Chapter 10 Parker
Guilt tears at me as Summer tugs the black baseball cap down her forehead, obstructing nearly the entire top half of her face from view.
She’s all the way across the gym putting away the equipment she’d been using during Quentin’s session, lifting and racking his hundred-pound weights with impressive ease.
On a typical day I’d wander over to help her, making noise about the weights being too heavy for her, too rough on her delicate hands.
Pushing and prodding at her until she inevitably challenges me to the bench press contest that she always loses, but attacks with the kind of gusto that says she truly believes today might be the day she beats me.
Instead, I remain stuck to the workout bench I’m sitting on. I found my peace offering donut in the trash in the staff offices, along with yesterday’s donut and the accompanying apologies written on our pink Post-it notes.
I fucked up, in a multitude of ways.
Donuts and paper planes won’t do a thing to fix the town gossip I started, nor Denny’s treatment of her, but I hoped they’d entice her to speak to me. Look at me. Acknowledge me in any way.
I’ve got a best friend who pretends I don’t exist, while the very thought of laying eyes on her is the only thing that makes dragging myself to work in the mornings worthwhile.
Between school and work and the vacations we’d take with the rest of our friends when we were younger, I haven’t spent more than a few hours without her in… as far back as my earliest memories.
I’ve never had to miss Summer, and I envy the me from before. Blissfully unaware of this agony.
“She’s still icing you out? It’s been… what?” Over my shoulder, Noah’s face is screwed up in thought. I hadn’t even noticed him arrive. “Two days?”
Two days, fifteen hours, and thirty-three minutes to be exact.
I don’t bother correcting him. Instead, I count to three, then five, then twenty, and force myself off the bench to get our session started.
Noah shakes his head. “People really think she’d go after an almost-married man on purpose?”
“You know how it is here. Small town with nothing better going on.” I’ve been snapping the truth at anyone I overhear talking about it.
Not that it’s helped. The gossip seems too salacious to part with, especially with Summer’s family history.
More entertaining than the truth. “It was the same with the bullshit they were spreading about me.”
Noah looks amused. “That was bullshit?”
“Hey, Prescott.” Don’s booming voice travels across the gym. Summer peers at him from under the brim of her hat, shoulders hitching toward her ears as though bracing for impact. Every head in the vicinity turns to look at her.
Don points to his own head. “What’d I say about hats while you’re on the clock?”
“What the hell’s with that guy?” Noah mutters.
“There’s not enough time in the world to explain Don.”
Summer peels the hat from her head. She avoids any and all eye contact as she heads to the offices.
I hurry after her, sucking down the trail of floral perfume she leaves behind. “Summer.”
She doesn’t stop walking. Doesn’t even look at me. Changes direction and slips into the women’s washroom, swinging the door shut in my face.
At three days, fourteen hours, and sixteen minutes, my stomach growls with hunger, drawing Noah’s eye.
He gestures to the sleeve of donuts in my lap. “You can take a minute to eat if you need to. I can go warm up.”
“They’re not for me.” I tried filling the growing pit inside me with any food I could get my hands on a couple of days ago, but the realization came quick that it wasn’t going to help me.
Help this.
The mounting soreness in my shoulders, and the thickening fog in my head.
This feeling like I’m both empty and so full of lead I can barely make my limbs function the way they should.
I’ve been fighting this growing pit for weeks, months, only for it to be dwarfed by the Summer-shaped crater now inside me.
“Then I’ll have one if you’re offering,” Noah says. “I only had time for a quick breakfast, and—”
Summer waves goodbye to her client, and I bolt off the bench. The sudden movement in the wall of mirrors catches her attention, and the way she glances at my reflection is as close to eye contact as we’ve made in days.
“Summer—”
She tucks her chin, fiddling with the rack of free weights lining the mirrors.
I thrust the box of donuts toward her. “If you’re hungry, Wynn baked them fresh this morning. They’re still warm.”
“Noah?” she calls over her shoulder. “You in the mood for donuts?”
He strolls over. “The better question is, am I ever not in the mood for donuts?”
Summer plucks the box from my hands, pushes it on Noah, and walks away. He shrugs, downing half a donut in one bite. “At least she didn’t toss them in the trash this time.”
At four days, fifteen hours, and forty-eight minutes, Noah plants his hands on his hips. “I’ve been given strict instructions from your sister to make you answer your texts by any means necessary. She and Zac are worried about you.”
“My phone died.” Last I checked, it wasn’t just them texting. Brooks has been calling me nonstop. But I don’t have it in me to answer. I’m exhausted, barely able to keep it together at work, let alone long enough to entertain a dozen questions about my questionable well-being.
“So… charge it?”
“Can’t find my charger.”
Across the gym, Don emerges from his office with a pair of men in crisp suits I’ve never seen before.
He walks them to the exit, shaking their hands, exchanging pleasantries, looking pleased with himself.
I find Summer where she’s spotting her client.
She’s noticed the suits, too—I catch her frowning in the mirror.
And then she looks for me, probably out of habit, but it’s enough to cast a spotlight of warmth on me.
I’d known I was cold without her, but it takes her looking at me to know just how frigid I’ve been.
That same feeling when I emerge from relentless AC in this ice-cold gym and into the summer sun.
The way my skin prickles with relief, sunrays sinking deep.
Her gaze falls away the moment she finds me staring. Just like that, I’m drenched in shade again.
I feel like I’ve been hurtling down this path for months. Colors turning increasingly dull and then gray. Destinations dwindling, navigation system flickering. Directionless. Ambitionless. Now without the glue that held me together.
Noah looks me up and down, not a speck of his usual amusement to be found. “Are you all right?”
At five days, twenty hours, and eleven minutes, I leave yet another draining day at work. And for the first time in years, instead of heading down to Oakley’s early to save our Summer Friday table before the dinner rush, I crawl into bed.
I moved into my apartment on the day I turned twenty-three.
By then, my parents had sold their house and left town.
Zac had been avoiding me at every turn after we’d disagreed over his high school feelings for my sister, who was off in the big city she’d dreamed of living in since we were kids.
Brooks was in LA for his first stint in the NFL.
I didn’t see any of them that birthday, but I never felt their absence.
I’d finally rented this brand-new, adult apartment after years of roommates in college.
And I had Summer in a sparkly green party hat, sitting across from me on the empty living room floor.
It had been my hat originally, but the shimmering pink one she’d brought herself fell apart the moment she put it on.
She’d looked so miffed over that stupid broken hat.
And then so elated when I’d slipped my own on top of her head.
We ate too much cheap pizza, drank even worse prosecco before switching to more reliable soft drinks.
Then she led me around the empty apartment, describing in precise detail exactly where I should put the couch once I got one.
Which color curtains would match the pale gray walls I couldn’t be bothered to paint over.
I followed her down the hall toward the bedrooms, the pom-pom on her hat bouncing as she went.
She’d hemmed and hawed over the two bedrooms before deciding that I should take the smaller one to the right, because it had a view of the main street. She joked that one day she’d rent a place right across, and we could wave each other goodnight every day before falling asleep.
The waving thing never happened when she eventually moved into her place.
But I did take that bedroom. I suspect it was a kid’s room in a previous life, given the pencil lines marking measurements inside the closet door, growing higher with the years, and the glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck across the ceiling.
I’ve never thought about these stars too much, other than finding it mildly charming that a child had once stared up at them, pretending he was under the limitless sky outside.
Tonight, though, with the streetlights shining through the open curtains and the sounds of the busy street filtering in through the shitty soundproofing in this old building, that star-covered ceiling feels like it’s slowly inching down on me.
Has been, for the day or days or months since I got into bed.
There’s a buzzing in the hall alerting me that someone’s on the street trying to come up.
I don’t get out of bed, though. Anyone who matters has a key.
I called in sick at work a while ago and haven’t seen anyone since.
Haven’t managed to choke down more than a slice of plain bread here and there, whenever I get too lightheaded.
Another buzz and I turn over, pressing my face into the pillow. After a minute the sound ceases, leaving me in the relative silence of my bedroom. I picture that sparkly party hat, the bouncing pom-pom, willing myself to fall back asleep.
A deafening crash sounds somewhere in my apartment. Then rhythmic banging that I realize are stomping feet approaching my room.
I lift my head off the pillow, hoping for Summer. I don’t care if she’s come to forgive me or yell at me. I’ll take it all.
But it’s Melody barging into the room, flicking on the overhead lights with no regard for my retinas. She looks furious, though I can’t imagine what I’ve done to her seeing as I haven’t seen her since that night at Oakley’s.
“Good evening.” My voice is scratchy. “Make yourself at home, sis.”
Her glare is withering. “Zac’s been buzzing you downstairs for days. You’re ignoring my texts, and Brooks keeps getting your voicemail.”
I rub my face. “Zac’s been camping out on the sidewalk for days, waiting to be let up? You didn’t give him your key?”
“He has my key—confiscated it when I threatened to come set you straight last week. Something about giving you space if that’s what you need, and that you’ll come around when you’re ready.
” She plants her hands on her hips, standing at the edge of my bed.
My twin sister is tiny, almost a foot shorter than me and probably half my width.
But she’s got the most threatening scowl I’ve ever seen.
“I’m not nearly as patient. Get up. Zac’s holding us a table downstairs. ”
I flop back down on my pillow. “I don’t want to get up. It’s dark out. Nighttime. Sleep time.”
“It’s been sleep time for days, Parker. Six days, to be exact, and after you practically bullied me into a camping trip with our friends shortly after my last breakup, you can call this retribution.”
“Retribution? I was setting you up with Zac—who you married.” My head pops off the pillow. “Is this a setup? Will Summer be there?”
Mel’s expression flickers. It’s just a flash of pity before settling back into its stern mask, but that’s all I need to know. I tug the comforter higher up my body. Mel reaches over and flings it off me. I pull it back up. She flings it off again.
“Seriously, Mels?”
“Yes, seriously.” She looses a breath, and her body deflates. “Parker, you’re officially scaring me. All this sleeping, skipping work. Your apartment’s a mess. This isn’t… you.”
Little does she know, it is me. Me lately, anyway.
“Please, just come downstairs with me. Let’s get something to eat. We won’t even talk if you don’t want to.”
My sister’s eyes go pleading, and guilt whacks me over the head. It takes several long breaths to get me there, but eventually I manage a gravelly “okay.”