Tara waved me off. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve done it tons of times. And remember—you were going to sleep with someone sort of as practice first, so when you met the right guy, you’d know what to do.”
Except it wasn’t like that at all, I wanted to
tell her. Graham and I had just had this connection that I didn’t really need to know anything beforehand. I didn’t think Tara would get what I was saying if I told her that, though, so I didn’t.
*****
That evening after dinner, I went up to my room to look at some of the art books I’d checked out of the library the other day. I lay on my stomach on my bed, flipping through the oversized hardcover books, looking at all these amazing sculptures. I felt sure I would never in a million years be able to come close to creating something of that caliber.
I’d just finished flipping through the last book when I heard my mother calling me.
“Chloe! There’s someone here for you.”
For one wild second, I thought that it was going to be Graham, that he’d somehow figured out where I lived. Of course, I should have known it wasn’t him just based on Mom’s reaction, but I pushed myself up off my bed and skipped down the stairs.
Parker stood there in the front entryway, smiling at whatever my mother was saying to him.
I slowed, coming to a stop on the staircase. He looked up and saw me. “Hey,” he said.
“I’ll give you two a minute.” My mother hurried off before I could accuse her of inviting Parker over here.
“I apologize for coming by unannounced,” he said. “I was really hoping you might reconsider. I’d really love to take you out sometime.”
I knew my mother wasn’t far, and that she was probably eavesdropping. I coughed. “That’s nice of you. I guess I just ... I mean ... don’t you have a lot of other girls that are interested?”
He tilted his head slightly to the side and gave me a quizzical look. “Well, there’s a few, sure, but ... I don’t know, I’ve seen you around every summer now for a while, and I thought we might have a good time together.”
Parker was very handsome, in a completely different way than Graham was. Parker could be the face of a Ralph Lauren ad, or a luxury car brand, or something. He just radiated this feeling of well-being; not in a Zen sense, but more in a he’s-never-had-to-deal-with-a-hardship-of-any-kind sense. He thought life was good because that’s all life had ever been to him: good. But, I realized, it was kind of the same for me. I’d never really experienced any hardship either, even though some things might’ve seemed like a big deal at the time.
I thought about all the things Tara had said. She did have a point, I suppose; Graham and I weren’t actually going out. I thought about the endless amount of crap my mother would give me if I turned Parker down, if I didn’t even give him a chance. He wasn’t a bad guy; I could tell that just by standing here talking with him these few minutes; hanging out with him wouldn’t be awful. We could go out and do something and then I could tell my mother—and Tara—that it hadn’t worked out and at least I had given it a shot. They couldn’t be upset over that. Plus, Parker would probably realize that I just wasn’t on his level, because, well, I wasn’t.
“Fine,” I said. “We can hang out some time. What did you have in mind?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Graham
Francesca was one of my long-term customers who came to the Cape every summer for a few weeks. She was married and worked as a model and a professional cyclist. And not just mountain biking; she did cyclocross, criteriums, and road races. She had a full sleeve on her left arm, a half-sleeve on her right, and we were currently working on a full back piece that was sort of a Salvador Dali/Edward Gorey mashup. With bikes.
Ninety percent of Francesca’s tattoos were done by me, and she’d given me free reign to design the back piece, which had been a lot of fun. I was always happy to see her, and today was no different. Except, midway through our session, when she told me that she and her husband, Anthony, had called it quits.
“We’re divorced,” she said. She was lying there on her stomach, her shirt off. I was working on an area on her mid/lower back, so she’d kept her bra on. She craned her neck around and gave me a devilish grin and a wink. “I know you’ve been waiting to hear those words. I’ve been waiting to say them to you.”
“Oh boy, Franny,” I said. “You fuckin’ slay me.”
“I’ll be here for another two weeks. And then taking off for Les Gets. Care to join me?”
“You know I’d love it, but I can’t.”
“Well, you can at least keep me company in that big hotel room of mine.”
Ah, timing. I smiled and shook my head ruefully. “Afraid I’m going to have to pass,” I said.
She craned her neck further, a genuinely surprised look on her face. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Have you taken the cloth?”