Chapter Thirty #2
“You pulling up to Kyle’s party?” he asks Parker as he captures Mike in a headlock.
“After I take Dani home.”
“You should come too.” Caleb winks at me. “If we’re lucky, maybe someone will get drunk enough to be defenestrated.”
Once we’re alone in the lot again, Parker opens the passenger door for me. I study the gap from the ground to the Jeep, unsure if the car’s too big or I’m too small. Either way, this isn’t going to be a graceful climb. “Why is it so high off the ground?”
“It’s pre-lifted.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means there’s bigger tires and more ground clearance for off-roading.”
“And how often do you, a teenage boy from suburbia, go off-roading?”
Parker’s face is telling me to shut up. “Just use the step to get in. And watch your head.”
“I’m wearing a skirt under this. Can you look away?”
He silently obeys, closing the door after me and making his own effortless entry into the driver’s seat.
The engine roars to life as we pull out of the lot.
Parker turns the radio on and fiddles with the air conditioning controls, checking with me if it’s too cold.
I don’t mention my conversation with Caleb, opting for silence while Parker recaps his plays from the game.
I only understand half of it, but I listen intently like he’s telling the most riveting story.
“You were on fire tonight,” I say. “I feel so lucky whenever I get to watch you play.”
The Jeep pulls up to the curb between my house and his. He kills the engine and leans back in his seat, getting comfortable and signaling to me that I don’t have to go yet. I watch him reach for the sleeve of my—his—jersey, and he gives it a gentle tug. “You can keep this if you want.”
“I can’t. What am I going to do with it? Take it to New York?”
“As long as you don’t take it to bed.” He cringes, and I slap his arm. “Wait, look at me. You didn’t actually put eye black on your face, did you?”
Parker leans forward. He’s so close I can smell his shampoo.
“Of course not. It’s eyeshadow. Look.” I rub one of the stripes and show him the smudge on my fingers.
And that’s when it happens. The next few seconds proceed in slow motion as he reaches over and touches my face.
I sit there, still as a stone carving, but my heartbeat is loud, like thunder in my bones.
He brushes his thumb against the stripe under my eye, and his touch on my skin is hot. Or maybe it’s me who’s gone ablaze.
“Huh. It is eyeshadow.”
“That’s what I said,” I mumble back.
If it were anyone else, I might dare to think of this as an intimate moment. But this is Parker. And Parker isn’t supposed to make my heart feel like it’s about to give out.
Hold on. If that’s true, then why is my pulse racing faster and faster? This is a lot like one of those scenes in Mom’s romance movies. This is when she’d grip my shoulder and gush that something magical was about to happen.
Is he going to kiss me?
I’ve never been kissed before.
If he kisses me, it might not be so bad.
I might even kiss him back.
But then I blink, and he withdraws his hand, finding his phone instead. He reads a text off the screen. My fingertips land on my cheek, the skin once feverishly warm now chilly and exposed.
“What did Caleb say before he left?” He startles me back to reality. “Defriendnistrate?”
“Defenestrate. It means to throw someone out a window.” I’m self-conscious when he doesn’t laugh, and so I shrug, “It was funny to us.”
“Since when do you and Caleb have inside jokes?”
“Since when have you been dating Amelia Reyes?” I blurt out.
In another slow, torturous moment, Parker looks to me with a thousand burning questions in his eyes. The world around us seems to stall—the air too heavy, the wind outside at rest—until he finally speaks up.
“Where would I find the time to date anyone between training and camps?” he says, confounded. “If I’m not in Eugene to see my coaches, I’m always with you.”
Something that feels a lot like relief washes over me. “Caleb mentioned your trip to Bend. There were all those rumors, you know, about Amelia and her friends staying with you guys.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Well, they did stay over.”
The drop in his voice is all it takes for me to put two and two together. “Did she sleep in your room?”
I might’ve missed his nod if I wasn’t so locked in. “So, the rumors are true? Did you two—”
“No.”
“You slept in the same bed and nothing happened?”
“We made out.” He swallows. “And we fooled around a bit. But not, like, all the way.”
“Fooled around how?”
Parker can’t sit still; he’s shifting in his seat and tapping on the steering wheel. “Do we really have to talk about this?”
“Why do you feel like you can’t tell me these things?
” It starts as a flicker, then a spark goes off inside, demanding that I dig and prod at this sore spot until it becomes an open wound.
Maybe it’s defensiveness or frustration at how unfair this feels.
Maybe I just want him to know I’m upset.
“I’m your best friend. If you can’t even tell me that you fooled around with a girl, what else are you going to keep from me?
What about when you lose your virginity? ”
He draws a deep breath as he drapes one arm over the steering wheel. His mouth is a hard line, and he’s insistent on looking anywhere but my face.
“Oh.” It lands like a deep cut. The pain of the self-inflicted blow makes my voice shake when I ask, “How did it happen?”
“It wasn’t Amelia,” he clarifies. “I was at a party, and I’d had a few beers. Honestly, I don’t remember much. She was in the year ahead of us, so she’s already graduated now, and I never see her anymore—”
“Okay,” I cut him off, turning to the window. Maybe I don’t need to know after all.
“Dani, if it was you—” he says, barely above a whisper. “Would you tell me?”
“I—” I can’t answer that, because I’ve never been in a situation where it even seemed possible. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
Of course we wouldn’t be able to run from it forever. But I always thought it’d happen when we were in college, where I wouldn’t have to watch someone else become his new favorite person.
It makes me laugh. I can’t help it. Right now, there’s no bigger joke than our own na?veté.
“This is so weird. We’ve known each other our whole lives, but I’m just now realizing that outside of the bubble of our houses, I don’t actually know you.
The rest of your life—when you’re at parties, or from what I hear through rumors—it’s like a different you. ”
“I wish you wouldn’t pay attention to the rumors. Most of it isn’t even true. People here are so bored with their lives, they have to make up shit to keep themselves entertained.”
“Some of it is true,” I counter.
“Dani.” He takes hold of my wrist, urging me to look at him. “I didn’t keep it from you intentionally. I just—I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. I’m sorry, okay?”
I bite down on my lip to quell the squeeze of my throat. It makes it hard for me to speak—not that I know what I’m supposed to say to any of this. I shake myself free from him and make a grab for the door handle. “You should get to your party.”
“Do you want to come?” he asks, sounding a tiny bit hopeful.
“No, I’m good.” I hop out of the car, landing on the pavement with a dull thump. “I’ll return your jersey tomorrow.”