Chapter 15 Summer
The mattress underneath me is rock-hard. Nothing like the plushiness I’ve grown accustomed to since I got it years ago.
I’m not strictly uncomfortable. The bed is pleasantly warm, smells heavenly, and the pillows I must have arranged around me feel like a cozy cocoon.
It’s so comforting I could easily fall back asleep, were it not for the strange, rhythmic thump thump thump thump in my ear, slowly bringing me to full consciousness.
My eyes flutter. And they wrench all the way open when I realize I’m not in my bed.
This is Parker’s living room. Parker’s couch.
And that’s Parker lying underneath me. His hair is a mess over the throw pillow he’s using, eyes squeezed tight against the morning light filtering through the curtains.
He’s got one arm flung up over his head, and the other…
wrapped around me. Holding me tight to him, with his massive hand tucked underneath my tank top, cupping the curve of my waist.
What the hell happened last night?
And how is he so firm?
The second question is a stupid one—I know exactly how he got this way. I’ve watched him work out every day for years. But I didn’t know.
Remnants from last night litter Parker’s living room.
Soft drinks were eventually exchanged for copious beers.
He agreed to train me for Surf’s Up, we sealed the deal with too much alcohol, popped on a rom-com, and worked through a training program that’ll occupy the entirety of my spare time this summer.
Help me win the series. Qualify for the tour.
And ship me out of the town that’s let me down so deeply.
Or, as far as Parker is concerned, exact my revenge on Denny.
The night passed like plenty over the years—constant teasing and so much laughter my abs are sorer than if I’d powered through hundreds of sit-ups.
And yet, it had been nothing like before.
Because there’d also been touches lingering just a smidge past the point where they could pass as accidental. And then the staring.
Parker’s going through something—obviously, given the impulsive unemployment and the state of his apartment when I arrived. I’ve never known depressive episodes to lead to touching and staring at childhood friends, but if that’s what he needs to do…
I watch my fingers spread out over his soft T-shirt with deep fascination. The way they don’t dent him in the slightest when I press down, testing the firmness of his body.
Parker shifts underneath me and the movement has me sliding farther down his body.
The leg I had hooked over him knocks against the TV remote that somehow became wedged between us as we slept.
Perhaps the right thing to do would be to get up, go home, let him have his rest. But he’s still gripping my waist. And I’m comfortable.
So, careful not to wake him, I slide a hand between us, looking to dislodge the remote.
My hand closes around the offending object and two things happen simultaneously.
First, Parker moans. A thick, loaded moan that hits me right between the thighs. Sends lava rushing through my veins.
Second, I realize I don’t have my hand around a TV remote at all. It’s him. I’ve got my fingers curled around Parker’s hard-as-nails, thick-as-fuck—
“Oh my God,” I whisper-shriek, yanking back my hand. “Why is it so fucking big?”
And then things go from bad to worse. Parker releases a sigh, this soft sound I feel in every inch of my body, before mumbling, “Summer.”
Oh my God.
I’m paralyzed on top of him, my body cycling furiously through its options: fight, flight… wake him up and see if he’ll let me touch him some more. Wait, no—
“Get a grip,” I command myself in a whisper.
Carefully, I peel myself off Parker. Deliberately avert my eyes, because I am a gentlelady who’d never think to objectify my closest friend, and… My jaw actually drops.
Good grief. What does a man even do with a dick that big, anyway? It’s absurd. As is the sexual prowess that surely accompanies it—a man can’t simply go around stabbing that kind of thing into women, willy-nilly. That kind of package requires serious skill.
I wonder if anyone’s ever needed a vibrator to come with Parker. Probably not, but it would be just my shitty bedroom luck that I’d be the one to break his toy-less streak.
Hypothetically, of course.
Parker gives a satisfied hum, and I should really get up. Get out of this apartment and pretend I never saw, felt, heard any of this. Instead, my lust-addled brain shouts silent questions at him.
What am I doing to you?
What gets you moaning like that?
What makes your abs tense under your shirt like this?
A heartbeat blooms between my thighs, and I squeeze them together against the sudden demand for relief. I’ve gone my entire post-puberty life without going there with Parker. Maybe I’ve been curious about him after the things I’ve heard lately, but I’ve never once touched myself thinking about him.
It’s always felt… not wrong, but against some cardinal rule of friendship. Crossing a line I could never come back from. But fuck if it doesn’t take everything in me to stop from reaching down my leggings at the sound of his sighs.
And then his hand wanders down his own body, blindly looking for—reaching for—Parker’s fist closes around the shape of his cock. He groans. And I momentarily black out.
One second, I’m kneeling over him, soaking him in. The next I’m falling off the couch with a yelp. I smash into the coffee table. Beer bottles clink together, topple over. Parker jerks awake at the racket, eyes springing open, finding me crumpled on the floor.
“Summer?” His voice is thick with sleep but all I can hear is the way he moaned my name. I scramble to my feet, shoving my hair behind my ears.
“Good morning!” I flap my hands, frantically searching the room for my purse. “I was just leaving!”
“Why? It’s Saturday.” He runs a hand over his face, propping himself up on an elbow. “Stay. Let’s get breakfast.”
“Oh, no. That’s… No.” My bag lies under a discarded throw pillow and I toss the strap over my shoulder, looking anywhere but at him. I jab a thumb toward the door. “I’m going to go. Thanks for the visual—the visit! Thanks for the visit.”
Screaming inside my own brain, I shoot across the apartment and swing open the front door. Parker’s arm darts over my shoulder, snapping the door shut before I can escape.
“Summer.”
“Yes?” I squeak.
“Turn around, Summer.”
My forehead falls against the door. He’s standing so close I can feel his body heat. “I can’t.”
“Was I talking in my sleep?”
“Why would you think that?”
His exhale dusts over the back of my neck. My eyes fall shut. “I was dreaming about you.”
The shock of his brazen confession has me spinning around.
Parker stares at my mouth, the way my teeth dig into my lip.
Against my wishes, my own gaze falls down his body.
He’s clutching a cushion below his waist, as though the damage hadn’t already been done.
As though I’ll ever be able to scrub the sight of his absurdly enormous, utterly ridiculous—
“Looking for something?”
“No!” My stare zips up to meet his. “What on earth would I be looking for?”
His head tilts ever so slightly. “What indeed.”
“All right, fine.” I force a bright smile. An easy smile. Breezy as hell. “Look, we’re all adults here. There’s no need to feel awkward about this.”
The tilt of his head deepens. “Awkward about what?”
“The…” I can’t even say it. “You know what.”
“I assure you, I don’t. I was dead asleep until you made a racket.” His teeth scrape over his lip. “Feel awkward about what, Summer?”
“You might’ve… said… done… some things with…” Why? Why did I just gesture at his— “But as I said, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. These sorts of dreams happen to the very best of us.”
“I’m not embarrassed,” Parker says unflinchingly.
“Oh?”
“It’s my favorite dream.” My back presses against the door, head falls back to look up at him. He conducts his own assessment of me, gaze bouncing over my face. As though he’s given me an opening with that confession. And he’s waiting to see what I’ll do with it.
What the hell does he want me to do with it?
“Do you…” I clear my throat. “Have it often?”
“If I’m lucky. Why are you blushing so hard?” That head tilt goes even deeper. “Are we talking about the same thing?”
I hesitate. “We’re talking about the dream you just had. The one where you and me—”
“Go to the zoo and—”
“Have sex!” I finish at the same time. No. My hands fly up, clasping my cheeks. “What?”
“That… that time in the tenth grade when we went to the zoo. You dragged me to the insect pavilion and dared me to volunteer to have that tarantula crawl over me. I was so mad I let you talk me into it.” Parker’s brows pull together. “Wait. You thought we were—”
“Oh God, I’m never living this down, am I?” I wail, face heating furiously. I nudge at him, trying to create enough space to back off the door and make my escape, but he doesn’t move. “You were dreaming about the zoo?”
The shallowest of dimples appears in his left cheek. “Nah, we were definitely fucking. Just wanted to see you blush again.”
My breath audibly catches. I’ve heard him use the phrase before, but never about…
us. It forces awareness into my skin. Of him, his size, his body heat.
The teasing spark in the depths of his eyes that truly never goes away.
His hair is charmingly disheveled, and he has faint pillow creases on his cheek.
He still clutches the pillow to himself.
It’s so bashful and at odds with his words about us that something fizzes happily deep inside me—this delicious twinge in my stomach I’ve never felt before.
You’ve been following this guy Parker around all your life, and not even he wants you that way. Never made a single move on you.
The fizzing fizzles at the memory of Denny’s words, a harsh but evidently needed reminder that Parker has never thought of me that way. Has never wanted me. Surely, whatever’s gotten into him is nothing more than a bizarre side effect of his delayed quarter-life crisis.
“Parker, this is not… I know we took a mini friendship break, and your memory might be a little fuzzy on the particulars. But this isn’t us.” I’m saying the words to us both. “We should endeavor to return things to normal. The way they were before.”
He’s quiet another long, drawn out moment. “Is that what you want?”
“Is there another…” I blow a frustrated breath through my nose. “Of course, that’s what I want. We’re friends.”
“Friends.” The word ping-pongs between us. Bouncing off my confusion. Lobbed right back at me by Parker’s steady stare.
Then he blinks. Shakes his head as though clearing it of fog, before breaking into an easy smile. “Of course we are. I’m glad to have you back, Sum.”