I remained locked in my room for the majority of the afternoon. Parker said his dad would be up by dinner, but after wasting a mindless hour surfing social media, five unanswered texts to Madison, another half hour trying to beat the level I had been stuck on Candy Crush since I quit playing it freshman year, and the thirty minutes I took putting my clothes neatly away… I was pretty much going out of my mind with boredom.
I wasn’t lying when I said I needed a buffer. Parker and I hadn’t spent more than a few minutes together since we were thirteen. After the car ride, I could almost feel a shift as if we were friends again. He even let me choose the radio station and didn’t complain once about my singing along with every song.
But this was Parker. New Parker, not the one I had grown up with. That guy hightailed it out of town around the same time my dad did. In fact, everything changed for both of us the summer before eighth grade when my dad left and his mother unexpectedly died. He retreated into a shell and when he emerged in the fall, he looked like my Parker, but his personality had done a 180. Body snatchers scary.
But I did have him to thank for Madison. If he hadn’t ditched me to go be Mr. Popular, we never would have become friends. And although I was still kind of pissed at her, I loved her like a sister.
Around five thirty I couldn’t take it anymore. I poked my head out into the hall. Parker’s door was closed, and the house was dead quiet. Maybe he was out riding the Jet Skis. I shut my door and grabbed my suit. My mom made good on her promise of buying me a new one. Suit shopping with my mom wasn’t my favorite pastime, but I used it as one of the many excuses to stay out of the house to avoid Parker. It was surprising how long you could drag out a simple trip to the mall when desperate.
I slipped on the flimsy material. I had always been a one-piece kind of girl so I was stunned when my mom bought it for me. Of course, she insisted on buying me the matching cover-up, but whatever. I figured if I had to spend a week at the lake, I might be able to meet a guy. If I did, then it would give me plenty of time to avoid Parker. Simple plan all hinging on my ability, or lack thereof, to flirt.
As I piled my hair up into a messy bun, I did a once-over. Maybe the bikini was a bad idea after all. It was more Madison’s style. The lady at the store called it bandage or something. The light pink bottoms had a bunch of bands on the hips instead of the normal ties. That was all fine and good and I figured they would stay on better out in the water. The top on the other hand…I really don’t know what got into me. The color matched the bottoms, and it was considered full coverage, but that was only because it covered the parts of the cup that normally wouldn’t be there with a sheer material. On top of the sheer material was a solid delicate flower. It concealed all the important parts, but still left way too much to the imagination. Notably side- and underboob.
At least there weren’t any ties that could get snagged. That happened to Madison once on a school trip to the water park. She almost flashed half of the sophomore class and a crap ton of little kids running around.
I let out a low breath and pulled on the cover-up. I made my choice and I would have to live with it. Parker would just have to keep his eyes to himself. Not that I worried about him ogling me. More like informing me about how inadequate I was compared to his many, many hookups.
A girl’s ego could only take so much.
The clock read close to six as I made my way into the kitchen. Still no Parker or Mr. Hayes. Then again, traffic was probably terrible leaving the city on a Tuesday.
I snagged a water bottle from the fridge and surveyed the living room. Parker wasn’t kidding when he said his dad renovated. It looked nothing like the lived-in room of my childhood. In place of the comfy worn-in couch sat a modern brown sectional I imagined was better to look at than sit in. All the family photos were gone, replaced with a gigantic white screen. I looked up and saw a projector mounted onto the ceiling.
Fancy.
The staircase to the left was also new. I thought the house looked bigger. I couldn’t remember there ever being a third floor. Uncharted territory. With my curiosity taking over I made my way upstairs. It was ridiculous to feel like some kind of intruder in a house I spent so much time in, but that didn’t stop me from flinching with every creak of the wood.
Once I reached the top, I had to do a double take. It wasn’t what I expected. In fact, it didn’t look like it belonged to the same house. Another one of those huge screens hung on the far wall damn near taking up the whole thing. The opposing wall had a long leather couch that looked brand-new. To the left sat a pool table and a minibar, much smaller than the one on the first floor. And to the right there was a wall made of glass. From the looks of it, it led out onto a deck.
And at that moment is when I realized where I would spend most of my time. Parker wasn’t kidding, I did need some color. My skin tone could have rivaled a ghost after the craptastic winter we just came out of. Being from the Pacific Northwest we live through months of rain, rain, and more rain leaving most of us sun starved.
I slid open the door and took a deep breath. The house always had a beautiful view, it sat on the lake for crying out loud. But the new height gave the advantage of seeing the whole lake and Olympic mountains. Breathtaking hardly covered it. There was a reason I always loved coming there during the summer.
I was so taken with the view I didn’t notice the person lounging in a chair until he spoke up and scared the ever living out crap of me.
Did I mention that attention to my surroundings wasn’t a strong trait of mine?
“Gorgeous, huh?” Parker slid his sunglasses to the tip of his nose and peered over them at me.
I tried to answer, I did, but all that came out was a weird gurgling noise. I blamed it on the scare, but it might have had a tiny bit to do with the fact that Parker was topless. Again. And let’s just say that chest wasn’t the same bony, concave, prepubescent chest I remembered. Somewhere along the way Parker had filled out. And then some. I had managed to overlook that at the party. Probably because I was doing my best to ignore him in general.
Parker smirked and put his sunglasses back in place. My whole body flushed red from embarrassment. He one hundred percent caught me ogling him. Parker. A boy I hated. But I couldn’t deny those muscles.
He stretched, resting an arm behind his head and when my gaze dipped taking in the six-pack rippling in the sunlight, I had to look away. Maybe burn my eyes. A lobotomy wouldn’t hurt.
Pull it together, Lily.
I plopped down on a lounge chair a couple over from him. Space was defiantly welcome. Needed even. With him on the outskirts of my peripheral vision, I could pretend he didn’t exist. Get some sun and wait it out until Mr. Hayes arrived.
Only that’s not what happened because the second I got comfortable it was as if someone had injected him with pure caffeine and he wouldn’t shut up.
“Need anything to drink?”
I held up my water bottle. Eyes averted.
“Bring sunscreen? I have some if you need it.”
“No thanks.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would with that sack you’re wearing.”
“It’s a cover-up.” Okay, it wasn’t the most attractive thing, but my mom insisted. I had never agreed with her fashion choices until that moment.
“It’s almost one hundred degrees, why would you want to put more clothes on?”
Because there is no way in hell you need to see what’s going on under it—not with everything you got going on over there.
“We can take the Jet Skis out tomorrow if you want.” Parker continued before I had a chance to answer his previous question.
“Sure.”
“Maybe one of these nights we can go into town. I hear they still have that old-timey ice cream parlor that we used to go to.”
“Cool.”
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
He reminded me of that girl on How I Met Your Mother who wouldn’t stop talking, to the point where no one could get a word in edgewise.
Don’t judge me. My mom loved that show. I had seen the whole series at least three times.
“What do you want for dinner?”
“Whatever your dad is making.” I took a long drink of water. Parker wasn’t kidding, it was blazing hot out, but I wasn’t about to take off the cover-up. Nope. I might even swim in the damn thing. Die in it. Marry it and have little cover-up babies. Presumably not in that order.
“Oh, yeah, about that. Dad texted me earlier. He won’t be able to make it until Saturday.”
The cool water took a detour down my windpipe and I bolted upright coughing.
“You okay?” Parker dropped down next to me and patted his hand against my back. I made a feeble attempt to push him off the chair. But he didn’t budge. I did however notice how hard his chest was.
“What…do…you…mean?” I got out between coughing fits.
“Exactly what I said.” He ran a gentle hand down my back as my lungs settled. An involuntary shiver ran through me when his palm met with my bare skin on my lower back where one of the ties came loose.
If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Guess something came up. But he Venmo’d me money and said to stock up on whatever we want. Which is surprising for him considering—”
“Take me home,” I blurted out. I couldn’t be there alone with him.
“What?” He settled back in the chair, hands in his lap.
“Take me home. I only agreed to this because my mom thought I would be spending time with you and your dad. I’m not hanging out with just you all week. We can’t even stand each other.”
“That’s not true.” The tone of his voice almost had me. It sounded hurt. But that wasn’t possible. All I spoke was the truth. He couldn’t be offended by that.
“Whatever, Parker. Take me home.”
“No.” The little muscle on the side of his jaw flexed as he looked away.
“Excuse me?”
“I didn’t drive all the way up here just to turn around. It would be a complete waste of my week. Besides, if I go home Dad will just force me into my grueling swimming schedule and I would prefer a week off.”
“Fine.” I stood up and made my way to the door. “I’ll just call an Uber.”
Parker caught my wrist and spun me to face him. “Don’t be ridiculous, that would cost hundreds of dollars. You got that laying around?”
I pursed my lips, and he nodded.
“I thought so. Dad will be up here in a few days. In the meantime, we have the lake house to ourselves. I can’t think of a better way to start the summer.”
Uh, I could think of at least one hundred other ways to start my summer and at least ninety-eight didn’t include Parker. Two included burying him somewhere in the desert.
“Swear you didn’t do this on purpose.” I pulled free of his grasp.
Parker held out his pinkie, and I smiled. I hadn’t done a good pinkie swear in forever. I locked mine around his and squeezed, twisting his hand to a weird angle.
“Ow. What the—”
“If I find out you did this on purpose in some sick play to get me alone, I’ll castrate you in your sleep.”
With that I left him standing alone on the deck to enjoy the view that was no longer appealing to me.
Four days. I just needed to get through four days without murdering him.