CH 11

After the movie they went to bed. Carter crawled in bed beside Abby and put his arms around her. She lay with her back against Carter's chest but she couldn't sleep. She lay there for a long, long time until Carter's breathing evened out and she knew he was asleep. She slowly crawled out of his arms and onto the floor under the window, her favorite spot to sit when she hated herself, which was a lot of the time. She sat there and thought about Carter. He was sleeping so sound that he didn't even know she wasn't lying beside him. Abby felt a twinge of guilt thinking about him - he'd be upset if he knew she was sitting on the cold floor on the middle of the night feeling sorry for herself. She couldn't sleep; she'd slept so much during the day after crying that now she couldn't. She knew she had to work the next afternoon and that she'd probably be exhausted but it was a welcome change. Carter wouldn't be on until midnight and she was off at eleven so she wouldn't have to see him at work She was glad for that, she wasn't ready to work with him yet she didn't want him to be all protective at work. The last thing she needed was for him to act different and make other people ask questions.

Abby sat on the floor for a couple more hours until the cold was too much to bear finally she crawled back into bed.

Abby woke up early the next morning even though she'd hardly slept the night before. She got up and went to the kitchen to make coffee. When the coffee was made she sat at the kitchen table with her mug and thought about how, for the first time in a long time, she was looking forward to work. She just needed to get away from Carter. She felt like she was being suffocated, like he watched her every move as though she was going to shatter into a million pieces at any moment. Granted, she did feel like that at times, but this was her life, she'd been doing this for a long time and she knew how to deal with it. She wasn't going to suddenly shatter. She was going to have a hard time getting out from under Carter's watchful eye and today she needed a break. She hated herself for everything she'd admitted to him the night before. It scared the crap out of her. She knew that Carter thought it would make her feel better to talk to him and get things out, but he didn't know about the guilt she felt for telling him. How she felt like a failure for breaking down in front of him. She hated that she opened up to him; it left her feeling vulnerable and afraid, both feelings she hated.

'You should be afraid, you should feel guilty. All you're doing is burdening him with all these awful things. You're supposed to keep the burden not share it. All you're doing is hurting him' she told herself.

She didn't want to face him today, she wished she could close her eyes and take yesterday away. She wanted to go back to being alone. Anything was better then this unbelievable feeling of overwhelming panic that washed over her every time she thought about what Carter now knew. Suddenly Abby's fear got the best of her. She didn't want to be there when Carter woke up, she couldn't face him right now. She sneaked back into her room and gathered her clothes together. She crept into the bathroom to change, then she wrote Carter a note telling him she had errands to run and then she was heading straight to work at three. She left the note on the kitchen table and left the apartment as quietly as she could.