"Is everything alright?" she asked, eyeing me and the mud around me like I was a vagrant.
Michael tugged me to my feet and dragged me toward the door.
"Yes, Caroline, thank you. We were just leaving."
Outside the office a dozen or so curious heads popped up from behind grey cubicle walls.
I grinned and shouted, "I love him terribly, madly, crazily, stupendously, ridiculously, idiotical—"
Michael darted toward the emergency stairwell, pulling me in behind him. His face was red. "Abbi, what the hell are you doing?"
I peered over the railing to see the stairs descending far below us.
"Good idea," I told him. "Much better acoustics in here. I love Michael O—"
Michael pressed me against the wall with his fingers flat against my lips. His green eyes searched mine as he held me pinned to the hard concrete blocks. "Are you going to stop?"
I nodded. But when he peeled away his fingers, I started again. "I love Mi—"
His hand covered my mouth again. "Abbi!"
My heart was beating in a way it hadn't in years; it felt like the pounding of horses' hooves on a wide plain. He ignited in me the girl I'd been in those mountains. Maybe I could remind him of the boy he'd been there, too. With only a wicked grin against his hand as a warning, I bit down on whatever my teeth could find.
"Hey!" Michael shouted, wrenching back his hand in surprise.
I took the opportunity to dart down the stairwell ahead of him. I was correct, after all: the acoustics in here were amazing.
"I love Michael O'Sullivan! I love Michael O'Sullivan!" I shouted all the way down.
Michael ran after me, our footsteps pounding along with our hearts, but I ran faster. My shouts echoed back to me a thousand times so my voice was inescapable. Good. That's how I wanted him to feel: that my love was inescapable. It was like the very air itself. One couldn't earn air, pay for it, deserve it, win an award for it. It was just there, everywhere. I wanted to be everywhere for Michael.
Michael didn't catch me till after I'd sprinted across the dark, empty lobby, voice soaring to the tall ceilings, and pushed open the doors into the rain. He grabbed for my wrists, but the downpour made his fingers slip away.
"Michael O'Sullivan, I love you!" I screamed at the top of my lungs over the honks of car horns as I darted out into rush hour traffic.
"Abbi, you're going to get yourself killed!" he called after me.
It felt good to run and shout and pour out a heart I'd forced into a tidy box for so many years. I'd hid myself, my true self, from the world, from Zara, because I thought I was doing the right thing, doing the responsible thing. But as the downpour soaked through my shirt, I wanted Zara to see me now: exposed, vulnerable, out of control, loud.
"I love Michael O'Sullivan!" I shouted as I jumped onto a park bench and threw my arms up into the air, laughing. "I love Michael O'Sullivan!"
People hidden beneath black umbrellas hurried faster past me, certain I was just another crazy person. And I was! And I never wanted to be anything else than a crazy person for the man and child I loved. I threw my head back, water splashing against my face and shouted as loud as I could.
"I love Michael O—"
I yelped as Michael pulled me down into his arms and covered my lips with his in a fierce, passionate kiss. He tasted like rain and distant mountains and red wine in a crammed linen closet. I was left gasping when he pulled away.
"I hear you," he whispered as the rain pounded around us.
He held me tight and I wrapped my arms around his neck. He rested his forehead against mine.
"I hear you," he whispered again.
I brushed his wet hair from his eyes and then stroked his cheek.
"But do you believe me, Michael?"
Michael
I still couldn't quite believe her. I wanted to. Fuck, I wanted to. But I just… I still couldn't believe it was that easy.
I felt like I'd been told the sky was actually green, but there I was, still standing beneath a dome of what I could only see as blue. No matter how hard I tried to squint, no matter how I tilted my head, no matter how long I stood there, I just couldn't see the green.
Could it have been that simple for my father? Could his lonely, empty, lifeless existence in Albuquerque all have been avoided just by…just by staying? I thought to avoid the life he'd been reduced to I had to do more, give more. I had to fight tooth and nail to prove myself. I had to day after day show that I was good enough for Abbi and Zara and their love. I understood that way of thinking. I even liked it.
It meant I was in control. It meant my fate was in my hands. It meant if I just worked hard enough, like everything else I'd achieved in life, I'd get what I wanted eventually, my way.
But what Abbi was trying to tell me—that there was nothing I could do but accept their love freely given—well, that scared the hell out of me. Because I wasn't in control. And I never would be.
Maybe that was what my father wanted after all. When he left, maybe it wasn't for more money or more success or more square footage; maybe it was for more control. If that’s what he found in his full bottles of beer in his empty kitchen, then I wanted nothing to do with control.
But saying that was certainly harder than living it. I was still missing something. I
