Chapter Thirty-Three
A white Audi pulls up in front of my apartment building a little after two a.m., long after the Uber dropped me off.
I wasn’t keen on going to bed after making my escape from Reggie’s party, finding consolation in a bottle of red wine I had stored for special occasions.
After chugging two glasses, I was in the middle of wondering—dreading—who Parker might’ve kissed at midnight, when Heather called and asked for my address.
She said she had a special delivery to make and apologized in advance.
“I hate to agree with Reginald, but driving here really does suck,” she says as she climbs out of the sedan with a huff, flipping blonde curls over her shoulder. Her makeup and hair are still magnificently intact at this late hour.
I hug my coat tighter around my pajamas, glancing over her shoulder at the tinted windows. I can make out a shadow in the passenger seat. Slumped against the glass is one Parker Tran, and I don’t detect any movement.
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he just fell asleep,” she assures me. “After you left, he went straight to the bar and spent the rest of the night there. He was three drinks in when he insisted he had to talk to you.”
Should I prepare for a conversation that ends with, We should stop seeing each other?
With the way I left things, I wouldn’t blame Parker for backing out of our arrangement now.
He’ll remind me what casual means—of course he would see other people—and that I have no right to be upset.
Now he has every reason to cut me loose.
Start the new year with a clean, Dani-less slate.
“I got your number from Parker, hope you don’t mind,” Heather explains. “I told him if you were still up, I’d take him to see you.”
“How very work big sister of you,” I say with a small smile.
She grins at this. “Hey, so, I got the deets from the other guys for you. Turns out Isaac was the one who introduced Min to Parker. It was the first week he came to New York, and they haven’t been in contact since then. They all thought she’d left the city until tonight—even Parker.”
Oh. So that’s how it feels to breathe again.
“Heather, Parker and I aren’t together,” I frown at her. “So it really shouldn’t matter to me if he were seeing Min or any other girl.”
The look on Heather’s face hovers somewhere between wanting to spill a secret and holding back. She props an arm on the open car door and sighs.
“I don’t know the whole story. I tried to pry the details out of him over Thanksgiving, but Parker’s not the oversharing type. All I know is, he’s in no rush to go back to San Francisco, and I think that has a lot to do with you. Did he tell you about the Nets thing?”
I shake my head.
“It’s just interesting that he’s so keen to land a deal that would keep him here a few more months.” Heather gives me a coy shrug before she opens the passenger door, helping Parker to his feet. Plastered and fighting a losing battle against gravity, he can hardly stand up straight.
“I’m going to need your help, girl. It’s like moving two hundred pounds of muscle.”
I scurry over and sling one of his arms over my shoulders. He begins to show signs of life, the grogginess evaporating from his eyes.
“Dani,” he says with a crooked smile. “Is that you?”
Without warning, strong arms wrap around me, pulling me tight against his body.
He smells of whiskey, just like the first time we kissed, and my heart squeezes in my chest. I can’t remember the last time Parker held me like this.
Holding someone during sex isn’t the same as a hug.
It is tender, affectionate, like a Band-Aid for your soul.
“I missed you,” he says, and just like that, he quiets all my nerves. I think I hear Heather giggling, but Parker’s giant arms around me shut out the rest of the world. I can’t see past him.
“Friends, right?”
I poke my head out over his shoulder. “I’m sorry for all the trouble tonight.”
“Don’t be. It’s nice to see him like this. Reminds me that he’s human too.” She slides back into the driver’s seat. “Hey, so I’ll be here for a couple weeks. I feel like we didn’t get a proper chance to talk tonight. We should do lunch—without the boys.”
“Okay. You have my number.”
I wave goodbye to Heather as the Audi peels away, then lead Parker into the apartment lobby, one clunky step at a time. The difference in our builds humbles me immediately. For a grueling three seconds, he leans too much of his weight on me, and I try not to crumble beneath him.
“How much did you drink?” I blurt as we wait for the elevator.
He’s not listening. His head hangs low, his hair far from its usual pristine state. With a husky drawl he mumbles, “Why did you leave?”
“Turns out I’m not cut out for a Reggie Cruz party. Sensory overload and all.” I hope that sounds convincing.
“You were upset. If you weren’t, you would’ve said something to me before you left.”
“Is that why you were drinking?”
“You get me all anxious. Like I’m going to mess this up again.”
“What does that mean?”
“The last time I messed up, I didn’t get to see you for seven years.”
A dense, aching weight sits in my stomach. The elevator door opens, and I shuffle us inside.
“Isaac was hitting on you all night,” he says. “He thinks you’re cute.”
“You had a model throw herself at you,” I mutter back. “And even if Heather isn’t your work wife, at some point you must’ve noticed there were three women vying for your attention at that table.”
He keeps going, ignoring me. “You brought a guy home to Silverpine. I’ve never brought anyone home to meet my parents.”
It’s the last thing I expect to hear from someone who doesn’t even want a girlfriend. A single overhead light buzzes faintly in the small lift, reflecting in Parker’s glassy eyes. His cheeks are rosy with a soft blush that creeps up to his ears.
“Are you actually jealous?”
“Shit, what am I even saying? All of this is confusing as fuck to me.” He drags a hand over his face. The elevator comes to a stop, and he eases some of his weight off me. We walk with a little less difficulty to my front door.
Confusing is putting it mildly. Parker’s feelings were ambiguous enough when he wasn’t talking about them—now his drunken admissions have only complicated things further.
What’s clear is that this doesn’t feel so casual anymore.
If we’re not careful, one of us is going to slip, and then there won’t be any going back.
I don’t unlock the door right away. Parker leans against the frame, gazing down at me with a myriad of emotions on his face. I reach for him, sweeping his bangs out of his eyes. My hand lingers against his heated skin, and he smiles, resting his cheek against my palm.
I sigh at the throb in my chest. “How much of this are you going to remember?”
“Why? Plan on getting some dirt out of me?”
Maybe I’m the one who’s going to slip. And maybe I don’t really mind. “Can I ask you something?”
He arches a brow, prompting me.
“Did you think about me? When we were apart all those years.”
When he answers, it takes a minute for me to swallow down my heart.
“All the time.”
The first thing Parker does when he enters my apartment is down a mug of coffee and jump in the shower to sober up. I listen at the door for movement, knocking every five minutes to make sure he’s still alive. Each time, he croaks back an unconvincing, “Not dead.”
When he finally steps out, I hand him a glass of water and an Advil. He’s still in the same clothes because he doesn’t keep any spares here. There’s no point in giving him a drawer when he’s never spent the night.
“How are you feeling now? Sobered up yet?”
He floods his mouth with water to avoid answering. I pretend not to notice that his ears are still glowing bright red. Fighting the urge to tease him, I take a seat at the kitchen counter and start slowly swiveling in place, waiting for him to find his voice again.
“Stop,” he finally says.
“Stop what?”
“Whatever you’re doing. Sitting there. Watching me.” He threads a frustrated hand into his hair, pushing against damp locks. “I’d rather you make fun of me, so go ahead.”
I bite down on a grin. It’s no use. The corners of my mouth are so taut, my cheeks start to ache. “There’s just so much material. Do I start with how alcohol turns you into a hugger? Or with why Heather thought the best place to dump your drunk ass was at my doorstep?”
“Heather dropped me off here because apparently, when I’m drunk, I don’t stop talking about you.” He sets the glass down in the sink and levels a look at me. His face says that this has been the longest night. “Is that clear enough for you?”
I chew on my lip, avoiding his gaze. That doesn’t clear anything up.
None of this lines up with the reality I was living four hours ago: I was the one losing it over the thought of him with another woman.
He was supposed to be the sensible one, casual and cool, not hitting the bottle because I left him at a party without saying goodbye.
“About Min,” he says suddenly. “I want you to know, I met her before I ran into you at Picotea. It was one night, and there was never any overlap. The last time I spoke to her was when she returned my key card.”
“Heather alluded to something like that.” I speak directly to my hands resting on the counter. “I guess you didn’t give her your New Year’s kiss, then.”
“What? Of course not.”
“Stupid question: Did you kiss anyone at midnight?”
“Who would I kiss? You left the party,” he asks, searching for correlation. “Why would I kiss anyone else?”
“Because it’s an age-old tradition. It’s also a good excuse if you want to make a move on someone.
Like hey, everyone else is kissing and here we are, in close proximity.
” I spin in my chair, shying away from him.
The wall seems like a better place to look.
“And those are the ground rules, right? You can see other people, and I can too?”
“Dani, I’m not seeing anyone other than you,” he says, his voice stony. “I haven’t, since this started between us.”
I pause then whirl back around to face him. “Since the first night?”
“Since the first night.”
It hits me like the loud, gritty screech of brakes on pavement when I realize what this means: I’ve been spiraling all this time for no reason.
I’m so horrified at my own thickness that I can’t even take comfort in the relief washing over me.
It doesn’t help that Parker is staring at me, stupefied. But then his expression softens.
“Have you been worried about that this whole time?”
I let my head fall to the counter. “Yes,” I mumble into the granite.
Curling inward, I silently plead in my half-cocoon shape that Parker won’t prolong this humiliation. But then a small chuckle breaks the silence, and not long after, he’s laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“We meet three, sometimes four times a week. How much sex did you think I was having?”
Reluctantly, I lift my head. My skin is scorching. “I’m new to this, okay? I’ve never been casual with anyone before. And for the record, I also haven’t, you know—” I clear my throat and amend, “I haven’t been seeing anyone else, either.”
“That’s what I figured. I wasn’t sure at first, when you asked me about seeing other people in my office, but like I said, we meet so often,” he says, calm and assured. “Look, I think I know what’s happening.”
“You do?”
“Dani, it was na?ve to think that this—me and you—would ever be straightforward. Before we even learned how to be friends again, we introduced sex into our relationship, and that meant neither of us was thinking clearly. And now . . . well, we’re more than just friends.”
He hits the nail on the head without any pretense, voicing everything I’d been too afraid to say out loud.
“But if I’m being honest . . .” He rubs a hand on his neck, still curiously flushed with color. “After the first night, I knew I didn’t want to see anyone but you.”
A soft boom echoes in my ears, and I’m pretty sure my heart just exploded. I grapple for words. “You’re not still drunk, are you?”
“Believe me, I wish I was. It’d make this night a lot less embarrassing.”
A long breath fills my chest as I hop off the stool and make my way around the counter until we’re face to face.
“You’re right. We’re more than friends now. We crossed a line, and it happened so quickly, we didn’t have time to figure out what crossing it actually meant. But now . . . we’re kind of stuck on this side.”
He stares down at me, his features relaxing into a smile. “I think I prefer being on this side with you.”
As expected, Parker Tran says all the right things.
“Hey, so, I know the ball dropped like—” He reaches over to the counter and wakes his phone. “Three hours ago.”
Then he ducks his head and kisses me, a soft landing on my lips.
“Happy New Year, Dani.”
Suddenly, my legs are in danger of giving out. As if he hasn’t just jumpstarted every muscle in my body, Parker starts moving around the apartment, collecting his belongings. “I should get going.”
In just one night, he’s overhauled everything I thought I knew about our relationship.
Parker has only been seeing me. He only wants to see me.
We’re in this gray area, where I can be as honest as I want about my feelings, without ever saying what those feelings are.
How did we clear up so much, only to land in an even more ambiguous place?
We’re more than friends. We’ve crossed a line with no possibility of going back.
But he’s made it resolutely clear that as long as we’re on this side, it’s just me for him, and him for me.
And he’s said it with such certainty that I have to rein in every impulse to push him onto my bed and kiss him, just to show him how much it means to me.
Then again, I haven’t had much self-control lately.
“Wait.” I steel my stomach. “You can stay here tonight. If you want.”
Parker stalls at the door. “Like, sleep over?”
“If we’re crossing lines, we might as well get them all out of the way.”