Park (Archer's Creek Book 4)

by Gemma Weir

  Forcing myself to move, I start the car and within minutes I’m pulling out of the airport and into the ridiculous LA traffic. Living in a small town like Archer’s Creek, I’m not used to dealing with a thousand asshole drivers on the roads at rush hour. It takes forever to get out of the mass of cars and onto the highway that will take me to Palos Verdes where my parents’ house is. As I drive toward the town limits, the houses get bigger and the cars more expensive. My parents are wealthy and the town they live in love the rich and famous. I wind my way through the palm-tree-lined streets heaving in a lungful of air and exhaling slowly. The action calms my ragged nerves but does nothing to assuage the sick feeling in my stomach. Over the phone, coming here to see my parents sounded like a much better idea than letting them come to me in Texas, but now I’m actually here, I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. Slowing the car, I try to prolong the length of the journey, desperately hoping that somehow I’ll be teleported back to Texas where I can pretend that I never agreed to this trip.

  My eyes scan from left to right. The roads are familiar, but it’s not until I see Taylor’s home that it truly hits me. “Fuck,” I hiss. Memories of my childhood hit me like a freight train and I have to pull to the side of the road when tremors wrack through my body. All the emotions I felt the last time I used this road seem to consume me at once, and throwing open the door, I stagger from the car and vomit all over the curb.

  This was a huge mistake. Meeting Rosebud has made me sentimental and forgiving, but that isn’t my nature. I’ve harbored a grudge that has kept me from my home and family for over ten years. What the hell made me think I could get over it and reconnect with the person who ruined my life all those years ago, now?

  I shove my hand into my pocket and pull out my cell. My shaking fingers fumble with the screen as I try to dial Rosebud, desperate to talk to her, to hear her voice. The phone rings and rings, eventually going to voicemail. “Fuck,” I shout into the air.

  Circling the car, I sit my ass on the hood and rest my head in my shaking hands. In and out, I pull in a lungful of air and exhale, trying to calm my panicked heartbeat and rasping lungs. It takes several minutes for my hands to finally stop trembling, and by the time I lift my head from my hands I feel calmer and more in control.

  My cell rings and I answer it without thought. “Hello.”

  “Hello, friend.”

  My eyes fall closed at the sound of her voice. I try to speak but no words come out.

  “Park?”

  “Hello, my Rosebud.” I say, and I’m shocked by how ravaged and pained my voice sounds.

  “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Rosebud audibly gasps, loud enough for me to hear. “You don’t sound fine. What happened? Tell me.”

  “Nothing happened, baby, I swear. I’m fine, just a little stressed out.”

  Rosebud stays silent for a moment, then she speaks. “Why are you stressed out? Has Taylor contacted you?”

  A dry laugh falls from my lips. How can I tell her I’m in my home town and driving past Taylor’s house and that the memories of the last time I drove this street is what’s got me all fucked-up? “No, I haven’t heard from her. As far as I know she doesn’t even have my cell number.”

  “Oh,” she says, and she sounds almost disappointed.

  “Have you heard from her?”

  “No, not since the day at the hotel.”

  Her voice is small and sad, and I instantly want to do something to make it better. If I thought telling her I was in the same state as her would help her I’d do it, but fear that it might make her feel worse keeps me silent. When I see her in person tomorrow, I’ll be able to tell from the look in her eyes if she’s pleased to see me, and I need her honest and unfiltered reaction.

  “Park, I’m sorry, but I need to go. My mom’s insisting I have dinner with her and some guy she’s trying to set me up with. If I don’t leave work now, I’ll never make it. I’ll call you later once I’m home. Bye, friend.”

  She ends the call before I can ask who the hell this guy is. I know that she’s single, that was one of the things Smoke had asked her when we’d played twenty questions at the bar, but it had never occurred to me that she might be looking for a man. My gut churns and another roll of nausea surges upward. I take slow, deep breaths and eventually it recedes. If she gets a boyfriend or a fiancé or a fucking husband, they might not like our friendship. I don’t understand this need I have for her, but I know that now I’ve found her, I’m not willing to give her up.

  I need to get my shit in order and then I need to go see her. We never really spoke about maintaining our friendship once she came home, but if this last few days has taught me anything, it’s that I value her presence in my life too much to give it up without a fight. Long distance friendships are hard to maintain, but not impossible. I still have friends from Ireland that I keep in touch with and Rosebud and I can be the same. We can call and text like we do now, and we can find the time to visit each other a few times a year.

  As I’m firming my resolve to maintain my friendship at all costs, a small voice at the back of my mind tells me that seeing her a couple of times a year won’t be enough. It’s been less than a week and I already miss her more than I have any right to.

  Fuck, maybe Smoke is right; maybe I am obsessed with her.

  I end the call and immediately wish I hadn’t. I wasn’t lying. I do need to leave work to get to my parents’ house in time for dinner, but that wasn’t why I ended our call so abruptly.

  He had sounded so wounded when he’d answered his cell. My body had reacted so violently that I’d sunk back down into my office chair and held my cell so tightly to my ear, my fingers still feel numb. He said he was fine, but I can tell that he’s not and he wouldn’t tell me why.

  I’m in too deep and my mood reflects his. If he’s happy when we speak, I’m happy. If he’s tired, I feel tired too. When he’s sad or whatever he was today, I feel it too. It’s too much. Too extreme a reaction to be having to a friend I’ve known for less than two weeks, but it’s happening and I have no idea what to do about it.

  Dropping my cell into my purse, I look down to see my hands are shaking. Right now, the urge to jump on a plane and fly to Texas is almost overwhelming and with each day that passes, my life here feels less real, less mine. Before I met Park, I was content, or so I thought, but now I think maybe I was just complacent. I was happily living my life, ignorant to all the possibilities that were happening outside of my bubble.

  I want to say that seeing another way of life has broadened my horizons and that’s what’s making me question if this narrow piece of existence is enough to make me happy. But deep down I know that a trip to another state wasn’t the catalyst. Park was.

  Even the sound of his name in my head makes me sigh with longing. Eric’s assumption that Park and I had been sleeping together has festered in my mind, leeching into every thought and filling me with doubt.

  That first time Park touched me, I felt sparks; but they’d vanished the moment Taylor had appeared. Only now I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if Park was a stranger to Taylor. Would that night have ended differently?

  Park is Taylor’s brother and she’s my best friend, so he and I can never be more than friends. Until a couple of days ago I never questioned that. The connection I feel to him is abnormally strong, but that can happen with friends? Right?

  Each time I try to talk myself into pulling away from him, he calls or texts and I’m lost to him, to us, and the way I feel. My mom has always lamented that when you meet the one, you just know, but that can’t be true.

  Right now, for the very first time, I don’t want to talk to Park, because somehow it feels, at least for me, that the lines are beginning to blur. We’re friends, nothing more, but no matter how many times I tell myself that, it feels like a lie.

  In a daze I take a cab to my parents’ house and have dinner with my mom, dad, and
Robert. Robert is my mom’s friend Maureen’s son. He’s 34, and an accountant who just became partner in a prestigious accountancy firm. Robert is attractive in a conservative way; his brown hair is neatly cut and styled in a side parting. His black suit is tailored to perfection and complemented with a crisp white shirt and a jaunty red tie. And the cherry on top of the cake are his shoes. Black, stylish, and polished to a gleam.

  He’s everything I ever wanted in a guy, but he’s quite possibly the most boring man I’ve ever met. Robert drones on about his clients and work and how rich they’re making him. He tells us that he drives a Prius and plans to retire before he’s fifty, with a pension extensive enough to allow for a comfortable home and two vacations a year.

  He’s so boring I have to stifle a yawn every time he opens his mouth to speak. My parents are hanging on his every word and my mom keeps throwing excited glances at me, like I should be peeing my pants with enthusiasm over the man.

  When dinner is finally over, I feign tiredness and manage to excuse myself and leave while my mom is still loading the dishwasher. I know my hasty retreat is rude, but the thought of Robert asking me out on a date is enough to make me risk my mom’s wrath to escape.

  I call a cab as I’m dashing down the drive, but before I can get away, the front door opens and Robert rushes down the front steps. “Rosie,” he calls from behind me.

  I freeze, wishing I could pretend I hadn’t heard him, but knowing that out here in the empty suburban street there’s no way I can do it. Plastering on a smile, I spin on my heel to face him. “Hi, Robert, was there something you needed?”

  “Your dad suggested you might need a ride,” he says in his overly smooth voice.

  I sigh, and the fake smile falls from my lips. “I was actually just calling a cab.”

  He steps toward me and offers me his arm. “I’d be happy to drive you home.”

  Looking around me, I search for a reason why he can’t, but I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t make me look even ruder, so I smile brightly. “Thank you, Robert. If you’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” he says, looping my arm through his and escorting me down the sidewalk to his car. He opens the car door for me, and I slide in. It’s surprisingly comfortable, but I’d rather be in the back of a smelly cab than be forced to make small talk with a man I’m sure my mom would call ‘husband material’.

  “So I know our moms are pushing hard for us to make a connection, but I’d still really like to take you out one night next week if you’re free?” Roberts says, his smile revealing a perfect row of bright white teeth.

  As I consider my answer, I take a moment to look at him. He is literally what I would have described as my perfect man two weeks ago. But now, I know that as perfect as he seems, I’d only ever be content with him and I’m starting to feel like content isn’t really enough. “I’m sorry. I’m sort of seeing someone. It’s new, but I’m pretty invested,” I say.

  When I planned to say I was seeing someone I’d considered it a lie, but the moment the words are out of my mouth they feel true. Do I feel like I’m in a relationship with Park? Relationship. The word feels strange, not quite right, but not wrong either.

  “Oh,” Robert says, pulling me from my internal musings. “Your mom said that you were single.”

  “Err,” I swallow. “Like I said, it’s new. Just the last couple of weeks. I haven’t told my mom about him yet.”

  “Maybe you could take my number, and then if it doesn’t pan out with this guy, you could take me up on my offer of dinner. I’d really like to take you out.”

  “Sure,” I say, forcing a brittle smile onto my face.

  The car journey home seems to take twice as long as it should. When we pull up to the curb outside my building, I try not to run from the car in glee.

  “Here,” Robert says handing me a business card.

  “Oh, er, thanks,” I say, unclipping my seatbelt and opening the door as quickly as I can, without making it look like I’m trying to get away. Once I’m standing on the sidewalk, I feel a little foolish. Robert is everything I thought I wanted. It’s not his fault that after meeting a tattooed biker I’m having a crisis of faith. “Goodbye, Robert,” I say, closing the car door with a click and waving at him through the window. He waves back, then pulls away from the curb and I practically wilt with relief that he didn’t try to walk me to my door.

  As I climb the stairs to my apartment, a wave of longing for Taylor crashes over me. Every boy, every bad date, every good date since the day we met has been dissected with alcohol and ice cream, but now when I’m more confused than ever, she’s not here, and I have no idea what, if any, friendship we’ll have left when she gets back.

  Even though I want to, I don’t call Park. Instead I get into my comfiest PJ’s and climb into bed with a pint of ice cream and a glass of wine. The ritual feels hollow without Taylor, but I do it anyway.

  The next day nothing goes to plan. My hairdryer breaks, the zip on my favorite suit pants rips, and the coffee shop I stop at on the way to work has sold out of lemon poppy-seed muffins. Feeling sullen and annoyed with everything around me, I stomp up the stairs to my office in black linen shorts, a white tank, and an oversize hounds-tooth suit jacket with tall black wedge pumps. I’m not sure if the looks I’m getting from my colleagues are shock at my out of the ordinary outfit, my loose air-dried wavy hair, or the scowl on my face, but whichever it is I feel their stares and whispers as I head for my office.

  My desk is no longer empty. In fact it’s covered in paper, pictures, and Post-it notes for my Archer’s Creek article. What had started as a review has morphed into a feature, extolling the virtues of vacationing in small-town America. In truth, the article doesn’t really fit in with the usual local interest pieces we tend to fill the pages with. But the newspaper’s editor Jerry, is sixty-five, and while he counts down the days until he retires at Christmas, he doesn’t care what we write as long as it’s not controversial, X-rated, or something any of us would get arrested for.

  Sliding behind my desk, I drop my purse into my desk drawer and look over the notes I made yesterday afternoon. Not wanting to mention the biker club or anything to do with Park, I’ve talked about the town and its quaint homely feel. I’ve written about the hidden gems that can be found slightly off the beaten track and how wonderful the guest house was that I’d likely have never found if I hadn’t have stumbled into the town. The article goes on to say that the culture of vacationing abroad and in Europe is leading to us missing out on all of the wonderful things this country has to offer, and how we should all consider a weekend break in a small town as the perfect lifestyle retreat.

  I work for the next hour or so, pulling my notes into order and writing up a first draft of the article. When someone knocks on the doorjamb, I look up and find my brother filling the open doorway. “Busy?” He asks.

  “Just working on a piece for the next edition. Don’t you have photos to take or something?”

  Eric pokes his tongue out at me before crossing the room and slumping down into the chair in front of my desk. “I’m so bored,” he moans, his head falling back against the chair with a thud.

  Eric is a freelance photographer. At the moment he’s home after just finishing a world tour with a famous rock band. “When is the next tour?”

  “The record company that hired me to do Prime’s tour are begging me to go out with a band called Hope Lost, but I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know? You love touring.” I say, absentmindedly scribbling a note onto a Post-it and sticking it to my desk.

  “Urgh, the lead singer on this one is supposed to be an absolute fucking nightmare,” Eric says just as another knock sounds at the door.

  I look up and my mouth goes dry.

  “Hello, friend.” Park says, a sheepish grin twitching at the corner of his mouth.

  I don’t think. I leap up from my chair and run to him. He catches me midair as I throw myself into
his arms, and then I’m wrapped in his embrace and everything feels right for the first time in a week.

  It feels like I stay in his arms for hours, but in reality it’s maybe only a couple of minutes before my brother clears his throat and I guiltily pull away from Park and look over my shoulder to Eric. “Oh, sorry,” I say with a sheepish shrug.

  “Who’s your friend?” Eric asks, but he already knows who he is. He’s just being a dick.

  Park’s large palm lands on my shoulder and he pulls me back until I’m resting against his chest. Eric lifts his eyebrows and looks at me with a smug smirk. I glance back over my shoulder to Park and then back to Eric. “Eric, this is Park. Park, this is my brother Eric.”

  Park’s grip on me loosens and then one hand lifts over my shoulder as Park holds it out to my brother. “Hey, nice to meet you.”

  Eric stands quickly and takes Park’s outstretched hand. “You too. I’ve heard a lot about you since Rosie got back.”

  “Is that right?” Park drawls, his musical Irish accent dancing with amusement.

  Turning my back on my brother, I look up into Park’s beautiful face. I’ve missed his soulful eyes and the freckles that cover his nose and cheeks. “How are you here?” I ask, my heart and soul feeling lighter than they have since I hugged him goodbye at the airport.

  “I came to visit with my mom and dad. Thought I’d come say hi.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but Eric’s voice interrupts me. “Guys, I’ll leave you to catch up. Park, it was great to meet you. Rosie, I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Bye,” I say, as he slides past Park and out of my office.

  Taking Park’s hand in mine, I pull him further into my office. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “I’m here,” he says, warmth exuding from every inch of him.

  “How long for? Do you have dinner plans, or lunch plans, next five minute plans?”

  He laughs.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m so pleased to see you,” I say, feeling embarrassed and a little silly about the way I’m gushing.