Chapter 24 Las Vegas #4
Abby seized her cheeks. Her tongue slipped in without an invitation, without needing one, as they bumped into the wall.
It was desperate and long, more suck than sweetness, as if they intended to inhale each other to nothing.
Kate moaned and clutched harder, dizzy from everything that was familiar, everything she’d forgotten, and everything that felt new too.
She feasted on her mouth, the trace of liquor and cigarettes on her tongue something she hated in all other cases but accepted because her same Abby lived beneath.
Her body woke up to it in an instant, never forgetting what this led to.
But then they required air, and in the brief break, Kate remembered Ryan. She stiffened, and when Abby obliviously moved to continue, she put her hands to her chest to hold her back.
“I’m sorry.” Kate gasped. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” Abby stepped away, ruddy and panting. Her eyes were dilated saucers, but she was otherwise astoundingly calm.
“I shouldn’t have done that.” Kate cycled toward the familiar anxiety that she’d narrowly avoided for nearly five years.
“It’s okay.”
Kate rested her hands on her knees. “Fuck.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Abby said. “Kate, stop. Breathe. It was just a drunk kiss. No harm done.”
She lifted her head and met Abby’s face. She willed herself to believe it was just one kiss. No harm. Ryan didn’t even have to know. Because it meant nothing. It had to mean nothing now. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Abby nodded, the smallest frown flashing before she glanced around the hallway. “You want to get some food?”
Kate squinted, still gathering her bearings. “What?”
“Pizza maybe? Unless you want to go to bed.”
“No. Yeah. Food.”
Abby grinned. “No. Yeah. Food.” She grabbed her hand, and Kate didn’t dare let go.
No one would ever believe the night she spent with Abby in Las Vegas was entirely innocent, but after the hallway, they didn’t share another kiss. Abby ordered pizza and a bottle of champagne to her room, and they flopped into bed like they were bunking for another road game.
“What’s the champagne for?”
Abby popped the cork. “You.”
“Me?” Kate furrowed her brow.
“The new job. Special counsel at Cortell & Griffin. You’ve got to be the youngest one. I saw the directory. It’s like an AARP yearbook,” Abby said as she handed her a glass.
Kate chuckled. “Mick told you?”
Abby blushed. “No. I looked you up.” She raised her glass. “This is for the other times too. The law review, the clerkship, graduation. It felt weird to not celebrate with you or tell you I was proud.”
Kate’s heart split and the tears nearly bubbled again.
All she could do was clink her glass to Abby’s in return.
“Thank you.” She sipped and tried not to think of Ryan.
Of how he had winced when she got the job and heard the salary.
Of how badly she’d wanted this from him but shrank each time she accomplished something instead.
“And you like it? You’re getting to do what you wanted?”
“I think I will eventually. I hope.” Kate nodded slowly. “I know it might not make sense, going to a big corporate firm like Cortell & Griffin.”
“It does. It’s the best, right?” Abby said.
And unlike Ryan, Abby didn’t say it like an accusation, but like she was seeing Kate fully. Like she always had.
“Yeah.” She stared at her pizza. “I still want to pursue the hard cases. The ones that come down to fairness, to not letting anyone get walked all over, or cast aside. I think maybe I can do that there—have both. Enough power to make a difference. Maybe change something from the inside out.”
Abby’s gaze brightened when she finally met it. “You will.”
Kate didn’t let herself smile but nodded. “Plus, now that I have the job, I can start paying you back for my tuition. With interest, I insist.”
“Nope,” Abby said through a mouthful. “It was an investment in the future. My tiny contribution to the good of mankind. You can pay me in free legal advice.”
“Please don’t put yourself in a position to need it.” Kate grabbed another slice of pizza. “You really shouldn’t have done that with your money.”
“What else am I going to do with it? I feel guilty every time I use it while my teammates scrape by on pennies. I don’t deserve it.”
Kate swallowed and dabbed her lips on a napkin. “We don’t get to decide what we deserve.”
Abby raised a brow. “What is that? Book of Job?”
“You read it?” Kate’s eyes widened.
“No, I just remember you talking about it that day.”
“I remember it too,” she muttered as it returned to her. The day she knew she loved Abby. The day she knew she’d always be part of her. Their souls meeting in quiet understanding. Abby’s gaze found her in that same place, as if she also felt it tug inside.
Kate cleared her throat and returned to her pizza. “You’ve really been everywhere, haven’t you? I should toast you. Hitting home runs around the world.”
“It’s really not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Mick says you’re kind of famous in Japan. Here.” Kate brought her napkin to the corner of Abby’s mouth and wiped pizza sauce away before she could stop herself.
“No, I’m not.”
“She says they call you something.”
“Oh God.” Abby groaned and flopped back on her pillow.
Kate laughed. “What is it?”
“Hanmāgaru.”
“Hanmāgaru?” She repeated it, and Abby smiled so big that Kate’s cheeks smoldered. “What does it mean?”
“Hammer Girl.”
“Hammer or hammered?”
“Depends on the hour.”
“Do you really do commercials there?”
“Yeah.”
“Do one.” Kate grinned.
“No.”
“Do it! Please!” She tugged at Abby’s arm. “Please, please, please, do it. Just for me. Just once.”
“Okay, okay.” Abby sighed and sat up. “This was my first one for Shiso-Plum potato chips. And you can’t laugh.”
“I would never.”
Abby huffed before holding an invisible potato chip by her face. “Saikyō no pureiyā ni fusawashī, daitan na furēbā. And then I take a bite.” She mimed a bite before returning to her overzealous delivery. “Hōmuran no aji!”
She topped it off with a swing, hitting the invisible chip out of the park, and flashed a cheesy grin for the nonexistent camera. Kate laughed so hard she thought she might pop a rib.
“They taste awful too. I must’ve done a hundred takes.”
Abby laughed with her until they wiped tears. Their hands grazed, Kate’s finding Abby’s shoulder, Abby’s drifting across her knee. They stayed like that even after their giggles subsided. Kate ignored how much she wanted to kiss her again.
“What does it mean?” she asked when she caught her breath.
“Something about the taste of a home run.” Abby chuckled. “I can’t believe Mick never showed you. She found bootlegged copies to torture me with.”
“I can’t imagine you doing commercials. Do you like it?”
She scoffed. “No.”
“Why do you do it then?”
“I don’t know.” She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “I’m starting to wonder why I do half the shit I do. I used to say it was for the game, but I can’t feel it again.”
Kate lay next to her, on her side, and Abby shifted to face her. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m tired.” She sighed.
“Leagues always changing and failing, new teams. Tokyo was better I guess, but maybe I lost something after the game show and the commercials. I stopped hearing it or I stopped listening. It warped the field into this thing I didn’t understand anymore. Shiny but spiritless.”
Kate’s heart thundered in recognition, in awe and admiration. The way Abby always cut through what she failed to. She couldn’t help but think of the jumbotrons and church concerts. The go-through-the-motions faith she’d fallen into.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just missed hearing you talk like this.”
Abby’s gaze softened. “What about you? You still believe in the church thing?”
Kate smirked. “Yes, I still believe in the church thing.”
“And the parents?”
“Yeah. They’re around. We still talk.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I don’t know.” Abby shrugged. “They like the boyfriend?”
“Yeah. Ryan’s great,” she said, voice rising as she rambled, wishing to hurry through the subject. “He’s a lawyer. We met at Berkeley actually. He helped me stop fearing church, and he’s a born-again virgin too…”
“Oh.”
Kate shut her eyes in mortification. “I don’t know why I told you that.”
“No, it’s fine.” Abby grunted and sat up. “Just feels like we’re back at Insley again. Blake 2.0.”
Kate scowled. “No, it’s not.”
“All right fine, it’s not.” Abby poured herself another drink at the minibar.
“It’s not like you’re much different either.”
“I never said I was.”
Kate frowned as Abby returned to the bed, ice clinking in her glass. “You’re drinking too much.”
“We’re at a bachelorette in Las Vegas.”
“Abby,” Kate said, knowing full well she could stop her mid-breath, stop her from just about anything, by saying her name. “I can see it. The same as back then.”
She’d noticed it in her sunken eyes and the weakness in her smile. While Abby was stronger in many ways, beautiful and magnetic, Kate knew it covered up a flimsy version of her Abby. She knew in her gut, an instinct, that something wasn’t quite right.
“I’m okay,” Abby said, though her hand shook as she set her drink on the nightstand.
Kate didn’t follow up. It wasn’t her place anymore. Abby was no longer hers to worry about. She lay back down on the starched sheets, hating the distance she felt as Abby settled beside her.
“What about you?” Kate asked. “Are you seeing anyone?”
Abby nodded, and her stomach hardened.
“Her name’s Dani. She was one of the nurses when I had my ACL surgery. She’ll be at the wedding.”
Kate stretched one of the most painful smiles she could remember. “Good. I’m glad you have someone to take care of you.”
“I don’t need someone to take care of me.”
“Oh yes, you do. You always have.” Kate chuckled gently. “I always thought I’d be the one to take care of you.”
“You still could be.”
Kate’s fake joy dwindled. “I think we ran out the clock on that one.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.