by LK Collins
Driving across town to my parents’ house, I hope my dad can help. I spot him talking to Roger, Fallon’s dad, out front when I pull up. They both see me and wave. “How are you, son?” my dad asks at I walk over to them.
“Good,” I respond and give him a hug before shaking Roger’s hand.
“You seen my daughter lately?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’ve seen her.”
“How is she doing?”
“She’s good.” I don’t bother telling Roger about anything that’s going on with her. When he finds out what Leo did, he’ll be pissed, but it’s not my place to tell.
“What are you up to?” My dad asks me.
“Nothing, I had a client I had to meet over this way, so I thought I’d stop in and say hi.”
Roger’s cell phone rings, and I smirk when he pulls out his huge iPhone and excuses himself before answering it.
“What are you really here for?” My dad questions as soon as Roger is out of earshot. He knows I don’t just drop in without asking, ever.
“Can we talk inside?”
“Sure.” He turns and I follow him inside, kicking my shoes off as I enter.
“Mom home?”
“No, she’s out shopping. You want a beer?”
“Yeah.” My dad is the best person in the world to come to for advice, just having him listen to my problems all my life has given me the answer to so many things.
“So, what’s bothering you?” He hands me a beer from the fridge. I happily crack it open as we stand in the kitchen.
“It’s Fallon,” I tell him, and he gives me a knowing look. “Leo cheated on her.”
“Again?”
“Yeah.”
“When are you going to tell the girl how you really feel about her?”
I give him a crooked glare, and he chuckles. This has been a long-standing push and pull with us. He knows I love her, but he also knows all the reasons why I can’t tell her I’m in love with her. So he’s not helping one bit.
“Dad,” I scold him, and he raises his hands, signaling defeat.
“I can’t control my mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain. When I used to see her once a week or when we just talked on the phone daily, it was different. So now that break from her I normally have to give myself time isn’t there. And my mind is spinning. I can’t control how I feel for her; my feelings are as intense as they’ve ever been.”
“How long is she staying with you for?”
“As long as she needs. She was so upset after it happened, she walked in on him fucking some chick, Dad.”
“Oh, Jesus, poor girl.”
“Yeah, and here I am with a hard-on all the time like some weirdo.”
“I’m sure you don’t want to talk about this. But do you really think if you tell her how you feel, she’s not gonna reciprocate?”
“I don’t know what I think. I’ve told you before; I don’t want to risk our friendship though . . . not after losing Meg.”
Saying my sister’s name brings an eerie silence to the conversation. We don’t talk about her much anymore. She drowned when I was a teenager, and my parents have never forgiven themselves. Hell, neither have I. It was my idea to lie and tell our parents we were going to the movies instead of the beach, which had been too rough that day, the riptide too strong. We thought we were invincible.
That day we found out just how vulnerable we were. It took Mother Nature less than a minute to pull Meg so far away we barely heard her screams, and by the time I finally got to her, it was too late.
I was her older brother and should’ve been able to save her, but I didn’t. It will always be my greatest regret. It also solidifies my reasoning for not being honest with Fallon about my feelings. She’s all that got me through losing Meg, the guilt was literally fucking eating me alive, but Fallon made me go on, and since then, she is what keeps me going.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I tell him for bringing Meg up.
“It’s okay. Just consider this, Parks. Telling Fallon could possibly be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. All your stress stems from this elaborate lie you’ve spun, but you don’t actually know what she would do if you told her.”
“I can’t. I won’t risk losing her. Besides you and Mom, she’s all I have.” And that’s the truth. Trust me; I don’t want to be in this situation. I’ve tried to move on with my life. I’ve dated other women. It always starts off great. Then I find myself comparing the girl to Fallon, and things fall apart. No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop myself. It isn’t fair to be with someone and not really care about them, but I just keep trying to move on. It’s wrong, but it has helped me to keep my distance from Fallon.
“So what? Are you gonna live your whole life loving her and never tell her?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“Then I don’t know how to help you, son.”
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but that wasn’t it.
Five
Fallon
“Hey, where did you run off to?” I ask Parks when he finally comes through the front door. It’s close to midnight, and I haven’t talked to him all day. He bailed earlier and sent me some uber strange text that he had to meet a client. I could have sworn he told me that he had today free.
“I don’t answer to you, woman!” he slurs and slams the front door. He’s completely blitzed out of his mind.
“Holy fuck! Did you drive home like that?”
“I told you. I! Don’t! Answer! To! You!” He flops down on the couch next to me and leans his head back, reeking of liquor and resting his arm atop of his head. I pat his pockets searching for his car keys, but he pushes me away.
“Where are they?” I ask him aggravated. This is so not like him.
“I don’t know. I think I might’ve valeted earlier.”
“Where?”
He reaches in his pocket and hands me a yellow ticket for the valet. But it doesn’t have a name or anything on it. “So what? You walked home and left your car at a random club?”
“I! Don’t! Answer! To! You!” he repeats again, and I have no clue why he’s acting this way. His eyes are closed, and as I sit here next to him, waiting for a response, he falls asleep. Within a few seconds, he’s snoring loudly.
Dickbag!
I snap my fingers in front of his face, but he doesn’t move. It’s then that I realize there is something sticking out of the right pocket of his coat. Gently, I reach over and pull it out. It’s a napkin that has some woman’s number written on it.
What the fuck kind of name is Cocoa?
I’m tempted to text her and tell her that he’s not interested. For fuck’s sake, he has a girlfriend, and they’ve been together for years. I don’t know much about her, I only met her once, but from what I saw and he tells me, they seem really happy. So, what is he thinking going out and getting some chick’s phone number?
Fuck, this is the same shit Leo did to me, how could Parks even think this is okay? Looking at his drunken demeanor, I hit his arm to try to wake him, but he doesn’t move.
I pull my mind back to reality. There has to be a reason for it . . . right? Parks is the most honest guy I know. Maybe he’s just having a bad day, and that’s why he disappeared. Regardless, whatever it is, he’d never cheat on Mallory. And he’s never interfered in my love life, so I drop it, but looking down at her name written all swirly and shit, it’s annoying. A part of me is jealous, and it’s not for defending his girlfriend. It’s for my own feelings that I have for him, feelings I’ve been hiding for years. I shouldn’t feel that way about him . . . but for some reason, in this moment, it really bothers me.
“Parks.” I shake him hard, trying to wake him so I can get him to his bed, but he mumbles and angrily pushes my hands off his body.
What the fuck?
“Parks.” I try again but get the same response.
Asshole!
So, I leave his drunk ass on
the couch and head to my room. Flopping down on the bed, the exhaustion immediately hits me hard. God, what a shitty day it’s been and as I stress about everything that’s happened, the exhaustion of my body takes over my mind sending me into oblivion.
“Fallon!” Parks calls for me, waking me from my comatose sleep state. This bed is amazing. It feels like I’m wrapped in a million feathers, and I don’t want it to ever end. But he calls me again, and I know I have to answer.
“What?” I holler from my room and hear him groan. It’s that noise that forces me to my feet and into the living room, where I find him still on the couch.
“You okay?” I ask, and he shakes his head.
“Can you please get me some Advil from my bathroom?”
“That bad?”
He nods, and I almost feel sorry for him as I head to get him some medicine. I grab the bottle from his medicine cabinet and fill him up a cup of water from the fridge. He gives me a half smile as I hand him both before lifting his feet so I can sit on the end of the couch with them in my lap. At least he kicked his shoes off sometime last night.
“I tried to get you to go to your bed last night, but you were nasty.”
“I was?” He looks horrified as he says it.
“Yes! And when you got home all you kept saying was, I! Don’t! Answer! To! You!”
“Shut the fuck up,” he says and rubs his hands over his face. I nod, looking at him dead serious.
“You think I made that all up? It’s the truth. Oh . . . and I found this, too.” I hand him the napkin from the coffee table with Cocoa’s name and number on it. He drops it to the floor and rolls over. His large body barely fits on this couch.
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” he mumbles into a pillow.
“It’s okay. I really don’t care about that, but I am worried about you. You didn’t seem yourself.”
“Don’t be. I stopped to have one drink and got carried away.”
“Parks, come on. You don’t get carried away. You’re the most responsible guy I know.”
“No, I’m not,” he tells me, and I hear my phone ringing in the distance. “You can get that,” he says, and I drop the conversation he and I are having; then scramble to my bedroom to answer my phone before the call gets sent to voice mail.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Fallon, this is Marla.”
“Good morning, Marla.” I glance at the clock, wondering why she is calling since my shift today doesn’t begin until noon.
“I was calling to see if you could come into work a little early?”
“Uh, how early?”
“As soon as you can get here would be great.”
“Oh . . . okay. Yeah, I’ll get ready and head on in.”
“Thanks.”
We hang up, and as much as I don’t want to go in today at all, much less early, it’ll keep me busy, and I need the money to be able to move out on my own. Plus, I owe her. She gave me yesterday off, so the least I can do is return the favor.
Six
Parks
“Feel better,” Fallon says to me, walking out the front door.
I wave from my spot on the couch as she leaves. I’m still so pissed at myself for getting so drunk. But after I talked to my dad and he was zero help, I couldn’t come back here. So the bar sounded like a good idea, but really . . . it never is.
My stomach is somewhere between starving and chucking up the rest of the alcohol that is eating a hole in the lining. I force myself to get up. I have to eat something; the Advil on an empty stomach was such a bad idea.
Fuck, why did I get so messed up last night? I need to learn to handle all this better and control myself.
I have to get over this shit and let go of the feelings I have for Fallon. She is my best friend, and that’s fucking it—end of story. Especially now that we are living together, I can’t be secretly liking her. I have to keep up the lie about my fake girlfriend, even though it’s wrong on so many levels. But I made the decision a long time ago to keep things between us just as friends, and it’s going to stay that way.
I stand and immediately feel light headed. Once the dizziness fades, I wander to the kitchen in a half-drunken daze, grab a jar of peanut butter from the pantry, and pull a spoon from the drawer. Leaning over the bar, I brace my weight on my elbows and try to stomach down a spoonful. The room is spinning, and I almost don’t manage it.
Fuuuuuuuuck!
I swallow some more peanut butter and then stagger into my bedroom falling face first on my mattress.
I’m pretty sure I still have peanut butter in my mouth when sleep takes me.
“Parks!” I hear my name yelled loudly and is causes me to sit up so fast I almost topple off my bed. The time on the clock reads ten fifteen—shit did I sleep the day away?
When Fallen walks in, she’s still in her work clothes, so maybe I did.
She stands in the doorway to my room, visibly upset, and . . . I have no clue what to do. So, I open my arms to her, and she crawls on my bed, laying her body along mine.
As I collect my bearings, I ask her, “What’s the matter?” She nuzzles her face in my neck without saying anything. If Leo did something to hurt her again, I’m going to kill him.
I’ll kill him; I swear I will.
“Talk to me,” I urge her, needing to know what has her so upset.
“I got fired.” That isn’t what I expected.
“What? No way!”
“Yeah, Marla called me in early today to fire me!”
“Shut up! How can she even do that?”
“I . . .” She trails off and then sits up, obviously angry as she recalls the events from the morning. “She had human recourses there when I got in. She’d been keeping track of my every move and claimed I falsified my timecard.”
“Did you?”
“I might’ve taken an extra five minutes on my lunch here and there or left a couple of minutes early. But there were more times that I skipped my lunch or stayed late and never reported that. They didn’t care, though.” Fallon bites her bottom lip, thinking about what she’s been through and I have to keep my eyes on hers, not her mouth. “She said what my previous manager let slide was not her problem; she couldn’t allow me to work there if she can’t trust me.”
“What a fucking bitch, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I haven’t gotten along with her since she started, so I guess it was inevitable.”
“Still, you didn’t deserve to get fired.”
“No, I didn’t. Talk about kicking me when I’m down.”
I chuckle at her analogy. The poor girl has been through so much shit lately and, somehow, she keeps going with a smile on her face. It’s one of the many reasons why I love her.
Fuck, don’t go there, man.
What is wrong with me? Thinking shit like that is the last thing I should be doing. “Are you even going to say anything?” she asks me, and I nod, feeling so fucked.
“I know it feels that way, but sometimes these things happen for a reason.”
“What reason in the world could you explain me getting fired two days after walking in on Leo cheating on me?”
“I don’t know; I guess what I mean is that one day you’ll look back and this will all make sense.” She looks at me with a frown on her face, my words not helping one bit. “Don’t look at me like that; I’m doing the best I can do, girl. You’re gonna get through all this shit.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re successful and . . . perfect!” she yells, taking a bit of her frustrations out on me. If only she knew. “I’m so fucked!“
I pull her down back into a tight hug and hold her close. Even though my body is alive and wants her more than anything else, she needs me right now.
“Don’t ever say shit like that. You’re successful, and you’re so perfect you really have no idea. You fuckin’ hear me?”
Seven
Fallon
“I think we should go out and have a few drinks. Plus, we need to g
et your truck, right?”
“Don’t use my vehicle as an excuse to go out.”
“It’s not an excuse. I need to have some fun. Things have been shitty for me lately.”
“My ears are ringing, and I’m still hung over. So, as much as I’d love to go out and have a good time, I don’t think I can.”
“Come on,” I tell him as he is scrolling through his phone, not paying much attention to our conversation. “Please!” I beg him, and he sets his phone down, looking at me with those eyes as I give him my saddest pouty face.
“Don’t give me that face.”
“Please,” I plead with him and place my hands together in a prayer position.
“Fine, but I can’t drink.”
“Good, I’ll drink for the two of us, then you can drive me home.”
“Great, I’m sure it’s gonna be a fun night,” he says sarcastically.
“It will be. Plus, you know you’ll give in and have a drink. Remember last year on my birthday when you were supposed to be the designated driver?”
“Fuck yeah, we were such a mess.”
“We were and . . .” I trail off, remembering how Leo picked us up after he was done working. He had been so sweet, but now that I think of it, he probably didn’t make it to my party because he was cheating on me and not really working at all. I shudder, letting go of the pain from my past. Fuck Leo and everything he ever did to me. I work on keeping the negative thoughts away, but losing Leo and then my job, too, makes me feel as if the walls are crumbling down around me.
“So, I’m gonna get ready.”
I head into my bathroom to do something with my hair and touch up my makeup from this morning. As I swipe some lipstick on, I decide to just leave my hair down and pull it all over to one side.
It isn’t until I go to look for something to wear that I remember I left all my dressy clothes at Leo’s condo in the spare closet.
“What are you wearing?” I holler out to Parks, hoping going a little casual is okay.