Chapter 8 Summer
With a parting wave at our table, I let Denny lead me across Oakley’s and onto the busy main street. It’s warm outside even with the sun setting, and every few feet the cobblestone sidewalk is occupied by someone I know.
I wave at Callie, the silver-haired boutique owner benefitting from my shopping addiction since I earned my very first teenaged paycheck.
“Headed home already, Miss Life of the Party?” she says as we pass on the way to the crosswalk. “I’ve never known you to quit on a night out this early.”
“It’s my fault.” Denny tucks me into his side. “It’s hard to resist her sitting next to me.”
“Well, isn’t that sweet.” Callie’s eyes widen in delight. She’s had a front-row seat to the many retail therapy sessions needed after crappy dates. “And what are your intentions with our Summer, young man?”
“Cal!” I shoot her a warning look, but she only gives me a teasing smile in return. “This is my friend, Denny.”
“Friend?” Denny nudges me. “Do you let all your friends whisk you out of a bar for…”
“A gentlemanly kiss at her front door, and absolutely nothing else?” Callie supplies.
Denny shoots her a wink, Callie laughs, and I’m trying to keep myself in check, trying to play it cool. But I can’t remember the last time I’ve been happy like this.
“Well, don’t let me keep you. You lovebirds have a good night.” Callie squeezes my shoulder before heading for a small group gathered in front of Oakley’s. They all wave happily when they spot me. Lisa, who owns Oakley’s with her husband, clutches her chest when Denny presses a kiss to my temple.
“This town loves you,” Denny muses as we cross the street to my apartment.
I smile. “I’ve lived here all my life. Callie’s wife used to babysit Parker, Mel, and me.”
“You ever think about moving out of here?”
“When I was younger, definitely. But I love it. Love the people. Love being near the water.” And when my parents up and left, building new families without me, people like Callie and Lisa rallied around me. Made me feel like I still had a home.
Denny pulls me into his chest outside of my apartment building.
I feel like someone else. Someone who hasn’t been bloodied by years on the dating circuit, hasn’t wondered if there was something so fundamentally wrong with her that it drove men away, her father included, then drove her toward the worst kind of them.
For once, I’m basking in real possibilities, beyond the delusional fantasies. I’m feeling wanted and longed for, and I don’t want it to end.
“Get your keys out. I think I can actually hear your bed calling our names.” Denny leans in for a kiss. Quite possibly, I might be the happiest girl in the—
An angry shout echoes around us, bouncing off the brick buildings lining the street. I jolt away from Denny like I’ve been slapped by it.
Parker marches across the street. His hair is a mess, standing up at odd angles as though he’s spent hours tugging at it, though I barely saw him a few minutes ago. The closer he gets, the clearer I can see the absolute, terrifying fury in his eyes.
For a silly moment, I assume he’s ticked off I headed home without saying goodbye. He’d still been in the washroom when we left, and I’d been relieved to have a reason to avoid him after the things I said.
“Parker,” I say when he’s close. Strangely, I register a faint fuck from Denny. “I’m sorry we snuck out—”
“Get your hands off her.”
Too late, I realize his attention isn’t on me. It’s on Denny. And my horrified gasp is overshadowed by the grunt of pain out of Denny as Parker grabs his shirt, slams him into my building, and drives his fist right into Denny’s face.
“Parker, what the fuck?” I take the back of his shirt and try to heave him off a winded Denny. But Parker doesn’t budge, barely even registers me. I’ve never seen him this incensed. It’s like he’s been sucked into a vortex of rage, just him and his prey.
“Parker, stop.” I take his arm instead, tugging, pushing, trying everything I can to get his attention. “Have you lost your damn—”
Parker reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a phone I recognize as Denny’s. And that’s all it takes for my heart to stall. For that familiar sinking feeling to take hold of me. That I’m an idiot moment I inevitably get at some point during a date. The I should have seen this coming.
My arms fall limp at my sides. I suck in a breath as I take in Denny’s face, the one that’s been buried in my hair, my neck, whichever part of me he could reach for weeks.
“Come clean,” Parker seethes. “Come clean right now and I’ll consider letting you leave with your life.”
I swallow. “Parker. Maybe we should do this inside.”
“Summer, he’s getting married!”
Getting married.
Getting married.
Parker’s voice bounces in my head, over and over. There’s a sob, or maybe vomit, crawling up my throat. My mouth snaps shut in an effort to stop it.
Parker’s expression flickers from fury to concern to regret. That’s where it stays, his shoulders deflating, brows pulling together, fingers falling from Denny’s shirt as he faces me.
“He has a fiancée back home,” he whispers. “Summer, I’m so sorry. She called his phone and I picked up. He’s getting married.”
“I heard you.” For the first time since he stormed across the street, I become aware of our audience. Callie, Lisa, and her husband, Jim. Wynn Sheffield, the owner of the shuttered diner. Four people I’ve grown up knowing, all gaping at us from across the street.
That’s Ken Matthews, a football coach at UOB, and his wife, Gina, staring at me from just a few yards down this sidewalk. She leans into him, and even from here I can hear the word affair she whispers to her husband.
My eyes burn. “I think everyone in town heard you.”
Even if they didn’t, they’ll all know by sunrise. It’s how it went with my mother’s affair, why she only lasted here a few months before fleeing across the Atlantic.
Free of Parker, Denny straightens off the brick wall. “Maybe we should head upstairs and talk, Summer.”
Parker’s face snaps right back to fury. I take hold of his arm before he can get his hands on Denny.
“Why would you…” I swallow hard, losing my words. “Is this an affair?”
Denny gives me a funny look. “Summer, come on. We’re having fun, aren’t we?”Do not fucking cry.
My mouth opens as though to say something more, and I scream at my brain to cooperate.
To release the how could you and fuck you and tell her I’m sorry I want to throw at him.
But that thick sob surges again, and it’s all I can do to head for the door to my walk-up, searching through my purse for keys with violently shaking hands.
I’m vaguely aware of Parker saying something behind me—to me or Denny, I have no idea.
But the moment I’m through the open door he’s right there, taking my bag from me, steadying me when my knees almost give out, helping me up the stairs as I shove air into my lungs in short bursts. Trying so hard to keep it together.
I’m used to this. Crying over a man or the lack of a man. Done it plenty of times.
I’ve always been able to see the end coming, whether at the tail end of another long night pretending to give a shit about video games, or two minutes into yet another dead-end date.
This one, though? This one has me stumbling down the hall, gutted and empty.
Winded by the neck-breaking shift in gear.
One second zipping through the final stretches of a dark tunnel, blinded by the bright lights of possibility at the end.
Only to come crashing into a wall of pain and humiliation, crippling loneliness, and pure defeat.
Parker is speaking but I don’t register any of it. Because I give up. I fucking give up.
I’m done clinging to optimism only to discover it’s really delusion.
Done opening myself up only to come out of it with my heart chipped even smaller than the state in which the guy before left it.
Done dusting myself off and throwing myself back into the fray, pretending every ending doesn’t ache more than the last.
I’m so done being hurt by men.
The man who ruined the perfect marriage I thought my parents had. The man who got himself a fresh new life without me, new children and all. The man standing right in front of me, unlocking my apartment with the spare key I gave him the day I moved in.
A flame erupts deep inside me, shoving anger through my veins.
I’m grateful for it, the way it dulls my urge to cry.
Of course, I’d wondered where Denny had come from, the night Parker introduced us.
But we connected so quickly I hadn’t thought to question the fact that I know all of Parker’s friends. All his coworkers and clients.
Parker opens the door and ushers me in first, dropping my purse on the small table in the hall. “The guys are downstairs wanting to be let up. I guess people in Oakley’s heard the commotion.”
“Tell them to go home. I don’t want to see anyone.” Fury races through me. Of course news has already spread. He should’ve known better than to make a scene in a town like ours. “I’ve put so much effort into trying to vet dates for you for weeks, and this whole time… Who is he, Parker?”
Parker turns slowly to face me. “Summer…”
“Who is he? How do you know him? Why did you think to set us up?” I take step after step toward him, and my rage must be palpable because he lets me drive him backward, through the open front door and out into the hallway.
Dread and anxiety occupy every inch of his face—this face I trusted with everything, for years and years of my life.
Parker, the one guy I thought would never dream of hurting me.
Who’s always been careful with me, the same way I’ve been careful with him.
“Who did you let into your so-called best friend’s life?
Who did you trust with my heart? Who did you let me waste my time on? Answer me.”
An eternal pause. Finally, Parker’s shoulders lift and fall in sheer resignation. He looks miserable, but manages to look me in the eye. “I met him right before I introduced you.”
I slam the door in his face.