About Today

Abigail sat in her cubicle with Jennifer as they ate lunch together. They laughed and chatted about random bullshit and gave ideas for headlines and topics for future papers that they had to start on but hadn’t yet. The two women picked at their salads and discussed the details for the next day.

“So tomorrow night, do you want to meet there at a certain time? I know for a Saturday, the place is going to be crazy” Jennifer said as she took a sip from her Arizona can.

Abigail nodded, knowing that she usually stayed away from McHale’s on the weekends, just because the place was a madhouse from eight till closing.

“Yeah, we could meet there around seven, seven thirty just so we can beat the crowd and grab a booth or something.”

Jennifer nodded with a grin and before they could talk about it even further, Abigail’s phone started buzzing like mad in her desk drawer. Jennifer looked up and nodded politely at her friend as she grabbed her lunch and left the blonde alone.

She reached into her desk and saw the dreaded three letters across her touch screen.

Dad

She rolled her eyes but decided to swipe her finger across the unlock bar and put the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Abigail, hi. It’s your father” the older man greeted.

“Hey” she replied shortly as she took a sip from her Diet Coke.

“How’s it goin’, kid? How’s work and everything?”

Abigail rolled her eyes again and couldn’t help her thoughts as they swam around violently in her brain.

Please, don’t sound too obligated to ask.

“It’s fine. Work is work.”

“Yeah, I know how it is” he replied with a chuckle. There was a bit of an awkward silence until the man got the hint and spoke up.

“So listen, are you busy tomorrow in the afternoon? Gretchen and I were talking and thought it would be nice if you stopped over tomorrow for lunch at the house” he offered quickly.

Abigail was already seeing red before he even finished his empty offer. To sit and make small talk with the man that called himself her father and his pet chimp that was twenty years younger than him was a fucking joke to her. It made her nauseous and the idea of sticking a handful of safety pins into her eyeballs was a lot more appealing. There was another silence before Abigail took a deep breath and leaned her head against her hand that was being held up.

“Who do you take me for? What do you take me for?”

The other line was silent for about five seconds before he had the audacity to sound surprised.

“Abigain, I don’t know what you mean.”

Abigail’s fist was clenching on her desk and her knuckles were turning white.

“You mean to tell me that after I’ve been here for three years and you’ve only seen me on four occasions this whole time, you have the nerve to invite me over to your house with that drooling gold digging dog at your feet? I’m sorry, but I can’t make it clearer than that. If you have a brain under that thick skull of yours, you’d know that the last thing I want to do is to sit down and share a meal with the two of you.”

And with that, without hesitation, Abigail hung up and slammed her phone down on her desk. She rested her head in her hands and took another deep breath. She could feel her brain pounding and the memories of an empty childhood came rushing inside of her like a broken dam.

In a few seconds, she felt a hand gently rubbing her back. She looked over and saw Jennifer wearing a sad smile and nodding at her. Had she heard the whole thing? Is she going to interrogate me now to find out what that scene was about?

Jennifer sat there quietly and after a few minutes, spoke up.

“If you want to take the rest of the day, you can. You’re only here for another three hours, but I think it’d be best if you got out and relaxed” the red head spoke quietly.

Abigail looked at the girl and gave her a polite smile. Out of all of the people in her office and in all of Pittsburgh, she was glad that a girl like Jennifer called herself her friend.

“I don’t want to short hand anything-“

“Please, Abby. You’ve had a long day. You’d be doing me a favor.”

Abigail nodded mostly to herself and Jennifer started cleaning up what was left of her lunch. The two left the cubicle and Abigail’s purse and small sweater was all she left with. Jennifer said goodbye with a promise that she would call her tomorrow and watched as the troubled blonde drove away.

It was seven in the evening and at that point, Abigail didn’t want to go home yet. Being at home would’ve made her head ache even worse and the only cure she could think of was a Budweiser and Declan’s ear. Sure the old man had better things to do but he always had time to give advice to the young girl he had become so fond of over the past three years.

Abigail sat on her stool and watched as McHale’s got busier every half hour. For a Friday night, it was mostly the older crowd coming in for dinner and a few drinks. Saturday nights were the people around Abigail’s age and the partying crowd.

Declan came over and greeted Abigail with his signature shouting and placed a bottle at her fingertips.

“You don’t look so good, kid. Bad day?”

Abigail looked at him and gave him a perplexed look. Declan just nodded and patted her hand with his.

“I’m here of ya need me” he offered with an understanding smile.

Abigail smiled back and gave him a nod as he walked away to serve the other patrons. The bells on the door went off every three seconds so she never bothered to look up and see who was waltzing in to do the same thing she was doing.

However, a body that occupied the stool next to her caught her attention. The smell of beer and cologne trapped itself in her nostrils and a bittersweet relief overwhelmed her. She looked up and saw Tommy beside her, breathing heavily and swiping the black cap off of his head. He shoved the hat in his pocket and looked over at the blonde.

“Hey, Abigail” he breathed out.

She gave him a small smile and a nod.

“Hi, Tommy.”

“Jesus Christ, you can’t even breathe in here” he said mostly to himself as he looked around to the semi-crowded bar.

Abigail just looked around again to humor him and then took another sip of her beer. Declan approached, beer already in hand, and slid it across the cherry wood to Tommy, whom thanked the old man. He took a sip and looked back over to the girl that he had been thinking about for the past week.

“How’s it goin’” he asked as he gave her a slight nudge.

Abigail shrugged her shoulders and took another sip from the bubbles.

“It’s goin’. Maybe not how I want, but, what are ya gonna do, ya know” she said with a humorless chuckle.

Tommy gave one back and took a sip of his own drink.

“Do…do you wanna talk about it?”

The man couldn’t get over why he cared so much. What had the girl done for him? Why was he treating her like an actual human being? These questions that remained unanswered for quite some time had been plaguing him but that didn’t stop him from talking to her.

“I can’t burden you with this shit, Tommy” she replied as she looked over at him. He turned on his stool toward her and gave her a one shoulder shrug with a small smile.

“I got all night. You’re my ride, remember?”

Abigail gave him a genuine smile – the first since the phone call – and nodded.

“It’s just been a long fucking day” she trailed off, wiping the perspiration off of her bottle.

Tommy looked around and saw an empty booth in the corner of the bar that had no neighbors. He gently tugged on the sleeve of her shirt and motioned his head for it.

“Come on.”

He stepped off of the stool, Abigail in tow, and slid into the comfortable maroon leather, placing his bottle on the wooden table. She followed suit and took a deep breath as Tommy slid his jacket off to reveal a long sleeve grey thermal. God, he was so handsome.

“Let me hear it” he coaxed and took a sip from his beer.

Abigail ran a hand through her long hair and rested her head on her propped up hand. She waited a few seconds to get her thoughts together without sounding like a whiny child.

“Do you ever…realize how the person that calls themselves your parent is the biggest most hypocritical asshole you could ever meet?”

Tommy’s breathe caught in his throat, but nodded, not wanting to interrupt the girl.

“I’ve been in this fucking town for three, almost four years now, and all of the sudden; my father wants to be my best friend. As a child, it was me and my mom, all day, every day, and he was always on business trips, he was at the office, and blah blah blah. The move to Washington after the divorce, her move back, her getting sick, my move back, and me taking care of her…where the fuck was he? Nowhere to be found, just like now, but now, he’s decided to take on the fatherly role when I needed him fifteen years ago.”

Abigail ran both hands though her hair and rested her head on them as she was trying to steady her nerves. She was nearly shaking with anger by the time her rant was over. She let one of her arms on the table and placed her hand on her beer. Tommy sat there and reached across the table to rest his large hand atop hers. She looked up and they locked eyes.

“I know people say this all of the time, and it may sound empty, but…I know how you feel.”

Abigail’s eyes remained on him as his became darker with his unspoken past. The man had been through hell and back but the most Abigail knew about him was his name, his number, and where he lived.

“It’s just, it’s just so fucking frustrating. I don’t hear from him for years on end, but when I do, it’s to invite me over for lunch or just an obligatory call to ask how works is, like he gives a shit what I’m doing” Abigail added as she took another sip out of the bottle.

Tommy kept his hand on hers and nodded. He took a breath to take her information in, and decided that the only way to make her feel a bit better was to know she wasn’t alone.

“My father was the same way. He wasn’t around but when he was, we had to fend for ourselves and find new hiding spots. My mother was everything to me, and he found a way to ruin that for me, too.”

Abigail nodded, thinking of her mother in her trials of weakness, which was, unfortunately, the only way to put it.

“I just can’t comprehend everything she did for him. Even after the divorce, she defended him until the day she died and he wasn’t even there. I can’t even hear his voice without wanting to scream my head off, ya know?”

“Yes, I do” Tommy responded as he retracted his hand from hers and picked his beer bottle up to take a sip.

“I can’t be like her, Tommy. I won’t. She was the most caring, beautiful, selfless woman in the world, but…she was weak. It hurts to say it, but, even during the divorce, she just let him belittle her and she grinned and bared it. I can’t be like that.”

Tommy just stared at the girl and as she was describing her mother, he couldn’t help but picture his own. They were the same woman and her truth pained him. The nights he would come home as a child and seeing his mother thrown against the couch as his father screamed awful names at her had scarred him for life and now it was all he saw when he looked at his old man.

“Then don’t.”

Abigail looked at the man and held eye contact with him for a few seconds, just trying to read him. Prying into those beautiful hazel irises, digging for an answer. Before she could continue searching, he spoke again.

“No one’s asking you to be like her. You’re a strong girl, Abigail. We haven’t known each other that long but if you care that much about not being like her, you’re already stronger than her. She did what she had to do, but it ended up hurting her in the end.”

Abigail was starting to get choked up at his words. They were true, and that was something she already knew, but it was different when someone else was saying it. She always thought no one could understand, but being he had lived through it, as well, she would be foolish not to listen to him.

“Yeah” was the only response she could come up with.

The two sat in the booth for what seemed like forever and their table was scattered with beer bottles. Before they knew it, Declan was shouting last call and a lot of the patrons had already left.

“Ya wanna get outta here” Abigail asked as she was coming down from a small laugh high that Tommy had given her.

Tommy took a last sip from his beer and nodded at the girl with a smile as she started getting up and grabbing her purse and sweater. He stood up from the booth and gathered his coat and started slipping it on as the old man behind the bar was shouting goodbyes, along with the few bar flies that Abigail was familiar with. They got into the car together and the heat was immediately put on.

“It’s getting way too goddamn cold” Abigail said mostly to herself as she rubbed her hands together.
Tommy looked over at her and smiled to himself at how pretty she looked under the bright lights of the McHale’s sign and how the reflection of the dew on the windshield made her hair sparkle in the driver seat and how her rosy cheeks got a lot darker now that they were outside.

They were halfway down the highway when Abigail decided to speak up.

“Thank you, Tommy.”

The man looked over and adjusted the hat on his head.

“For what?”

She smiled to herself and flicked her blinker on when the car was approaching the turn into their neighborhood.

“For everything. For tonight, and for listening. It helped a lot.”

Tommy gave her a polite smile and she looked over at him.

“Of course, Abigail. It’s no problem.”

Abigail pulled down his road and they were nearing his house.

“You can call me Abby if you want, not that it matters but, everyone else does.”

Tommy looked at her and smiled as she stopped in front of the house he had grown up in.

“Sure, Abby.”

She grinned like a child as he unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door. Before he could escape for the night, Abigail called his name, making him turn around.

“Listen, um, my friend and I are going to McHale’s tomorrow to just relax and have a night out. If you didn’t already plan on being there, do you want to come?”

Tommy smiled and walked back to the car a bit and leaned his arm on the door frame.

“Uh, yeah, sure. I can meet you guys there. I have training tomorrow, so I’ll come over after.”

Training? She felt rude to ask, so she didn’t. She nodded and the two said goodnight to each other.

For the second time, she couldn’t wait to see Tommy again. The stranger that she had pretty much aired her dirty laundry to but cared enough to listen was starting to grow on her a bit and tomorrow would be the first weekend she was looking forward to.