Page 50 of Parker

“Yep.” I nod some more. “Yep. I am.”

“Harper was right,” she murmurs.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says, grabbing her purse off the table and standing up so fast, her stupid chair falls backward. She scurries to pick it up, pushing it back under the table with another screech of metal on concrete.

I stay where I am, staring at her, waiting for her to meet my eyes.

“I wish you weren’t,” she whispers.

“Too late.”

“How long?” she asks, finally facing me. Her expression is stricken. She has her hands on her hips. Her breasts rise and fall swiftly under her sweater.

I shrug, but the gesture is all about surrender, not apathy.

“Always.”

“Alwaysalways?”

I’m not really sure what sort of answer she’s looking for here, so I try to remember the first moment it occurred to me that I loved Parker. I think about the barking seals when I waseight and the camping trip when I was ten, but I’m pretty sure I still thought of her like a sister at those points.

Suddenly, I remember the ancestry presentation I gave when I was eleven. My heart surges in recognition. Yes.That’swhen I knew.

I clear my throat. “You won’t remember this—”

“Try me,” she demands, crossing her arms over her chest, her face still waffling between furious and sick.

“At the end of fifth grade, I gave a presentation on my family’s ancestry. I talked about being from Ireland and how the Morgans were descended from lords. And when I was done, everyone was clapping, and I took a bow, and when I looked up at you, you were…” I stop for a second because her eyes, which were so severe only seconds ago, are filling with tears. She blinks them rapidly, her arms tightening around her body as she stares down at the ground. “You remember.”

She nods, a curt and painful jerk of her neck.

“That was the first time I knew for certain I loved you,” I confess to her. “That was the first time I really felt it.”

“Jesus,” she whispers, swiping away the wetness on her cheeks and working her jaw in a way that looks painful. “You put a snake down my back later that day.”

“Yes, I did,” I say, hating myself for it.

“Quinn! Why were you so mean to me if you…if you…”

Her words drift away, but I know what she’s asking, and I want her to understand. More than anything else on earth I want her to understand me so that maybe—just maybe—I’ll have a chance with her.

“The truth? I knew you didn’t see me like that, Park, but I loved you all the same. I couldn’t help it. And I guess I felt like your anger was better than nothing. It was attention even if it was negative. Knowing that you hated me felt better than being invisible to you.”

Her eyebrows furrow, and her lip quivers like she might start crying again, and fuck, if she does, I just might too. Because Parker doesn’t cry. I’ve known her my whole life, and I can count the number of times I’ve seen her cry on one hand.

The waitress returns with our entrees, looking between us.

“I’m not staying,” says Parker, backing away from the table.

“Want me to box it up for you, hon?” asks the server.

“No thanks,” she says, her voice about to break. “I don’t want it.”

Then she hikes her bag up on her shoulder and walks away, into the night, as far as she can get from me.

Chapter 7