But an entire drive of watching the rearview mirror assured me I’d shamed Adam and my brother sufficiently to shake them off my tail, damn it. As I parked the car in my driveway, I turned my attention back to Parker, who was curled into a ball in the passenger seat, shaking. “Oh God, I’m so sorry about the air-conditioner. Why didn’t you say something?” I’d cranked the cold air all the way up, and Parker was paying the price in frostbite. Not everybody got all hot and bothered when Adam stared at them, apparently.
Parker didn’t uncurl from his ball.
“Hey.” I reached over and rubbed his knee in a friendly warming-your-skin way, not a way that would earn me the hickey from Parker that had been claimed by several sophomore girls whose stories I didn’t entirely trust anymore. “Let’s go in and meet my dad.” I thought he might regain some of his bravado by the time we got inside. But as I opened the door in the garage and crossed from the kitchen into the den, he continued to trail after me like a kitten with PTSD from being shot with way too many Nerf darts. ere was a reason the Vaders’ cat did not often venture out of the master bedroom. Parker would never scare my dad while he acted like this.
I would have to rely on Parker’s reputation getting back to my dad. en my dad would say, “My goodness, that timid boy is actually a man-slut? By analogy, Adam Vader, who seems to have a death wish, probably has his shit together after all!” Of course, this was the best-case scenario, or perhaps the in-my-dreams scenario. In retrospect, this was one of the reasons my plans had a tendency to backfire.
I walked into the den and stopped so fast that Parker plowed right into me. Dad was sitting on the couch all right, and Frances was curled up next to him.
In a miniskirt!
Well, maybe not a miniskirt. It might have been mid–calf length, and I got the first impression that it was a miniskirt because she usually favored floor-length hippie garb. She’d kicked off her Birkenstocks to reveal freshly painted red toenails. In short, for Frances, she looked adorable. I was sure this was an accident.
“Hi!” I exclaimed as if I’d totally expected my ex–au pair. But I truly hadn’t bargained on Frances being there. is threw a monkey wrench in my plans, though I wasn’t sure yet whether it was a big sucker like a pipe wrench or something that would be easier for me to manage like a little Allen wrench. We all exchanged greetings and I introduced Frances and my dad to Parker.
“Parker Buchanan.” My dad stood and gave him the firm handshake and the full grin he used with clients. “Nice to see you again.”
“Yes, sir.” Parker sounded as if he might faint.
“All right then!” I announced. “Parker and I are going up to my bedroom.” I figured if this date with Parker had any thrust left with my dad, it was the fact that we were going to hang out in a room with a bed in it. I did not add that when we got to said bedroom, we were not going to make out. We were going to have a long talk about how my dad already knew Parker and why it was nice to see him again.
We started up the stairs, Parker ahead of me, when my dad called, “Lori, can I have a word with you alone?” Parker paused and turned his traumatized kitten bug eyes on me. I nodded for him to go on into my room. As I bounced back down the stairs by myself, I resisted the urge to rub my hands together with glee. My dad wanted to give me a Talking-To about Parker! Hooray!
I reached the den again and my dad was still grinning, which did not bode well for the Talking-To from the concerned parent. Also, Frances hadn’t budged her organic cotton–covered booty, which confused my interpretation of what my dad had meant by “alone.” I could almost see her waving a monkey wrench at me.
“Young lady,” he said, which was a pretty good start for the Talking-To, “I am so proud of you.” DAMN IT!
“Thank you!” I beamed at him like I knew what the hell he was talking about.
“I have been Parker’s grandparents’ counsel since they founded the yacht club,” he said. “I’ve watched Parker grow up. He’s a terrific student, as I’m sure you know, with designs on Yale. But his grandparents have always been concerned about his social life and frankly, his mental health. He hardly peeks out of his shell at his private school in Birmingham. Then he comes down here to stay with them in the summer, and apparently he tells a lot of tall tales, making himself out to be some sort of Lothario.”
“You’re kidding!” I did not need to fake my astonishment, though I was not astonished for the reason my dad assumed.
“It’s wonderful that you’ve started a friendship with him,” my dad went on. “I’m sure it will do him good.” I was sure a knuckle sandwich would do him more good, but I refrained from saying this. “Dad, your pride means more to me than you know.” We gave each other a final manic grin and I headed for the stairs again, but not before I caught a glimpse of Frances watching me. She knew I was up to something.
Well, lucky for her and Dad, I was not up to a whole lot at the moment. I slogged up the stairs, into my room, and closed the door behind me.
Parker was sitting on my bed, thumbing through one of the issues of Playboy I’d stolen from McGillicuddy for fashion advice. He threw it back into the drawer of my nightstand and slammed the drawer shut, as if I would be completely fooled by this and had not been the one who put the magazine there in the first place.
I sat next to him on the bed and smiled sweetly at him. “You’re so tense, Parker. You’re not still worried about Adam and my brother kicking the shit out of you, are you? To be honest, I think they’re still mad, but they don’t have martial arts training like you do.” He stared at me. His eyes were so wide that I swore they were going to rebel and pop right out of his head and wander around the room, looking at whatever they wanted. If they ventured up my skirt, I was going to step on them.
“What am I going to do?” he cried.
“What do you mean, what are you going to do?” I asked him innocently. “You trained in Japan for your black belt. Just get in a good lick or two, and maybe they’ll leave you alone. Maybe, I’m saying. McGillicuddy probably will. Adam might not. Adam doesn’t always respond to negative reinforcement like you’d think.”
“Lori!” Parker cried. “I’m not who you think I am!”
I cocked my head and blinked at him. “You’re not Parker Buchanan, grandson to the Buchanans of the Buchanan Yacht Club, student at a fancy schmancy private school in Birmingham?”
“I am all that,” he admitted, “but I don’t have a black belt.”
I had surmised this already, but I played along. “You don’t?”
“No. And… Lori, can you keep a secret? I have so much bottled up inside me, and the pressure is getting to me.” He swallowed. “I didn’t date Miss Alabama when I was in middle school.”
“You didn’t?” I tried to feign continued interest. But if he wanted to self-debunk, he might go on all night, and frankly I was more interested in what Dad and Frances were watching on the Discovery Channel.
“No. I’m basically just a nerd. I have a 4.0 GPA, and I plan to matriculate at Yale and major in cognitive science with a double minor in statistics and ancient Greek.”
“You don’t.” I stifled a yawn.
“I do. The reason I’m spending the whole summer with my grandparents is that nobody knows me here, and I can be whomever I say I am.”
ere were a lot of things about this statement that made me angry. e lie. e fact that I’d been taken in by the lie. His smug tone of voice when he talked about it, revealing himself to be the biggest nerd I had ever met, even nerdier than the kid from my algebra class who collected antique motherboards, and absolutely the worst person I could have chosen to drive Dad into letting me date Adam again.
I said, “Can you be a person who is GONE FROM MY BEDROOM?”
Instead of moving away from me, which I would have much preferred, he scooted closer to me on the bed. “Why are you angry, Lori?”