“Does it involve you and Nualla?”
“Yeah…”
“Do I want to know about it?”
“Probably not,” Travis admitted with a grimace.
The conversation fell to an uncomfortable silence. I had forgiven him for not mentioning their past, but that didn’t mean either of us wanted to be reminded that we had both slept with her.
“So what are you doing tonight?” Travis asked uneasily after a few minutes of silence. He looked really unsettled, like he wanted to ask something, but couldn’t manage to get the words out. As a blush started to spread across his cheeks, it hit me. Travis was going on a date with Parker…and I was currently living in his spare room.
“Oh…um I’m going to hang out with Connor, you know, the usual,” I said as quickly and nonchalantly as possible. “There’s this new anime that’s premiering at the theater. It’s gonna be pretty late when it’s over, so I’m going to just stay at Connor’s,” I flat-out lied.
“Sounds fun. I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” Travis said, accepting the lie. Either because he was too stressed to realize it was a lie or because he really, really wanted it to be the truth.
“Yep.”
Travis continued to stand there awkwardly for a moment before he said, “Well, I’d better get going. If I’m late, she might just kill me this time.”
A nervous smile spread across my lips. He was more correct in that statement than he probably even knew. “Good luck.”
TRAVIS
As I stood there waiting at her door, it occurred to me that maybe I should have bought her flowers. I mean, that’s what you were supposed to do on dates, right? Bring the girl flowers?
The other thing that occurred to me was that I had absolutely no frakking clue where we were going, so I was praying I hadn’t over-dressed…or under-dressed.
I looked down at my clothes. My least wrecked pair of All Star high-tops, a pair of practically brand-new dark gray jeans, my black pea coat, and probably my only solid colored T-shirt. I scowled down at the coat. One of the buttons was a bit loose, hanging on by only a few threads, really.
Frak.
As I debated between ripping it off now so I wouldn’t lose it or just leaving it be, Parker opened the door. I looked up quickly, and couldn’t help when my mouth fell open.
Parker normally looked pretty damn hot, but this was just…wow. She was wearing a scarlet red dress that hugged every curve of her body, and knee-high black stiletto boots that I was pretty sure she could have stabbed someone with.
“You clean up nice,” I blurted out stupidly.
Parker arched an eyebrow at me as she folded her arms under her chest. “Are you saying I don’t normally look nice?”
“I—am going to shut up now.”
“Good, because there are better things you can do with your mouth than insult me,” she stated as she walked past me, the door falling shut behind her.
“Um… I… Uh… Yes,” I babbled as I turned to follow her. Reminding myself that I really shouldn’t be staring at her ass. But in the dress she was currently wearing it was more than a little hard, if not downright impossible.
“So how’s the rigatoni con pollo?” Parker asked with a shy nervousness that seemed a bit out of character for her. Her British accent making the Italian words sound even more foreign.
“It’s okay, I guess,” I replied with a shrug as I poked at the last of my dinner. I had heard that this place had the best spaghetti in the city, if not all of California. But the truth was, I hadn’t been able to eat spaghetti since that night I had taken Chan-rin to get some dinner. I loved the stuff, but now every time I thought of eating it, I remembered her longing for it. And it broke my heart in a thousand ways that made me lose my appetite.
“Are you still glad you came?” Parker asked, nervously running her fingers over a pendant I had never noticed her wearing before. But then again, I’d also never seen her wearing something so low-cut before, either.
“Are you kidding me? Of course I am,” I said, looking up at her quickly.
“You sure?”
“Most definitely. Though, if the evening doesn’t end with me frakking something up, I will be extremely surprised,” I admitted like an idiot.
“I know how you feel,” Parker mumbled into her drink.
“Really? Because you seem way better at this than I’ll ever be,” I said with a self-deprecating laugh.
“It’s only because I’ve practiced what I would say to you if I ever met you about a million times,” Parker said without meeting me eyes.
I put my fork down. “What?”
“I’ve actually had a crush on you for a few years now,” Parker admitted with a hint of a blush. “And when Kiskei said we were moving to San Francisco, I— Well, that first day I met you, I knew exactly who you were already.”
I swallowed hard. “How did you even—?”
“I’ve been working in the Seattle Embassy labs since I was fifteen,” Parker said as she looked up into my eyes. “I’m very familiar with your work.”
I just kinda gaped at her.
“What can I say? I find brilliance kinda sexy,” Parker admitted with a shrug as she twirled the olive in her drink.
I opened my mouth to say something, but couldn’t even begin to figure out what it should be. So instead I picked up my drink and tipped a too large portion down my throat. I started coughing and Parker’s face filled with concern.
“Are you okay?”
I continued coughing as I waved a hand at her. “Yes…no…maybe?”
When I had mostly stopped coughing, Parker poked at the last bit of her dinner with her fork. “Wow, did I really just admit to practically stalking you?”
“Kinda. But trust me, if I had known of you, I would probably have done the same, because you’re—” exactly what I would have wanted. I just sat there staring at her as my heart pounded against my rib cage.
“I’m what?” she asked with an inviting smile.
I opened my mouth again, but was saved from having to answer by the waiter placing the leather bill folder on the table. I reached for my wallet, but Parker was faster. She shoved some cash into the folder, and handed it back to the waiter.
“Do you need change, miss?” the waiter asked a bit startled.
“No, you can keep it,” Parker said as she stood. She turned her focus to me, and held out her hand. “Come on, or we’ll be late.”
“Late for what?” I asked as I stood.
“You’ll see,” she said with a sly, mischievous smile as I took her hand.
Getting over You
Thursday, November 15th
TRAVIS
“Tada!” Parker said as she gestured dramatically toward a large building on Pier 15.
We were standing in front of a science museum, the lights from the Bay Bridge reflecting onto the bay beyond it. I had been under the impression that museums tended to close around five or six. However, this one was clearly open, and groups of people in what looked like clubbing gear were walking into the main entrance.
“On Thursdays, they turn the museum into a kind of nightclub, but leave most of the exhibits open. I figured dancing and science—could be fun.”
I looked over at Parker, startled. It was exactly the kind of thing I would love. Like, spot on. Like, more spot on than anything Emmy or even Nualla would have come up with, which was more than a little shocking. Sometimes it felt like I had just met Parker—like she had just walked into my life. And then other times it felt like I had known her my whole life.
Parker turned toward me, a huge grin spread across her lips. “Happy birthday.”
“My Birthday was on September 9th,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but you were unconscious in a hospital, so that do
esn’t count,” Parker countered.
“Right…”
“Come on, drinks are on me,” Parker said with a barely contained giddiness to her voice. It was a side of her I didn’t get to see too often…a side of her I really liked. She was always so serious and professional when I saw her in The Embassy labs that I sometimes forgot she was actually a year younger than me.
“Are you going to let me pay for anything?” I asked with mock exasperation.
“Nope, it’s your birthday,” Parker said stubbornly as she folded her arms under her chest. Which was unbelievably distracting, because it caused her chest to spill even farther over the top of her scarlet red dress.
“But I already told you, my birthday was—”
Parker cut me off with a finger pressed to my lips. “Hush, stop arguing and just have fun, okay?”
My lips slid into a smile, and I kissed the tip of her finger. “Okay.”
Parker took my arm, leading me toward the main entrance. “I bet I can drink you under the table,” she challenged with a mischievous grin.
I mirrored her crooked grin, accepting her playful challenge. “Oh honey, I would love to see you try.”
Parker and I slammed our shot glasses down onto the counter of the bar.
“You know, I’d be shocked that you’re still standing, except for the fact that I grew up drinking with tiny little girls,” I stated as the shot burned its way down my throat. “Which sounds incredibly dirty when you say it out loud.”
Parker snorted and burst into laughter, and even the bartender cracked a smile.
“The way you talk about it makes it seem like all your friends were girls,” Parker said when she finally stopped shaking with laughter.
I thought about it as the bartender refilled our shot glasses. “More or less,” I admitted with a shrug. “I mean, I got along with guys just fine. It’s just, the closest I have ever gotten to having a male friend was probably Shawn or Patrick,” I said as I ran a hand back through my hair. I had never really analyzed it before.
Why hadn’t I ever tried to make friends? I mean, I had basically just let Emmy and Nualla thrust their friendship onto me.
“So you spent a lot of time with Nualla?” Parker asked as she picked up her shot glass.
I turned back to her as I answered, “Yeah, of course, she was my best—”
Parker was rolling her drink back and forth in her hands, her eyes intently fixed on the liquid as it sloshed against the sides of the shot glass. For some reason whenever the topic of Nualla came up Parker got really quiet.
The uncomfortable pounding in my heart returned, harder and harsher this time.
I picked up my shot and quickly dumped it down my throat. As I placed it down on the bar I shook my head at the bartender who moved to refill it. “Come on, you brought me here to dance, right?” I said as I held out my hand to Parker.
She looked at my hand, then up into my eyes. The sad expression sliding from her face as if it had never been there.
As weird as it might seem, I loved clubs. That feeling that I was just a single cog in a whirlwind of music and lights and bodies. But with all those bodies—those emotions pressed so close to me—I was also continuously walking a tightrope between numbness and hysteria.
It was like craving something you were allergic to. The strange sick pleasure of having something you knew was bad for you. Fortunately tonight, I had already downed enough alcohol that the emotions whirling around me on the dance floor were mostly quieted.
Parker didn’t know my secret though. Didn’t know of my aversion to large groups and unfamiliar spaces. Really, besides Dr. Jössel—that quack of a physiologist I had been forced to meet with every week for over a decade—there were only three people in the world who knew my secret.
Two.
I froze as I realized that I had forgotten, for maybe the hundredth time in the last two months, that Emmy was dead. As I was standing there, statue still in the middle of the crowded dance floor, someone bumped into me and I fell into Parker. Grabbing hold of her to steady us both before we toppled over.
When I looked up I realized that my hand was pressed into the small of her back, holding her close to my body. The music changed and she looked at me curiously for a moment before she moved her chest away from me. Rolling the movement down her body in time with the music that was slower and far more sensuous than it had been a moment before. Or did it only seem that way because she was so very close?
Parker’s movements were tentative at first, but only for the briefest of seconds. As the music hit its main stride, a change came over her, the cautiousness disappearing as if it had never been there.
She danced with perfect control as if she understood every inch of her body and knew how to make it do exactly what she wanted it to do. It was different than how Nualla danced—like she was being set free from the confines of her body. No, Parker’s movements had the planned control of a samurai’s sword strike. Swift and never without exact intent. And I realized what Parker was doing. She was changing her movements as if she was having a conversation with the music instead of being at the mercy of it.
It was a breathtaking sight to witness. But sadly, I was fairly certain that the heart-shattering beauty of it was lost on everyone else. Too absorbed in their own dancing to see the magic that was right in front of them.
But I was here. I was watching. And I was helpless to look away. And like a strange sort of magic, the rest of the room fell away. The maelstrom of emotions screaming past me becoming nothing but whispers. Dancer’s high—the weird feeling I only seemed to achieve when I was impossibly drunk and out on the dance floor of a dark club.
The songs flew by, one after another like a never-ending melody. And I watched her, unable to summon up the ability to pull my eyes from her for even a heartbeat.
There was something in the way she moved that made me want to touch her. But it was like touching fire. The dancing flames lured you in with their sensuous, undulating movements but the whole time your mind was screaming at you that it would hurt. That it would burn you.
Parker looked up at me through her lashes, brilliant blue eyes sparkling like starlight as the lights on the dance floor flashed across them. And a thundering sensation raced through my body, my breath catching.
I knew this feeling. A mix of sick, and giddy, and a pain like your chest was bruised and it was a little hard to breathe.
No. Oh no, no, no. Please, gods, no.
I just stared at Parker, my heart pounding faster and faster until her eyes filled with concern.
“Travis, are you—?”
“Air,” I croaked out before I bolted from the dance floor.
I leaned over the wooden railing of the pier, letting the cold wind whip my hair against my face until my heart stopped beating so fast. When the queasy, anxious feeling in my stomach had mostly settled, I turned back to the museum and the lit street beyond it. The orangish light of the light posts rendering the whole street colorless and foreign.
The clouds moved quickly in from the water and toward Coit Tower, almost as if it was pulling them to it. Making the tower atop its hill look mysterious and sinister in the same moment.
I hadn’t bothered to grab my coat on the way out, and now the sweat that was covering my skin was making every hair stand on end. Shivering, I shoved my cold hands into my jeans pockets and was a bit startled to find something warm and metal against my fingers. I pulled it free, and stared down at the small silver ring with a tanzanite stone. I had been putting the ring into my pocket for weeks now, and it had become as unconscious—as normal—as breathing.
I turned the ring over in my hands, reading the inscription for maybe the thousandth time even though I knew exactly what it said by heart.
For Nulala, the only One I will ever need.
> And she had been the only one I had needed. No one had ever understood the shadowy corners of myself. No one except her. But maybe—just maybe—Parker did too. And unlike Nualla, Parker wasn’t…someone else’s.
I sucked in a sharp, frigidly cold breath of air that stung my lungs. The fact that I could have Parker—that there was nothing standing between us aside from my own insecurities—was somehow terrifying. But not quite as much as the realization that I did want her. That I couldn’t stop thinking about her. That the idea of losing her made my stomach twist into knots. That I was pretty sure I was falling hard. Like a bird turned to bricks.
Who knows how long I stood there turning that ring over in my hands, wrestling with myself. But I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn’t even realize that Parker was there, standing only a few feet in front of me.
I don’t know if it was her blond hair or her red dress, but something caught my eye, and I looked up.
Parker’s hair whipped around her, making her look wild and beautiful in the same breath. And that’s when I knew. In that one heart-stopping moment it was like all the cogs clicked into place, and I realized I was hopelessly, unintentionally, irrevocably in love with Parker Kirihara.
I opened my mouth to confess everything before my nerves got the better of me, but then I finally noticed the expression in her eyes.
“I’m never going to be good enough for you, am I?” Parker stated in a raw, heartbroken voice as a single tear snaked its way down her cheek. “Because I’ll never be her.”
The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) Page 16