Chapter Twenty
Marisa sits up straight in our booth like she’s had a big lightbulb moment. “What about Silverpine?”
I lift a mango habanero wing to my mouth. “What about it?”
“For me and Shay,” she says. “Small-town life could be kind of cute. Shay loves community projects, so I’m sure she’d find some local initiative to hyperfixate on. We’d have farmers’ market days and drive-in movie nights.”
“Okay, slow down, Hallmark. We didn’t have any of that stuff in Silverpine. The closest thing to a local initiative was the grumpy old lady in the park who yelled at you to recycle.” I take a hefty bite of the wing and say, “You wouldn’t last a month. You know we don’t have a Trader Joe’s, right?”
Marisa slumps back against the booth and sighs into her cocktail glass, a fog appearing around the rim.
I’m getting a little buzzed, and I can tell she’s starting to feel it too.
How did the night get away from us? She had come to Bed-Stuy with the intention of grabbing a couple drinks, but now I’m three beers in, and she has that glossy, five-margarita look in her eyes that takes me back to our college days.
I point the lip of my beer bottle at her. “How about Portland?”
“Oh, I can see it. Just a couple of coffee snobs with our matching umbrellas.”
I balk at her and throw a cautionary glance over my shoulder as if the entire Pacific Northwest is listening. “No one uses umbrellas there. You’ll look silly to the locals.”
“Then how are we supposed to keep our matching flannel dry?”
I giggle at her. “Umbrellas in Portland. That’s a good one. Next thing you know, we’ll be using them in the grocery store when they mist the produce.”
Marisa is laughing, too, but I can see her crossing off another item in her mental list. The first time she mentioned the idea of moving was six months ago, in the very same sentence where she revealed that she and Shay were thinking about having kids.
Both had been bombshells to me because neither children nor white picket fences had ever been on her radar.
But I knew that if there’s one person she’d imagine that life with, it’s Shay.
From the day she answered a “Roommate Wanted” ad and met her future wife on the stoop of their Greenpoint brownstone, she’s been madly in love.
“I still think you should stick to Upstate.” I say, picking at the label of the bottle.
“Aww, you don’t want me going too far,” she coos. “Trust me, if I could pack you up and have you live in the room under my stairs, I would.”
I crinkle my nose. “I’m good.”
“Seriously, I don’t want you to be lonely without me. Did you really give up on the apps? You know you don’t have to find something long-term.”
Here we go. She’s still disappointed that my trial run at online dating didn’t inspire a Samantha Jones–style era of sexual liberation.
I’ve reminded her that even if my only goal had been to get laid, there was still no way I could sit through a first date with a man whose opening line was, “Are you a domme or a sub?”
I make an X with my arms, signaling a firm no, and she makes her disappointment known. “Your vibrator is probably working overtime these days.”
More like collecting dust, now that I have an absolute stallion to take care of my needs.
The quip is on the edge of my tongue, but I hold back.
I haven’t told Marisa about my casual relationship with Parker, even if this is the closest I’ll get to Carrie Bradshaw writing a column about me.
One of the reasons why hooking up with Parker is so much fun is because we’re the only ones in on the secret.
It’s the first time in my life that I’m doing the opposite of what everyone expects, and there’s a thrilling freedom that comes with that.
I make a silent promise to tell her everything once it’s all over, and Parker is on the other side of the country. “I don’t really have time to think about dating right now.”
“Sure, because you’re so busy.” The way her lip stiffens tells me she doesn’t believe me for a second. But she polishes off the last of her cocktail and changes course. “You never told me what happened between you and Parker.”
I nearly drop my beer. “Did something happen between us?”
“The event he invited you to?”
My panic subsides, and I say, “Nothing really. We talked. We were civil.”
Marisa reaches for a wing. “What does he look like now? Is he still blond?”
Reluctantly, I pull up Parker’s Instagram on my phone.
I still haven’t followed him, and since the last time I stalked his profile, he’s added three new posts.
In one of the photos, I recognize his outfit from the first time he visited my apartment.
He’s standing next to a basketball player whom I’ve seen on the news, throwing up peace signs.
So, when he said he was meeting a client, what he actually meant was that he was kicking it with one of the Brooklyn Nets.
“Holy shit.” Marisa snatches my phone from me. “If women went to war over men, that’s what they’d be fighting over.”
“Right?” I wish I didn’t readily agree with the idea of Parker as a modern-day Helen of Troy, but alas. “Doesn’t it make you want to smash your head in?”
“Is he single?”
“Yeah.”
“Hm, hard to believe someone wouldn’t try to lock that down. I wonder what his deal is.” She hands my phone back to me. “What if he’s terrible in bed? You said he drove a big Jeep right? Smells like overcompensating to me.”
I laugh without humor.
I’d forgotten that drunk Marisa has a tell: calling up her wife with cloyingly sweet declarations of love. Not long after, Shay comes to pick her up. I don’t ask about the house search, because I still can’t visualize Marisa holding a baby instead of two pints of Guinness.
As soon as I reach my apartment, I wash my face and put on a sheet mask, relaxing on the couch with a lazy leg over the backrest. When I unlock my phone, the screen is still on Parker’s Instagram page.
I lift my thumb to exit, but the slick from the sheet mask causes the phone to slip in my hand, and I hit the big, blue Follow button instead.
Color drains from my face, and I scream, launching my phone into the air. It collides with the kitchen counter and plummets to the floor.
What have I done what have I done what have I done. I’ll have to go off the grid now. Move to a cabin in the middle of the woods and train a courier pigeon to bring me news of the outside world now that I’ve decided I’ll never own a phone again.
My heart rate is turbulence under my ribcage as I slide off the couch, staring at the device. One, two, three minutes pass. I crawl my way over and pick it up.
parker11tran wants to follow you.
The screen changes in a flash, just as I read the notification. Parker is calling me. I answer just as a hiccup rises in my throat.
“Are you stalking my Instagram?”
“I . . . hic—” Fuck it, there’s no saving me now. “Yes.”
I can hear him stifling a laugh. “What’s going on with your voice?”
“I—hic—have the hiccups. Hic—hold on.” I peel the mask off my face and myself off the floor, gulping down a glass of water until my diaphragm calms.
“You could’ve used a finsta if you were going to stalk me.”
“What’s a finsta?”
“Uh . . . never mind. Explaining that to you will make us both feel old.” From his end of the line, I can pick up faint chatter and the muffled sound of a Top 40 song. A familiar voice shouts for Parker to take a shot amid the commotion.
“Is that Reggie?”
“Yeah, we came out for drinks after work.”
Sounds like a typical Friday night for the folks at Venture. “You’re probably busy. We can just table this discussion—”
“It’s fine. Hold on, let me step outside.” It’s a few seconds before a door shuts, and the noise dispels into the distant sounds of New York traffic.
“Just so you know, I was only on your Instagram because Marisa—my roommate from Columbia—was curious.”
“Mm-hmm, and did you mean to follow me too?”
“See, that’s where I fucked up.”
“I knew it.” I can almost hear him grinning. I understand now why he’s called me: Not one to ease my suffering, he’s trying to catch me in the act. “Accept my follow request already. It’s a little unnerving that you get to stalk my page when I can’t even see yours.”
I tap at the notification. Though reluctance brews, I accept his request. Parker is quiet, and I know he’s going through my feed in the silence.
My tiny online existence has just gained a new audience member, and I don’t anticipate rave reviews.
I wait for him to speak, drumming nervous fingers against the cool granite of my kitchen counter.
“Dani, you have, like, twenty posts. How am I supposed to tease you when you’re giving me nothing to work with?”
“Not all of us get to post our sexy sailing sessions.”
“Did you intentionally find all the photos where I don’t have a shirt on?”
“Ha! Pfft,” is the sound I choose to make.
“I’m gonna be real: This suspiciously unused account isn’t helping to fight the stalker allegations.”
I groan miserably. “This is why I hate social media. Everyone thinks they can deduce a personality based on a collection of heavily curated photos. What people conveniently forget is that no one in their right mind is going to propagate a version of themselves they don’t want the Internet to see.
Frank from Wall Street isn’t going to post about his foot fetish or that he steals his neighbor’s Postmates.
He’s got dope pictures of himself in the Hamptons and at Coachella, so he has to be a stand-up guy.
But Dani? Dani’s a stalker because she only has three selfies! ”
“Who’s Frank?”
I throw a hand up in the air. “Frank is hypothetical. But that’s not the point. The point is that most of it is false advertising. You should know this—you’re the one with a marketing degree.”
“I specialize in sports, not foot fetishes. That’s a whole other market,” says Parker. “I’m kidding, Dani. I don’t think you’re a stalker. Keeping a low profile can be a good thing. I deleted a bunch of my older posts too.”
I hadn’t noticed. Though I’ve been lurking, I also made a conscious effort not to scroll too far, afraid of what I might find. “Bad breakup?”
“Just some things I don’t care to remember.”
I catch the soft bell of a door opening and closing, the hum of lively chatter, but Parker remains outside.
“I remember you being chronically offline back then too,” he adds.
“I was surprised when I looked you up one day and found your account. To be honest, I thought of sending a friend request, but I figured you’d ignore it. ”
“You looked me up?”
“I was curious. Doesn’t everyone look up their old high school classmates now and then?”
“Is that what we are? Old high school classmates?” My voice betrays me, and I hope the disappointment isn’t obvious to him. “I’ve been trying to figure out what to say when people ask how we know each other.”
“That was me being sarcastic. I don’t really know if there’s a label for what you and I are to each other.”
I wonder how many drinks he’s had tonight. I almost wish he was drunk, because this level of transparency is still foreign to me, and I don’t want to assign greater meaning to it.
“Would it be too late to ask you to come to my hotel?” he asks suddenly. I think I hear him swallow. Now I’m sure he’s at least tipsy.
It’s nearly midnight. Nine times out of ten, if I were asked to leave my place at this hour, the answer would be a hard no. But my body is already responding favorably, so I guess that puts us in the ten percent margin for an exception.
“Wait, fuck. Don’t answer that.” He takes a controlled breath, and the frenzy in my chest—and loins—is immediately smothered. “I told Reggie I’d hang around to meet his contact from the Nets. If I think about you waiting for me at the hotel, I’ll never make it through the night.”
A giggle slips out of me. Parker getting turned on over this phone call is not what I’d expected, but it is an interesting development. “What’s your schedule like?”
“I have some time off for Thanksgiving, so I’m going back to San Francisco next week,” he replies. “What are your plans?”
“My dad is visiting, so I’ll be here.” This means that by next week, we’ll be in different states, and our arrangement will have to take a hiatus for the holidays.
I’m suddenly aware of how quickly the last month has gone by.
It won’t be long before I return to the humdrum life of my original timeline.
As though he’s read my mind, Parker says, “If I don’t see you before I leave, then we’ll have to wait until I get back. Think you can last that long without me?”
“You’re the one picturing me naked in your suite right now,” I counter, and it makes him groan out of frustration.
Amusement bubbles up from inside me, and I’m laughing again before I know it.
But the ruckus from the bar cuts me off, trickling in like a sudden stream.
Reggie must’ve stepped outside, because when he calls for Parker, it’s a lot clearer this time.
“By the way,” he says into the phone. “If you really need a label, you can just tell people we’re friends.”
A smile spreads across my face. “The unconventional kind of friends.”
“Friends who have really good sex,” he amends, “but they don’t need to know that.”
He says it like an offhand comment, like it wasn’t meant to launch my heart from a cannon into the stratosphere. I know what we have is electric and that it consumes us so completely that we spend hours tangled up in each other. But hearing him say it is another thing entirely.
I wonder if Parker has this with anyone else. He might have a casual relationship in San Francisco, too—someone he feels that same soul-evacuating passion with. It could be Heather, or it could be some other woman. It could even be better than what we have.
“I should go to bed.” I decide now is a good time to end the call, before he says anything else that’ll keep me from sleeping tonight. “Enjoy your night, Parker.”
When I’m half-asleep and bundled under covers pulled up to my neck, my phone buzzes next to my pillow.
parker11tran commented on your post.
With tired eyes, I type in my passcode, and the notification brings me to a photo on my page.
I don’t remember who took it—Dad, a cousin, or maybe the ex, Graham—but it was posted six years ago, after a visit to Apizza Scholls in Portland.
In the shot I’m holding a pizza box with both arms, turning to the camera in a candid moment, a laid-back smile on my face.
I try not to post too many photos of myself, but I always liked this one for how natural the moment was. The caption is simply a pizza emoji.
I scroll down to Parker’s comment.
Ken’s is still better.