Chapter Forty
I think Dad can sense how desperate I am for a distraction.
He doesn’t nudge me to open up again, but as soon as I get that lost, dejected look in my eye, he gives me another moving box to fill or sends me on a sudden grocery run.
When he asked me to drop off his dry cleaning, I could tell he was tapped out of ideas.
Dad almost never gets anything dry-cleaned.
It’s just as well. After leaving the cleaners, my quest for diversion takes me to the pharmacy, where C? is all too delighted to have my company.
She also has no objections to me following her around Silverpine all day.
In the afternoon, we deliver medications to some of the town’s seniors, then swing by the hardware store to pick up fertilizer before returning to close up the pharmacy.
Time seems to fly as we finish up at the local supermarket for C?’s weekly restock.
“So nice you are home, con.” She puts the car in park after pulling into the driveway. “How about you stay at C?’s house tonight? We can have girls’ night!”
“Great! It’s a good thing I grabbed popcorn.” Exiting from the passenger side, I circle around to open the trunk, but C? hurries after me.
“What are you doing? Put that down!”
I pause with my arms clasped around a fertilizer bag. “I was going to take this to the garden.”
She swats me away. “It’s too heavy, you will hurt yourself. I will tell Chú to come help.”
“But—”
She shoves a tote bag full of food in my face. “Take this to the kitchen.”
I’m pretty sure her grocery haul is more of a threat to my back, but I decide not to tell her this as I lug it into the house.
Once inside, I kick off my sneakers for a pair of slippers and make a beeline for the kitchen.
Setting the bag on the counter, I stack the frozen items in the freezer first. Flour and oats go straight to the pantry, and soy sauce goes in the cabinet closest to the stove for easy access.
I’m all too familiar with the snack drawer and make quick work of replenishing it.
It’s only the dried vermicelli noodles that are stumping me, and I scan the kitchen trying to figure out where they fit in C?’s meticulous system.
“Cabinet by the fridge, top shelf.”
My body reacts before my mind does, but it locks up so I can’t move.
When my thoughts catch up, they collapse in on themselves like dominos.
I’d never mistake that voice for anyone else’s.
It’s the only one that sounds different when he calls my name.
It’s etched in me like a secret spilled beneath my skin, from intimate whispers in the dead of night.
I whip around to face Parker—or a Parker-like figment of my imagination—and nearly drop the bag of noodles.
“Here.” He plucks it from me and reaches over my head, placing the noodles on the highest shelf with ease.
All the air leaves my lungs in a rush. I can’t believe any of this is real, that he’s really here. Am I dreaming? I blink hard, expecting him to disappear the second I wake from this trance. But he doesn’t. “What . . . why are you—”
“Why am I in Silverpine?” He takes a step back to give me a long scan. “What do you think? I came back for you.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Well, I heard from my mom you were back in town. Next thing I knew I was booking a flight.” The mask of calm nearly slips as he adds, “It’s really good to see you. I missed you, Dani.”
His hair isn’t styled; it looks messy even, like he hasn’t had the time to give it the usual attention. Did he race here from the airport?
“What about Venture?”
He offers a shrug and nothing more. “I have to admit, I’m surprised you let yourself take a break. You’ve been in full grind mode since you started your editor job. For a while, I thought you’d disappeared on me.”
“I’ve barely heard from you since the Super Bowl. You’ve been just as busy.”
“I’ve tried calling you.”
“So have I,” I say back, a little too pointedly.
The words hang in the air, and the room falls into a brief hush. I’m still trying to process what his sudden appearance means, but it’s impossible not to feel slighted by the past three months of communication deadlock. I can’t help but be a little guarded.
Parker’s eyes search mine. Whatever he’s feeling, he keeps it well hidden.
Or perhaps the separation has dulled my senses, and I can’t quite read him.
Just when it seems like the quiet has gone on for too long, he leans against the counter and speaks.
“I know there’s the distance, and I’ve had a lot going on at work, but that doesn’t mean I stopped thinking about us.
But I can’t tell if it’s the same for you.
Ever since I left, I’ve gotten the sense that something’s been . . . off between us. Am I imagining it?”
“No, you’re not wrong,” I sigh, my shoulders dropping. “I guess it was easier for me to throw myself into work than think about things ending between us.”
“I wasn’t aware that we had ended.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Parker, you left without mentioning anything about the future. I assumed that meant it was over.”
“What was I supposed to say? I couldn’t ask you to drop everything and leave New York for me. I knew you wouldn’t ask the same of me either.”
“Exactly. You’re not going to quit Venture or leave San Francisco, and I’m not going to walk out on my new job. I suppose if we had some kind of arrangement, then you could still visit and stay a couple weeks at a time. And I’d go to San Francisco, but—”
I stop myself.
But all it’ll ever be is casual.
He stares at me, and I take in his anxious face, the pinched brows and the tight line of his mouth.
I finally start to feel the heaviness of how much I’ve missed him.
A week ago, we were on opposite sides of the country, but now, if I were to reach my hand out, I could lay it on his chest and feel the same heartbeat that had once lulled me to sleep.
“Parker? Why are you here?”
I flinch as a stunned C? steps into the kitchen, her voice piercing the stillness and scattering everything left unsaid. Parker must not have alerted anyone to his return.
“I came back for Dani.” He’s said that twice now, and I’m still not any closer to an explanation that makes sense.
Her eyes fly to me, but my face is just as baffled as hers.
“That means . . .” She brandishes a finger between us with a gleeful spark. “You two are finally . . .?”
“No, it’s not what you think.” I hold up a hand reflexively.
I need to get ahead of the misunderstanding before it can make the tension any worse.
“Parker was just telling me he needed a break from work, and when he heard I was here, he thought what a great idea it would be to also come home. Right?”
He raises a brow in my direction and opens his mouth, but closes it without a word.
“That’s it?” C? says sullenly. “You come home to slack off and bother Dani on her vacation?”
Parker makes a noise of disapproval. “Why is it vacation for Dani, but I’m the one slacking off?”
I almost feel bad for throwing him under the bus because C? isn’t subtle about her disappointment. “Má oi! Why did they give me a windhead for a son?”
“Airhead, you mean,” Parker grumbles. “And don’t call me that.”
“Airhead, groundhead, whatever.” His mother throws an arm up in resignation, but an idea strikes her, signaled by her widening grin and the spark in her eye. “Wait. You’re here, so you take Dani out tomorrow.”
“Oh, no,” I insert swiftly. “That’s not necessary—”
“You want to go to Portland, yeah? You talk all day about that fancy pizza, ‘the best in the city!’”
“We’re not going to go all the way to the city for pizza.”
“Why not? Your dad told me you do nothing all day! Just stay at home, sleep on the couch, watch the same movie over and over again. He is so worried about you!”
My face burns as I realize Dad must be keeping her updated on my pathetic sulking, and those updates include how many times I’ve rewatched Chungking Express.
But that embarrassment is short-lived, squashed by my looming dread of what the next few days with Parker might look like.
This can’t end well, right? Even if he’s told me he misses me and came all the way to Silverpine to see me, I’m still going back to New York at the end of the week.
Aren’t we headed down the same road to disappointment once we go our separate ways?
But C? is not one to be deterred. “Parker will drive you! You kids have fun. But not too much pizza. Eat dinner at home, okay?”
“Sure, I can take you to Ken’s tomorrow,” Parker offers, pushing off the counter.
I shake my head. “I was referring to Apizza Scholls.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought she said best pizza in Portland.”
If his mother wasn’t in the room with us, I would deck him right then and there.