Chapter 42 Summer
“Hey, Dad. It’s Summer. I’ve been tied up with my friends all day, didn’t see your texts until now. No, I’m definitely not making your trip to Mexico. Anyway… Talk soon?”
My fingers skim the wall to keep myself oriented in the dark.
I follow the sounds of stuttering snores belonging to Noah and the soft, sleepy breaths I recognize as Parker’s toward the bed at the far end of the room.
It’s just past midnight, officially his birthday. We all crashed tonight after an early morning and a long day in the sun, and I know I’m risking being found out, but it’s the same as it was back before I knew what it was like to kiss him.
I’m possessive of Parker. Hate the idea of not being the first to wish him a happy birthday. Especially when he’s not been himself all week.
He’s kissed me plenty, still insatiable in bed.
He’s training me harder than ever and blushing adorably whenever Tritus’s three tongues make appearances in our current read of the Hidden Moon series.
But there are moments when he doesn’t think I’m paying attention where the dimples smooth over. His eyes glaze over, deep in thought.
He keeps worrying over a crumpled sheet of lined paper, but all I ever catch are check marks and scribbles before he notices me watching and stuffs it back into his pocket, slapping on a smile.
I’ve let him keep his secrets because it’s not as though I’m not keeping some of my own.
“Park, wake up,” I whisper, squinting into the dark. My knees hit the edge of the mattress and I reach out, touching his clean-shaven cheek and stroking down his neck.
Wait a second—
Noah’s shriek pierces the silence. I squeak, stagger backward, slamming my elbow into the wall. The lamp at the far side of the bed turns on and Parker pops up behind Noah’s panicked figure.
“Sum?” he mumbles, reaching for his glasses on the nightstand.
“What the fuck, Summer—”
Parker leaps across the mattress and claps a hand over Noah’s mouth, cutting off the rest of his shouting. “Pipe down, Irving. You’ll wake up the whole house.”
I bury my face in my hands, sliding down the wall. “Oh my God.”
Noah mumbles something under Parker’s hand.
“She wasn’t feeling you up. She thought you were me.” Parker’s gaze darts my way. “Right?”
“I saw a big shape in the bed and thought…” I look between them. “In hindsight, Noah is quite huge—”
“Hey. I’m huge,” Parker protests. His eyes narrow at the sound of muffled words from Noah. “Don’t start. Can I trust you to keep it down?”
More muffled words and Parker releases him. There’s a smirk plastered on Noah’s face. His voice goes high-pitched. “ ‘There’s nothing going on between us.’ ”
“That better not be an imitation of me,” I say weakly, getting to my feet.
“It was Parker, actually.” Noah grunts when Parker tosses a pillow at him. “Well, to what do we owe this midnight surprise, Summer?”
“I—well, I wanted…” Parker’s no help whatsoever—he’s laughing quietly to himself, watching me stutter.
“I see.” Noah wags his eyebrows. He rolls off the mattress and springs to his feet, reaching for his phone on the nightstand. “Well, I’m sure you won’t blame me for not sticking around. I’ll take the couch. You kids have fun—use protection.”
“Irving,” Parker calls as Noah reaches the door. “Thank you.”
Noah salutes us before slipping into the hall. Parker takes me in properly for the first time. “Why are you fully dressed?”
I reach for his jeans slung over an armchair in the corner and toss it at him. “Because I’m taking you out, birthday boy.”
Parker’s fresh champagne glass clinks against mine. The server who’s been overseeing our night heads back into the inner bar, leaving us on the otherwise deserted rooftop terrace.
It’s a cozy space nestled in a quiet neighborhood of semidetached brick houses, with lush trees lining the sidewalk below. The terrace is lit with Edison bulbs strung over a handful of unoccupied couches and tables and an unmanned bar toward the back.
I planned this night for us several weeks ago—not exactly what we’re used to back at Oakley’s, but close enough. I’ve got Tritus and his tongues, Parker’s got a new autobiography, and we’ve been picking away at appetizers since we arrived.
“I can’t tell you how much I missed doing this with you,” Parker says, sipping on his drink.
“Been too long,” I agree. I stack our books off to the side of the table, pushing our food out of the way. When I look back at him, Parker is staring at me with the same contemplative look he’s worn on and off all week.
“A lot’s changed since the last time,” he says slowly.
I nod, smiling, and then my stomach pangs when I realize he’s frowning.
But he doesn’t add anything, so I reach into my purse and pull out his gift.
I wrapped it in the most obnoxious pattern I could find, and he opens it to see two equally horrendous matching Hawaiian shirts folded one on top of the other.
Parker huffs a laugh, watching me pull mine on. “I can’t decide if this is a punishment, after what I told you.”
“Hate to say it, but they’ve grown on me. You did this to yourself.” With a shake of his head, he slips his arms into the sleeves. I sweep aside the wrapping paper, unearthing the second part of his gift. “Now this.”
Nudging up his glasses, Parker slides the scrapbook closer. I’ve been putting it together little by little for months. Unearthing pictures from my own collection, and from the boxes of Parker’s childhood things stacked in his spare bedroom.
Still, when Parker flips it open to reveal a fading picture of the two of us as kids, there’s an unexpected bursting in my stomach.
We’re three years old, on the day we met.
I’m dressed in pink denim overalls with lopsided pigtails.
He’s in tear-away trackpants with blond hair falling into his eyes.
We’re smiling inside a pillow fort at day care, blankets piled on our laps, sitting shoulder to shoulder.
Parker rubs at his chest, staring down at the book. “Well damn, Prescott. You really should’ve prepared me for this.”
I tuck into his side, and he flips through the next few pages.
Toddlerhood, then kindergarten, all the way through junior high.
Our hair grows, legs get longer. Teeth go missing, braces come on and off.
Parker’s skinny frame fills out, my suntan deepens.
Drastic changes within just a few years, yet there we are, still shoulder to shoulder.
Another page and we’re in high school. Creased pink Post-it notes accompany nearly every picture now, starting in our freshman year.
Sitting cross-legged under the bleachers at school after cutting out of class, together at the end-of-summer parties Zac used to throw at his grandmother’s house.
There’s a picture from Parker’s first football game, him in full gear, me in a spare jersey of his.
He’d left it in my locker earlier that day, with a paper plane that said How many touchdowns do you want tonight?
I’d told him three. He’d scored me four. And when I’d teased that I was his lucky charm, he’d shaken his head. Not luck. Motivation, he’d simply said. The touchdown requests became our game-day ritual all the way through college.
Parker smooths his thumb over a photo from our senior prom.
We’re dressed to the nines, dates who aren’t each other flanking us as we pose for the picture side by side.
The month prior, he’d flung a paper plane at me in class after I’d admitted that I suspected my date had only asked me to prom to spite his ex. What color’s your dress? his note says.
I’d rolled my eyes when he showed up to prom in a tie just a shade lighter than my pale pink dress. Pointed out that his own date was wearing green. But secretly, I’d loved knowing I was the other half of a marked pair.
Parker grows increasingly quiet as he flips through the book.
The surf events, football games, college parties, and Summer Fridays.
Mundane workdays and trips with friends.
Walking down Melody and Zac’s daisy-lined wedding aisle, our arms linked.
Some of my favorite moments through our decades of heartbreak and triumphs and fumbling through life together, and I stare at the pages holding my breath, as though I hadn’t made them myself.
Like I’m a spectator to my own story, dying to know what happens next.
And seeing it like this…
Parker reaches the final page of the scrapbook. It’s us, smiling at the camera in matching Hawaiian shirts the morning of the Rocky Ridge event. Just hours after our first kiss.
It’s a cliff-hanger, a dot dot dot. An unfinished sentence at the end of a page. The arrow on a compass whipping about, searching for north.
I clasp my hands, realizing they’re shaking. I thought this would be a fun way to reminisce. Share some good laughs, bond over the most meaningful friendship I’ve ever had. But now I feel as though I just brandished insistent, conclusive evidence of something else.
I’ve always wondered how Parker so easily gets under my skin.
But I think it’s because he exists under my skin. Burrowed in me so deeply as a child, then grew into me, his soul molding to mine along the years. Filling cracks. Reinforcing weak points. Invading my space when I get too comfortable, pushing me to spread in new directions.
He’s part of me in a way that, if I were ever to try cutting him away, would make me less me. Like punching out an apple’s core, and trying to pass it off as whole.
Parker sits perfectly still. Not saying a word, just staring at that final picture.
“So, that’s…”
It, I mean to say.
Real love, I want to say.
Isn’t it? For weeks, this thing between us has felt out of the blue. A freak accident. A mistake he’ll come to regret. But, on display from beginning to end like this, leading up to that first kiss…
It’s hard to imagine there was ever another outcome for us.