“Open your eyes.”

Abby does, and after the blinks to readjust her sight, wonder and awe race across her face. “Oh...my...God. There’s thousands of them.”

Stars. She’s referring to the stars. We’re hours away from any city, a good forty-minute drive from the nearest expressway. We’re as far from civilization as we can get and by being here, we get to witness the world as God envisioned it, as God created it, and it is absolutely good.

I ease down beside Abby, allowing the skin of my arm to touch hers. “I was in eighth grade the first time my parents allowed me to come down here with Chris and his grandfather. Chris brought me and Ryan out here and we camped. Long after Chris and Ryan went to sleep, I lay on the grass and stared at the stars in the sky. Made me feel small.”

“You liked that?” There’s an unsure tone in her voice. “Feeling small?”

“Yeah. If I was small, then maybe my problems were, too.”

“I get that. I get that more than you’d think.”

We’re quiet for a bit and I don’t mind the silence. I tried counting the stars once, and I never got far. Always fell asleep before one hundred. “I’m going to quit the band.”

Abby leans up to her elbow. “Why?”

“Those guys—all they could talk about was music. Their music, other people’s music, arrangements, instruments, shots and dreams...I was more interested that they had a gig in Florida before the summer ended.”

Abby cracks a grin and nudges my ankle with her toe. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Beaches sounded good at the time. Don’t get me wrong, I like to play. Gives me something to do with my hands when I’m bored, but a deck of cards can do the same thing. They deserve someone who loves what they do as much as they do.”

Abby nods like what I said was insightful. “So you’re going to play baseball again?”

My stomach knots. “Maybe, but being a baseball player...that’s not me, either. I like to play. Gives me a hell of a rush, but Ryan’s a baseball player. He can’t live without the game.”

Just like Isaiah can’t live without cars and Chris can’t live without dirt beneath his feet. Sometimes, I think I’m more like Chris. I like the idea of owning something, not being underneath anyone else, my own successes and failures dependent on what I do or don’t do. Working in a place where I’m reminded, in a good way, how small I am.

I’m off-kilter with my diabetes admission and Dad’s rant. More than I care to be. Now that my friends know and they haven’t shoved me into a wheelchair or deathbed yet, I’m lost.

I’ve worked my entire life to not be the guy with diabetes, taking on whatever it is that was in front of me to prove it. If I’m the guy with diabetes and no one cares, then who am I? “Maybe I don’t know who I am.”

“I disagree with that. I think you’re mixing up what you want to do with the rest of your life with who you are. For instance, I think I would make a kick-ass high-level agent for the stars. Nobody would say no to me. I know what I want to do, but I have no idea who I am.”

I reach over and link Abby’s fingers with mine. “You want to be an agent for actors?”

She bitterly laughs. “No, but it sounded good. I get what you’re saying though. I’ve spent my whole life being Mozart’s daughter, the girl he saved from the junkie, Grams’s second chance, the street hustler for Ricky, the pet project for Linus. I don’t have a clue who I am. Do you think normal people ever feel like us? Like we’re so busy being what everyone in our lives say we are that we never have a chance to be anything else?”

“Who are normal people?” I ask.

“Not us.”

Not us.

“Truth?” she asks.

I squeeze her fingers. “Truth.”

“I like who I am more around all of you then I ever liked myself before. Sort of like I had been trying out other people’s skin like a girl trying on clothes. The person I was before I met any of you, the person I am when I’m not around any of you feels too tight, too scratchy, too irritating. But when I hang with any of you, it’s like I can breathe.”

That’s a big statement for Abby and I’m dumbfounded as to what to say. Instead, I gently pull on her hand until she tilts her body so that we’re facing each other.

“Bigger truth?” she whispers.

“Bigger truth.”

“I really, really like who I am when I’m around you.”

I tuck her hair behind her ear and enjoy the silky strands as they fall from my fingers. For months I ignored the truth, gave what was brewing between me and Abby other labels—attraction, friendship, playing around, lust.

While Abby definitely takes my breath away every time she walks into a room, there’s always been more between us and it’s time to man up. “Abby, I’m in love with you.”

Abby

I can’t breathe.

Logan’s in love with me. With me. And he knows all my dirty secrets. Not just the slightly-coated-with-dust secrets. The real deep muddy ones. The secrets that are so crusted over that they’re cemented into my soul. He knows all of these things, but he loves me anyhow.

“People don’t love me,” I whisper. Fear me. Leave me. Hate me. Use me. But love? Grams loved me but she left me mentally a long time ago and my father...I was the closest he had to experiencing emotion.

“I do.”