33. 33
S he walks up the drive. Her hair is longer than I remember and as she gets closer, I can see the barest signs of age on her face. She lost the last visages of childhood but I still see the girl I married there.
“I’m here to see you. I was hoping we could talk.”
I look back inside my house and there stands Anastasia, waiting for me. I turn back to my ex-wife.
“About what?” I demand.
“You know what about. I’m sorry to interrupt your date.” If I didn’t know every expression her face makes, I would have missed the infinitesimal smirk that passes over it. “I don’t plan to be here very long, so maybe, if you could find the time?”
I look back at Anya as she moves closer to the door. My stomach twists and turns and the younger version of me, the one that was left behind, wars with the man I am now.
“It’s okay,” Anya whispers.
“Give me a second,” I say to Brittany, shutting the door in her face, before turning toward my girlfriend who looks like she’s about ready to bolt.
“Anya, I don’t know what she’s doing here,” I say, panicked.
“It’s okay. You should talk to her. I can just go home.”
“Baby, please. I want you here,” I say, almost begging her to stay, but I know, even if she does stay, the night is ruined. I’ll be distracted the entire time.
“And I want to be here, but this is more important.”
She goes up on her tiptoes and kisses me, but as she tries to pull away, I band my arms around her, holding her like I’m trying to fuse us together.
“Parker,” she whispers, “you need to let me go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
Panic grips me.
“Promise?” I can’t let her go without knowing she won’t disappear from my life.
“Promise.”
I drop my arms and hold out my keys.
“Take my truck. I’ll have Mitchel bring me to get it tomorrow.”
She takes them, and opens the door, Brittany standing there with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Sorry to ruin your night,” Brittany says as Anya walks past her, her voice the one I immediately recognize as her mean girl voice. Any time she was going to give someone a backhanded compliment, that was the voice she used. My hackles immediately rise. I open my mouth to say something, but Anya takes care of it.
“You didn’t ruin it. I’ll have plenty of other nights with him. He is my boyfriend, after all.”
Brittany’s arms drop when her dig doesn’t land, but I don’t care. I all but preen at Anya’s claiming of me. I see a small slice of the smile she gives Brittany, and I’m just glad I’m not on the receiving end of it. I don’t think I’d have any balls left.
“Do you want to come in?” I ask Brittany, stepping out of the way as Anya beeps my truck unlocked.
“Thanks, Parky,” she says, using the nickname I haven’t heard in so long. Anya waves as I look at her until the door blocks my line of sight.
My foyer is empty when I turn around. I move into the house, finding Brittany running her finger over the back of my leather sofa.
“How did you find out where I live?” I ask, anger starting to seep into my tone.
“Nice place,” she says, looking up at the high ceilings. “It suits you.”
“You’re not here to talk about my house, Brittany. What do you want?” I fold my arms over my chest, closing myself off.
“How about a drink?” She flops down on my couch, making herself at home, and it sets my teeth on edge.
“Fine. But only if you tell me how you found my address.” I move through the arched opening into the kitchen, grabbing two beers from the fridge. I take a long swig of mine and walk back to her, holding it out by the neck .
“Private investigator. I needed to talk to you and you changed your phone number.” She grabs the drink from me. “Thanks,” she says with a smile.
I take a seat in the chair across from her. Normally I’d be pissed about the extreme invasion of privacy, but it doesn’t hold a candle to my worry about how Anya’s feeling right now.
Brittany’s had the upper hand since she showed up on my doorstep. But I know she won’t answer anything until she’s good and ready. Instead of peppering her with questions, trying to force her to talk to me like I used to, I just drink my beer and wait looking around the room like I've never been in here before.
The walls of my living room are a cream. Charlie hated the choice, but I thought it allowed for the architecture of the space to really shine. The mahogany-colored beams stand out, adding warmth. The deep leather of my couch matches, while the chairs Lorelei picked out are a forest green fabric and amazingly comfortable. The raw edged wood coffee table is made from a large tree my dad had removed from the backyard of my family home. It’s the one piece I’ve taken with me throughout the years.
“I saw you on House of Deceit . You should have been the winner. That Charlie girl never would have lasted if not for you. But, then again, you weren’t always the best observer of the people around you, huh?”
The dig lands, but I control my facial expression.
“The right person won,” is all I say.
“Do you remember how we’d watch that show every week?”
“Yup.”
“Did you think of me when you applied? ”
“Once or twice,” I tell her honestly, “but my time there has no connection to you.”
She scoots back on the couch, laying one arm on the back as she takes a deep drink from her beer.
“When I saw you announced as a contestant, I almost swallowed my tongue. My Parker all grown up and on the show we always said we’d apply to.”
“I’m not ‘your’ anything.” I realize I don’t want to go down memory lane with her. I want to be with Anastasia and finish our date.
“Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?” she asks.
“I figured if you wanted me to know where you were, you wouldn’t have left in the middle of the night and would have called at some point.”
“I went dream chasing. After everything, I felt like I had a second chance at life. I had to take it while I could,” she tells me with a smile.
“You couldn’t’ve waited until the sun came up and told me you were going?”
“You never would have let me leave. I would have died in that town without doing anything.”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself,” I say, shrugging my shoulder.
My fingers itch to pull out my phone and text Anastasia and check on her, followed immediately by an emergency request to talk to Sharon tomorrow. I keep my hands still. Calm. Keep everything in. Just like I always have.
“She’s beautiful,” she says, trying to bait me in a new way.
“She is. ”
“You wouldn’t have an issue pulling a beautiful woman. I mean, look at you. I’m sure you have people falling at your feet constantly,” she says with a sly smirk and I know she’s watched at least the first episode of House of Desire . “It’s so funny you picked her. Considering you met her in the same way you met me. I guess we really do repeat our pasts, don’t we?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, not wanting to play her mind games.
“Don’t you remember? You told Charlie about how we met, after all. You plowing into the cheerleading pyramid and knocking us over? You like to be the hero, dusting the dirt off the damsel in distress.”
I snort. “Anastasia wasn’t in distress.”
“Wasn’t she? I don’t know. I saw a lot of distress on her face tonight.”
I squeeze the beer bottle in my hand, as the need to call Anya nearly overtakes me. To check and make sure she’s not going to leave me, too. All because of the woman sitting across from me that destroyed my heart all those years ago.
“Why are you here?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“I know I messed up with you, how great you were, and I’m hoping, maybe, we could pick up where we left off?”
I stare at her.
“You have got to be shitting me.”