Page 34 of The Best Worst Mistake (Off-Limits #2)

I take the wheel when we get back to Abby’s car, and silently drive us back to the main stretch of road, away from that awful line of houses, until we come upon a little burger joint, the sign out front boasting best milkshakes in the west.

Abby suddenly asks if we can pull in.

I don’t question her. Instead, I grab a hold of her knee, and don’t let go until we roll to a stop near the front of the building.

She looks up at the sign, staring at the old burger joint as if she’s just seen a ghost. Her second or third ghost of the day. “Best in the west,” she mutters, reading the sign. There’s a faint smile on her face when she turns to me. “Can we go in?”

“You’re hungry?” I ask, surprised that the visit to her old neighborhood didn’t just destroy her appetite.

She grins wider. “Something like that.”

When we walk inside the checkered floor diner, a waitress greets us. She’s wearing a folded paper hat, like we’ve just stepped back in time to the 1950’s.

“Two of your biggest strawberry milkshakes. Extra sprinkles,” Abby says when the young waitress asks for our order. “Do you want anything else?” she asks, turning to me.

“Ah, just the biggest pile of fries you have, to go with them,” I add.

“Excellent choice,” Abby says, bumping into me.

“I hadn’t pegged you as the extra sprinkles type of girl.” I bump her back.

“I am damn near full of surprises today.” She tilts her face up to smile at me, knowing everything we’ve done today has come out of left field.

We walk to a table in the back. I slide in across from her in the blue vinyl booth and push two paper straws through the plastic lids of the water cups the waitress hands us. Folding the wrappers up into tiny accordions, I wait for Abby to speak.

I drop the paper accordions and gently nudge her leg under the table with my knee, keeping it pressed up against hers, wondering if I should be sitting next to her instead of across from her, if only to hold her upright after everything that just happened.

“I wasn’t expecting a home tour today,” I finally say, letting her off the hook as the one to break the silence. “I’m really glad you took me with you.”

“I’m not totally sure whether I’m glad I took you or not,” she says, smiling faintly.

“It’s been so long. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went back there.

But I’ve been feeling like I should. Seeing Miss Candi there was completely unexpected.

I definitely feel shook at seeing her like that, but I’m really happy I did. ”

“I can tell.” I hold her hand, then I let it slip away. “Do you want to talk about it? Or—”

“She’s the person who called CPS on my parents,” she says, looking firmly into my eyes. “She started the whole process that got me adopted by my aunt and uncle over in New York.”

Christ . My stomach drops out. I could tell something major had happened between them, but I couldn’t have guessed that.

I wait for more, still wondering how a bus driver could have had that much impact on her life, or knew that whatever waited for her in New York was going to be better than whatever was happening in that house.

Or what Abby would have had to go through to get to that point.

“Bus one eighteen was like a mobile daycare to me,” she says, somehow looking fond of the memory.

“I’d sat in front of my house for who knows how many days, watching that bus come and go, the happy-looking people getting off, orderly lines waiting in front of it.

Miss Candi, as I later came to call her, was always welcoming people onto that bus with a big ol’ smile.

I never knew where any of them were going, but I always knew that she just looked happy to have them there with her.

So one day, instead of sitting out in front of my house, waiting for my parents to come home with — hopefully — something to put in the fridge after being gone for a few days, I got on. ”

“Your parents left you without any food for days at a time ?” I can’t imagine this version of Abby.

She nods. “But Miss Candi let me on the bus that day and changed everything for me.”

“She let you on the bus? All alone as a kid?”

“She did,” she says, wistfully. “And every day after that, too. She’d welcome me on that bus of hers with a big smile.

Didn’t even make me pay. I’d ride around with her for a few hours most days, until her shift ended.

Sometimes I’d sleep, sometimes we’d just talk about kid stuff that I didn’t have anyone else to talk to about — school, other kids in my class, that kind of thing.

And then she’d let me back off in front of my house, promising me I could ride again with her the next day.

She started bringing extra food for me to have on the rides, so I knew that I could eat at least once a day with her, as long as I got on that bus. ”

“Christ,” I whisper, shaking my head. I had no idea. “What happened . . . to your parents?”

“I’m not totally sure,” she says. “My aunt and uncle never talked about them, and I eventually stopped asking.”

“And how were they?”

“My aunt and uncle?” I nod. “Better than my parents, but they’d already raised a few kids of their own and had zero interest in having me there.

They stopped short of sticking me in a closet under the stairs, but I was basically invisible to them.

I think I reminded my aunt of her brother — my dad — so I was probably fairly painful for her to have around.

But I had food and a clean home, so that was a step up.

I graduated from high school early just to get out of there.

So, I guess it all worked out better in the end.

When I first got to New York, I’d dream about getting through school faster, just to go back to L.A.

and find Miss Candi so she could be my real mom, even after all that had happened.

But instead, I just went off to college once I graduated. You know, life took over.”

I shake my head, trying to imagine this version of Abby. The one who pushed herself to excel, even after everything. Closing herself off from relationships along the way, though now I can definitely see why.

“I can’t imagine growing up like that,” I tell her, wishing I was sitting next to her instead of across the table so I could hug her, hold her. Kiss her.

“Everyone has a past,” she says, smiling reluctantly. “And now, I suppose, you know mine.”

The waitress places our order down on the table, along with a bucket heaped with hot fries. I grab one of the long ones off the top and shove it down into my milkshake before popping the whole thing in my mouth. I’m not sure if I’m at all hungry, or mostly just unsure of what to say.

“You dip your french fries in your milkshake?” Abby asks, watching me grab another.

“Don’t tell me you don’t?”

She grabs a long fry off the top and scoops up a heap of melty pink shake with it before taking a bite.

“Mmm . . . k,” she says, chewing. “Better than I thought.”

I drag another fry through my shake.

“I always wanted to come here,” she says, looking around like she’s taking it all in.

“This place was on Miss Candi’s route. Fun fact — that sign out front has never changed.

I always told her I wanted to try the best milkshakes in the west. Almost every day I’d beg her to stop here.

” She laughs. “Of course, she couldn’t stop her bus route to grab me one, but I always thought we’d come here one day. ”

I try to picture a tiny, seven-year-old Abby sitting on a big bus seat, nose pressed to the window, dreaming of the day she could sit right here with a big strawberry milkshake, just like she is today.

It makes me feel dizzy, trying to imagine what it must be like for her now, sitting here in the exact place she always asked the driver to go.

“What else did you want to do back then?” I ask, wishing I could give her the type of childhood that every kid deserves. One with giggly sleepovers and rainbow sprinkles on her shake, or at the very least a childhood with parents that love her and a fridge full of food.

“Oh, gosh, everything,” she says, grinning wistfully.

“I heard about all the fun stuff from my classmates, but I never really got to go further than wherever Miss Candi’s bus route went.

My parents didn’t own a car, and they certainly didn’t take me with them wherever they went when disappearing for days at a time. ”

I can’t imagine.

“They’d disappear for days at a time?” I ask.

“I could never decide if it was worse having them home, or having them disappear. Both had their downsides.”

“Where did you want to visit as a kid that you never got to go?” I ask, watching her eyes brighten at the idea of visiting some of these places.

“The pier,” she says. “I haven’t seen it, but I hear there’s a big Ferris wheel there.”

“The Santa Monica Pier?” I ask.

“I think so,” she says. “A girl in my class brought a picture of her and her family there to school at the beginning of the year once. I stared at that picture for probably a solid five minutes, wondering how that was close to our house and yet I’d never even known it existed.”

“I can’t imagine how you must have felt when you learned that Disneyland was also a few miles away!”

She laughs, then shakes her head. “You have no idea how much that one hurt.” She manages to grin.

“What else?” I ask, my heart breaking even more.

“The beach,” she says. “The Pacific.”

“You never got to go to the beach as a kid?”

“Not once.”

I’m already making a mental checklist in my head of all the places we need to go to while she’s here.

“Anywhere else?” I ask, using a fry to wipe a long drip up the side of my shake cup.

“The Hollywood sign,” she says. “These are all just typical little kid dreams, you know? All the silly places I heard about from the radio or my classmates, mostly Rowan Sanderson, really. She was always doing fun stuff with her family. I always kind of hated her for it.”

“Then let’s check some of these things off your bucket list, before you go back. I mean, as long as you’re here for a few more days.”

“Or weeks?” she asks. Her eyes meet mine and she shifts in her seat. “Don’t answer that.” She grins, knowing her time here in L.A. hinges on the deal we’re both embroiled in, outside of all this. “I know today feels like a step in the right direction, but I’m still not going to be a pro at this.”

She waves her hands between us, over the surface of the table.

“Not the best at dipping fries in your shake? No, it’s terribly messy,” I say, pointing to all the drops she’s left between her cup and the table. “But you’ll get the hang of it. And then you’ll never go back to just ordering fries again.”

“No.” She laughs, nudging her knee against mine beneath the table, but she leaves it there, pressed up against mine. “ This .” Her eyes find mine again. “If you’re even still interested in me after knowing more about me.”

“Abs,” I say, my voice softening. I run my hand across the table until I find hers. “Knowing more about you just makes me fall harder for you. There is nothing you’ve shown me today that scares me off, not even in the slightest.”

“I just don’t want you to see me as some victim of my circumstances from earlier in life.

I don’t like it when people pity me when they find out.

Teachers, friends, social workers when I was a kid.

Always the same pitying look, like everything I’ve gone through defines me, when it doesn’t.

It’s why I try to hide it as much as I have. I hate when—”

“Abby,” I interrupt, squeezing her hand until she looks at me. “Pay attention when I tell you this, so you never have to question it when it comes to me.” I lean in and push the food aside. “I don’t pity you for what you’ve gone through. I am in awe of you for what you’ve endured and become.”

Her brows knit together, eyes glossy. “You’re not . . .” She pauses to find the words, swallowing hard. “You’re not weirded out now? Knowing that . . . I don’t know . . . my own parents didn’t even want me around?”

Her voice is so quiet, it comes out just above a whisper, cracking at the end.

“I don’t know the entirety of what your parents had going on. But I get the sense that drugs and probably alcohol played a part in it.”

“From what I understand and remember, yeah.”

“Then I don’t think them wanting you or not wanting you had much to do with the circumstances that you were in.”

Her lips turn up at the corners.

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Then believe it,” I tell her, squeezing her hand afresh.

“Not everyone who has kids can care for them. But that’s never — and I do mean never — the kids’ fault.

Their problems had nothing to do with you.

And Miss Candi . . . What she did? I don’t know her, but I can tell from her reaction today that making that call damn near killed her.

That’s how much she loved you. That’s how much she cared and wanted better for you. ”

A lone tear slides down Abby’s cheek, and I swipe it away before going on.

“But your aunt and uncle can suck it,” I say, before I can stop myself. “They should have done better.”

She snorts, then manages to laugh.

“I owe a lot to them. They did the best they could. It’s not my fault they were done raising kids by the time I came to live with them. They had their own lives, their own issues. But they fed me, sheltered me . . .”

“Loved you?” I ask, searching her eyes.

She blinks, then looks down at the checkered floor.

“Honestly, I don’t know. Once I moved out, we kind of lost touch. I used to come home for holidays and whatnot, until one year I went home for Christmas and the house was empty. They’d left for a cruise in Florida with their real kids and hadn’t even bothered telling me.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in that family,” I tell her, wishing I’d known about all this years ago so I could have been taking Abby back home for holidays with me.

Even if it was as nothing more than friends.

Whatever she could have handled, as long as she wasn’t alone in New York.

Especially ever since Olivia, who is clearly her chosen family, had decided to stay in Hawaii.

A decision that must have been impossibly hard for her, too.

“Do you think it’s possible for an apple to fall farther away from the tree?” Abby asks, bringing her eyes back to mine. “Or do you think I’m going to be incapable of loving someone — of being loved by someone — always? Like it’s hereditary or something?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” I tell her. Then, I stand out of my seat and slide into the booth next to her, pulling her in for a kiss.