Page 27 of Parker
As I’m lowering the phone, I hear her bellow, “Get back here!”
I put the phone back up to my ear. “Yeah?”
“Aaron was out last week so he’s covering some of Joe’s hours this week. Daddy’s giving Wren a bath. I’m sitting on the couch with a glass of wine.”
“Oh!”
“But you still better have a good reason for calling me during bath time.”
“I do.”
“Then tell me! What’s going on?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say,“Quinn Morgan gave me a turtle,”but oh my god, she wouldn’t even know what to do with that. I don’t know where to start.
Because she knows me better than I know myself, she says, “Stop overthinking, Parker. Just start at the beginning.”
I take a deep breath and let it go before telling her about how I ran into Quinn at the airport in Juneau, and that he was his regular asshole-y self when he insisted we sit together on the plane, but that since then, there’s been this weird change.
“He’s been, like,niceto me.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“He left me alone on the flight from Seattle to Vegas. He didn’t bother me in the hotel lounge. He obviously didn’t know he was supposed to set up his table the night before, so he was all sweaty and panicked, bringing his boxes in the morning of the convention.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So I helped him set up his table. Then he went to lunch with Skylar Jones, and—”
“Skylar Jones?”
I groan. “Yeah. She’s here, too.”
“Ican’t standSkylar Jones,” says Harper.
“For whatever it’s worth,” I tell my older sister, “you’re way more buff than she is. And you’ve had a kid! You could take her, Harp. A hundred percent.”
“Appreciate you, Park. Keep going.”
“So, he went to lunch with her, and afterward, when he came over to thank me for helping him set up, I tried to warn him about her—about all the Joneses, actually—but it fell on deaf ears, and I thought we were back to the strangers thing.”
“Wait. Back up. The ‘strangers’ thing? What’s that?”
“Oh. Didn’t I mention that? On the first flight—the one where he was being a jerk—I asked if we could be strangers in Vegas, and he agreed.”
“Plot twist.”
“Wh—What does that mean?”
“Keep going,” she says. In the background I hear the sound of more wine being poured into a glass.
“So, earlier tonight I went to this park on the outskirts of Vegas…it’s called Red Rock Canyon, and it’s the only place near the city where you can get some fresh air. I wanted to take a short hike. Anyway, out of nowhere, Quinn pulls up.”
“Mm-hm. He followed you?”
“Oh my god! I said the same thing! But, no. He wanted fresh air, too.”
“So, you ignored him and went for your hike?”