Chapter 45 Parker
That Friday evening, Summer stops dead just ahead of me with her yellow surfboard held over her head.
“You did not,” she says, voice hushed. I catch up to find her staring, mouth ajar, at the pale-yellow camper van sitting on the edge of the beach at Pine Point.
She’d groaned when I insisted on parking my Jeep farther away from the rocky section of the ocean that causes the barrel waves this spot is known for—which I’d used to lure her here after work.
Now, though, Summer turns her wide eyes on me. “I thought we were here for a last surf before tomorrow.”
“We are. But I figured we could hang around overnight, since you start bright and early.”
She forges ahead, bare feet sliding in the sand in her excitement.
Call it manifesting, call it playing pretend. I want to give her a taste of a day down the road. When she’d be doing this very thing across the world, and I might fly out to do it with her.
Maybe I also wanted to make sure no one crashed our Summer Friday this time around.
Summer leans her board against the side of the van and lets me slip off the straps of her backpack before she bounces inside like a kid at Christmas.
I came to set it up earlier today, loading it with the requisite pre-bed reading material and stocking the fridge.
There’s a family-sized bag of chocolate-covered almonds and cans of Diet Coke—her favorite post-fuck snack—waiting on the nightstand.
Summer climbs onto the bed—a mattress of questionable quality lying on an elevated platform at the back of the small space. She shuffles to the double doors at its other end, throws them open to a view of the beach, then flops onto her back.
I lean against the doorway, grinning as she sighs up at the paneled roof.
“Best Summer Friday ever,” she declares.
“I got you something.” Ducking my head under the low ceiling, I uncover her gift where it leans between the seats at the front of the van. A shiny, brand-new surfboard in the exact model and shade as her current one.
I sit next to her, placing it across our laps. Then I flip it over to reveal the artwork on its underside.
“Parker,” Summer gasps, a palm meeting her cheek.
It’s our surf spot at Crystal Cove, where we’ve spent every morning for months.
Swirls of blue make up the water spanning nearly the entire length of the board.
The curving outcrop is on one end, lush with trees; the tiny squares making up Summer’s favorite beachfront bungalows sit on the other.
The sky is countless shades of burnt orange, the setting sun hovering over the edge of the ocean.
“It’s beautiful.”
Summer’s fingers trace along the cursive words painted over the artwork. Team Summer, here and across the world.
I reach for my phone and snap a picture of her beaming at the surfboard. The clicking sound has her looking around.
She shoots me a teasing smile. “You and your pictures.”
I shrug. “It’s a long life, you know? I want to make sure I remember the good parts at the end of it all.”
“Me staring at a surfboard is a good part?”
“You are the best part.”
Over the next few hours, Summer surfs while I float along nearby, waterproof camera trained on her.
We meet the people in the camper van parked next to ours, a boyfriend-girlfriend pair of surfers competing in tomorrow’s event.
Summer takes to the other woman so quickly that we pool our dinners and end up cooking burgers on the small grill attached to the back of their camper.
We sit eating together in the sand, and it feels like we might be on one of Summer’s tour stops on a Tahitian beach or the Australian coast.
I can’t say I really connect with this lifestyle. I’m too partial to my things, my bed, my people. But I can understand the appeal of it for someone like Summer, who so easily makes friends, and who’d exist in the ocean if biology allowed it. For my parents, too, who thrive in new experiences.
It’s bittersweet, seeing her so in her element. Knowing it’ll take her away from home. Her first adventure without me. But feeling, deep in my bones, that it’s an experience she’s meant to have.
We sit on the roof of the van now, just the two of us, as the sun sets. Summer got increasingly quiet after dinner, when her new friends turned in and the beach started to empty out. She stares at the horizon with unfocused eyes, legs swinging over the edge of the roof.
“Thank you for doing this for me. It was fun.” She leans back on her hands, French braid flipping over her shoulder as she looks at me.
She gives a small smile when she catches the expectation in my face, waiting on her to say whatever I sense she’s working up to.
“The other night, what did you mean by so long?”
“I meant I’ve been in love with you for years.”
To my surprise, she doesn’t deny it. “But when did it happen?”
“I don’t know. And believe me, I wish I did.
” I stare out at the now-quiet beach. There’s an aging couple walking hand in hand along the shore, and I can’t help but hope we’ll be there one day.
Me and Summer, taking on yet another stage of life together.
“I would’ve caught that moment in a jar, held on to it so I could relive it whenever I needed to.
Because knowing us, it would’ve been a good one. ”
She smiles softly. “It must’ve been big. The time we all snuck into the drive-in after hours in high school, and I figured out how to get the projector working?”
“No way—it would’ve been something like this.
You and me, just existing together. Easy.
Nothing to it, but it’s like the whole world pauses.
” I wind an arm around her waist and tuck her close.
“I’ve loved twenty-eight versions of you, Sum, one way or the other.
I couldn’t tell you when that kind of love became this kind of love, but I think that’s the point.
Falling for you was the most inevitable thing in the world for me.
It was always going to be you—just took me a while to realize it. ”
She rests her head on my shoulder. “Earlier this summer, when I first kissed you. Did you know?”
“I knew when you iced me out and I lost all semblance of direction without you.”
“That was the night I realized I could love you.”
My entire chest squeezes, her words like a zap to the heart, sending it into overdrive. Every frantic pump shouting, Do you? Do you? Do you?
“What if I wanted this—all of it?” She gestures at the beach, the camper, her hand settling on my thigh. “If I left… would you wait?”
“I’d be counting down the seconds, waiting for you to come home.” I take her hand, press her open palm over my heart. “And you’d stay right here. Where you’ve always been.”
Summer’s fingers grip my shirt. “How could you know for sure? We’ve never really been without each other. Not like that.”
I swing my legs onto the roof of the van. “Come on, let’s go in. Let me explain it to you in a way you’ll understand.”
She’s confused but follows me inside, dropping into the van from the skylight and landing on the mattress with a bounce.
I slam shut the doors at the opposite end of the bed. “Clothes off.”
Summer blinks, then hurries to peel off her tank top and tiny denim shorts. “Unexpected turn, but I don’t hate it.”
Once she’s naked, I grip her hips and spin her around so that she lies face down on the bed, gasping into the sheets.
I tug on her hips again so that she’s on her hands and knees, unable to take my eyes off her as I undress.
Bent over, already glistening, greedily squirming that ass in the air.
That visible rush of adrenaline as her body trembles, waiting for whatever I give her.
The first lick is all for me, lapping her from one entrance to the other, collecting every bit of her I can without going anywhere near her clit. She whimpers into the room.
“Can you—That was…”
I slip a finger inside her, just teasing her. “Where do you want my tongue, love?”
She makes a frustrated sound, squirming her hips again. “Parker.”
“Here?” I spread her cheeks, thumb circling her other entrance. Greedy girl that she is, she thrusts her hip back, demanding more. Goddamn. I give her what she wants, licking, swirling my tongue, making her squirm and gasp.
“Holy shit, I actually think I’m going to…”
Summer reaches for her clit. I let her go a while, rubbing circles over herself as I lick at her. Until she’s really shivering and her breaths become nice and labored. That’s when I pull away, and rip her fingers from her pussy.
I flip her onto her back. “None of that tonight, Summer.”
“None of…” Summer swallows, panting and blinking hard, completely disoriented. “Why’d you stop?”
“Told you: I’m explaining it in a way you’ll understand.”
“And that involves not letting me come?”
“Yes.” I reach for my backpack on the ground by the end of the bed, pulling out the length of rope I brought just in case the mood struck. I yank her upright. “Grab your elbows behind your back.”
With greedy eyes, she does, and I get to work binding her upper arms to her sides, wrapping and crisscrossing the rope around her torso.
I dip to press a kiss to her clit just to piss her off. She clamps her jaw shut, gaze now petulantly stuck to the ceiling. That is, until I line up my cock at her pussy. I rock just inside her, groaning at the hot, wet feel of her. Goddamn, her body is heaven.
Made for this. Made for me.
I push her legs up as high as her flexible body allows, sitting back so that I can see every throb and clench of her pussy as I slide into her fully, then pull all the way out.
“Parker.” Summer whimpers in protest, face twisting in agony.