Page 24 of Parker

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She stares at me, her blue eyes wide and trusting. They’ve been narrowed at me so many times in my life, I didn’t realize she had a little yellow sunburst around each of her pupils. It’s the same color as her blonde hair and makes her eyes bright like a sunrise.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I bet it was hell having me show up all the time.”

“You weren’t my favorite,” she says softly, looking down at her lap.

“I just thought you didn’t like me…which, I have to admit, made it ten times easier to give you a hard time because I couldn’t really think of anything I’d done wrong. I just…I thought the way we teased you and pranked you was just standard little brother stuff. I didn’t know ithurtyou.”

Her lips are pursed when she looks up at me.

“No. You know what, Quinn? I’ll buy the whole ‘I-didn’t-have-siblings-so-I-didn’t-know-better’ excuse forsomeof it. But notallof it. Come on. Wouldyoulike to wake up with cold oatmeal smeared all over your pillowcase? How about having a live snake put downyourback? Do you know how humiliating it was to sit on smushed berries in white shorts, and walk aroundall day with ‘blood’ on your backside? Give me a break. You’re ahuman being. You should have known better.”

“Sawyer’syourbrother.”

“And?”

“And he came up with most of it.”

Fuck.I sound whiny even in my own ears.

“Stop talking,” she says softly, but her tone is bordering on lethal. “Either take responsibility for your actions and offer me the unqualified apology I deserve, or shut up.” She tightens her jaw before adding, “Don’t waste my time, Quinn. The sun’s setting.”

She’s right. She’s absolutely, positively, one hundred percent right.

I put up my hands in surrender and nod at her.

“You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry,” I tell her solemnly. “I’m sorry forallof it, Parker. For everything. For every joke. For every prank. For every time I made you feel bad. I mean it. I’m really,reallysorry.”

“Thank you,” she says, staring back at me.

Green eyes to blue. Blue eyes to green.

Finally, she lifts her chin and shifts in her seat, folding her hands in her lap and looking out the window. “Now, let’s go.”

***

We finish our drive mostly in silence, but I feel like a weight’s been lifted between us. It doesn’t feel as tense as it did before, and I wonder if she hates me a little less than she did when the ride started. We arrive back at the Visitor’s Center too soon and find her Uber waiting.

“Thanks for the ride,” she tells me.

“I meant what I said before,” I say. “I’m really sorry for all the pranks and the teasing and—and all of it.”

“The beauty of a genuine apology,” she tells me as she opens the door, “is that you only have to give it once.”

I smile at her. “Thanks for accepting it.”

“Thanks for giving it.”

We stare at each other in the dim light of my rental car, and for a second—a split second—I remember another time in my life when she looked at me like this. I was in fifth grade, and I’d just given a presentation about my Irish ethnicity. Everyone in the room was clapping, so I’d taken a bow, and when I’d straightened back up, my eyes had slammed into Parker’s. To my surprise and delight, she’d smiled at me—a small, warm smile that showed me, for half a moment, what her face would look like if she didn’t hate my guts. I’d stared back at her, blown away by how pretty she was, by how blue her eyes were, by how my stomach flip-flopped all over the place as it never had before.

Later that day, Sawyer had convinced me to put a snake down her back while she was sunbathing by the river. And needless to say, she’d never looked at me with that kind of warmth or promise again.

Until now.

“Hey, Park—”

She breaks off our intense gaze. “Back to strangers tomorrow, okay?”

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