by Jewel E. Ann
“I don’t know, Piper … she’s bringing her A-game, setting the mom bar pretty high.” Parker grinned.
“Mmm …” Piper nodded, rubbing her belly. “It’s about time.”
Janey faked a frown.
The back door opened. “Knock knock. The realtor just dropped off the keys.” Caleb held them up. “Even though we don’t close until one, we can start moving some stuff over now.”
“Move all you want, peeps. I’ll be here in the air-conditioning with my swollen ankles up.” Piper blew Caleb a kiss.
“I could use the distraction and expend some energy. Let’s get these boxes out of my kitchen.” Parker stood and took her plate and cups to the dishwasher. She paused a moment, staring at the counter where she and Gus had been the night of the party. Grief was a sneaky little bastard, always hiding around the corner. Being back in Iowa, back in that house, and Piper and Caleb moving into Gus and Sabrina’s house meant there would be a lot of corners in her life. She needed to find a way to get past them, accept them, and maybe some day those corners would disappear.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Go away!” Levi shooed Rags away from his face and then buried it under the pillow.
Rags barked.
Levi passed out after an unknown number of beers at an unknown time. He had one shoe on, one shoe off, shorts caught around the one shoe on, and his shirt stuck around his neck like a scarf. His mouth felt like he got into Rags’s food by mistake. Rubbing his eyes felt like sandpaper. Had he cried? Levi couldn’t remember.
Pissed off. That’s the only emotion he recalled with any sort of clarity.
Pissed off at Parker, Gus, Sabrina, himself, life, and back again to Parker.
“Fuck you, Parker,” he mumbled, easing from his stomach to his back, squinting against the morning light trying to stab his retinas. “I didn’t want to love you.” Levi rubbed his temples to ease the sharp throbbing in his head. “Fuck …” He hated that he couldn’t even lie to himself. “Yes, I did. So damn much …”
Rags barked again.
“Okay, okay, you need to take a morning piss. I do too.” He eased to sitting, frowning at his disheveled state.
In three hours he needed to have his shit together and his ass on the job site. After piecing his outfit back together, he took Rags downstairs and then fed him his late breakfast, only four hours later than usual. A shower and seemingly endless piss later, he dragged himself into the closet to get dressed. Empty hangers and bare, half-open drawers taunted him reminding him of what he’d had and what he lost.
“Way to put your dick in my sister and in my girlfriend, Gus. That shit’s just fucked-up.” Levi ripped a shirt from its hanger. Being pissed off at Gus was a new experience and a little weird since he was dead. Just as well. Had he not died, Levi would have had to kill him for cheating on his cheating sister with a girl that was supposed to be his. “You’re losing it, buddy.” He pulled on his briefs and jeans. “Talking to yourself about dead people. Not good.” Levi chuckled. “Ahh … the brink of insanity. It’s a little creepy here.”
He walked to the bed and sat down to put on his shoes. “Rags! Get in here so I’m not talking to myself.”
Rags rushed into the room, tail in overdrive.
“Good. Now I need you to stay by my side when I’m here. Nod occasionally when I talk or at least do that head cock thing that you do.”
Rags cocked his head.
“Exactly. So we’re good?”
Rags cocked his head to the other side.
“Great. Good talk.” He scratched the dog’s head as he stood. “I’ll be back by dinner. Time to settle back into the bachelor life again.”
*
Levi wasn’t familiar with the girl being the reason for the breakup. He tried to find some sense of pride for not being the one to ruin everything with his big mouth. But in reality, it was his honesty and oversharing that led to empty hangers and a big bed with a hairy dog beside him a week earlier, rather than the most spectacular woman ever.
He laughed at that thought as he bathed his liver in alcohol at his favorite bar down the street from his condo.
The most spectacular woman ever.
That thought alone pissed him off. How did his mind come up with that after everything that had happened? His brain needed more alcohol to think clearly.
He hadn’t told his family or friends. He couldn’t tell them. As much as he wanted to resurrect the dead, only to cuss them out and throw them back into their graves for being so stupid, he couldn’t share that anger with his parents—taint their memories of Gus and Sabrina. They never knew about Sabrina’s affair. Or Gus’s.
At least a hundred times over the previous week, he’d typed a text to Parker then erased it. Sometimes the words were venomous. Sometimes they were questions he needed answered. Sometimes they were all the reasons he loved her, followed by all the reasons he couldn’t be with her. The former outnumbered the latter, but the latter weighed heavier on his mind.
“Anyone sitting here?” a perky brunette asked. Perky eyes. Perky smile. Perky tits.
“Nope.” He grinned.
She wedged her curvy little body between him and the guy two stools down who had his back to them. “I’m Talia.”
“Levi.”
“You live around here?”
“Yup.” He took several long pulls of his beer. “You?”
She ordered a dirty martini without expecting him to buy it, which automatically earned her his full attention. As full as his half-inebriated state would allow.
“Just moved to Phoenix last week from Tampa. New job. I’m meeting friends here…” she glanced at her phone “…in about ten minutes. You by yourself tonight?”
“Nope. I have my beer.” He held it up and grinned.
She smiled. It was a nice smile. Not a Parker smile, but living up to the smile of the most spectacular woman ever was an unrealistic expectation. He grunted.
Talia narrowed her eyes. “You okay?”
“Yes. Just had a disturbing thought. Keeps popping in my head. Won’t go away.”
Her perkiness dropped a notch. “O-kay …”
“I’m not mental or some psycho. Really.”
“Says every psycho out there.” She laughed, still a bit more reserved than when she first hopped up beside him. “So, Levi, what do you do?”
“I’m an architect.”
“Really? Well, I’m a graphic designer.” She was attractive. Friendly. Appropriately cautious. And shared his artistic talent. Talia was the exact type of woman he would ask out on a date or just take back to his place to see where things led, especially after that many beers.
“What do you know about corn detasseling?”
“Um …” She grimaced, biting her lower lip. “Nothing.”
“You ever run to a convenience store in the middle of the night for a couple of donuts?”
Talia’s laugh morphed into a giggle. “Definitely not. Do I look like the kind of woman who does that?”
He frowned, studying Talia but thinking about the most spectacular woman ever. “No. You don’t.” Levi tossed a wad of cash on the bar. “I’ve got your drink.” He smiled. “It’s been a pleasure talking with you. Welcome to Arizona. I hope your new job goes well. Goodnight.”
“Wait!” Talia called as he walked out of the bar.
He didn’t look back.
*
Day ten. Misery settled into Levi’s life like battery acid. He couldn’t work, eat, golf, sleep, or focus on a damn thing that didn’t come in a bottle with a warning label. Parker turned him into a worthless drunk with a dog. He felt sorry for Rags.
“I’m gonna call her.” He gestured to Rags with his half-empty bottle of beer. It was his sixth of the night. The fact that he was drinking only beer was progress.
Levi brought her up on his phone, frowning at the photo of her on the beach. “Fuck it.” He pressed call.
After several rings, he contemplated leaving a drunk message,
but at the last second, she answered.
“Hey.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Just the sound of it brought so much fucking emotion to him he struggled to find a breath, let alone a word. He put her on speaker and stared at the phone, watching the time tick away. She didn’t say anything, but as long as the time continued its count, he knew she was there—waiting.
He waited five full minutes to respond, but she was still on the line. “You see the irony in what happened, right? Your sister and her husband. You and a married man.”
“Yes.”
He waited.
She remained silent after her one-word answer.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he willed the stupid emotion to go the hell away, but it remained, burning his eyes. “Ask me something. I’m fucking dying to spill my guts, but I do it best when provoked. So ask me.”
The time on his phone continued to count. One minute and thirteen seconds later she broke the silence again.
“Do you love me?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
“Are we over?”
“Yes … No …” He punched his fist into the sofa. “Fuck you! Ask me a real question, not this yes or no bullshit.” Levi rubbed his temples, slipping into a place so dark and filled with anger he wanted to crawl out of his skin. He regretted his words the second he said them. Trying to break her only multiplied his pain. “This was a bad idea. I’ve had too damn much to drink. I shouldn’t have called, I—”
“What do you want me to say, Levi?”
He swallowed hard as more emotion pooled in his eyes. “That I misunderstood. That you weren’t having an affair with Gus.”
“And after I tell you it wasn’t a misunderstanding, what do you want me to do?” She sniffled.
He’d made her cry. Part of him hated himself for it and part of him wanted her to feel the twist of the knife too.
“Apologize?” she asked.
“I don’t need your fucking apology.”
“Fine. Real question—do your parents know about the affair? The affairs?”
“Another fucking yes or no question.”
“I bet you haven’t told them. Why? Why haven’t you told them, Levi?”
“They don’t need to know.” He took another pull of beer.
“Bullshit! If you need to know, then they need to know! They deserve to know that their daughter and her husband were living a lie. They deserve to know their daughter traveled without her husband but always packed sexy lingerie and a box of condoms.”
“Stop.” He gritted his teeth.
“She treated him like shit.”
“Goddammit! Shut the fuck up!” He threw his bottle across the room. Rags barked once then heeled while releasing a few whines.
More time ticked away. Three more minutes of silence.
“Go look in the mirror at that tattoo on your back.” Parker’s voice was controlled and laced with pain. “I’ll take my share of the blame. I’m a terrible person for how I treated my sister and Caleb. I’m a terrible person for falling on the sword of my pride. I’m a terrible person for blaming the shortcomings in my life on everyone but myself.”
She cleared her throat. “I could have stopped what happened between Gus and me. And I should have. But it would not have changed the outcome of their marriage. Had I known you knew about Sabrina’s affair, I would have told you about my relationship with Gus.”
“Bullshit. You never would have told me. You thought your secret was safe in the grave. Had I not said something about—”
“Jesus Christ! You have no fucking clue how much—” sobs ripped from her chest “—how d-desperately I needed to t-tell someone. I was dying inside. Heart ripped from my chest, soul c-crushing dying inside. But I couldn’t tell anyone without tarnishing their memories, dancing on their graves, ruining more lives than had already been shattered! S-so I had to take all of my grief and hold it inside, showing just the right amount of emotion people would expect from a neighbor, an employee.”
Levi fisted his hair and pinched his eyes shut, overwhelmed by the dizzying alcohol in his veins, the knife still lodged in his heart, and the sobs on the other end of the line.
“I should—”
“Stop!” He fisted his hair harder.
“Levi—”
“Not another fucking word.”
“I don’t regret not telling you.”
“I said shut up!”
She kept going. “I should regret showing up to the funeral. Every conversation we had. The night in the back of Old Blue. Chasing after you. Every word. Every touch. Lov—” Her voice broke. “L-loving you. But …” he could barely hear her whisper “ …I don’t. I can’t. So …”
He fell to pieces right along with her, unable to speak as his body shook.
“Hate me. I’ll still love you. Cut me with words. I’ll bleed for you. Regret us. I’ll vanish from your life. But don’t ever ask me to regret us. If we weren’t real, then I don’t want to take another breath. And I want to live, Levi. For the first time in so very long, I don’t feel like I’m drowning in anger, hiding from the truth, or in denial that this is my life. I’m imperfect like everyone else. But I’m also worthy of love and forgiveness and settling for anything less would be wrong.”
Levi rubbed his red eyes and continued to grit his teeth to bite back all the things he wanted to say. He did it for her, even if she didn’t deserve it. “You expect me to forgive you?”
“No,” she whispered.
“You expect me to be able to love you?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
The time on his phone continued to tick.
“I’m not the one who called. I don’t expect anything from you. But I wish you well.”
The timer stopped.
Chapter Forty-Three
Tramping, Taylor Swift, and hours of endless yard work kept Parker from dying a little more every day. Two weeks without Levi. She had a Levi calendar with X’s on it. On January 1, she would throw away the calendar and declare the end of her Levi detox. That was about four months away.
The phone call gutted her, but he needed it, and she understood that. Parker wanted to take his pain, and she took as much as she could without dying beneath the weight of it.
“We’re grilling out in a little bit. You should come over.” Piper handed Parker a cold bottled water as Parker pulled off her leather work gloves.
She was looking forward to fewer weeds in another month. “Not yet.” Parker sucked down half of the water.
“I hate that we live in a house that holds such terrible memories for you. I really wish I would have known or that you would have spoken up before we bought it. We could sell it and we would. If that’s what it will take.”
Parker had helped them move, but every room held some significant memory of Gus. As much as she tried to ignore it, she couldn’t breathe in that house. Every memory of Gus sparked a memory of Levi. Pain compounded by more pain.
She agreed to find temporary work until Piper had the baby, and if at that point the past still haunted her, she would move and look for work elsewhere.
“It’s a great house. It really is. And you’ll be glad Mom and Dad are so close when this baby comes and you feel overwhelmed, especially since Caleb travels so much. It’s a smart choice.”
“I don’t care how smart you think it is. I just care about you.”
Parker had her sister back. It meant everything. Maybe that’s why Gus came into her life. Maybe he was a lesson, an experience she needed—and nothing more. But that didn’t explain Levi. Parker worried her heart would never make sense of Levi’s role in her life.
“Thank you for your concern, truly. But … I’m going to be fine. Eventually. Right?”
Piper nodded with little reassurance on her face. “I suppose. Have you heard from Levi?”
“Not since he called me to vent. We’re done. It was pretty final.”
“Why didn
’t you tell him? You know he thinks you slept with Gus.”
“It was an affair. The lack of actual intercourse doesn’t change that.”
“It might in his mind.”
“Well, it shouldn’t. And … it’s none of his business. I never asked how Caleb kissed you and where and how he touched you. He cheated on me, that was all I deserved to know. The second he kissed you, he was no longer mine. Levi can think I lied to him if it makes it easier to hate me, but he can never say I cheated on him. I didn’t even know him then.”
Piper bit her lips, her eyes squinting. “Humans are so …”
“Human. Imperfect. Judgmental. Scared. Insecure. Easily disappointed. Delusional. Impulsive.”
Tugging on Parker’s ponytail, Piper grinned. “Yes, but also … kind. Loving. Forgiving. Heroic. Truthful. Noble. Humble. Resilient.”
Parker looked over at their house. “I’ll come for dinner.”
“You don’t have to—”
“No. I do. I’ll shower and be over in an hour.”
Piper gave Parker’s short ponytail one last tug. “You’re a good person, Parker Joy.”
“Thanks, Piper Faith.”
*
Dinner was bearable and what she needed. One slow breath at a time, Parker survived the close proximity to all the memories. A few times she even caught herself laughing at part of the conversation and forgetting about everything but the people who surrounded her.
After the final dish was washed and Piper found her spot on the sofa with her feet on Caleb’s lap, Parker said goodnight. When she walked past Old Blue, she opened the door. It protested, and she grinned. Fifteen minutes and a slow drive later, she put it into park just outside of the cemetery. To her surprise, it didn’t backfire when she shut it off.
The horizon was getting ready to put the sun to bed, but there was enough light left to guide her toward the back of the cemetery. As she climbed the last hill, a figure appeared by Gus’s and Sabrina’s graves. Her heart paused when she realized it was Levi. His back was to her, so she turned and ran back to the truck.
“Shhh …” She pleaded with the door when she opened it, but it paid no attention to her. Then when she went to start Old Blue, he failed her again. He had a thing with the cemetery. “Come on! I didn’t bring you here to die.” She pumped the gas a few times and twisted the key.