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Also bring me back some fresh strawberries since you are unavailable to go with me to the market today.
Thirteen
“It's been so long since I’ve taken the time to drive up to the Catskills,” I say, admiring the beauty the farther away from the hustle and bustle of the city we get.
“Did your parents ever bring you up here?” Parker asks, and my eyes trace the way his hands wrap around the wheel of his black-on-black Rolls Royce Wraith.
I scoff. “Heck no. This wasn’t up to their standards for a vacation.” I didn’t come up here until the fall of my freshmen year when Sloan, Quinn, and I took our first girls’ weekend getaway. I fell in love with the quietness.
“Not even a day trip?”
“A day trip in their eyes is taking a helicopter out to the Hamptons.” I remember one time we took a small plane up to Toronto for my dad’s business meeting. I begged and pleaded to make a pit stop to see Niagara Falls and you would have thought I was asking to go dumpster diving by the way my mom turned her nose up. “That’s for silly tourists,” she had said. If it didn’t involve a good shopping spree or the bragging rights to talk about trips to Europe, then they didn’t want to do it.
“Sounds luxurious,” he says with an eye roll.
“Sounds boring,” I retort. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, some of my best memories were spent at my grandparents’ house in the Hamptons, but you don’t know how badly I wished as kid to do simple things like this.”
“Why does it always seem that we want what we can’t have?” he says, and I don’t miss the way his eyes linger on my face before looking back at the road.
“As a kid, did you want the lavish things you have now?”
He thinks about it for a minute and shakes his head. “No. I’ve been around people with money my whole life, and none of them ever seemed as happy as my parents.” Parker pauses for a minute, then adds, “Well, before my mother’s diagnosis, at least.”
“How old were you?”
“She was diagnosed my senior year of college, but they didn’t tell me until I came home that summer, and she was gone six months later.”
Fuck. I can’t imagine. I don’t share an overwhelming fondness for my mother, but I would never want her to go through something like that.
I picture a beautiful brunette with Parker’s eyes. Retracing his apartment in my head, I don’t think he has any pictures of actual people, now that I think about it. But then again, I haven’t been in his room. I can’t help but wonder if I’m right, or which parent he resembles most.
“Tell me something about them.”
Emotion passes over his face before he answers.
“My mom gave up everything for my dad and my dad gave up everything for me. But somehow, it always felt like we still had it all.”
A soft smile lifts his lips, like he’s reminiscing, as my mind conjures up a younger, more carefree Parker.
“My mom’s family cut her off financially when she chose to marry my father, and my father gave up his musical ambitions when she became pregnant with me. They bought a small house on Long Island and made it into the perfect home for me to grow up in. Our spare time was full of music festivals and baseball tournaments, camping trips, day drives up here. They didn’t just love me, they believed in me. Believed I could do anything I set out to do.”
That makes me smile, thinking of the support and love I always got from my grandparents. I’m happy Parker was able to experience that.
“Sounds like an amazing childhood. Did you ever see your mom’s family?” I wonder if they are who he was referring to when he mentioned being around people with money.
He hesitates, and I notice the dark look that washes over his face. “Yeah, not because of my mom. My dad grew up in the system and refused to let my mom give up her family for him completely. We went to holidays on occasion. And in the summer, I would spend time with them.” It makes me wonder if they were there for him when his parents died, but I’m scared to ask.
“Where are they all now?”
“Some are in the city, some live out east in the Hamptons.” The sneer on his features doesn’t go unnoticed, and I take that as my cue to stop prying.
The next sign I see offers me the perfect distraction and change in subject.
“Ooooh, fresh strawberry shortcakes. That sounds delish.”I point, and Parker grunts in approval.
The strawberry patch sign reminds me of Sloan’s text from earlier. I finally three-way called her and Quinn on Wednesday to fill them in on my disaster of an apartment—I may have thought they planned the whole catastrophe themselves if I hadn’t of been with them in North Carolina that weekend.
They were way too excited about my current living arrangements. Quinn, especially, reminding me of what the close proximity turned into for her and Eli.
