Chapter Four: Two Step and Back

"’Lo?" His voice was groggy, and she considered briefly just hanging up the phone. "Abby?"

Dammit, she hated Caller ID.

"I didn’t wake you, did I?" she tried, keeping her voice as casual as possible. "Too early to be asleep, even if it is a school night."

Pause. She could hear the twist and rustle of sheets and bedding. "What’s wrong?" he asked.

She hesitated, not quite sure what she wanted to say and even less certain of why she called. Why the rumble of his quiet voice soothed the frayed edges of whatever it was that Kim stroked so deeply within her.

"Meet me at Loeb’s," he said into the silence. "I’ll be there in twenty minutes."

She put down the phone and once again contemplated her shaking hands. It was either a phone call or a bottle. Despite her words to Kim, her steady defiance that she could handle things, she knew she was too close to altogether too many edges.

She knew the air of inevitability that marked all their encounters was going to be her undoing one of these days. This evening, the familiar mixture of desire, fear and sheer need had surged into her throat when she recognized the low, hesitant tones of the woman on the other end of the line.It had drifted downward as they talked, floating her heart and soul in an ocean of tumult, until it settled somewhere deep between her legs as she had finally spoken the words aloud.

You… Tell me that I can have you…

Simple? Not exactly, but she was done trying to be the responsible one. From the sound of it, they all were.

And now with Luka. Her screwcorking open all the mess that he– of the lot of them– wanted the least to do with. Them all players in some Marx Brothers one-reel playing on the fringe of Shakespearean tragedy–her with her shaking hands and unslaked thirst; Kerry, her dogged stoicism and bleak eyes, unwilling to claim what she had and equally unwilling to let it go. And Kim– back to that languid promise of succor, that smile with the barest hint of acid, just enough to sting. None of them knew what the hell they were doing, and why did she think Luka could help figure it out?