, because of how close he was to Abbey. It takes a while for Abbey to let anyone in, let alone a guy that is not her boyfriend.  Many of the group doesn’t really know Abbey the way he does. 

 

“Where are we going??”

 

 “Eh for a drive and we will see where we end up”

 

“Okay, that works.. As long as we don’t talk about Shaun. ”

 

 “Abs… you need to talk about it, crying into your bear may have worked when you were seven but it doesn’t now.” Abbey giggles at how well Rick knows her, and finally agrees.

 

“Okay. So basically he came up to me and was all lovey dovey and I shot him down, and said have a nice life. I can’t deal with it anymore, Rick… It’s been so long and I have been dealing with his advances and looks since the day he broke up with me. Do you know how hard it is to get over a person when they tell you how much they love you and want you back? I know what he did was really fucked up, but Rick he has some kind of power over me… that smile makes me weak at the knees… a simple glance from him and I get all tingly. It NEVER went away. And it sucks… I tried so hard to hate him but it was just. Impossible... And YOU know that!  Ahhh!!! I am happy he is not going to be around next year, it gives me a chance to finally be Abbey, and not Abbey and Shaun. I finally can get over him. I should have a long time ago…”

 

“Yeah, but Abbey, you never really gave yourself an opportunity to really forget about him because you allow him to be a part of your life still. You thrived on the attention you were getting from him, you should have said this to him months ago, and I bet by now you two would be friends and not bitter exes. And a week ago you said how over him you were, and I believe that over this nonsense. You know that he never deserved you anyways, not only are you entirely too awesome for his stupid a*s but you are way too beautiful.”

 

Abbeys face turns pale, and says “awkward” to herself. As close as they are, Ricky hasn’t ever told her she’s beautiful. Ricky doesn’t ever say that about anyone. In fact, he is the pickiest mother f****r she has ever met. Always finding something wrong with someone “too skinny, too fat, lopsided b***s, her left foot is bigger than the right” He gets teased constantly about it. She had no idea it was because he already met someone perfect that no other girl he meets can live up to… Abbey sits there in silence for a few minutes. Ricky notices what he said made her feel weird and said, “I love you, Abs. you are my best friend and I want you back”

 

Abbey smiles and nudges him and says “yeah I guess I haven’t really been myself, huh?”

 

“This is the first time in 2 months I am getting you out of your house, Abs. I did enjoy spending so much one on one time with you, but it is nice to get out of your basement!”

 

“Yeah I liked spending so much time with just you too. It is so much easier to hang out with you alone, especially lately. I didn’t think it was possible but we got even closer!” Abbey pauses for a second, to get herself back to the Shaun conversation. “Oh and two years is a long time for it to end in five minutes… he WAS my life, Rick. I thought we were going to get married one day. And so I am sorry if the reality of it not happening took me a while to get over. And yes I allowed him to still be in my life, even if it was counterproductive. Truth is… I need him in my life, Ricky… so yeah I let him flirt and stuff but at least I had him…I can‘t ever trust him again, maybe one day we can be friends. Maybe one day he will understand that WE will never be again.”

 

“EXACTLY! One day that will happen, he has some growing up to do, and he will realize you just need a friend, and you can really move on with your life. Just give it time Abs... I promise he will come through” Abbey is surprised that Ricky said something somewhat nice about Shaun and put her head on his shoulder, and wiped the tears as they drove in silence for a few minutes. Then Ricky pulled into Hooters and Abbey got super excited.

 

“RICKY! Oh I love you... How did you know? I haven’t been here in forever!!”

 

“Yeah, that’s because you can’t have Hooters when your being a HERMIT”

 

“Har har. Whatever, a*s” They walk in and are greeted by the normal under dressed waitress, and Ricky tells the waitress they are meeting a party, and they are lead to the back of the restaurant where all their friends are.

 

It’s a large crowd of Burger King people, and mutual friends of BK people. Abbey gets excited and hugs all of her friends she hardly gets to see, either because of her own hermit issue or them being away at college and just getting back. After her hellos, she goes and sits near Ricky and puts her arm around him and says “thank you, you have no idea how much I needed this” he kisses her head and they separate. Abbey finally feels like she is getting her life back.

 

 

 

Abbey gets home five minutes before her curfew, Ricky was good about that.  He was the only friend of hers that her parents liked and he wanted to keep it that way. Abbey was having such a good time with Ricky she didn’t realize she left her phone at home. She sees she has some missed messages. The first one is from Shaun, “Can we be friends? I can’t imagine my life without you in it. I know I messed up, and I know we will never be together again, but I need you in my life”

 

This one, she chooses to answer… “I would really like that. I am sorry for being so hard on you earlier; I am just so sick of the way things have been. So yeah, being friend’s works for me.” She smiles to herself, and is proud of that message. She figures if he is going to be in Colorado it is going to be easy to be friends, she doesn’t have to see him… Ever. Then she gets a response “sweet, have a good time in Florida, friend. I’ll see you when you get back!” she smiles as she reads the message and gets a little tingle in her tummy.

 

Then she realizes what it says and freaks out a little “when I get back? I get back in August, wont you be at school already?”

 

“Um. About that... I have to take a year off to work, my dad lost his job. So no Colorado for me” Abbey slides under her covers and starts to regret agreeing to be friend

 

Reviews

[Creepy Swine Guy]

You've some minor grammatical boo boos here but they are certainly not rampant. I was able to read past them and enjoy the plot of the sort of story that I am not usually interested in. I'm not big on "relationships" buy you are delivering your story well and I am interested in what happens next. As an old man, I am grateful for your liberal use of white space. It is VERY easy on my old eyes.