It’s much later, when everythingis put away and Ian and Dee are packing up to go home, that I go looking for Abby. She took a phone call before we all left the rink and never came back. I find her around the back of the building, but she looks and sounds…off as I approach.
“—you shouldn’t even be calling me,” she’s saying.
Her brow is furrowed, and her mouth is pursed into a tight line, and her cheeks are a ruddy sort of pink, not at all like the pretty blush she was wearing earlier.
“Well, I wouldn’t have answered if you hadn’t used a different number,” she hisses.
I stall a few feet away, Abby still having not noticed me.
“You can’t keep doing this!” she says with a raised voice. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
I can hear an increasingly loud male voice on the other end of the line, each word making Abby look more and more upset.
“I know, but, Dad, you can’t just—”
Another bout of shouting from the phone, and then Abby winces, pulling it away from her ear entirely, apparently having been hung up on.
I can’t seem to keep my feet from moving then.
“Are you okay?”
Abby jolts, turning to me with wide eyes. Eyes that I realize are wet with unshed tears, which makes me immediately bristle as I rush to close the distance between us.
“Abby, what’s wrong?”
She blinks rapidly before she uses the heel of her hand to wipe at her eye, shaking her head. “He used a different number—I didn’t—”
“Your dad,” I finish for her. “That was him?”
She nods sullenly. “In all his glory.”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her.
She shakes her head again. “It’s not your fault. I should have been paying more attention. I definitely shouldn’t have been answering calls when I didn’t know who they were from.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” I huff. “You’re not the bastard that keeps harassing people.”
I hear footsteps behind me, and then Dee’s voice.
“Hey, we’re going to head out. Are you two good to…” She notices Abby’s wet eyes, moving in closer. “What’s wrong?”
Abby looks at me with wide eyes, and I can see there that she has no desire to talk about this. I flounder for only a second before stepping in.
“She’s just a little choked up about you and Ian,” I say, holding her gaze for a moment before flashing a smile at my sister. “Turns out she’s a bit of a marshmallow. Who knew?”
“Oh, Abby,” Dee says with a soft smile.
Abby’s mouth opens and then closes, and then finally, she gives me a light punch on the arm, going along with it. “I’m not a marshmallow. It’s just…a lot of changes.”
“Good changes,” Dee points out.
Abby nods. “Good changes.”
“Ian is telling Kyle goodbye,” Dee tells us. “Don’t let him see you crying or he might start in.”
“He would not,” Abby says thickly.
“He’s kind of a marshmallow, too, sometimes,” Dee says with a laugh. She moves in close, pulling Abby in for a hug. “I hope you’ll be my maid of honor.”
