Page 64 of Mother Parker
His hand reached across the table and covered mine. The contact shocked me. I hadn’t expected it. And it numbed my fingers, my arm, my entire body.
“Nothing,” I said.
I pulled my hand away and instantly regretted it.
It made my body feel…empty.
Hwan raised an eyebrow, seemingly undeterred by my action.
“She left me. I drove her to the edge, so…she left,” I said.
“Why? What did you do?” he asked.
“I’d rather not talk—”
“That’s fine. If you don’t want to say. This is…it’s a safe space here. You can share whatever you need to, and it will all stay between…us.”
Why did that make me relax instead of strain? Why did it lessen the pain of what had happened rather than increase it?
He pushed his chair closer to me and covered my hand again. The warmth inside and out of me was simultaneously suffocating and soothing.
It was just us. Us and nobody else.
“My family is complicated,” I said. “Autumn and Camden—that’s my brother—well, let’s just say they had to leave home because my parents were like me. Dickbags. My-my brother came out to them as trans five, six years ago, and they…they were horrible people. They wanted to send him to conversion therapy. They tried to pray the gay away. They made his life a living hell until Autumn took him and left so they couldn’t hurt him anymore.”
I rubbed my fingers along the rim of my glass and tried to remember how to breathe when he was so close. When he was touching me like it meant something. When he looked at me like I was his world.
“Wow. I think I love Autumn more, if that’s even possible,” he said.
I nodded.
“I was already away by then. I left home ages ago when I joined the Navy. So when Autumn and Camden ran, I picked up the pieces. Whatever pieces I could. They were sick, my parents. They’ve been sick for a long time, and as much as I hated what they’d done to him, they…they were still my parents, you know. Not that I saw them a lot, but I’d pop by between missions, clean the house, try to fix their problems that seemed insurmountable, and then I’d go back to the other side of the world doing my job. Until they died.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, squeezing my hand.
“It’s okay. They weren’t very good people, as you can imagine.”
“They were still your parents.”
“I guess,” I said.
“Wh-what happened next?”
What happened next? My entire life unraveled. That was what happened.
“I ruined everything, that’s what,” I said.
He leaned forward. Close enough to breathe in. Close enough to kiss. My heart pounded, desperate to escape and leech on to him.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” he said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because you’re a good person. I can tell.”
My face spasmed in what I assumed was a laugh, but it didn’t feel like one.
“Then you’re pretty shit at telling people’s character.”
