Chapter 16 Parker
My freshly washed hair soaks the seat cushion when I flop back onto the couch a while later, head full of Summer.
Specifically, what to do about Summer, and these feelings that’ve suddenly decided they’re done living in silence.
It’s as though years of repression strengthened their resolve to throw my insides into disarray.
Unleashing this incessant chant of mine mine mine in my brain whenever I look at her. Frying all rational thought.
Daring me to test the waters, to see whether she’s been repressing it, too.
Except she demanded friendship and normalcy. Fled my apartment. And I guess it’s my lot in life to die a slow, painful death, crushed under the weight of these feelings for her.
Blowing a breath at the ceiling, I tug my phone out of my sweats.
PARKER: How’d you do it?
The reply comes several long minutes later.
ZAC: FYI, if you’re trying to deliver context through telepathy, it isn’t working.
PARKER: You were in love with my sister for years. How’d you keep it to yourself for so long?
This time, the gray dots at the bottom of my screen flicker right away, his answer appearing just a breath later.
ZAC: If I could do it all over again, I’d tell her the moment I realized how I felt.
With a groan, I toss my phone onto the coffee table.
I don’t know why I bothered. There’s one glaring difference between our situations, which is that my sister had been pining for Zac just as hard, and just as long.
When I got my head out of my ass and realized what was going on between them, there was no question that they belonged together.
Fit together perfectly. He was exactly the kind of guy she needed. He made her life better.
I can’t be the one saving you from destruction, Park… Take charge of your life.
Summer’s words hit me square in the stomach, same as they had last night.
Of course she doesn’t feel the same way.
She’s Summer. The fantasy of fantasies. A dream you write off as being too far-fetched, but can’t help hoping it comes back around the next time you close your eyes.
She’s a woman deserving of castles and shrines erected in her honor.
Not some guy who can barely keep his head on straight these days.
Who’s unemployed. Living above a bar, without drive or ambition.
I’m a dead end. If I ever encountered a guy like me supplicating at Summer’s altar, I’d drag him away. Tell him to hit the bricks. Try his luck elsewhere.
At least I don’t have to worry about her shipping out of town anytime soon, like my sister did to Zac.
The buzzer goes off at my front door. I force myself to my feet and hit the intercom button.
“What?” I bark.
There’s an awkward pause before a voice I faintly recognize fills the hall. “Is this Parker Woods?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Who’s this? And how did you figure out where I live?”
“Uh… Everyone in this town knows where everyone lives.”
Fair point. “And who’re you?”
“Right, yes. This is Colin Nowak. I taught you and your sister history in high school?”
I frown at the intercom. “Pretty sure I don’t have any homework due.”
He chuckles, undeterred by the dickishness that can’t stop pouring out of my mouth. “No, you don’t. But I’m hoping you might be able to help me—us—with something else. Specifically, my son River—”
Colin is cut off by someone in the background, words that sound vaguely like fucking pointless. What draws my attention most is the absolute bitterness in that voice.
Then it clicks.
Late last year, seventeen-year-old River Nowak got stuck driving through the worst thunderstorm I’ve ever witnessed.
I’d been sitting it out in this apartment with Summer, playing board games over candlelight after the power cut off.
And the sound of River’s car crashing into the diner on the street below had startled us worse than any clap of thunder before it.
The destruction had been visible from up here, even through the rain and fog: an ancient oak tree split by lightning, lying across the road and crushing the roof of the Nowaks’ old silver Chevy, which was partially buried inside the diner.
Word around town was that it’d taken River a couple of days to wake up in the hospital he’d been airlifted to. The bones in his right leg had broken in several places, putting the kid—who’d been quarterbacking the local high school’s football team—on crutches ever since.
Colin clears his throat from down on the sidewalk. “The thing is, we’ve tried several physical therapists, all the ones at the hospital in the city. But unfortunately, they didn’t… They weren’t a good fit.”
“It wasn’t my job to maintain their precious feelings, Dad. I’m the one on fucking crutches.”
Again, I’m struck by the kid’s voice. It’s not just bitterness. There’s defeat in there, too. And my heart goes out to him, it really does, but…
“What do you want from me? I’ve got things to do today.” My bed’s calling my name.
“I heard you were let go from your job,” Colin rushes to say. “And I’m here to offer you a new one, working with River.”
Oh, hell no. Don’s telling people he fired me?
I wrench open my door and march down the steps leading to the street below. Colin Nowak startles when I throw open the door. Aside from the graying ginger hair and faint lines on his face, he looks exactly like he had as our history teacher. Tall and lanky.
“The Oakwood rumor mill, man. It truly never rests,” I say.
He retreats a step. “Pardon me?”
“I quit my job. Sure as fuck wasn’t fired.”
“Guess that makes him slightly less useless than he was five seconds ago.” River stands a little farther down the sidewalk, propped on a pair of silver crutches.
Despite his height and the spotty red facial hair, he’s still just a baby-faced kid.
If babies were capable of shooting that much hate from their eyes.
“You got something to say to me, big guy?”
All he does is scoff, but his father seems to have recovered from my abrupt presence. Colin steps closer, drops his voice. “The thing is, Parker, River here is a big fan of Brooks. And seeing as you trained him back to the NFL, I’m hoping that working with you encourages my son to…”
I stare expectantly, without saying a word.
“To try,” Colin says quietly. “He’s driven away everyone else who’s worked with him. But I’m hoping that your experience—”
“I don’t have experience with this.” River turns his back on us, staring down the street in the direction of the decrepit diner. “Pediatric therapy isn’t my area.”
“He’s almost eighteen. Isn’t it close enough?”
Colin’s desperation manages to dim my growing impatience. Technically, I’ve worked with UOB freshmen barely older than River.
“Are we done wasting our time yet?” River says. “We’ve tried fifty different people, and none of them have fixed me. The football season starts in three months. Scouts show up in three months. And there’s no college on this planet that wants a quarterback with a limp.”
“Please,” Colin begs. “If this doesn’t work I don’t know what else to do for him.”
River is still staring down at the diner.
His shoulders are tense, hands tight around his crutches.
I can’t see his face, but I’m not sure I want to, convinced it’s manifesting emotional pain worse than any of the physical kind he must’ve endured after his accident.
I can imagine exactly what he’s thinking: He’s an athlete—a good one at that—who had an entire career snatched away by a fallen oak tree.
And how unfair is that? He’s just a kid.
I heave a sigh. “What’s going on with the recovery?”
Hope flares in Colin’s eyes. “I’ve got his scans in the car—the bones healed. But there’s a nerve that pinches whenever he puts too much pressure on the leg.”
There’s a pillow and glow-in-the-dark stars calling my name upstairs. I should probably get something to eat. Summer will get over this morning eventually—maybe I can convince her to spend the day with me. Distract me from the fog in my brain.
I can’t be the one saving you from destruction, Park… Take charge of your life.
I bid a sad farewell to the prospect of sleep. “Fine. I’ll agree to an assessment. But I’m not making any promises.”
“Try it. I said try, River.”
“Why don’t you say it again? Maybe then I’ll be able to do it.”
At some point during my break from work, all semblance of professionalism has departed my body. Because the look I level at the moody kid suddenly in my charge would’ve gotten me fired from UOB long before I’d have had the chance to expose my philandering ex-boss.
River sits on one of the workout benches lining the massive garage Brooks converted into a gym at the home he and Siena keep here in Oakwood. He sent me the code to the doors without even questioning why I wanted access to his house.
Meanwhile, I’m seriously questioning all my decisions.
Half an hour into this physical assessment, it’s clear that River Nowak has a long way to go before he’s back on a football field.
He’s not in physical shambles, exactly. The alignment of this leg and hip is out of sorts, and he’s lost a ton of strength after the injury and the months of failed therapy. But it’s fixable. Workable.
What’s going to do him in is his defeatist mentality. And here’s the thing about having trained athletes for as long as I have: It became obvious real early in my career that half the battle happens in the mind.
I could do only so much to get Brooks back to peak physical shape last year. If he hadn’t wanted it, been willing to fight tooth and nail for that comeback to the NFL, he’d still be here in Oakwood.
River grinds his teeth, working to shove the foot of his injured leg against the resistance of my hand. His palms find the edge of the bench and he shoves harder.
“Hands off the bench. I told you, it doesn’t count if you use leverage.”
“And I told you I can’t fucking do it,” River snaps. He yanks his leg out of my grip.
I straighten out of my crouch, ripping the backward hat off my head just to wrench my fingers through my hair. This kid is gonna make me lose my damn mind.
“It’s an assessment,” I say for what’s got to be the fiftieth time since we arrived.
I expect I’ll have said it another fifty by the time River’s dad comes to rescue me from this miserable decision.
“I don’t need you to be able to kick my arm out of my socket.
I only need to know what I’m working with. ”
River sneers up at the raftered ceiling. “You saying I’ll eventually get to knock your arm out of your socket?”
“At this rate, you’ll be lucky if you ever lay eyes on me again.”
River shoots me a glare that very clearly wishes fire and blood upon me.
“My dad’s on his way back. We can lump this in with all the other failed experiments since I got this way.
” River reaches for the crutches propped farther down his bench, yanking them closer as though preparing for a swift exit.
And that there—the glimpse of defeat that leaks through the bitter armor River wears—is the only reason I haven’t called Colin to demand his early return. Apparently, the dark pit inside me hasn’t spared me from my sense of sympathy.
I drop onto the bench across from River. “What the hell did happen to you that night?”
River looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Raging storm? A tree crushed my car?”
“We were all warned to stay inside during that storm. What were you even doing out there?”
“Who cares? It happened. No point revisiting it.”
“Whatever, man. Just making conversation.” I fiddle with the yellow resistance band sitting next to me, fingers skimming the rubbery surface. “Your leg isn’t that bad—”
“Fuck you,” River mutters. “You have no right to say that.”
“Actually, I’m exactly qualified to say that. And when your dad asks, I’ll tell him the truth: that if you spend the rest of your summer working with me, you’d have a solid chance at making your high school team. Just in time for those college scouts to watch you play.”
River’s wandering gaze flies to my face.
“When your dad asks,” I continue, enunciating carefully, “I’ll also tell him the other truth. Which is that if you don’t work through what’s going on here”—I tap my temple—“you won’t see the inside of a locker room for the rest of your life.”
My words go down about as well as predicted. River looks like he’s been sucker punched in the mouth, visibly working to salvage his mask of teenaged indifference. “What do you even know? You got fired from your job.”
Irritation spikes inside me, grabs me by the throat. I open my mouth to tell him he can fuck right off with that… and I shut it again. River stares at the blue socks on his feet, dejected as hell. As good as it would feel to let him have it, it won’t do him any good.
“Like I said, I quit my job,” I say once I’ve got a handle on myself. River doesn’t deign to respond, so I pull out my phone and stare down at my message thread with Summer.
Maybe I should apologize for this morning.
“Why’d you quit?”
River isn’t looking at me. His eyes wander around the gym like he doesn’t care about my answer. But he still bothered asking.
I turn my phone over. And I really think it through, for the first time since quitting. Yes, I hated my job. Yes, Don is an incompetent asshole and the favoritism he showed my colleague was way out of bounds. But there’s another truth I haven’t voiced, even to myself.
There’s no point hiding from it in this empty home gym, with a kid I’ll never speak to again.
“Because I was tired of feeling like shit about myself. And my bedroom felt safer from disappointment.”
River is silent for a long time after that. He stares down at his socks again, apparently deep in thought. Meanwhile, I’m struck by the relief of saying those words out loud. Acknowledging how unhappy I’ve been, and the fact that I haven’t had it in me to do anything productive about it.
Telling River Nowak, of all people, feels like a first, shaky step in digging myself out of the mess I’ve made of my life.
Finally, River stretches out his leg. Winces as he points and flexes his foot. “Pussy.”
I snort. “Takes one to know one.”
He shoots me another moody glare. But I swear, I see something resembling a laugh in his eyes. The sound of tires running on asphalt breaks the silence, and we watch Colin’s car pull up the driveway through the open garage door. I don’t bother getting up, already contemplating an afternoon nap.
River makes it all the way outside before turning his chin over his shoulder. “Are you free tomorrow?”