Page 80 of Parker

“Then why…” I pause, realizing that I’m gesturing to her with a soiled burp cloth, dish towel, and empty bottle. “Let me take care of these.”

I walk through the living room to the kitchen, place the bottle in the sink, then open the laundry room door and put the cloths in the hamper. When I return to the living room, Parker’s sitting on the couch, looking at me over her shoulder.

“Why…what?” she asks. “You were about to ask me something.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I was just wondering…if it’s so good to see me, why haven’t you responded to any of my texts?”

Now this is interesting. Her eyebrows immediately furrow, and she leans away from me in confusion before shaking her head. “I didn’t get any texts.”

“Come on,” I say, taking a seat in a chair catty-corner to her. “I’ve texted you half a dozen times since we left Vegas.”

“No!” she says. “You haven’t.”

She stands up, goes to the coat tree beside the front door, and takes her phone from her parka pocket. Signing into her phone as sits back down, she taps on my name and shows the screen to me. Sure enough, she’s not lying. There are no new texts from me. The last one is from two weeks ago, telling her I was leaving my room and would be arriving at hers any minute.

“I don’t understand…” she says, playing with her phone. Suddenly her mouth drops open, and after a flurry of taps, she looks up at me. Her expression is sheepish. Embarrassed.

“What?” I ask.

“I…it looks like I blocked you.”

“Youblockedme?”

Wow. That hurts. A lot.

But in a weird way, it’s also comforting, because it means she wasn’t ignoring me over the last two weeks. She had no idea I was reaching out.

“I must have blocked you that—that morning…and—and forgotten.” She cringes at her phone, on it again before showing it to me. “Unblocked now. Sorry.”

I sit back in the easy chair, hating that things are so awkward between us.

“What did…um, what did your texts say?” she asks.

I lean forward, fish my phone out of my back pocket, and pull up the texts I’ve been sending to her.

“You want to hear them all?”

“Yes, please.”

“Well, there are a bunch of truly pathetic ones begging you to talk to me after you kicked me out of your room and threatened to call security.”

Her cheeks blaze red as she nods, staring down at her lap.

“And then there are somemorepathetic ones, pleading ones…mostly sent on, like, Tuesday and Wednesday, the week before last. ‘Can I come to Dyea and talk to you?’ That sort of thing.”

“I’m so sorry, Quinn,” she whispers.

“Would you have said yes?” I ask her. “If you’d gotten the texts, I mean?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

Two letters.N. O.They’re a punch to the gut.

“No? Wow. Okay.” I take a strangled breath and look back down at my phone. “Let’s see…here’s another. On Saturday night. Drunk, after seeing Sawyer for beers. More pleading. More promises. ‘I love you. I’ll love you forever. Give us a chance…’ Blah, blah, blah. Pathetic.”

“Not pathetic,” she murmurs, reaching up to wipe away the tears on her cheeks. “Not pathetic at all.”

Are tears a good sign or bad sign?At this point, I can’t tell.

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