Page 38 of Reckless Encounters

“I figured it was ‘Gasolina’?”

His eyebrows furrow again, gaze searching mine.

“How did you know that was even an option?”

I laugh. “I came to a game my sophomore year with the girls. You would have been a junior.”

“Really?” he asks, still astonished.

“I remember you walked out to Daddy Yankee and then jacked one over the fence. I think I immediately had a little crush,” I admit, but seriously, he was hot as hell back then too.

“Why didn’t I meet you? I remember meeting Sloan and Quinn on multiple occasions.”

“Maybe you met me too,” I tease, wanting to make him question it, but his response twists up my insides.

“No, I would never forget you. I still remember what you had on the first night I met you at Kings Hideaway.”

I bite my lip and ask my next question so I can analyze it for days to come. “What was I wearing?”

“A hot pink blazer with matching heels and skintight black pants. Your hair was down and curled. And you had in these tiny gold hoops and a small flower stud in your second piercing. And I knew right then and there you were going to be a pain in my ass.”

Wow. I retrace every word until he speaks again. “I can’t believe you were at my game.” Parker chuckles, and as the song ends, he passes the phone back to me.

“Okay, let’s switch it up. Now a song that always makes you feel a little melancholy or sad. As long as you aren’t going to start crying on me.”

I wrack my brain and one I randomly heard again recently comes to mind.

“‘100 years’ by Five for Fighting. You ever listened to it?” I ask and select it on his screen.

He nods. “Yeah, I actually remember the first time I heard it as an adult and really understood the meaning.”

“The older I get, the more I understand how that one hundred years can fly by.”

Parker glances out the window. “Some people would be thankful for half of that.”

The pain in his voice hurts my soul. He’s thinking of his parents, I’m sure.

We sit there listening, and I don’t ask for his sad song because I worry that would be too much for him right now. He scrolls through one of his playlist, and when the song he selects starts playing, I know just by the melody that he’s gifting me with something painful to him.

I dabble in country here and there, and this song has been on the top charts for a while now, so I immediately recognize it. “I Remember Everything” by Zach Bryan and Kasey Musgraves.

Looking over at Parker and seeing his eyes closed but his face so full of anguish, brings tears to my eyes. I reach my hand over and rub my thumb along his. I expect him to push me away, but instead, he intertwines our fingers. We remain quiet during the whole song, and when it ends, he peers up at me, emotion flaring in both our gazes.

“Parker,” I whisper. “Who does that song make you think of?”

“My parents, they met in 1988,” he whispers back. Taking a sip of his drink, he speaks again. “My mom was a rich girl from the city and my dad was an aspiring musician who took a bus ride there on his last dollar. The song isn’t necessarily their story, but the emotion in it, and some of the parts that resemble them, always overwhelm me with thoughts of the past.” He pauses again, but I stay silent, my chest thundering with the fact he is trusting me.

“He also had a bottle of cheap whiskey in his hand every day after my mother died of ovarian cancer until he drank himself to death.”

Rotgut Whiskey.

Tipping his drink in my direction, “That’s why I only drink the high dollar stuff, plus I know how to control myself.”

I turn my head slightly to the side, twisting my lips, trying to control my agonizing emotions. It's not about me, and I know Parker doesn’t want my pity. But what do I say to that? No one should have to go through that. I know Quinn mentioned this, but I guess hearing it from him and how it went down makes it a million times worse. No wonder he is so closed off; I would be too.

Parker tugs on my shoulder. “Hey, now that you’ve got me baring my soul thirty thousand feet in the air, can you pick a happy song, please?”

I attempt to smile through the tears I’m trying desperately to hold in. This time, when he passes me his phone, I think of my aunt. She played me this song as a pick-me-up after one of the many nights my parents treated me like crap. And then I turned it into my first solo dance routine.

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