Page 31 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I shook my head. “No, I’m sorry. It’s not a good night for me. Why don’t you get a video of it and send it to Kelli? Kelli, give him your number.”
Kelli’s cheeks turned fluorescent pink, but she took the phone Jordan offered to her, and she punched in her digits. She passed it back to him. “I would actually really love to see the video,” she said.
Jordan smiled. “And maybe we can catch up over coffee sometime?”
Kelli giggled. “That would be nice. Thank you. We’ll talk later?”
“Sure thing. You ladies get home safe.”
“We will,” Kelli said. I’d already started pulling her away toward the doors.
I drew up short when I saw Cal standing there. He wasn’t looking at me, thank God, but he was standing right where we needed to go. I veered off to the right and pushed through one of the emergency exit doors that led out to a path that wrapped around the school. We’d have to walk back up to the parking lot in the freezing cold night air in nothing but our dresses and heels, but it was worth the sacrifice.
Kelli lifted up the skirt of her dress and followed me along the back of the school. “I’m guessing you talked to Cal?”
“Yeah. He sat down after you left. Then he followed me when I tried to get away from him to apologize. Asshole.”
“Apologizing makes him an asshole?” she asked.
I shook my head as I looked down, watching where I put my feet. My heels were a bit too high to walk confidently in on this uneven terrain. “Yes. Because he thinks a simple sorry fifteen years later will make up for the shit he pulled on me.”
Kelli didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry to have ruined your night with Jordan.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “We couldn’t have expected Cal to show up. He didn’t come to the ten-year reunion. I really didn’t think he’d show tonight, either. I shouldn’t have made you come. Tonight is on me, Lina.”
I sighed. “No, it’s not. It’s on him.”
“Fair.”
We made our way around to the front of the school. Lina tossed me her keys. “I went through two glasses of wine pretty quickly talking to Jordan. Are you okay to drive?”
“Yeah, I only had half my glass before Cal interrupted me.”
We got into her silver Honda Civic. I turned on the engine, and we both immediately turned on our seat warmers. I cranked the heat, and we both buckled up. We had to sit and wait for the defroster to work away the frost that had formed on the windshield in the short amount of time we’d been inside.
“I hate the cold,” I muttered.
“No, you don’t. You’re just mad at Cal. You love winter. Turtlenecks and boots are your jam.”
I reversed out of the parking space, and we rolled over the three sets of speed bumps on our way out of the parking lot. Soon, we were pulling out onto the street and headed for Kelli’s house.
My grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I can’t believe he thought a simple ‘I’m sorry’ was going to make everything better. Like it would erase the shit that happened.”
“Well, to be fair, he probably hoped it would help his case somewhat. The fifteen years that have passed since then likely made him think he had a chance to smooth things over.”
I shook my head. “Fifty years wouldn’t have been enough time for me to forgive him.”
“Really?” Kelli asked, cocking her head to the side. I didn’t look over at her, but I could feel her staring at me. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Lina. I get it. What he did to you was messed up on so many levels. But after all this time, there’s no part of you that can look back and realize you were only kids? He was just a boy.”
“A boy who made me believe he loved me. Who made me think he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.”
“Your experience is not unique, Lina.”
I looked over at her.
She shrugged. “There are plenty of girls who’ve had the rug pulled out from under them like that. And boys, too. High school is fucked up, and young people do stupid things. That’s just a fact. At a certain point, you’ll have to, I don’t know, let all this go somehow.” She ran her hands up and down her thighs in an effort to get warm. “Would you slow down? The speed limit here is twenty-five.”
