Run Away Baby

Abby-girl. She loved it. So much better than Sugartitties. She bit her lip, trying to make her smile go away. If she looked this happy when she got home, Randall was going to know something was up.

Chapter 20

Abby worried in the days after the coffee shop encounter that things would be weird between her and Charlie. She could have seen it going either way: Charlie starting to hang around her house or something horrid like that, or the whole other end of the spectrum, with him coming into work and ignoring her, making her feel used and discarded. Neither scenario happened. She saw him the next day that she worked and it was perfect. All three partners were standing by the front door, about to go out to lunch together, waiting for one of the women back in accounting to come up to join them for her review.

“Abby, would you mind buzzing Sharlene? We haven’t got all day,” said Clark.

“Sure, of course,” she said. She still had no idea how to ‘buzz’ Sharlene. She picked up the phone and pressed a few buttons. “Hi Sharlene. It’s Abby. Misters Lorbmeer, Messdiem, and Miller are waiting for you to join them for your yearly review. Thanks.” She hung up. They’d told her to call them ‘misters’ when she was talking about more than one of them. To her, it sounded wrong.

“Thanks, Abby,” Clark said. He said it like, At least you can do something right, unlike Sharlene, who keeps us waiting all day. Abby nodded, praying that Sharlene came up before they asked her to do it again.

Charlie walked in. “Hello,” he said to the partners and Abby. He was all postal professionalism, giving away nothing. Sharlene came up front just then and she and all three partners left, leaving Abby and Charlie to have a moment alone.

“How’ve you been?” he asked her.

“Good. I miss you constantly.”

“I miss you too. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“Classes start soon,” she said.

“I’ve been thinking about that. I want to see you more than a couple of hours a week, though.”

She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “I know. Me too. What are we going to do?”

“Can’t you leave your husband?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“What would he do if you tried?”

“Oh my God! You have no idea.”

“I can help you,” Charlie said.

“I can’t talk about this here.”

“Will you talk about it with me sometime?”

Abby nodded. “You look great, by the way,” she said.

“So do you. I mean, that’s the understatement of the year, right?”

The front door opened; Sharlene was back. She looked surprised to see that the mailman was still chatting with Abby. Not that surprised though. She seemed to quickly brush it off, assuming it was a one-sided flirtation and Abby was an uninterested captive audience.

“Looks like rain. Clark asked me to run back and get his umbrella,” she said, disappearing into Clark’s office.

“Anything outgoing today?” Charlie asked loudly.

“Here you go.” Abby handed him a couple of letters. Their gazes locked for a moment and then Charlie was out the door, back on his way.

Sharlene came back up front with two umbrellas. “Do you know which of these he uses?”

“You could bring both?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Can you believe they’re supposed to be taking me out for lunch, and then halfway there they send me back to get an umbrella? Pretty frickin’ rude, wouldn’t you say?”

“Totally rude. Where are they taking you to eat?”