Chapter 20 Summer
“Hey, Dad! It’s me. I got your text about rescheduling this weekend’s family dinner.
Of course, that totally makes sense with the twins’ birthday party!
Except, I actually had a little something to give them.
Nothing huge—just some new soccer gear for them to play with.
I’d be happy to come to their party? Even just to help out?
Or I can drop off their gifts at your house sometime?
Or… I could totally hang on to it until the next dinner. Do you have any dates in mind?”
PARKER: Show up at ten thirty, bring a swimsuit, and park your car as far back from the building as you can.
In the dark inside of my car, I stare down at the text like I haven’t read it a dozen times since he sent it this afternoon.
I do have an inkling as to why I’m currently parked in the very corner of the deserted lot of Oakwood High. All signs point to the kind of shenanigans Parker used to pull in our teens, but I’m really hoping I’m wrong.
I jump in my seat when my car door swings open and Parker ducks down to look at me. “Took you long enough. Let’s go.”
“Parker, I’m begging you.” I let him help me out of the car and then reach for the backpack in the passenger seat. “Tell me we’re not doing what I think we are.”
After some fumbling, the flashlight on his phone comes on, pointing at our feet but illuminating his proud grin just enough. “If you’re thinking we’re about to sneak into our old high school to use the pool, then… yes. This is our only option.”
“Breaking and entering is our only option?”
“Something like that.” His hand comes up between us, palm side up. “Do you trust me?”
I stare at the dark outline of our old school. The sensible answer to all this would be a swift hell no. But the thing is, we’ve done this before.
At sixteen, it had been one of Parker’s not-so-bright ideas that led us, plus Zac and Melody, to our high school pool in the middle of the night during a summer heat wave. My irritation at him for dragging us into such a reckless excursion had evaporated the moment my toes dipped into the water.
Yes, we’d totally gotten caught. But Parker got us safely out before turning himself in to the security on patrol. He got off easy, and the entire night had been the most fun I’d had all summer given the nightmare I’d been living at home. My mom’s affair had come to light only weeks prior.
“I swear, you’re going to land us in jail one day.” I drop my backpack into his waiting hand. He stares down at it long enough to make me pause. I… don’t think he wanted the bag.
Still, he hitches it on his shoulder and flashes me a small smile.
The side door swings open without struggle—Parker must have unlocked it before I arrived—and then we’re quietly tiptoeing through our old high school.
There was a security guard’s car parked out front when I pulled in.
But the building feels deserted, lit only by dim lights at the mouth of every long hallway.
We pass several open classrooms without stopping, headed in the direction of the gymnasium and adjacent pool.
Parker’s hand trails over nondescript lockers along the way. “Mine,” he whispers with his hand over one before moving to the next. “Yours.”
My gaze lingers on the lockers as we pass them. They’d been assigned alphabetically by last name. “It’s funny to think we had no idea why Zac insisted you trade spots with him. He wanted the locker next to Mel’s.”
We creep along the hall for a quiet beat before Parker looks over. “It was me. I was the one who asked to trade.”
Oh. I don’t know why that confession hits me the way it does, and where it does. Right in the chest, making my heart squeeze then take off in a gallop.
His words still reverberate in my head by the time he opens the door to the pool. The overhead lights are off, the massive room bathed in blue light from within the pool, giving it an ethereal quality. Like we’re wandering in a dream.
“Come here,” Parker says once we’re at the water’s edge.
For a silly moment I think he’s asking me to step into his arms, to let him hold me just because.
The way my heart leaps is downright humiliating.
I’m so starved for romantic attention that I’m looking for it in two simple words uttered by my best friend.
Parker twirls his finger in a turn around motion and starts working braids into my hair. My eyes close, chest swells at the feel of his fingers.
You’ve been following this guy Parker around all your life, and not even he wants you that way.
Denny’s words are a mean but welcome reminder. Parker’s out-of-the-blue flirtation is getting to my head, and it’s bound to leave me in emotional shambles if I can’t keep a tight leash on these delusions.
That’s my friend, who hasn’t shown a crumb of desire for me in twenty-seven years. Who’s trying to find himself, and acting out of character.
“Do you want me to set you up again? Another blind date?”
Parker’s hands pause in my hair. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“You seemed keen on dating before.” I rub my lips together. “They’ve brought in a new trainer to fill your spot at the clinic. Her name is—”
“She’s not my type.”
“I haven’t told you a single thing about her.”
“I know enough.”
“Is it because she’s a trainer, too?” I stare at the far wall as he resumes braiding, my stomach inexplicably sinking. Then spiking with frustration when he stays silent, declining to shed any kind of light on the situation. “I thought you didn’t have a type.”
“I have a type. Just took me a while to figure it out.”
“Well?” I throw out my arms. “What is it?”
With a soft chuckle, he turns me around by the shoulders. Smooths down the unruly baby hairs along my forehead with faint dimples in his cheeks. “I love it when you’re annoyed.”
“Sadist.”
He strips off his shirt, leaving him in his swim shorts. I follow his lead. Because I’m getting into the pool, obviously. Not at all because I need a distraction from his half-naked body.
“It’s not sadistic,” Parker says. “I love that you get annoyed with me. Not everyone gets the full range of Summer. I love that I do.”
I huff a breath, dropping my denim shorts. “Do you want another setup or not?”
Parker shoots me a look on his way to the very edge of the pool. “Not sure if you noticed, but I’m a bit preoccupied these days.”
He dives into the water headfirst, without even dipping in a toe.
I chew the inside of my cheek watching him swim to the surface with a few powerful kicks and push his soaked hair off his face.
He zeroes in on me the moment he opens his eyes.
Drapes his hot stare over my body, lingering on my hips, breasts, before meeting my eye.
“You’re a knockout, you know that?”
My stomach swoops. “I’m the same I’ve always been.”
His eyes soften. “I should’ve been telling you every day. I’m sorry it took me so long.”
It takes enormous effort to redirect the conversation. “I know I’ve been sucking up a lot of your time lately. If you want to scale back the training, or write out a program I can follow on my own…”
“Summer, who else would I spend all my time on?” He treads water, his smile amused. “What about you? You want a setup?”
“Not sure if you noticed, but I’m a bit preoccupied these days,” I say in a poor imitation of his deep voice. I dip my big toe into the water. “Fuck. Why is it so cold?”
“School’s been out for a while. Get in.”
“No way. Park, it’s freezing.”
“Get in anyway.” He swims for me, climbing out and dripping streams of water on the tiled ground. Holds out his hand again. “You’re thinking too hard. Give me your hand. Jump in with me.”
He’s always been so good at it—leaning into whatever he’s feeling at the time.
I know he sees it as a fault, but I couldn’t be more envious of him and his ability to jump—to act without overthinking every tiny step along the way, trying to predict minutes, hours, years down the line and how I might come to regret the simple decision in front of me.
His grin doubles when my hand drops in his.
I squeal when I surface from the water, muscles locking together in a shiver. “How is it worse than I thought?”
“You’ll get used to it. I’ll keep you warm until you do.
” Parker anchors his hands on the edge of the pool, caging me in.
In this lighting, the deep blue of his eyes looks stormy.
Like the raging sea, no land for miles. His wet hair is curling at the ends, tickling the backs of his ears.
It strikes me that I’ve gone my entire life without ever running my fingers through it.
Suddenly, it’s all I can think about doing. And it’s so absurd a thought that it makes me laugh out loud. A nervous-but-excited kind of laugh. The same exhilaration that has me dissolving into uncontrollable laughter on a roller-coaster ride, even as people shriek around me.
Oddly, some kind of light goes out in Parker’s eyes.
“Did you really ask Zac to trade lockers so you’d have the one next to mine?”
One corner of his mouth lifts and drops. “Every year.”
Those two words do some real heavy lifting inside me.
They push aside any thought of who we are, the precious, longtime friendship between us.
They dim my common sense, futilely shouting that this isn’t really Parker.
That he’s just confused, saying and doing things he never would in his right mind.
They let me want what I want—him, his indulgent stares, and knowing things about him I never thought I would.
His eyes spark again when I reach for him, pushing a strand of hair off his forehead.
But before I can make sense of what it means or what I think I’m doing, Parker jerks his chin toward the far end of the pool. “Let’s get to work, Prescott.”