35. 35
M y phone sits on my chest, hands resting on top of it, hoping it vibrates with a text from Anya.
When Brittany asked if she could stay in the guest room, my jaw almost dropped. She hadn’t contacted me for years and now, not only does she want back in my life, she wants a place to stay? But then she gave me those big eyes she always did in high school, and my traitorous heart gave a small squeeze.
I showed her to the room before making my way to mine, making sure to lock the door so there would be absolutely no confusion about if she was welcome in my space.
And then I paced.
And paced. I debated texting Anya and asking her if I could come over to talk, but decided against it not wanting to pressure her. In the end I sent a short message telling her how great of a time I had with her and that I wished she was here before finally laying down around three in the morning.
The room lightens as dawn begins to break. Not able to wait any longer, I climb out of bed and into the shower after stripping out of my clothes. I had moved all of my meetings for this morning after Anya had agreed to go on a date with me. I didn’t want to be presumptuous she would spend the night with me, but I didn’t want to rush away if she was in my bed.
Who would have thought it would be Brittany in my house and not Anya.
I pick up my phone and send a text to Anya wishing her a good morning and asking if we can talk.
The smell of coffee and bacon meets me as I make my way down the hallway away from the sleeping quarters of the house.
“What are you wearing?” One of my old, long-sleeved winter shirts hangs off her body, hitting right below her ass. Her legs are toned and bare.
“Oh,” she says, looking down at herself before turning her attention back to the eggs she’s scrambling on the stovetop. “I hope you don’t mind. I got cold and looked in the closet for another blanket. I didn’t find one, but I found a box labeled winter clothes. I guess you probably don’t need those much here.”
“I do mind. Extra blankets are in the chest at the end of the bed.”
“Just like our house,” she says, smiling.
“It’s convenient for guests.”
Her cheeks turn a slight pink as she grabs a bowl from beside her, putting the eggs on it. On my island sits pancakes and bacon, along with a pot of coffee .
“I made breakfast,” she says, stating the obvious as she sets the bowl next to the other plates. Steam rises off of everything. “There’s coffee. I know how much you need your coffee first thing in the morning.”
I look at the spread and despite the effort I see she put into the meal, I get angry.
Angry at her pretending like this is normal.
“I don’t drink coffee anymore,” I say, pettiness rising up and lashing out. I’m not proud of the small amount of hurt I put in her eyes, but I can’t seem to accept her gesture.
“I see. The grounds must have been for your girlfriend, then.”
I don’t respond. She doesn’t need to know anything about me and Anya. It’s not her business. Not anymore.
“I’m going to work,” I say, stating the obvious. Even without morning meetings, I’d rather be at the office than in this hellish situation. “When you leave, go out the garage. There’s a panel on the left side when you look at the house from the driveway. Press the enter key and it’ll shut the door. Remember, you said only one night.” My tone is brusque, but I just don’t care. Anya hasn’t texted me and I know it’s a direct result of the woman across from me.
Not only did she break my heart, leaving me a husk of myself, now, when I’ve finally found someone I can feel myself falling for, she pops back up.
“I remember,” she snaps, crossing her arms under her breasts, pushing them up, showing me she’s going bra-less this morning. In another life, that would have been enough for me to go to her and take her on the island, but now it does nothing for me. “Are we going to talk about what I said last night?”
“No. ”
“Okay. Are we going to talk about everything that happened back then?”
“ You don’t get to dictate this. You left. Not me. Leave your number on the notepad on the side of the fridge. I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk. One more day without answers after ten years won’t matter.” I can feel my temper rising and I want to get out of here before I say something I regret.
My phone vibrates and I check it immediately, but it’s just my ride share telling me they are outside the house.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I say in goodbye, heading for the front door. As I shut it behind myself, I see my truck still in the driveway.
My heart begins galloping thinking Anya is here, but when I look around, she’s nowhere. The driver of my ride honks and I flash him a one moment signal. As I turn to lock the door with my spare set of keys, my foot bumps the ones I gave to Anya last night.
Squatting down, my joints crack like I’m a thousand years old. The metal is cold against my overheated hand. I wave off my driver, getting a double middle finger before he pulls away.
I look down the street like I can see the ghost of Anya leaving.
Every mile I drove into the office, I got more and more disappointed Anya didn’t take my truck. I wanted a reason to get her to see me without me showing up at her bakery.
“What’s your problem?” Mitchel asks as I stomp to my office, a warm coffee cup in my hand and a bag of fast food breakfast.
“Brittany is here.”
Mitchel’s eyes go wide as he follows me into my office, shutting the door behind him. He left for college after we graduated and wasn’t there for the whole horrible thing, but on a few drunken nights, he definitely heard a story or two.
“Did she call you or something?”
I laugh at the absurdity of the entire situation. “No, because she wants to ruin my life all over again. She was waiting on my doorstep.”
“Holy shit.”
“And I was bringing Anastasia home for the first time after an amazing date.”
His jaw drops and his entire facial expression is pretty much how I’ve felt since Anya and I pulled into my driveway.
“What did Anastasia say?”
“She told me to talk to Brittany. I gave her my car keys so she could get herself home, but she left them on the ground and must have had someone pick her up.”
“Have you talked to her?” he asks, crossing his arms.
“She never answered my text from last night.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. But I need to talk to her. Would it be insane to show up at her bakery? I think I’m still her boyfriend, but I don’t want to overstep.” Uncertainty at what to do and fear there’s nothing I can do to rectify this situation has been making my stomach hurt since I shut the door on Anya yesterday.
“I don’t think I’d show up in the middle of her workday. Maybe just text her a few more times and if she’s still not answering, I’d show up at closing in a day or two. She might need a second to breathe.”
“Okay, thanks. What do you need?”
We go over the details of a few different projects and the issues they are running into. Then we go through the list of new projects so I can add them to the map I like to keep marking of the different places around the city that our homes occupy.
“How far out are we booking?”
“Eighteen months,” he says, checking his phone.
“Still?” I ask. That was the timeline before I left for the show and we hired additional people.
“We keep getting new customers. I’ve had to turn people away.”
“Sounds like we need to expand the team again. Let’s talk to finance and see where the budget stands.” He taps on his phone and my computer pings with the notification of the meeting. “If there’s room, highest priority is quality.”
“Agreed. I can put out a call to the teams we already have and see if there’s anyone they suggest.”
“Let’s check with the managers. See if any of the apprentices are ready to be promoted and prioritize those movements and then backfill them.”
I check my phone as he makes notes. Still no message from Anastasia.
“She’ll call,” he says, catching me.
“I hope so.”
“I’m going to get out of here. There are some emails waiting for you I need responses on.”
“I’ll look at them now. I’m going to visit the Valdez site this afternoon.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll let you get to it.” He leaves my office and I pick up my phone again and type out a new text and send it. Considering how many times I’ve wanted to text her, I feel like I’ve shown great restraint to this point.
Parker: I found my keys. I wish you would have taken the car .
Anya: I didn’t want to inconvenience you
I stare at the screen, reading her response a hundred times. How could she ever think anything regarding her would be an inconvenience?
Parker: If you took a ride share, I want to pay for it.
Anya: That’s not necessary. How did your night go?
Fuck it. I press the video call button and it starts ringing. My heart pounds so hard against my ribs while I wait for her to pick up I’m afraid the bones will be bruised.
“You have flour on your nose,” I tell her with a smile. She’s beautiful. Disheveled hair. Tired eyes.
“It’s been a busy morning.”
“I thought I’d call you and answer your question. Last night was awful because you weren’t there.”
“You know that’s not what I meant, Parker,” she says. The lack of emotion in her voice is almost worse than if she were mad.
“I know, but it’s no less true. It was weird, seeing her for the first time.”
“Did you talk it out?”
Embarrassment. That’s all I feel when I have to admit I wasted my night away from her.
“No. There were a lot of hurt feelings just seeing each other after so long.”
“Hi, Anya!” Liam says in the background and her answering smile is bright and I wish I had received it.
“Hey, Li. Give me a second.” She turns back to me. “Parker, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Sure. Have a great day. ”
She hangs up quickly and I feel no better for the conversation. Not wanting to leave it like this, I text her the truth.
Parker: I miss you.
Tucking my phone away, I finish my breakfast as I sort through the various emails from Mitchel, vendors, and customers. Anything to keep my mind off of Anastasia and what she is doing.
My stomach grumbles hours later and I push back from my desk, trying to decide what I want to eat before my client meeting in an hour. Grabbing my keys from the drawer, I lock my computer.
“Knock, knock,” Brittany says, standing in my doorway.
“You really need to stop showing up places,” I tell her, rudely.
“I just thought I’d bring you lunch.” She holds up a paper bag and I’m thrown back to our first month married when we would eat lunch together every day. “It’s Chinese. I still remember your favorite food.”
“I was just leaving to go to a meeting,” I tell her, the smell of the food making my mouth water, but I refuse to give in.
“Oh, okay. I guess I’ll just go then. I’ll see you later?”
“Yeah. Later,” I say, pushing past her. Leaving her, just like she left me.
Charlie: Are you still coming to dinner tonight? Courtney and her family will be there. They got in this morning and are exhausted from unloading the moving truck .
I was hoping for a text from Anastasia when I felt my phone vibrate in my meeting, but I guess I should have known better. It’s been four days since our date and all of our conversations have been short and to the point. It’s better than silence, but only just.
Every day after work, I’ve found myself sitting outside her bakery but unable to go in for fear of pushing her.
Parker: I’ll be there. Can Courtney make those cookies she mailed you that one time? Next dinner, perhaps?
Charlie: I’m surprised you want to eat anyone’s baking but Anya’s.
Parker: Yeah, I’ve got an update on that.
Charlie: Should I have the whiskey ready tonight?
Parker: Probably wouldn’t hurt.
She acknowledges my message with a thumbs up and I groan, thinking about telling her. The clock ticks a minute closer to five o’clock and I decide I’m done for the day. Keeping myself busy has only worked so well and I’m tired of fighting it.
“Mitch,” I call from my office. He pops his head out of his office, taking a bite of a candy bar and raising his eyebrows at me. “I’m leaving for the day. If there’s anything I need to do this weekend, shoot me a text. Otherwise, I’ll see you on Monday.”
He gives me a salute without saying anything and ducks back into his office.
As I make my way home, I think about going by the bakery but quickly realize a car accident has created a snarling mess of traffic in that direction, and I know with dinner at six, I’ll be late if I make the detour.
Brittany’s car sits in my driveway and I roll my eyes. After the first night, she gave me a sob story about not having enough money to get a hotel room, all the ones in the area being incredibly expensive. As I feel my heart rate spike, I know I’m going to have to kick her out this weekend .
And the fact that Anya hasn’t talked to me much so I could tell her what’s been going on and we could clear the air is sending me into a tailspin.
“Hey,” Brittany calls out as I come in, shutting the door behind me.
“Hi.”
“You’re home early.”
“I have plans with friends tonight.”
She’s standing in my kitchen, grabbing a beer out of the fridge, handing it to me. I twist off the top and take a long drink.
“Can I come?”
“No,” I say, untucking my shirt as I make my way back to my bedroom. Her footsteps follow me down the hallway and I don’t want to deal with this.
“Please? I’m so bored and you still won’t talk to me.”
I roll my eyes at her pushing. Before I would have given in.
“You want me to talk to you? Okay. Why did you leave, Brittany?” I ask, whirling around. “Why couldn’t you talk to me? Tell me how unhappy you were? Why wouldn’t you just talk to me?”
“Because you never would have heard me. It was the best thing for us!” she yells, equally as annoyed by the round and round we’ve found ourselves in. And yet, I can’t bring myself to open up all of this pain again. I know it needs to happen. It has to happen. But the pain might end me.
“Yes, the perfect way to work through the loss of our son was to run away. Great choice,” I say, emotion clogging.
My heart hurts. Just as it has every day I’ve thought of him, my son that didn’t even live longer than a day .
“And your solution was so much better? To not talk to me or cry or even pretend like it happened? And it’s not like I left the next day!”
“I had to keep moving or I was going to die with him. I’m sorry we still had bills to pay. I’m sorry I grieve differently than you.”
“That wasn’t the problem and you know it.” She huffs as if she’s just run a mile.
“Then what was the problem? Huh? What was it, Brittany?”
“I was trapped , Parker! He was gone and the entire reason I was still in that town, other than you, was gone . The only reason we got married was because I was pregnant. Did you really want to marry me? Did you? Because I don’t think you did. I wanted to leave, go away to college, and that choice was taken from me when that double line showed up.
“And that was okay. I was so excited to have your baby. To be a family with you. And then we lost him and all I could think about was what we would be doing if he had survived. How I’d be taking him to preschool or shopping for clothes for him. Every milestone he never had. I was suffocating under our lost son and my dreams.
“I just wanted to feel something, anything . All I felt was this great gaping emptiness where my baby was supposed to be and I was so scared that’s all I’d feel for the rest of my fucking life. All I could think about was how I wanted to go with him. To take care of him. To be with him.
“But I couldn’t leave you. Until that was the only thing I could do, so I could maybe feel something again.”
The ringing silence echoes after she finishes yelling and all I can do is nod while pushing the hurricane of emotions ripping through me to a distant corner of my broken soul .
“Sorry for trapping you then,” I say, almost gently, shutting my door softly in her face.