Page 12 of Best Friends for Never

Partner. He.

She has apartner. She has ahe. She has someone to bake her cupcakes.

Parker continues talking to Dick, but I don’t hear a word of it. All I can do is stare at her, watching her full lips move, the way they stretch when she smiles with nothing but sincerity, the way her hands wave wildly as she chats, the way she tosses her head back on a laugh, and how her eyes shine brightly, despite the gloomy lighting hanging overhead.

Once again, I’m struck by how familiar it feels, while being so different.

I guess that’s what happens when you haven’t seen someone since they were a teenager and now they’re nearing thirty. Things stay the same and change all at once.

“Well, I’d better stop yammering and get this milk back to the house before my wife hobbles down here to find me.”

The older man turns toward me with a smile, but it’s not warm. It’s reserved, never reaching his eyes, and his lips hardly moving. Odd, because I was never on his shit list as a student. I was a model kid, except for that one fight with Axel.

He extends his hand to me. “It was great seeing you, Noel. It seems like you’ve made a successful life outside of Emerald Grove.”

It sounds like a compliment, but it feels awfully like an accusation.

He’s upset I left, and a part of me gets it.

The people who leave Emerald Grove come back. Always. I can count on one hand the number of people who have left and not returned, including me. Once I had my diploma, my plan to head to LA was in full motion, and my career is all I’ve focused on since. Sure, I’ve seen my grandmother over the last ten years, but I always flew herout to me and never came back here. All other ties to this place were cut. People who were once such major parts of my life just stopped existing in it. I’m sure to the townspeople it feels like I abandoned them, even when I didn’t mean to. I was just a kid with one thing on his mind—making his dreams come true.

I slide my palm against my old principal’s, and instantly, he grips my hand with a strength you’d never expect from a man his age. “Thank you. It was great seeing you again, Dick.”

“Try not to stay away so long next time, huh?” He gives my hand another hard squeeze and shoots Parker one lastgenuinesmile before leaving.

If a director or producer had done that to me, I’d have squeezed back just as hard and stared them down, letting them know I wasn’t going to take their shit. But getting into a pissing match with an eighty-year-old man isn’t exactly my style.

Parker’s shoes squeak against the floor as she shifts, and I’m all too aware that we’re alone again.

We haven’t been alone since ...

I clench my jaw, not letting myself think about it. I’ve done a good job of pretending it never happened, and I don’t want to ruin that streak now.

“Well, this is incredibly awkward.”

A smile tugs at my lips before I can stop it. Parker always did like getting straight to the point.

And she’s right. Thisisawkward.

It’s not that I didn’t plan to see her while I was here. I had no doubt she’d be at the ceremony on Friday as they break ground on the new theater. But I didn’t anticipate running into her this soon on the trip. Or for this long. Or standing so close to her.

I turn toward her. We may as well get this over with now.

I clear my throat, running a hand through my hair just because I can. There are no hair-and-makeup teams here to yell at me not to. “How are you, Parker?”

She blinks up at me. Once. Twice. Three rapid ones.

“How . . . am I?”

I shrug. “Yeah. Like, how are things with you?”

Another blink.

She rolls her tongue over her bottom lip, the one I know tastes like peppermint all year long. “I ...”

She shakes her head, stopping herself, and laughs lightly, then again, and again until suddenly, it’s not light anymore. It’s loud, obnoxious, and scathing. Can a laugh even be scathing?

She tosses her head back, grabbing at her belly as she continues to cackle.

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