Page 4 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
“Kelli!” I exclaimed.
“What?”
I shook my head and stood to put on my outfit: a mid-thigh-length floral-patterned dress. “Yes, I would like to get some time alone with him. And yes, I’d like to have sex. But mostly I just want to be with him. Talk with him. Everything still feels so up in the air with what our next steps are. I mean, I don’t know what the plan is.”
“I thought you were going to New York for school?”
I shrugged. “I’d like to. But I don’t know where Cal’s head is at. Maybe we can enjoy the summer and take a semester off or something. Get our priorities in line.”
“You’re right. You do need to talk to him.”
“I know,” I said, sighing.
Kelli tossed me my denim jacket, and she shrugged into her leather one. “Come on. We should go. We’re already fashionably late. Cal is probably chomping at the bit, waiting for you to show up.”
I giggled. “He’d better be.”
We slipped out of her bedroom and downstairs, where her mother was waiting for us in the kitchen to drive us to David’s house. Mrs. Rollins was a sweet woman with a fiery attitude like I had never seen before. When I first started living with her family three weeks after my twelfth birthday, Mrs. Rollins had brought me into the formal living room. They had two living rooms, something else I had never seen before. She sat me down and told me that things were going to be hard for awhile. Weeks. Months. Maybe even years. But she promised that no matter what, she would be there for me. To talk, to drive me to dance class, to teach me how to make her famous banana bread, to help me with my homework. And she had kept her word. She also made me swear to stop calling her Mrs. Rollins and call her Judy instead.
I was lucky to have them in my life, and I knew it just as clearly as I knew I was in love with Callum Gabriel.
We pulled up out front of David’s single-story rancher just after nine. The sun had just set, and the air was still pleasantly warm for the middle of June. Judy rolled down the window of her Volvo after we got out. “You girls have fun! Don’t hesitate to call if you need a ride. I’ll be up reading my latest romance novel.”
Kelli shushed her mom. “Go away! Nobody cares about your Harlequin romances, Mom!”
Judy only spoke louder. “I’m about to get to the best part, where they make love for the first time!”
“Mom!” Kelli’s cheeks turned a vicious shade of red as I doubled over laughing. Kelli jabbed me in the hip, but I only laughed harder and scurried away from her as Judy waved and drove off.
“Your mom is awesome,” I said.
“We will agree to disagree on that front.”
I grinned. “Like the boobs?”
“Yes,” Kelli said, straightening her black leather jacket. “Like the boobs. Now come on. Let’s go get ourselves some drinks.”
David’s parents always went away this time of year. His mother was a travel agent, so she got awesome deals. They were currently doing a tour of the Galapagos Islands—a trip that I researched when I found out they were going and discovered it cost an average of ten thousand dollars per person for ten to fourteen days. Being a travel agent certainly had perks—and it benefited us, too. We had a house to throw parties at every summer.
The house had an open concept layout, so no matter where you stood, you could see the dining room, kitchen, and living room. The back walls were floor-to-ceiling windows that opened up to a view of a massive patio and an in-ground pool, heated year round, and an outdoor kitchen with marble countertops that the family had added two summers ago. At the time, they probably didn’t realize they were paying twenty thousand dollars for a feature a bunch of teenagers were going to use more than them.
They also probably had no clue their pool was going to be five percent alcohol by the time we were done with it.
As Kelli and I crossed the front lawn, Cal and David came out the front door. Cal’s long legs made quick work of the porch, and he hurried down the stairs and across the grass to greet me. He wrapped me up in his arms, spun me around in a circle, and set me back down before holding my hands and stepping back to look me up and down. “Damn. You look good, Lina. That dress is perfect.”
“Thank you.” I blushed, shyly drawing my right shoulder up to my cheek.
Cal smiled back, and the dimple in his left cheek winked at me. He was a looker and always had been. When we met on the first day of high school, I’d been drawn to his sharp features and bright blue eyes. They looked even bluer in contrast to his black hair and tanned skin. I’d also been drawn to the distinct smell of his deodorant and cologne: pine and sandalwood mixed with a bit of classic teenage boy musk.
Cal tugged me up the lawn, his fingers still woven between mine, as David hovered around Kelli. “Beer pong?” he asked several times over.
Kelli waved him off. “Chill, David. I’ll get around to kicking your ass at that stupid game soon enough. For now, let me worry about mingling and getting my drink on. Did you guys manage to get what we asked for?”
We followed Cal up the steps onto the porch, and he nodded at us as he pushed the front door open. “Yep. Your drinks await you in David’s room.”
Kelli arched an eyebrow. “Is that a ploy to get a girl in your bedroom before high school is officially done, David?”
David scoffed. “Please. I have plenty of ladies in my room.”
