Chapter 17
Parker
I heard the door slam behind Lara as she left my apartment, and I continued to sit on my couch for a few seconds, seething.
I had no idea why she was so angry and I couldn’t believe she was playing me.
Did she really have feelings for Luke? Reading in that text message that they’d kissed had made me see red.
She’d kissed him? I’d been texting her every day.
I’d been thinking about her. Worrying she’d been mad at me.
I’d been there, hoping to see her and hoping she’d been going through the same thing.
And now I find out that she’s making out with other guys?
Perverted guys who wanted to lick ice cream off of her.
I was pissed. How dare she play me? I could feel myself growing angry.
How dare she pretend she was angry because we’d had sex and try and make it seem like the reason she was angry was because I’d said I didn’t think we were ready to be boyfriend and girlfriend.
What the hell did she expect?
Would any reasonable woman think they were dating someone they’d never been on a date with before? She should have said she wanted to go on a date if that was what she wanted. How was I to know? I mean really, I’m not a mind reader.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized she was just using me. She’d slept with me because she was on the rebound with Luke because she thought he’d dumped her and wasn’t interested, and then he’d texted and she’d felt guilty and now was taking it out on me.
I was pissed.
She’d used me.
I sat on the couch, seething, angry at her, but in my heart I knew I wasn’t completely right.
I knew that inside there was more going on here and I just didn’t want to acknowledge it.
I shifted on the couch and grabbed my phone.
There was only one person I could call right now.
Only one person who would know what to say and how to help.
“Parker?” Mila’s voice sounded surprised as she answered the phone.
“Yes, it’s me, your stupid big brother,” I said sheepishly into the phone.
“What’s going on? Where’s Lara? Isn’t she with you? Oh my God, is everything okay? Was there an accident?” Mila’s voice sounded anxious.
“She’s fine. I mean, at least she’s not hurt from an accident.
” I sighed. “I don’t know what’s going on.
I need to talk to you. Like, really talk to you.
I know you’re Lara’s best friend and you don’t want to betray her confidence, but I need to talk to you, Mila.
You’re my sister and you’re the only one I trust to be honest with me, and I really need your honesty right now. ”
“What’s going on, Parker?” Mila’s voice was worried. “Please tell me everything is okay.”
“I don’t know.” I sighed down the phone line. “I really don’t know.”
“What happened?” Mila sighed. “Hold on, I’m going to go and sit down.”
“Yeah, you should do that.” I sighed again and closed my eyes. “I don’t even know what’s going on with Lara. I don’t understand her, Mila. I don’t understand what she wants or doesn’t want.”
“Start from the beginning,” Mila said softly.
“I’m sure you know we’ve had sex. Don’t lecture me, I know it was foolish of me,” I said, even though I knew I would have done it again in a heartbeat.
“I’m not even going to comment,” Mila said. “I’m assuming you guys copulated again this afternoon?”
“Don’t make it sound so crude.”
“I’m not making it sound anything,” she said snidely. “Just continue.”
“I thought we were on the same page. I apologized to her about hurting her feelings. Told her I thought she’d been ignoring me, but she told me she’d just been busy. I guess with that fool, Luke.”
“He’s not a fool. He’s a nice guy.”
“Uh-huh, did you know they’d kissed?” I said angrily, feeling a spark of jealousy running through my stomach again, and I clenched my fists.
“Yes,” she said simply. “How do you know?”
“I saw his text.”
“He texted her?” She sounded surprised. “What did he say?”
“How am I supposed to know? All I saw was a text saying how all he could think about was their passionate kiss,” I said bitterly.
“Wow, he said that?”
“Mila!” I almost shouted. “He didn’t use those exact words. I can’t remember what he said exactly. Who the fuck cares? This is about me, not about this schmuck. Whose brother are you?”
“I’m no one’s brother?” She laughed.
“Ugh, you know what I mean. Whose sister are you?”
“You know I always have your back, Parker,” she said softly. “I take it you’re upset that Lara kissed Luke. Is this what this call is about? Did you guys argue about the kiss? And how did you see the text message on her phone? Were you creeping through her texts?”
“I would never snoop through someone’s phone,” I said with a sigh.
“She was getting upset with me and acting all irrationally and shouting at me and her phone beeped, so I very kindly went to get it for her and I found it stuffed under the sheets and saw his name and text on her phone. She’d been texting with him in the bed that we’d just made love in. ”
“Really?” Mila’s voice was dubious. “That doesn’t sound like Lara.”
“Well, maybe you don’t really know Lara. Maybe I don’t really know Lara. Who knew she was a player?”
“Lara isn’t a player,” Mila said. “You know that.”
“How am I supposed to know that?” I said. “She’s in my bed texting another guy.”
“Okay, Parker, what help do you want from me?” Mila sighed in frustration. “I’m not sure exactly what you called me for, since you don’t seem to want to listen to what I have to say.”
“I want to know what Lara’s problem is. What game is she playing with me? I want to know what I’m supposed to do now. Am I supposed to text her? Call her? Am I supposed to just let her go on with Luke? Ignore her? Go back to being friends and pretend everything is okay?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “I don’t know. I don’t know what game she’s playing with me. I don’t know what she wants from me.”
“What do you want, Parker?”
“I don’t know.” My heart started thudding.
“I want to be with her. I want to spend time with her. I want to kiss her. I want to hold her hand. I want to talk to her. I want to be her shoulder to lean on. I want her to come to me when she’s sad.
I just, I don’t know . . .” My voice trailed off. “What’s happening to me, Mila?”
“You have to figure it out yourself, Parker,” Mila said softly. “I think you’ll get there, but you need to figure it out yourself.”
“I need to talk to Lara.” I sighed. “I just don’t even know why she was so upset.”
“Do you really not know?” Mila cleared her throat. “You’re my brother and I love you, but you cannot be this dense. I know you can’t be this dense.”
“What do you mean?”
“You knew Lara had a crush on you when we were younger,” Mila suddenly snapped. “I know that you knew, because Ryker and I have talked about it before.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So have you never considered the possibility that her crush never really faded? Be honest now, bro. Come on, now.”
“I don’t know,” I said softly, not sure how to answer. “Maybe? I don’t know. I’ve never really thought it.”
“You’re selfish, Parker. You’re really, really selfish.
” Mila sounded pissed. “You know in your heart of hearts why Lara is upset. You know what’s going on, but you don’t want to acknowledge it.
You don’t want to be any more uncomfortable than you have to be.
You think you can just sleep with girls and lead them on and just do what you want without any emotional entanglements?
You think people don’t have feelings? You think you can pull and tug at her heartstrings and not have any repercussions?
You think you can become close to someone and just be in some weird friend zone where you fuck forever?
That’s all you’re comfortable with. And God knows why you’re so scared of relationships.
I don’t get it. I don’t get you. You can’t play people like this, Parker.
You can’t pretend ignorance. You can’t call the girl crazy.
You can’t make it seem like you’re an innocent bystander in all of this.
It’s not fair and it’s not right. You need to grow up.
You need to look a little deeper. You need to stop being so bloody selfish and think about how others might be thinking and what your actions and words might be doing.
Think about someone else’s feelings for once and act based upon that.
Stop acting and doing things because you’re a jealous little boy who doesn’t want to share his toys. ”
“Anything else?” I said, processing in shock what she’d said to me.
“Yeah, figure it out soon,” she snapped. “Get it together, Parker, please just get it together.” And then I heard the phone slamming down.
I dropped my phone onto my couch and sat back and tried to think about everything she had just said to me.
She’d been harsh, but maybe she’d also been partially right?
Was I being selfish? And if I was, what did that mean?
Where did I go from here? What did I want?
What did Lara want? And would I ever be able to figure it out?
Three days—that was how long it took me to call her.
I thought maybe she’d call me or text me to apologize, but of course she didn’t.
I wasn’t even really sure why I thought she would.
It wasn’t like she seemed to even care about me anymore.
I missed the days when she would text me randomly throughout the day.
I’d grown so accustomed to her random texts that I hadn’t realized how much they meant to me, until now.
And now that they’d stopped, I would have given anything to just get one.
At least then I would know she was thinking about me.
If even for just a few seconds. She crossed my mind every moment of the day and I had no idea if she even thought of me at all.
The first time I called, it rang three times and went to voicemail.
I wasn’t sure if that meant it had just gone to voicemail by itself or if she had sent me to voicemail.
I was hoping it was the former, so I ended up calling her a second time just a few minutes later.
Maybe her phone hadn’t rung or maybe it had been off.
Maybe she’d even been trying to call me at the same time.
This time the phone rang two times and went to voicemail, and I frowned.
Either her phone wasn’t working properly or she was sending me to voicemail.
I’d call her one last time and then I’d leave a voicemail.
The third time I called, it didn’t even ring once.
It went straight to voicemail. I gripped the phone and hung up angrily.
Had she turned her phone off or was her phone broken?
I knew it was highly unlikely that her phone was broken, but I wasn’t sure why she would turn her phone off.
Were my calls really that annoying? I looked down at the phone and called her again a fourth time.
Once again, it went straight to voicemail.
I hung up. And called again. Voicemail. I dropped the phone on the couch, walked to the kitchen, grabbed some water and took a few deep breaths, and walked back to my phone.
I grabbed my phone, looked at the screen to see if I had any missed calls or missed text messages, and sighed when I saw none.
I pressed redial on her number and frowned as it went straight to voicemail again.
“Lara, it’s me—Parker. Call me back. We need to talk,” I said and then hung up.
I groaned as I hung up. My voice had sounded accusatory and my message had been too short.
If she listened to this message she was unlikely to call me back.
So I decided to call her back and leave one more message.
It might make me look like a psycho, but it was better than looking like a jerk.
I called back one more time and this time the phone rang.
My heart stilled as I waited to see if she was going to pick up the phone.
My heart fell pretty quickly as it went to voicemail again.
I cleared my throat and started to leave my new message.
“Hi, Lara, it’s me—Parker. I hope you’re doing well.
I’m sorry about the other day. I’m sorry we got so angry at each other.
I’d really like to talk to you to see if we can figure this out.
Please call me back. I’d love to see you as soon as possible.
I miss you.” I pressed the pound sign this time instead of hanging up so that I could relisten to the message to see how it sounded and if I wanted to change it before submitting it to her ears.
I figured I sounded like a bit of a pussy, but sincere enough, so I left it and accepted the message.
All I had to do was wait now. Wait for her to call me back.
Wait for her to tell me she was willing to see me.
Wait for her to tell me exactly what she wanted.
I sat back on the couch and closed my eyes, hoping I didn’t have to wait too long.