Abby Road (23 page)

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

A
s 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.