Chapter 1 Summer #2
“What about the one who dined and dashed while you were getting another round of drinks at the bar?” Parker asks darkly.
I grimace, remembering how I’d come back to our table to find a furious Parker forking over cash to cover our bill after witnessing Garrett’s vanishing act.
He’d then plied me with Diet Coke and Thai food from my favorite place in the next town over to cheer me up.
I’d actually been hopeful during that date—thought it had been going well for once.
But I’ve been trapped in a string of bad first dates for the last three years.
Three years without even a glimmer of hope for a second date. Three years of navigating a slew of hook-up-type, moon-landing-denying men that seem to look at me and think, Yep, she’s the one.
My last boyfriend, who dumped me when I started feeling him out on an eventual engagement after four years together, was normal, at least.
Well, normal adjacent.
His idea of quality time involved me watching him drive tricked-out cars through video game streets, hitting innocent pedestrians along the way. He broke it off, then turned around and got engaged to his next girlfriend a year into their relationship.
The wedding bells in my life didn’t stop there.
Our friend Zac and Parker’s twin sister, Melody, who split their time between Oakwood and the city, got married just last month.
Brooks, who we met in college, and his fake-girlfriend-turned-real-fiancée, Siena, shipped across the country when he signed with an NFL team out in Los Angeles.
Even our newest friend Shy has a husband and three-year-old daughter.
I stare over our table at Parker taking a deep sip of his soda.
It’s an undeniably pretty view that’s evolved plenty over the years—from preschooler with a perma-smile to baby-faced teen to this nearly-thirty-year-old man with his mess of thick hair, a subtle bump on the bridge of his nose from taking a bad tackle in his college football years, and a jaw dusted with stubble.
Even he’s started dating more seriously after years of happily living the single life, and seeing as he’s pretty much the best person I know, it’s only a matter of time until he’s paired off, just like the rest of them.
I’ll be happy for him once he finds someone. Thrilled. The first to champion their relationship, celebrate their eventual engagement. Because he’s my best friend, deserving of all the love in the world.
But then… it’ll be me. Single, thirty-year-old only-child-of-her-practically-estranged-parents Summer Prescott.
It’s hard not to feel like I’m constantly chasing after a high-speed train, scrambling for a foothold, trying not to get left behind.
Trying to silence the voice in my head that points to all the departures in my life and concludes that I’m the problem.
It’s not just my friends who’ve left me behind, after all.
“Serious question. What is it about me that says, Weirdos, nymphos, and grown men with mommy issues welcome here?”
Parker squints at me from over the top of his book. “That felt like a personal attack.”
Lisa appears with my soda. “Another bad one, hon?” I pull a face in reply, and she pats my outstretched calf. “I’ve been saying it for years. That picker of yours gave up on you a long time ago.”
I give her a look over the rim of my Diet Coke. Lisa is withholding her favorite, incorrect caveat about said picker.
According to her, it did its job when I met my true love at the ripe age of three. When he barged into the pillow fort I’d built on my first morning at day care in Oakwood, and announced we were now friends.
Worst meet-cute ever, but it was the perfect introduction to the mischief that would go on to follow me for twenty-seven years in the form of a blue-eyed, dimple-smiled, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing tornado of a man.
It followed me all the way through high school, when we, plus Melody and Zac, would let Parker pull us from our homework and into some middle-of-the-night misadventure we’d get grounded for later.
Through college, when our passion for biomechanics meant we shared an identical class schedule that led to our physical therapist jobs at the University of Oakwood Bay’s athletic rehabilitation center.
Even after, when Parker moved into the apartment above this very bar, only to find me moving into a place directly across the street just a few months later.
Parker huffs a laugh across the table, but Lisa turns a sharp look on him. “You’re in no shape to laugh given your own track record with ladies.”
“Lisa, please. Tonight’s about Summer.” Parker reaches over the table to lay a hand on my arm, giving Lisa a reproachful look. “She’s just been through a terrible ordeal—shockingly, the guy whose pictures she spent a week salivating over turned out to be all chiseled jaw, no decency.”
Lisa cinches her graying ponytail, looking back and forth between us. “Don’t you think you two should cut to the chase already?”
“What chase is that?” Parker asks around a sip of his Mountain Dew.
He’s being difficult on purpose, and the blank look I give her is just as phony. We know exactly which chase she means—the one where we supposedly wake up after almost three decades of platonic friendship to realize it was more than that all along.
Never gonna happen, for a multitude of reasons.
We’ve never kissed. Never had a sleepover, not even the kind with sleep involved.
The most we’ve shared are friendly hugs and humiliating secrets I’d never dream of telling a guy I was trying to win over.
And while I’m perfectly aware that my best friend is wildly, ask-me-to-join-his-cult-and-I’d-happily-sign-on-the-dotted-line attractive, inherent awareness and a desire to act on it are entirely different things.
“The chase. The chase.” Lisa waves an impatient hand at us. “There’s a reason all your dates keep failing, isn’t there?”
“We know exactly why my dates keep failing,” Parker says darkly.
We’ve all heard the rumors about Parker, the excited chatter among Oakwood’s female population. And the things they say he’s into in bed… Well, there’s a reason women keep cutting their dates short to proposition him instead, eager to see if the rumors are true.
Lisa’s nose wrinkles. Meanwhile, I shift on my bench as an image of Parker breaches its confines inside my brain, where I’ve actively buried all thoughts of the small-town rumor since the first time I heard it. It’s not even a real image—just a synthesis of the different versions of him.
The way he looks when he focuses on a book.
The way the tight pockets of muscle over his stomach flex when he works out.
How his hair turns to waves when it’s damp with sweat, how his chest moves while he pants from exertion.
That smile of his—tilting slightly to the left, the long, shallow dimples bracketing plump lips.
How it exudes endless reserves of playfulness, but the wholesomeness is completely offset by the mischievous spark in his deep blue eyes, telling you exactly which kind of adventure you’re in for in his hands.
Illicit. Middle of the night. Either waking up behind bars or butt naked and sore as hell.
And all of it pointed at the woman sprawled underneath him, squirming into his sheets, French braids turning more dishevelled by the thrust—
For fuck’s sake, Prescott. Stop picturing your best friend naked.
I shove the thought back from whence it came. It’s not even that I want to see my best friend naked. It’s that godforsaken rumor, putting crazy thoughts in my head.
“Perhaps it’s the universe trying to tell you something,” Lisa tells Parker.
“What, that my dating life is so dire I may as well join a monastery?”
“Good grief, you’re both hopeless.” Lisa heaves a resigned sigh. “Keep on going like this and you’ll end up alone.”
With those awe-inspiring words, Lisa heads back to the bar.
“Thanks for that, Lisa. Excellent pep talk. Truly life-changing,” Parker calls after her, before giving me a look that says, Can you believe her?
Except…
Lisa is dead wrong about me and Parker, but it’s not as though she doesn’t have a point—there is a reason our dates keep failing. I eye Parker’s profile as he returns to his book, the very beginnings of an idea forming in my head.
As much as Parker’s dead-end dating life brings relief to my co-dependent heart, it makes me a little frustrated on his behalf. He’s incredibly funny. Self-deprecating. Smart and supportive. And he can weave a damn good French braid, too.
It’s not as though he was the one to spread that rumor about himself, but he is the one who keeps asking out the wrong women.
Distractedly, I rub my nose, wincing when it jostles my tiny hoop piercing. “You know what? I think Lisa’s right.”
Parker’s gaze darts to me. “About which part?”
“About us being hopeless.”
He returns to his book. “You, of all people on this earth, are not hopeless.”
“No, hear me out. I think we’re the problem. Well, not us—our pickers.” I swing my legs off the bench and under the table so that I’m facing him. “I bet I could find you a girl who at least finishes her drink before trying to strip for you.”
Parker’s eyes narrow in thought. “To be clear, she will strip for me eventually?”
“See, that’s exactly what I mean—you’re letting your dick do the picking. Maybe this requires a woman’s touch.” I laugh when Parker opens his mouth. “Don’t. Do not joke about my touch in the context of your dick. You wish, Woods.”
“Harsh, Sum.” Parker’s hand slaps over his stomach, exaggerating as though I just punched him.
“Focus—I figured it out. How to remedy the train wrecks trying to pass for our dating lives. No monasteries required.” The more I think about it, the better the idea becomes. We know each other better than anyone. Have each other’s best interests at heart. This idea isn’t just good—it’s brilliant.
Parker sobers the longer he stares at me, squinting over the top of his book. “You’re scheming. I’m officially worried.”
“Don’t be. It’s genius.” I sweep my Diet Coke off the table and toast my increasingly skeptical best friend. “I’m going to become your picker. And in return, you’re going find me the love of my life.”