Chapter 2 Parker
Minutes later, an avalanche of pastel-colored pens and spiral-bound notebooks hits Summer’s coffee table. She doesn’t waste any time before reaching for one of each and scribbling Parker’s Dream Woman at the top of a page.
Just the sight of those words has my stomach sinking.
I drop next to her on the worn-in blue sofa, rubbing my thumb over my brow and willing away the headache that tends to build whenever I read for too long. “Summer, we’ve just established that our pickers are broken. Why do you think we’ll suddenly be able to find each other people to date?”
“Not people to date. We’re finding each other’s soulmates!”
I squint at my best friend through the recent fuzziness in my vision that feels like the cold hand of death lying on my shoulder, reminding me of the impending end of my twenties in just a few months.
She’s grinning happily, cheeks rounded and pink, the way they get when she’s excited.
Eyes crinkling, still dusted with the soft purple stuff she wears on dates that makes the green in them sparkle even more than they usually do.
Brown hair tousled around her shoulders, permanently wavy from the daily hours she spends surfing in salt water.
Nose ring glinting under the overhead light.
She changed out of that little number she wore for that dipshit Cory—the tiniest dress I’ve ever seen—and into a matching light-blue tank top and Lycra shorts, her signature gym outfit.
She’s stunning, both looks suiting her beyond comprehension, and it’s almost enough to distract me from the insult she just dealt me.
Here’s the thing about me and Summer: We’ve been teased to no end about our friendship, how close we are. Since we hit puberty, people have been obsessed with the idea that we’ve spent years pining, battling jealousy, and sighing over all sorts of what-ifs.
I can’t speak to any of that.
But it came to me years ago, reading Campbell Ackerman’s autobiography.
The happily married Hall of Fame quarterback spoke at length about his teammate Zander Larson, the tight end he’d played with his entire career, won a handful of Super Bowls with.
They’d been a dynamic, once-in-a-generation pair.
The way they could read each other with half a glance, always managed to find each other through a sea of bodies, knew exactly how to push each other’s buttons or talk the other into stillness…
They existed on a wavelength that defied normal human connection. He’d called Zander Larson his soulmate.
I’d known then, without a doubt, that Summer Prescott is my soulmate.
“Think about it, Park,” she says now. “I’ve been falling victim to pretty boys with charming smiles for years.
A trap you won’t fall for, given your preference for boobs.
And seeing as my appreciation for boobs mostly revolves around the way they look in a cute outfit, I’ll be finding your dream girl in no time.
I don’t know why I never thought of this before. ”
“I don’t know,” I groan, already exhausted by this side quest. I feel like a jerk for the lack of enthusiasm, but nothing’s ever sounded less appealing.
“Come on,” Summer needles me. “Please? I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this on my own. The swiping. Coming up with a cute pickup line. Trying to sound all fun and sexy and intellectual over text, only to end up wasting layers of my favorite lipstick on another dud date.”
“Not the lipstick!” I give an exaggerated gasp. She doesn’t play along; just stares back at me with those wide, twinkling green eyes. Her lip trembles and I know for a fact that it’s fake as hell, but I crumble like a dry cookie anyway. “Fuck, fine. I’ll matchmake you.”
“You’re so damn easy.” With a happy bounce in her seat, Summer thrusts a pen and notebook into my hands.
“This requires note-taking?”
“It requires thoughtful planning and careful strategy. I’m not going to set you up with just any woman. We’re going for…” She assesses me. “What are you looking for, exactly? A long-term girlfriend with the potential for marriage, kids, a picket-fenced house?”
Again, it’s that sinking feeling—one I can’t quite put my finger on.
I nudge Summer’s knee with mine, trying to buy time to get my thoughts straight. “Let’s fix your hair first.”
Patting at the waves on her head, Summer slips off the couch and settles on the old parquet between my outstretched legs.
I get to work, splitting her hair in half, then in threes, and twisting it all together in the two French braids I perfected as a teenager when she adopted the hairstyle for her surf sessions at sunrise.
The guys tell me it’s kind of weird. But she can’t French braid on her own, and this nightly ritual has always felt meditative after a long day. Just running my fingers through her hair stills me. Helps me breathe a little deeper.
“Would you judge me if I said I’ve never really thought about it?
” I say slowly. “Marriage, kids, and picket fences—it always felt like some nebulous thing I had years to figure out. And then I blink, and I’ll be turning thirty in a couple of months.
My twin sister married our childhood friend, and Brooks wins a Super Bowl and proposes to his fake girlfriend, all within a year.
Everyone has it all figured out, while I still get stuck coming up with what I want for dinner. ”
I know these things have never been nebulous to Summer, but she hums a thoughtful sound anyway. “I’m still here. Still just as single.”
“But you know what you’re looking for. You know what you want out of life.
” I slip an elastic band off my wrist and tie off the second braid, smoothing my fingers along her hairline and smiling at the tiny freckle hidden under the unruly baby hairs.
“And it’s not just about picket fences. It’s my apartment, my job.
Rewind about ten years and I’m in exactly the same place I am today.
” She peers over her shoulder as I sit back on the couch, staring at the ceiling.
I wave vaguely toward the window overlooking Oakwood’s main street. “Is this it for me? All there is?”
“Maybe you need a break from work. Get your mind off it and the spark will come back?”
“But that’s the thing—I fell into that job because it’s what made sense for me at the time, and then I never stopped to think whether it was what I really wanted.
” I gesture at the pile of pens on her coffee table.
“And now you’re asking me to describe my dream woman, someone I’m supposed to marry one day, and…
I can’t. I have no idea what I’m looking for. ”
She reclaims the seat cushion next to mine, a teasing smile pulling at her full, glossy lips. “Not even a hair color? Shoe size?”
I shake my head, gaze drifting to the bookcase on the far wall piled with Summer’s favorites—books about blue aliens bedding human women, and men who shapeshift into all kinds of mythical creatures. My own face stares back at me from several of the framed pictures scattered between the spines.
“You have to give me something. I can’t promise you a hole in one with finding you a wife if I’m going in blind.”
A wife. Jesus, it feels like I was in college just a minute ago—how the hell did I get to the point where we’re talking about my future wife? I haven’t even had a girlfriend in years. Not since Lainey, who dumped me when I told her I wasn’t ready to move in with her.
I was twenty-two. Hardly ready for adulthood, let alone a live-in girlfriend.
When—how—did I get here?
I feel Summer’s eyes on me as I fiddle with the hem of my T-shirt. “Park, are you okay?”
I don’t think so.
It’s a conclusion I’ve been drawing for the past few months, as I recognize myself increasingly less.
Things that would’ve made me laugh then, barely faze me now.
A job that used to have me excited for the next day keeps me paralyzed in bed long after my alarm goes off in the morning.
A simple conversation about what I’m looking for in a woman makes me sweat more than it should.
I’m constantly on edge. Constantly exhausted. I feel like I’m approaching a cataclysmic event with no idea where it’ll come from, but terrified by what it’ll do to me.
“Parker?” Summer’s hand comes down on my knee, pulling me out of my head. The shift is instantaneous. The fog in my head recedes as quick as it came, the weight falls off my chest, the tightness in my stomach unravels. Like she’s just injected me with sunlight from the palm of her hand.
“Sorry.” I breathe a genuine, sheepish laugh and uncap the bright pink pen she handed me. “Let’s… let’s hit pause on my wife and talk about you. Summer’s Dream Guy. What do you have for me?”
It takes her a beat, but then Summer hops to her feet, her earlier enthusiasm returning full force.
“Dream man.” She disappears into her tiny galley kitchen.
I catch a glimpse of her through the rectangular opening in the wall before she bends into her fridge.
“I’ve dated boys and bros and guys, and I’m done with them all.
I won’t settle for less than a grown man, with goals and ambitions.
Who’s steady and predictable, and wants exactly what I want out of life: marriage, kids, and picket fences. ”
I scribble in my notebook as she speaks. “Steady and predictable? You really had the right idea with this matchmaking thing. You need all the help you can get.”
She peeks through the opening in the wall. “What’s wrong with steady and predictable?”
“Summer, you throw yourself into the ocean—willingly—with just a piece of plastic for safety, every single day. As dangerous a hobby as it gets. I think there’s a whole lot more you want out of life than steady and predictable.”
“Maybe that’s why it works. I’m not looking to swim for my life at home, too.” She scoffs when I shake my head. “Go ahead, then. Tell me what I really need, matchmaker.”