Abby Road

by Ophelia London

  After a minute I said, “There’re some other things we have to talk about.”

  Todd nodded. “I know.”

  “But why don’t we wait till you calm down some more?” I grinned, enjoying how our roles had reversed.

  Todd grinned back, if only for a second. “I am perfectly calm, Abby,” he stated, but the vein popped out on his neck told a different story. He lifted his bandaged hand, noting his bright red knuckles. “Maybe I overdid it a bit.”

  “This is just as new for me as it is for you,” I explained.

  Todd held my gaze, his injured hand dropping to his side.

  “We have to make up the rules as we go.”

  “Rules. Right.” Some more foreign swearing went on as he took another hard punch at the bag. I guess he wasn’t as calm as he’d proclaimed. “This whole thing really does suck,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting to like you so much.” He shot me a playful glare. “It’s really irritating.”

  “Thanks.” I tried not to laugh. “You irritate me, too.”

  Todd finally smiled, a deep, genuine one, all the way to his bright green eyes. Seeing it made the bonfire flare in my chest. I fought to stifle it. Now was not the time for unpredictable female hormones . . . no matter how helpful they may be.

  I pushed on before losing my nerve. “Even if I stay here all summer, I’ll have to leave eventually—in September. You have a house here, a business, and Sammy. Your life is here, not there.”

  His smile dropped.

  “I know,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ve been thinking about that.” He made a fist, ready to take one last whack at the bag, but he looked at his bandaged fingers, grimaced, and flicked the bag with his other hand.

  “It’s only three months.”

  “I can count,” he replied with a half grin.

  We both chuckled, but it faded quickly.

  “So I’m guessing the time for all hedging has passed?” he asked.

  I snorted at his major understatement.

  “Okay. What’s the plan?”

  I sighed and moved my gaze out the French doors, considering potential reactions to the new plan I had in mind. For starters, Lindsey would be thrilled, but she’d shower me with I told you so’s. Max would be pissed, even though he’d claimed it was totally up to me whether I went to work that summer. Everyone else, I realized, would manage just fine without me for three months.

  And then there was Todd. My stomach did a backward flip when I looked at his hopeful yet dread-filled expression. A summer fling had never been my style. But my heart started racing with excitement at the very idea.

  “Come on, Abby.” Todd was the picture of ease now, strolling toward me. “Time is of the essence here. No pressure intended, of course, but I’d like to know if you’ll be around this weekend. The Village Green amphitheater is showing Dumb and Dumber on the big screen Saturday night. As of now, I’m dateless.”

  “Tempting,” I said, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands.

  Todd sat on the coffee table next to my wrapped foot. His expression had changed. It hadn’t ended as a literal frown, but it was a different kind of smile, a smile with a specific emotion behind it: pity.

  Don’t worry about it, Abby, his wordless expression screamed at me. If this isn’t what you really want, you’re off the hook.

  That was just it, though. I didn’t intend to be let off any hook. This was what I wanted.

  And for the first time in five years, I was taking it.

  “Essentially, I’m a greedy man,” Todd said, wearing that same sympathetic smile, “but I want you to be happy. If leaving tomorrow will make you happy—”

  I placed one finger over his mouth. “It won’t,” I murmured, allowing myself to touch the lovely creation before me. A part of me needed to make sure he wasn’t some cruel ghost of my imagination, taunting me with something I couldn’t have.

  His eyes were closed, waiting. I tilted my head, slowly taking in every detail of his face.

  And suddenly, something remarkable happened, like a switch turned on deep inside my chest. Instead of wanting to make out, to have a summer fling . . . I wanted to fall in love.

  Todd turned his face, kissing the center of my hand.

  “I will absolutely hate myself,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice steady, “if I leave.” Todd opened one eye, looking a little surprised.

  I smiled. “So with your permission, Lieutenant Camford, I have decided to stay.”

  He blinked a few times, still unbelieving. “Really?”

  As an answer, I pulled him in, inhaling his smell, tasting every corner of his mouth. His hands slid around my back, pulling me to the edge of the couch. When our faces drew apart a million years later, we were both breathing hard.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I decided an hour ago.” I curled the front of his hair around one finger. “But you wouldn’t shut up. Sometimes longwinded?”

  He turned his face, laughing into my hair. “I wax poetic maybe once a year,” he explained. “You evidently bring out the Byron in me.” He abruptly released his grip and leaned back, his hands bracing his weight behind him. “But you’ve made a very wise decision, because quite frankly, Miss Kelly, if you were to leave tomorrow, I’d be forced to hunt you down like a caveman and drag you back by your hair.” One side of his mouth pulled back. “And I always win.”

  I leaned forward, but he lifted a hand to stop me. “There’s one more thing I’ve been meaning to tell you all day.”

  “What is it?” I asked impatiently, not able to keep from staring at his mouth.

  He took his time, drawing in a slow inhale and then letting it out just as slowly. “You,” he finally whispered, running a finger across my chin, “absolutely take my breath away.”

  It was right then that I knew, down to my curling toes and thumping heart, that I had made the correct decision, maybe the most correct decision ever to be made in the history of decision-making. I reached for him, torn between wanting to stare into his incredible green eyes and an almost painful desire to kiss him.

  Naturally, we kissed. And kissed.

  Long after the sun had set, I pushed back my tangled hair, rubbed my swollen lips together, and stood up on very wobbly legs.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, reaching for my waist. “You said you were staying.”

  “I believe your earlier Babe Ruth imitation broke my cell.”

  He grinned up at me, running a hand through his equally mussed hair.

  “Max might want to hear the news right away,” I explained. And then, at the risk of sounding totally cliché, I kind of got lost in Todd’s eyes for a moment, visualizing the rest of the summer: sunny days relaxing on the beach with a paperback novel. Moonlight swims. Evenings curled together on that very couch, catching up on the last four seasons of One Tree Hill. Or with no TV on at all.

  I dropped my chin, feeling Todd pull me down.

  “May I use your phone to call California?”

  ABIGAIL KELLY:

  SWEETER THAN SUGAR

  As she strolled up center stage and plucked a microphone from the stand, the entire venue crackled with feedback. The place then went silent.

  “Oops.” Abigail Kelly giggled into the only mike that seemed to be working. “My bad.”

  While the techs behind her labored to get the sound back up, Kelly stood under the spotlight, treating the crowd to an a capella rendition of “Hey Jude.”

  In a typical day in the life of a world-famous pop music icon, Abigail Kelly gave Paris fans another reason why she’s so straight-from-the-heavens charming, so talented, and so darn likable.

  It’s her ability to just go with it.

  “I have no idea what’s coming next,” she told Paris’s TrèsSweet last week at an after-concert press event. “What we’re doing now is working so well, and the guys and I are having a blast, so why change a thing?”

  After a string of number-one hits that don’t seem
to end, Mustang Sally’s lead singer is still all about the fun. She enchanted fellow party attendees with her behind-the-scene stories of being the only female on a tour bus full of men, reminding us of Gwen Stefani’s similar plight with No Doubt a decade ago.

  For someone who hasn’t seemed to touch earth in five years, Kelly also appears quite normal.

  “Oh, sweet!” she exclaimed after digging through the contents of the swag bag that every guest received. “I scored BB cream!” She held it up to the light. “And it’s Dior.”

  How can you help but love a girl—someone who’s graced more magazine covers this year than Oprah—who still gets excited over makeup?

  {chapter 16}

  “EIGHT DAYS A WEEK”

  I was sitting cross-legged, feeling cramped despite the slightly oversized first-class seat. My feet were asleep, which was probably what snapped me awake. When my eyes fluttered open, I saw Todd staring out the window at the pearly early morning sky. One hand was at his chin, the latest courtroom crime novel turned upside-down on his lap, a finger marking its place.

  Watching his profile, I could see the faint two-inch scar that ran from the corner of his mouth to just above his chin, the result of a boating accident when he was twelve. He coughed into his fist and there was that dimple, set deep into his cheek. I closed my eyes, knowing the mere sight of that simple indent in his skin could get me quite worked up.

  Even though my feet were painfully deprived of circulation, I didn’t move, so as not to disturb him. As we flew through an air pocket, the plane dipped and corrected. I felt Todd move closer. He knew I hated flying. He knew a lot about me, actually.

  I sneaked open one eye to see him changing the time on his watch, preparing for life on the West Coast. Definitely the end of summer.

  I exhaled. It seemed like only yesterday I’d made that phone call from Todd’s couch to Max’s office.

  When I’d assumed Max would be merely pissed off, I hadn’t known the half of it.

  “What the hell, babe?” he’d bellowed. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  Not my problem, ass hat, I’d wanted to say, but didn’t. Of course. After listening to ten minutes of his yelling, I told him I would see him in September. Then I dropped Todd’s phone to the floor and climbed in his lap.

  Our summer couldn’t have gone better. I’d been de-stressed and deliciously lazy in a way I hadn’t been since I was a little kid. I read twelve trashy novels, kept a journal, and even started a sketchbook. Lindsey read somewhere that drawing was a healthy form of non-aggressive therapy. I didn’t know about that, but I sketched all summer, if just to appease her.

  Todd and I had one argument. He started it, but I assumed most of the blame. I was being passive-aggressive instead of honest. At the time, the summer was almost over and I was afraid of leaving, so I lashed out. Real mature. It wasn’t the highpoint of our time together, both of us angry and worried, saying things we didn’t mean. But we apologized afterward, and we both meant it. Sometimes those kinds of things can actually draw two people closer together, if they’re lucky. We were lucky.

  I watched him turn a page of his book and scowl at whatever he’d just read. A moment later he nodded and chuckled under his breath. Whatever the problem was, he had thought it out and dismissed it. That was another thing we had in common—we were both ambitious and yet found immense pleasure in simple things.

  He coughed again, and I couldn’t stand my numbing appendages for another second, so I wrenched my feet out from under me, wincing as the flow of blood shot pinpricks up my legs. I reached up and rang the bell for a flight attendant.

  “What do you need?” Todd asked, dog-earing the page he was reading.

  “I’m parched. How soon do we land?”

  “About four hours.”

  “Four?” I straightened up, having that recurring panic about boarding the wrong plane, falling asleep, and waking up in a bathtub full of ice cubes in Mongolia, half my organs gone.

  “You were asleep for a grand total of ten minutes.”

  I moaned as he passed me his Dr Pepper. “Crap. I planned on sleeping through the entire flight.” I swirled the ice around inside the glass and took a sip of the chilled brown liquid. “After last night, I thought we’d both be zonked out.”

  Todd stretched his arms out in front of him and cracked his neck. “You were the one who stayed up all night packing, not me.” His index finger traced a circle over my knee through the hole in my jeans.

  “You could’ve stayed up with me,” I said. “Like we did last week.”

  Todd looked at me and grinned, and we both recalled the night we were awake until the sun came up, just lying around, talking. Well, mostly just talking. All summer we could gab for hours and laugh until one of us busted a gut. But we could also sit, speaking only when I needed him to pass me that cupcake I couldn’t reach or when he asked me to turn up the volume on the ballgame.

  I smiled at him. We really were an amazing fit.

  “I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said, rubbing my shoulder against his. He lifted a quick flash of a smile. “You’re not nervous, are you?”

  “I’m not nervous.” He gave my nose a peck. “I’m happy.”

  The band was scheduled to record our next album at Studio Universe in Los Angeles from September to December. Per my instructions, upon our touchdown at LAX, Molly would have my Malibu house ready for me, and only me.

  We’d discussed it, but no, Todd and I would not be living together. It wasn’t my style, and Hollywood hadn’t warped me so much as to make me forget that. Neither of us would have ever been considered libertines, but we certainly weren’t monks, either. I simply wasn’t willing to rush into anything and make the same mistakes I’d made in the past. My relationship with that idiot Miles was almost purely physical. We never talked, and then we ended up having screaming matches that rivaled Ike and Tina Turner. Ending up like that with Todd was painfully unthinkable, so if it meant that for a while I made us behave like a couple of fifteen year olds with purity rings, then so be it.

  Plus, I knew Todd’s background. His parents were extremely conservative, almost to the point of being old fashioned, which I happened to find charming. Todd would have rather moved into a hotel than live with me in sin.

  Back in Seaside, when I would innocently fall asleep on his couch, the evening always ended with me being scooped up and taken home.

  “Puppy,” his deep and dreamy nighttime voice would whisper, his fingers tickling various parts of my body. “Last call. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

  Lindsey and Steve had gotten used to the tall, green-eyed man showing up on their doorstep in the middle of the night with me, half conscious, propped up against his side or completely cataleptic in his arms.

  At the beginning of the summer, it had been mostly just the two of us, but after a few weeks, Todd deemed it “safe” enough for me to meet his local buddies. Even Frisbee Dude. They were great guys who probably resented me for stealing away their surfing pal. After their initial reactions, à la Chandler, the guys got used to me, and I was mostly hassled with questions about how well I knew Taylor Swift and could I give them Emma Stone’s cell phone number. Todd also kept in touch with his college alums and Marine brothers-at-arms; they drifted in and out over the summer, dragging him off to cave dive and deep sea fish and climb random tall things while I happily napped on the beach—or in his bed, when he wasn’t looking.

  “Will you be working as soon as tomorrow?” Todd asked as our flight attendant loaded us up with water, more Dr Pepper, honey roasted peanuts, and a warm chocolate chip cookie the size of a dinner plate. I declined mine, knowing full well that the eight and a half pounds I’d packed on over the summer would have to come off once Max took one look.

  “I think so,” I replied. “Nathan sent some of the new material a few weeks ago.” I reached for my brown-and-gold Gucci carry-on under my seat. “I haven’t even looked at them yet. The
y could be in Swahili, for all I know.” I tore open a large FedEx envelope, laying the hundred-some-odd pages of sheet music on the pull-down table in front of me.

  Todd’s eyes went wide and then glazed over. “It looks like Swahili to me.”

  “Music’s a snap,” I said, speed reading through the first song, hearing notes in my head. It was mid-tempo, low register, and something of an ode to a certain frozen dessert, reminding me of George Harrison’s “Savoy Truffle,” his precious ditty devoted entirely to the contents of a box of chocolates. As Todd read over my shoulder, I added, “You’re the one who’s fluent in four languages at last count.”

  “You’re memorizing those, aren’t you?” Todd asked when I flipped a page, barely glancing at it, though its picture in my brain remained intact.

  I tapped the side of my head. “I wouldn’t survive without this baby.”

  “Are you actually expected to sing the word consternate?” he asked, pointing to the sheet of a fast-tempo number about a girl meeting a boy for a date on the moon. “You should do more songs like ‘Intimate Strangers.’ One of my favorites.”

  I balked in surprise. “Really?”

  He nodded, flipping through some more pages. “It’s joyful and sentimental without sounding like a torch song. The lyrics are pretty clever.”

  I smiled. We hadn’t talked about my career very much; in fact, Todd was the showoff when it came to singing along to the stereo. His gyrating Mick Jagger was spot on, only to be bested by his croony Sinatra.

  “I really like that song, too,” I confessed, staring at his lowered eyes. “I changed it up a little during one of the takes, and we kept it that way.”

  He looked at me. “Which part?”

  “I kind of tweaked the last verse so it was relevant. I thought my fans would be more interested in a happily ever after, rather than a song about a one-night stand, so I changed the end. Writers hate when singers do that.” I rolled my eyes. “But even something as small as a few lines or the phrasing . . . When I can change something, I feel like the song becomes mine, and I’m sharing a piece of my soul.”