Page 44 of The No Touch Roommate Rule
“With respect, Mr. DeWitt, that’s none of your business.” Parker’s voice is calm, but there’s steel beneath it. “And I think Makena’s had enough for one morning.”
“And I think you have no business putting your oar into a family conversation, son,” my father says, displaying his superior mastery of the “watch where you’re stepping” tone.
Suddenly, I can’t handle another second of it.
If I don’t get away, I’m going to scream or claw my skin off or cry and beg my dad to forgive me for being such a disappointment.
Always a disappointment…
No matter how I kill myself trying to prove that I can finally be a success, finally be good enough to make my father proud.
And just like that, I’m running.
Again, the way I always do, past the bakery with its too-sugary pastries and gross croissants made with margarine, instead of butter. Past the boutique with the preppy dresses that never fit me and the bookstore where Mom and I used to play trains at the toy table in back before she ran away from home without me.
Chest tight with an ache so much older than the pain of this conversation, I turn down an alley, then a side street. Soon, I’m in the park where I spent so much time as a kid, under the shade of a crepe myrtle tree that’s seen me cry before.
My childhood home isn’t far from here.
Dad likes living close to downtown, so he can walk to the coffee shop with his paper every weekend.
Tucking myself between the tree roots of my old friend, I pull my knees to my chest, rest my forehead on her bark, and let the floodgates open.
Old pain, new pain…it all comes out.
The grief comes in waves. I mourn my restaurant and the little shelf where I felt cramped, but brave. I mourn my regulars, who I doubt I’ll ever see again, and my record collection, the one Chuck the jerk face returned just in time for it to be destroyed by the storm surge.
I cry for the father who loves me but can’t accept me, and for the mother who accepts me but refused to fight for me. And for all the fresh starts I’ve poured my heart and soul into, only for them to end in disaster again and again.
And for Parker, who’s no doubt sick to death of watching me run away.
I get it.
I really do.
But I don’t run because Iwantto run. I run because it’s dangerous to stay. If I stay, I’ll lose control, lose faith that I’m going to make it, lose…myself. At least when I run, the mess is mine.
And when I’m alone, no one can hurt me.
Yeah, but no one can help you either, Mack,a voice that sounds way too much like Parker’s whispers in my head.
I sigh, sniff, and look up and…
There he is.
Standing just a few feet away, watching me with an expression that says the cat—and all my daddy issues—are out of the bag.
Chapter
Ten
PARKER
Ifind her under a tree in the park, curled up between the roots of a giant crepe myrtle in her yellow sundress.
She has her knees pulled up and her arms wrapped tight around them, balled into the smallest version of Makena, which is pretty damned small.
With a personality like hers, it’s easy to forget how tiny she is sometimes, but sitting on the curb with her dad’s arm around her, she looked so little.
