She's got an apple in her hand, red and glistening as she tosses is back and forth, back and forth, her eyes following as it arches through the air. She's fixed herself up nice today, but I'm too afraid to say so, and she'd probably get mad – Abbi's not the type to gratefully accept a compliment. Her lips still look vaguely coloured anyways, as she pouts, sighing restlessly.

"I'm bored as fuck," she complains, tossing the apple a little higher (though she never fails to catch it).

From where I lean against the trunk of the tree hiding us from the sun, I try smiling at her. This shady little park – the one beside the library, where you find stoners and sluts at night and broken beer bottles and used condoms in the morning – has sort of become 'our place'. It was a great place at first. I still have a few photographs of when she fell asleep on me here, but now it feels like we're coming back to it just to try and reclaim that feeling.

"We could…" I start, but she cuts me off.

"Oh, it's too damn hot to do anything, French."

"I was going to say we could take the bus down to the waterfront, and–"

"I'd rather not. You know I don't swim."

I feel like protesting – well, I do swim, and if you want you can just wade in to cool off – but somehow, I really doubt it would be worth it. Arguing with Abbi is never worth it.

So I keep my mouth shut as she crawls over to me, the apple abandoned, and pushes my shoulders back against the tree. The bark digs into my back and her fingernails are pressing hard into my skin, almost hard enough to break skin – I kiss her anyways. I know she wants me to. She kisses me back eagerly, tongue warm and wet in my mouth and my hands on her hips. I never really did get what a big deal kissing is, but Abbi seems to like it a lot, so we kiss all the time. We kiss and we kiss until I finally have to turn my head away to get a proper breath in.

Sulking a little, Abbi crawls back over to her bag and retrieves her apple from it, and sneaks glances at me as she nibbles on it.

"Well, that killed a little bit of time," she says dismissively, like it didn't matter at all. Like I'm just a hobby of hers, something she could drop anytime. "What now?"

I shrug, not really caring, and she glares at me a little.

"You know, French…."

But she just sinks her teeth deep into the flesh of the apple again, letting her train of thought drift away into the late summer morning. She could drop me anytime, but I don't think she will. We've been doing this for almost two months now, and though she complains and whines and threatens to ruin me, she still hasn't.

Some people just like the sound of words when they're worried people aren't really there.