Page 28 of The Proximity Factor

“Point taken,” Parker conceded.

“Moving on, then. Get ready to become BFFs,” I teased him. “First question: What was your favorite age growing up, and why?”

He glanced over at me, his brow pinched. “What kind of question is that?”

“These will not be your typical icebreaker questions. These dive deeper. And this one tells a lot about a person.”

“If you say so.” He was obviously skeptical.

“So, what’s your answer?”

He thought for a moment. “Seventeen. It’s the year I found out I was going to be a brother. And it’s the year I got a decent part-time job after school fixing computers. It allowed me to help my mom out so she didn’t have to work three jobs,” he mumbled, like it embarrassed him.

All I could do was stare at him in awe.

“What?” he said self-consciously.

“Parker, you’re a good man,” was all I could think to say. That one question told me more about him than living with him for a month had. Although, I already suspected this of him, given what his friends and sister had told me. But to hear it from his own lips and to witness both the humility and pride in his eyes when he spoke about it was a whole other ball game.

He shrugged. “I have my moments.”

“They are better than most, as far as I can tell.” That earned me a smile.

“What about you? What was your favorite age growing up?”

I raised my brows, surprised. “You want to know about me?”

“It only seems fair.” He flipped on his turn signal.

It wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped to hear. I was hoping he was as curious about me as I was about him. But I still played along. I didn’t even have to think about it. “Seven.”

“So young.” Parker turned onto Athens’s main thoroughfare.

“It was a good year for me.” I laughed. “I beat Mandy Bradshaw in the spelling bee that year. It was the last time in school anyone praised me for being smart. I studied so hard—Mama and Daddy and even Tad helped me go over what felt like every word in my little pink dictionary. Mandy went down with my favorite word at the time, princess. She used an s instead of c. But it all worked out for her. She was the valedictorian our senior year. And I was prom queen,” I sighed.

“You say that like you didn’t want to be prom queen.”

“Oh, I did. It’s just, sometimes I wonder where life would have taken me if I had tried harder in school.” Not to say I didn’t love being a cheer coach. But maybe I could have been, like, a chemistry teacher instead of a PE teacher. There was nothing wrong with that either, except for people’s preconceptions about us.

“Is this about that douchebag, Greg, not thinking you’re smart enough?”

I looked out the window at all the cute brick storefronts. Places I’d browsed and shopped at during my college years when I probably should have been studying. “It’s not just him. I know how people perceive me.”

Parker whipped his head my way. “And how is that?”

“Like I’m just some ditzy airhead.”

“I don’t think that. Neither do my friends. One would be unwise to underestimate you. You have the kind of smarts that make a person dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” I questioned.

“Yeah,” he lamented. “Do you think I would be driving to meet your mother otherwise? You have the kind of skills only the wickedly smart among us have. You know how to read people and situations to get what you want. That’s worth more than a high GPA.”

Huh. I had never thought of it that way. Except ... “Are you saying I’m devious?”

He flashed me a pressed-lip smile. “I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole. But you can take it however you want to.”

“How very smart of you,” I retorted.

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