33
PARKER
The mighty and famous Niagara Falls. I’d caught a glimpse of it from the airplane on my way in, but getting up close and personal with the thundering water was one of the first things on my to-do list. I couldn’t fucking wait. If I had time while I was there, I was also planning on squeezing in a boat trip.
All of which would’ve been better if Isabella was with me.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel of the rental car. The scenery around me faded into the background as I sped from the airport toward the city. Alone. Again.
Fuck.
I’d found out yesterday that she’d changed her flight to tomorrow instead of flying out with me today. She’d told me she had work to do, once again employing her go-to excuse for avoiding me. When I’d called her out on it, she’d shrugged—fuckingshrugged—and said that she had agreed to go to the weddings with me, not to make every wedding into a three or four day sightseeing trip while I performed my duties before the big day itself arrived.
Trying to shake it off and not let it bother me, I inhaled slowly through my nostrils and forced my fingers to relax their death grip on the wheel.It’s fine. I’m fine. I need to focus on making Colt’s wedding the best day it can possibly be anyway. It’s better that she’s not here to distract me from that goal.
After a few minutes of trying to think about anything other than her and failing dismally, I reached for the volume knob on the radio and turned it all the way up. Some screechy, terrible eighties song was on, and I winced before switching to a different station.
The screeching stopped and a mellow rock tune took its place. I leaned back and did my best to relax, nodding my head in time to the music.Much better.
Much better but not good enough to stop me from thinking about Isabella again. She dominated my thoughts these days, and instead of trying to forget about her, I leaned into it this time. According to the little screen on the dash, I had twenty more minutes to my destination.
As the best man, I had a ton of responsibilities to get through over the next few days, and one of them was to pick up our tuxedos from the rental company. Since we were spending the weekend here, Anna had thought it best to rent from a local company and return the suits before we left Niagara.
That means I have twenty more minutes to let Isabella wreak havoc on my brain, and then I’ll rein it in. Some-fucking-how.
After my admission on game night, things had been quiet between us. The fight seemed to have drained out of us both, but the awkwardness remained. The chick was killing me.
Sometimes, when we were working late into the night and it was just the two of us left in the office, she seemed to get too tired to keep those sky-high walls of hers fortified. Every once in a while, she’d let them slide down, and in those moments, we were so fucking good together.
We talked and joked. We laughed over takeout that got cold because we didn’t get to it fast enough, too absorbed in each other to even notice it was there, but then, inevitably, the walls would come slamming right back up.
I was starting to think of her as a prisoner behind those walls. It was like she let herself have visiting hours with me, but then she’d go back to her self-imposed fortress of solitude. I was locked outside, and no amount of screaming or banging would let the guards around her to allow me in again.
There was no scaling those walls once they were up. No breaking in or even getting a peek at her through a window left open. There was no equipment that could pry open a door and no crowbar or wrecking ball that could help.
Trust me. I’ve tried.
So many times, I’d thought about just letting it go, lettinghergo, if not by terminating our contract then at least by going out on a date with someone else. So far, though, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it.
I was too caught up in her. Living for those moments when she came out for visiting hours was getting old fast, and yet there wasn’t a single fucking thing I could do to change the fact that I was always waiting for those moments. It wouldn’t be fair to ask someone else out while I would be resenting the girl with me for not being Isabella.
If everything went well this weekend, I planned on sitting her down and talking to her about it. Not even the Parker-repellent she seemed to soak those walls in would keep me away. She could push me away as hard as she wanted, but we needed to talk.
It was becoming ridiculous, the constant push and pull. I saw the way she looked at me, felt her eyes on me even when she thought I wasn’t paying attention to her, and had heard the way she spoke about me on the phone to potential buyers.
I wasn’t imagining things. I wasn’t so infatuated with her that I was making shit up just because I wanted it to be there. She felt the same way I did. For some reason, she was just too scared, too busy, or too determined not to let herself feel it to give me a chance.
But that shit had to end. It was time to hash it out properly and let the chips fall where they would. If they didn’t come down on my side of things, then fine. At least I’d know and I’d be able to move on.
“You will arrive at your destination in one minute,” a disembodied female voice said, and I cursed out loud.
One more minute, then I’m shutting this down.It wouldn’t be as easy as all that, but I was doing it. Colt had been my best friend for a long damn time, and I wasn’t planning on moping around all weekend when I should’ve been psyched to see him tie the knot.
The world around me came back into focus as I pulled up outside the address where I’d been told to collect our tuxes.Holy shit. It’s like kitsch paradise around here.
I squinted against the horror of the retro-style storefronts. I’d read that while here, one should embrace the kitsch, but this was just too much.And this is coming from a guy who turned his gym into the adult, fitness-focused version of an arcade and amusement park.
One good thing about it was that my attention was finally on something that wasn’t Isabella. I walked into the store and chatted to the friendly lady behind the counter for a minute before giving her my name.