Chapter 9 Summer
I hate him.
It’s the sole thought bouncing in my exhausted brain as I stare at the shadows on my speckled ceiling.
By this time on a regular Monday, I’d have already made it home from a sunrise surf session, showered the salt water out of my hair, and thrown together two breakfast smoothies before heading out to meet an awaiting Parker, no less than fifteen minutes late for work.
But I couldn’t stomach the thought of surfing today, for obvious reasons. I consider blowing off work altogether. But then I’m reminded that the alternative is to continue lying in this bed, thinking about how much I hate Parker Woods.
And I really need to stop thinking about him.
So, I bounce off the bed. Don’t even bother righting the peach-colored comforter thrown around during hours of tossing and turning, and head to my closet to get dressed for work.
I debate the merits of makeup before catching sight of my tired, blotchy face in the mirror above my dresser, and then reach for the most heavy-duty concealer in my possession.
The brightest blush. The shiniest gloss.
I’m looking for a hairbrush when my eyes catch on the floating shelves next to the mirror.
They’re a cluttered mess, like everything else in my apartment.
Too many picture frames and fading Polaroids.
An old, sparkly green party hat. Mason jars filled with colorful, mini paper airplanes covered in years’ worth of teenaged secrets and jokes and stories flung at me from where Parker sat several rows toward the back of our classrooms.
Every inch of those shelves is covered in him, and it fills me with rage all over again that he, out of everyone, would have been so damn careless with me.
I consider launching the jars out of my window as hard as I can, hoping at least one of them shatters against his own window across the street.
But my aim’s always been shit, despite the years my football-playing friends tried to remedy it.
Odds are, it would hit an unsuspecting pedestrian below, giving this town even more reason to gossip about me after last night’s street-side display.
Humiliation wells inside me, threatening tears. Instead, I layer on another coat of my darkest, least waterproof mascara.
Because I will not cry today.
I will be the happy employee I’ve always been. The most dedicated trainer to my clients. I will not give anyone a reason to pity me, or hate me, or judge me even more than they already must for a transgression I didn’t know I was committing.
I don’t bother with the smoothies this morning, seeing as I’m down both an appetite and a best friend, so I bypass the kitchen and head straight for the front door. Plaster on a bright smile as my hand closes around the knob.
I will not cry today. I will not—
The door swings inward, a large shape falling at my feet. Parker startles awake as his head bounces off the ground. He blinks, disoriented, still in yesterday’s clothes.
God damn this man. The sob that’d been stifled by anger somewhere around dawn breaks free, tears falling.
“Summer.” Parker scrambles to his feet. He reaches for me but pauses with his hands in the air when I step back.
“What are you still doing here?” The mirror by the door shows black streaks already running down my cheeks, and I wipe them away angrily. “I thought slamming the door in your face was sending a pretty clear message.”
“Please, give me two minutes. Thirty seconds. Let me explain, apologize—”
“I’d have liked an explanation weeks ago, before I spent my time helping a scumbag cheat on his innocent fiancée.
” Giving up on my face, I brush past him out of my apartment.
He hurries after me. “You want to know the worst part? What he did, what he roped me into? It probably makes me a prime candidate for intensive therapy. And, yeah, odds are pretty low that I’ll ever date again. But I’ll get over it eventually.”
I pivot to face him. It’s so abrupt, Parker’s momentum carries him several steps past me.
“You, though? You weren’t thinking about me when you forgot to find me a date.
You weren’t thinking about me when you set me up with a stranger off the street.
Didn’t think of me at all when you put me in a situation where a nearly married man touched me and kissed me and made me all kinds of promises I was desperate enough to believe.
And you sure as fuck weren’t thinking about me when you made that scene in front of the entire town last night.
You, the person I’d have trusted with my life, put me here.
You got my heart broken. You humiliated me in front of people who watched me grow up.
And that’s something I’m never getting over. ”
I don’t wait for a reply. I stride down the stairs and onto the busy street, trying to scrub Parker’s shattered look out of my head and hoping it’s just my imagination when people turn to stare in my direction.
People do stare.
All day, they stare as my car drives through town. When I’m in the gym, setting up for my next client. They stare whenever, despite myself, I scan the rehab center for the head of pale brown hair I’ve never gone a workday without.
Parker never shows up to work. But every time I start to feel guilty for letting him have it, I catch another glance in my direction. Another couple of people whispering as I park my car outside my place at the end of the day.
Charity Reynolds, whose son Cameron was in the grade below mine in high school, wanders down the sidewalk just as I step out of the driver’s seat. It must be the years I’ve spent chatting up the other locals whenever I bump into them, because a smile breaks over my face out of habit.
“Hey, Charity. Haven’t seen you in a while!” Charity acknowledges me with a minuscule nod though she doesn’t stop walking. For some reason, I persist. “How’s Cameron doing these days? He was thinking about moving back to town, right?”
The disdain in her eyes is blatant as anything. “He’s married. Happily.”
I hear a snort from somewhere behind me.
“That’s… that’s great.” Charity has already meandered across the street but I flee into my apartment before anyone else can catch a glimpse of me.
Inside, the stifling silence takes me by the throat. It presses into me from all angles until it physically hurts. Like I do every time this happens, I sit on my sofa and force my gaze across the apartment, over the shelves and walls covered in frames.
That picture at the very top of my bookcase?
That’s me and my former client Merrill Hunt, after his first NBA game.
On the gallery wall surrounding the TV, the time Parker broke us into our old high school for a midnight pool party with Melody and Zac when we were sixteen.
Me and my co-volunteers, on our boards after last year’s final Surf’s Up event.
Me and Callie at her sixtieth birthday down at the pub.
My dad and Estelle, with me sandwiched between my half-brothers in front of a lit-up tree, two Christmases ago.
Long minutes pass as I try to let the pictures do their job: remind me I’m far from alone whenever the loneliness creeps in.
Tonight, though?
When I’m single again—if those weeks with Denny could even be called a relationship—and getting shunned and judged by the people who became my family when my parents left town… With this morning’s unanswered text to my dad, asking if he had a minute to talk…
I allow myself a single quick glance out of my window. The blinds are open at Parker’s, and though the sun has long passed a spot in the sky that brightens his apartment, there’s not a single light on.
I’m not sure I can get through even a text conversation without laying into him right now.
And I’m terrified I’ve already done irreparable damage to us this morning.
We’ve fought plenty over the years, but never like this—never in a way that felt like I put a flaming torch to our friendship and walked away while it crumbled.
A knock at the door pulls me out of my head, away from the last, broken look Parker gave me this morning. “Summer, it’s us!”
I close my eyes at the sound of Melody’s voice. I’ve been avoiding my friends all day, not wanting to get into the events of last night and having no energy to talk about much else.
Dragging my feet down the short hall, I pause at the mirror by the door when I catch sight of my haggard appearance.
Get it together, Prescott.
I wipe tears, comb hair, slap on a smile. They’ve got husbands and a kid and enough to contend with without concerning themselves with the pit of despair inside this apartment.
The door swings open to reveal Mel and Shy wearing identical pitying looks. I pop a hip, leaning against the doorframe. “Why the long faces?”
Awkward silence stretches several beats before Shy indicates the paper bags she’s holding over each hip. “Siena sent provisions—they had to fly home late last night. There’s wine in this bag, hard liquor in this one. And she asks that you please answer her calls.”
I gesture to the box in Melody’s arms. “Who sent that one?”
“Parker left it for me to pick up.”
His name is a boulder plummeting in my stomach, disturbing the momentary peace that’s come over me at the sight of my friends.
I pluck a paper bag out of Shy’s arm and head for the kitchen.
They watch in silence as I uncork a bottle of wine and lift it to my mouth, guzzling liquid until coming up for air becomes a critical necessity.
“I appreciate you coming to check on me. But, as you can see, I’m absolutely fine.
” They stare pointedly at the bottle I’m cradling to my chest. “All right, so my feelings got a little dinged up. And, sure, I probably won’t date again until…
well, probably until I die. But if you’re going to be here, it can’t be a pity party.
I need feminine rage. The Fuck All Men Brigade. ”
Shy winces. “I’m more of the let’s-talk-about-our-feelings type.”