Chapter 38 Parker
Abandoning my new cookbook—a gift from Wynn after a week’s worth of semi-successful cooking lessons, featuring an impressive stack of blueberry pancakes but an overcooked, rubbery roast chicken—I pull up the instructional video I took yesterday and prop my phone on a bottle of olive oil.
I try to let muscle memory take over, and slice through the herbs like Wynn does on-screen.
But the leaves are wet and sticking everywhere—to my knife, my fingers—until the result is a sad sprinkling on the chicken sitting in a pan on my kitchen counter, surrounded by chopped carrots.
On the stove, tomato sauce bubbles away next to a pot of water waiting to be boiled.
Wynn had me convinced I could pull off a pasta dinner for tonight’s Summer Friday. And it might’ve been that his vote of confidence overinflated my ego a touch, because I decided to give the roast chicken another shot, too.
Summer’s dream man would put in the effort.
Since Brooks’s first call, I’ve had meetings with everyone from the heads of the Rebels’ training and medical teams, to higher-ups in the front office. I’ve spent all week outlining a business plan for my very own rehabilitation clinic, and signed the lease on a space just this morning.
The me of a few months ago, who felt caged in by my own life and obsessed over all the ways I fell short, never would’ve imagined an opportunity like this.
All I can think about now is telling Summer she was right.
That if I’d given up the way I wanted to, stayed in bed the way I wanted to, I wouldn’t be on the precipice of a dream I’d never even let myself have.
Hence tonight’s dinner date.
It’s a thank you for believing in me. An I love you. A couldn’t have done it without you. An everything I do, everything I am, it’s to be worthy of you.
Also, it’s an opportunity to grill her on how serious she is about marrying someone with dark hair, because I’m not sure I could pull it off.
I yank open a drawer and pull out a spoon, checking my distorted reflection in the back of it. Could I pull off dark hair? Maybe I should try it.
My front door swings open, bouncing off the wall in the hall and startling the spoon out of my hand.
“Park.” Summer groans. “I cannot begin to tell you how sore I am from today’s workout. I had to crawl up the stairs just now. Preston Wembley down the hall definitely thinks I’m possessed. Which I suppose is an improvement on homewrecker, but not by much.”
“Shit, she’s early,” I mutter to myself, hurrying to sweep the vegetable scraps into the compost bin under the sink.
“Parker, did you hear me? I think you have to tell Herb we’re skipping tonight’s swim. Otherwise, you’ll be diving to the bottom of the pool to retrieve me, and…”
Summer pauses in the mouth of the hallway. She’s dressed in the tiniest, most agonizing frayed denim shorts, an oversized T-shirt hanging off a shoulder. Her loose waves flick as she stares around the kitchen while I hold my breath.
“Wow, Park.” She gives me a curious smile. “That smells amazing. What are you making?”
I breathe a relieved laugh. “Pasta sauce. I still need to put the noodles on. I’m making roast chicken, too.”
“Oh, good.” She nods, eyeing the aluminum dish on the counter with relief. “That should be enough food for everyone.”
“No one else is coming. It’s…” A date. “Summer Friday.”
Summer doesn’t seem to have heard me. She drifts toward the dining table on the far side of the island, trailing a finger over its surface and smiling down at the pink glitter she collects, left over from my T-shirt crafting for her next surf event.
I don’t know why I’m so suddenly nervous about this. Our first real date.
Possibly, it’s because I’m not exactly sure she’s realized yet it’s a date. But we’ll get there.
Her gaze lingers on the flowers sitting in a vase, and then the ones still in their brown paper wrapping. She tugs on a rose petal. “Flowers?”
“For you.”
Her gaze flicks to me. “There are two of them.”
“You spend so much time here, I thought you could have one in both places. Yours and…” Ours. “Mine.”
“Oh,” she says softly. Summer floats to my side in the kitchen, eyeing the roast chicken and the wonky herbs atop it.
Then turns to me, head tipping all the way back as she searches my face.
“What happened to the guy whose signature dishes were burnt toast and soggy microwaved rice? How are you even pulling this off?”
“Wynn’s been helping me out with cooking lessons this week.”
She rears back. “That’s what’s kept you busy after work? Cooking lessons?”
“More or less. It’s something I’ve been meaning to brush up on.” She squeaks when I pick her up by the waist and set her down on the counter, caging her in with a hand on either side of her. “Wine or Diet Coke?”
She glances at the flowers, cheeks flushing the most subtle shade of pink. Come on, Summer. Add it all up. Flowers plus dinner equals…
“Wine, please,” she whispers.
Attagirl.
I open a fresh bottle of red. Her smile is timid when I hand her a glass, then clink it with mine. We take our sips with eyes on each other and it feels exactly the way I hoped it would. Us but different.
Us but better.
“Parker, I think I screwed up.” Summer carefully sets down her glass, and when she looks at me again it’s with a healthy dose of guilt.
“I bumped into your sister earlier and she asked what we were up to tonight, so I mentioned you were cooking. It all sort of snowballed from there, and… everyone’s coming. Here. For dinner. Tonight.”
Oh, fuck me.
Summer eyes the flowers again while I silently beg the ceiling to crack open and bury my humiliated body. It’s the pillow fort night all over again. I’m half expecting her to tell me everyone consists of a mass crowd of irritatingly nice surfer dudes she amassed throughout the day.
“Define everyone.”
“Your sister and Zac. Shy’s bringing Rosie.” Better than surfer dudes, at least. “And… your mom called Mels to say they were driving through town tonight. Your parents will be here in an hour.” Worse. Absolutely worse than surfer dudes. “Should I try to disinvite them?”
“No, that’s…” I clear my throat. “I’m making enough food so… why not, right?”
I should’ve known better.
If there’s anything Summer’s better at than overthinking, it’s brutally misreading romantic signals. She managed to turn a let me cook you dinner at my place into a dinner party with my mother as the guest of honor.
She watches me chop through more potatoes. “Silly me, coming over early to help you cook when I use my oven as shoe storage. You’re really putting me to shame with all this.” She tucks her hair behind her ear, and it’s a little self-conscious. “He mocked me for it.”
Denny. I know she’s thinking of the list of every supposed reason she’s single—used to be single, as far as I’m concerned. I’d love nothing more than to bury him alive.
“That guy couldn’t know the first thing about being marriage material, Sum.
It’d be like taking savings advice from a bank robber.
” I cut through a fresh potato. “The only insulting part of him bringing up your oven storage is the fact that you took credit for the idea, when it was mine to begin with.”
Summer pauses, wineglass at her lips. “What?”
“It was my idea. Don’t you remember your closet crisis a couple summers ago?
You had a meltdown trying to decide which pairs of shoes to donate when you ran out of room at home.
” I sat with her all day, helping her sort them into keep and donate piles as she got increasingly upset to be losing so many beloved pairs.
I suggested the oven when she couldn’t decide between two pairs of similar-but-supposedly-totally-different pink heels, and we spent a good while filling it while laughing our asses off.
A smile tugs at her mouth. “I totally forgot about that.”
“Besides,” I say with a shrug. “Maybe I’m learning how to cook so you’ll never have to.”
“That’s… kind of the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” She gives a little laugh, eyeing the ball of cooking twine as I start unwinding it. “And what’s the occasion for this… dinner?”
I take my time trussing the chicken, letting my nerves settle. This feels like the first proper step in the big picture plan, making Summer see me as someone worth her time. I put the pan in the oven, and wash off my hands before turning back to her.
“Brooks called last week. His coaches want to work with me to rehab anyone who ends up on the Rebels’ injured reserve.” Summer’s hand flies up to her cheek. “I signed the lease on a new clinic space this morning.”
“Parker. Are you kidding me?”
“I asked the same thing. Can you believe they’d trust me with something like that?”
“Yes. Absolutely, I can.” Summer takes my shoulder, shaking me gently.
“How are you so calm right now? This is huge! And so deserved—you’ve worked hard at this for years.
It was only a matter of time until someone took notice.
” She hops off the counter, turning in a frantic circle on the spot.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me sooner.
I could’ve brought champagne—a cake! There’s still time! Where’s my purse?”
I laugh, tugging her back by the belt loop before she makes it too far across the kitchen. “You’re all the celebration I need, Sum.”
“But…” She blinks around the kitchen. At the pasta sauce on the stove, the wine. The flowers. Then up at me, in a way she never has. Like she’s seeing me for the first time. “Parker, look at you. You’re cooking. Starting your own business before the age of thirty.”
“I’m thirty in two weeks.”
“Don’t do that—don’t downplay the accomplishment. This is major. Life-changing, and it couldn’t have happened to a better trainer. A better person.” She takes my shirt in her fists and tugs, like she’s willing me to see it her way. “I’m so proud of you.”
I let her validation wash over me, sink all the way in.