"Abby! I've been looking all over for you."
Abby looked up from the paperwork she was filling out to find Nick standing behind her. She smiled at him, "Hey!"
"Erm, Connor told me to give this to you," Nick held out one of the cream-coloured envelopes from the stationery storage room that had the ARC's logo and return address pre-stamped on it. Abby's name was scrawled across the front in Connor's handwriting. "He said he wanted to send it via post to make it extra special, but he couldn't remember his own address so he's hired me to be a postman for the day."
Abby giggled and took the letter from him eagerly. Connor had written back to her! It was things like this that made her love him so much. Nick was still standing and watching her though and she didn't want to read it in front of him so she tucked it into her purse.
"Thanks Cutter. So, what's the pay in the mail field like these days?" she teased him.
Nick grinned at her, "Absolutely zilch, but I wanted to come and talk to you anyway."
He had her full attention now, "About what?"
"Connor."
Abby bit her lip nervously, wondering if there was some issue that she was going to have to take sides in. "What about Connor?"
"Abby, I don't want to see him get hurt and I want to make sure that he's not reading more into something than he should be. He told me that you've been writing him love letters a few times a week."
Nick waited for a reaction from Abby, but she didn't say anything so he continued, "I was surprised to say the least, but when I got home and started thinking about it, I wondered if he might not be mistaken. That perhaps you just leave him some notes and he's mistaking them for something they aren't: wishful thinking kind of thing."
Abby still didn't respond and Nick could see that she was thinking carefully about her next words.
"Well, I can see that you aren't in the mood to talk, so I'll leave you to deal with it, Abby, but do be careful, yeah?"
Abby reached for Nick's sleeve, holding him back from leaving. "No, look, Cutter, I'm sorry, I just… Thank-you. You know, for looking out for him; we all know he needs a bit of looking after sometimes!" She chuckled a bit and then thought she'd have some fun with Nick. "I do leave him quite a few notes though; I guess I should be more careful. Here, I was just writing this one to him a moment ago. Could you please read it over and let me know if you think it could be misconstrued at all? I wouldn't want Connor to think it was something it wasn't."
Nick nodded and took the piece of paper that Abby had handed him, scanning over it.
Dear Connor,
I wish you had seen Lester's face today when I told him that we were late for work because you turned off your alarm clock so that it wouldn't keep waking us up. "That's the bloody point!" was his reaction I believe. I'm with you though, the thing is irritatingly annoying. I'd much rather be cuddled up to you in bed than filling out more field reports. I wish we'd hire a field co-ordinator to do all that sort of stuff, yeah? Anyway, I just thought I'd leave you this note to wish you a very happy day and tell you that I love you so very very very much. I miss you right now, even though you are just down the hall. Love Always, Abby.
Nick's mouth dropped a bit and then masked his expression and handed it back to Abby. "Yeah, well I guess Connor's not so much of an idiot after all. I thought it was pretty straight to the point actually. No mistaking that for anything it isn't."
He turned to leave the room and Abby called after him, "And what would that be, Cutter?"
Nick turned back to her with a smile on his face, "A love letter, definitely a love letter."
"Good. I'd hate it if he got that one wrong."
Nick just shook his head with a smile as he left the room.