Page 30 of The Best Worst Mistake (Off-Limits #2)

Bright and early next morning, I’m already outside — sitting on the front porch admiring my view of the city and wondering why I don’t come out here more often — when Abby’s car rolls to a stop.

I’ve already met two neighbors, and got to pet a very nice golden retriever rescue mix named Sasha that lives down the street.

When Abby parks her car — SUV? No, definitely car — I go sauntering down the driveway to rest my forearms on its open window frame.

“You didn’t tell me you were driving a toaster around L.A.,” I say through the window of her rental, which looks more like it’d toast my bread than take us out on an adventure. Maybe it can do both.

Chuckling, she hands me a Starbucks cup through the window that already has a faint, berry-pink lip stain around the hole in the rim.

“Your matcha latte is growing on me,” she says, nodding toward the cup.

Her lips are filled with the same berry color she wore that day in New York, like strawberries ground up in a mortar and pressed deeply into her skin.

I fight the urge to taste them, just to see if they taste as sweet as they look, and settle on sipping the frothy green tea from the place her lips have just been.

“You added vanilla,” I say, licking the sweetness of the tea mixed with the taste of her lips off of mine before taking a second sip to confirm my suspicion.

“I did.” She grins. “Carrie mentioned it helps the flavor.”

“Tastes good.” I smile, and I don’t just mean the tea.

“You’re welcome,” she says, watching me. I can tell she’s thinking about that morning in New York, just as much as me. And then everything it led to later that night.

She starts turning a light shade of pink before nodding toward the empty passenger seat beside her. “Now, get in before I lose my cool here and have to drive away.”

I squeeze her shoulder through the open window before it begins sliding shut, wanting to ask where she’s taking me that has her looking so nervous.

She hands me a small plate wrapped in aluminum foil when I climb in beside her. There are two brownies sitting underneath the silvery cover when I peel it back.

“Courtesy of Starry,” she says, but she’s staring out the window. “Is this where you live?”

I nod, sniffing a brownie for any special ingredients before biting into it.

“You own it?”

I nod again and then I can’t help it. My eyes roll back and I let out a long groan.

“Oh my God, you were right. These are pretty special. But not, like special .”

She laughs.

“Not in the way you initially thought last night,” she says, watching me take another bite.

“You never told me you live in a place with that kind of front porch,” she adds, eyeing the long, raw wood-plank porch filled with two white rocking chairs, before pulling the toaster-slash-car out onto the road.

“You’ve never asked about my porch style,” I point out. “But in case you’re wondering, yes, I live in a house with a wraparound front porch. And if those two rockers didn’t already turn you on, there’s three more around the other side that you just can’t see from the road.”

She grips the steering wheel a bit harder, and bites her lip, though it does nothing to hide her amusement. “You stop that sexy talk right now before I turn this car back around,” she says, through a laugh.

“If that porch does it for you, you should see my back patio.”

She erupts into nervous laughter and I manage to get another sip of matcha through my lips without spilling it out the side as we race down the road to wherever Abby has decided we’re going.

“Seriously, though. Who are all those rocking chairs for?” she asks, a more serious tone taking over from the one she had just a moment ago. “Are you hiding a whole wife and kids inside?”

“One day, I hope.”

Her eyes dart over to mine, narrowing, before drifting back to the road.

“Your future wife likes rocking on those?” she asks, forcing her brows together. “Chatting with neighbors that are out on their evening walks. That type of thing?”

“In my head, sure,” I say. “I mean, I haven’t exactly drafted it out, but back when I had the house built, I had the contractor position the house on this hill so the porch has a perfect view of the sun setting over the Pacific. My future wife and I plan to watch it every night.”

Her lips curl up in a smile.

“Like melted butter over a shimmering stack of diamonds,” I add, lowering my voice; that’s what my dad used to say whenever we watched the sun setting over my parents’ panoramic view above Sunset Boulevard.

We only ever did that a handful of times together, since both of them were stringent workaholics, but the way he described it like that each time always stuck out in my memory.

“I can’t imagine having a life like that here,” she says, wistfully. “L.A. is so different from New York. Similar in some ways, and yet so polar opposite when it comes to others.”

“I hear some people even call it the best coast,” I joke, looking out the passenger window so she can’t see the sarcastic smirk stretched across my face.

“I’m not sure we’re ever going to agree on that.” She gives my elbow a gentle nudge. “I haven’t been able to find a decent bagel since I got back here.”

“ Back here again?” I ask, catching the word that sticks out from the rest. “Before yesterday, I thought this was your first time visiting.”

Her hands silently wring the leather covering the steering wheel like it’s a wet towel before she answers.

“I’ve actually spent a lot of time here,” she says. “But you’re right. It’s like another planet to me.”

“You never mentioned spending any time in L.A. before. When I offered you that job at the firm here after law school, you acted like L.A. was a different planet — and one you had no interest in seeing.”

“I didn’t. Not again.”

She swallows, then pushes her tongue along her top teeth. Finally, she looks at me, but her face holds a new type of vulnerability, her eyes raw, like there’s nowhere to run.

“Where are we going today, Abs?” I ask, wrapping my arm around the back of her headrest.

Her eyes darken, like clouds shifting shape when a storm is coming in. I wait for her to answer.

“Just some place I didn’t want to go alone, but felt too important to miss while I’m here. Things are starting to wrap up with The Nile, from what I can tell, so I didn’t want to wait any longer. Then after yesterday with you, and Brett, I figured now was as good of a time as any.”

I nod toward the windshield, wondering where on earth she could possibly be taking me, but I keep my eyes turned toward the road that’s peeling away beneath us.

“So,” — I pat the window frame on my side of the car — “did you pick out this traveling toaster here? Or was this just part of your and Starry’s elopement registry? Or . . .”

She snorts, then braces one hand over her stomach, like it might settle down whatever nerves are coursing through her as we continue down the road. I wish I could lighten her mood, but I have a sense that she’s the only one capable of doing that right now.

“I really want you to meet her,” she says. “Starry, I mean. And not because I am completely enamored with her, but because I’m pretty sure that everyone on the planet should meet someone like her at some point in their life.”

Meet someone in Abby’s world? Other than Olivia, I’ve never even heard her discuss anyone in her life except Brett, and he hardly counts.

She chews her lip, a fresh set of nerves evidently rolling in.

“I’d love to meet her,” I say, grabbing her knee before sliding my hand off and back over the top of her headrest.

“Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles comes coursing through the speakers and Abby reaches to turn the volume up. I can’t tell if it’s a ploy to change the subject, or if this is really some favorite old song that she loves.

But it doesn’t matter.

Because once Abby starts singing along, tapping her thumb on the steering wheel to the beat, I don’t care whether she’s trying to distract me or herself with the song.

If she wants to talk, we’ll talk. Otherwise, I’m happy to play passenger princess to whatever adventure we’re on this morning.

The beach?

The pier?

Does it matter?

For maybe the first time ever, Abby’s initiated something outside of a closed-door rendezvous, and there’s no other place I’d rather be than right here, waiting to find out where the hell she feels the need to take me.

* * *

Nearly an hour later, we’re inching down a street lined with trash bags overflowing into the gutters, replacing the manicured sidewalks we left behind long ago.

Chain-link fences and a little pack of off-leash dogs meander past my window.

I’m starting to wonder if Abby got lost after exiting the freeway.

But, she’s checking the map on her phone religiously, still humming “Here Comes the Sun” to herself while injecting whispered street names, and making tiny sighs under her breath.

“Are you kidding me? Mrs. Perry is still at that place?” she says, more to herself than me as we pass a tiny, brittle-looking woman sitting on a worn-out chair that looks like it was painted orange at one point, but is now fully rusted out.

Paint is peeling off every inch, like a snake shedding its skin, while the woman blankly stares out toward the road.

“Oh, God, that place really went downhill, wow,” she mutters, looking out of her window at a barely-standing pile of plywood and bricks. Graffiti-covered boards cover whatever is left of the windows and door.

“I think this might be—” She slows, nearly to a stop. “No wait, not yet. God, it’s been forever.”

She drives a bit further, until finally, we pull off to the side of the road in front of a line of what should be identical row houses, but each one is worn in its own way, making each one of them somehow stick out like a sore thumb.

One more torn up than the next. All in some state of disrepair.

One with two missing windows, covered with black garbage bags stretched over the otherwise large gaping holes, billowing in the wind.

One of the plastic covers is pulled back, and a little girl with dark brown pigtails peeks out from behind the hanging garbage sack, her pale skin a stark contrast to her hair and the bag behind her.

She watches us intensely, but instead of ducking back into the house when she and I make eye contact, the little girl smiles and sticks a hand up beside her face, waving at us as we roll along the curb and come to a stop right in front of her house.

My stomach spirals, wondering what Abby could possibly need on a street like this, with a little girl like that behind a missing window.

But Abby’s watching the little girl, too, except, unlike me, she’s already waving back, smiling shyly.

Abby mouths the word, hi, and the little girl grins.

“Do you know her?” I ask, gently, watching the way her eyes study the figure in the window.

Abby shakes her head, her eyes shining.

“Not in the way you might think,” she says, shifting the car’s gear to park.

As quickly as she appeared, the little girl vanishes behind the black trash bag, and I watch it flutter in the wind, waiting for her to reappear, wondering why in the world her parents have her living in a place like this. Wondering, too, if we’ve somehow come here to help her.

What could we possibly be doing here, Abs? I want to ask, but I don’t.

Not yet.

“Do you know her parents?” I try next, taking a stab at why we’ve driven all the way across town and stopped here on this particular street.

I’m well aware that there are some neighborhoods around here that you just don’t go to unless you’re lost and wind up there by accident. And this, right here where we’ve just parked, is one of them.

“Does this have anything to do with the negotiation over The Nile?” I ask, wondering what other reason the chic, put-together, always laughing, Abby might have to bring me here.

She shakes her head again.

“Nothing about today has anything to do with work,” she says, lightly. “Or anything else you already know about me.”

Then she opens her door and gets out of the car.