Page 87 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
Cal held my face in his hands as I filled up with pleasure. Like a glass of champagne, I was all bubbly inside. It came to the surface with my orgasm, and I shook and spasmed beneath him. My vision grew brighter and brighter, until Cal’s face disappeared, and I was staring up at nothing and everything all at once.
I woke with a gasp that hurt my lungs and sat straight up in bed. The covers fell from my shoulders and gathered around my waist, much like my dress had in my dream.
“What the hell just happened?” I muttered as I pressed my hand to my forehead. My skin was covered in sweat, and I was still out of breath.
I shook my head, trying to make sense of what I’d just dreamt. Little pieces of it started coming back to me as I sat still and thought about it. There had been flowers, a breeze, and sunshine. And there had been Cal.
My Cal.
I remembered him.
A smile crept over my face. “I remember you.”
I ripped the blankets off and made it halfway to the bedroom door before I also remembered what had happened between Cal and me. I remembered all the lying he had done and why I was here back at Judy’s house with Kelli. I remembered that I had fled to the hotel after finding out I was not Asher’s nanny.
I was Cal’s ex-girlfriend from high school.
I was the one who had been left behind when he went away to Harvard.
I turned around and rested my back on the bedroom door.
The room I’d slept in was the same one I’d spent my teenage years in. That was what Kelli had told me, anyway. When she opened the door and led me inside, she said some of it might jog my memory. It hadn’t. It had felt like a room that belonged to some other teenage girl I didn’t know.
But it was mine: the white dresser with the pink jewelry box on top, and the glittery picture frames filled with pictures of a younger me and Kelli. The single bed covered with floral patterned pillows and trimmed with a pink bed skirt. The sheer pink curtains. The white shag rug. The boy band poster on the inside of the closet door.
They were all symbols of a me that used to be.
Why could I remember Cal, but not that old version of me? None of it added up.
One thing had become crystal clear to me in the last twelve hours. I owed some of that clarity to the dream. I knew how crazy that sounded, but it didn’t change the fact that I felt a little more whole after dreaming about me and Cal.
I knew that I still cared for him.
What was more, I remembered the love I used to have for him when we were young. Some of that might still be there. I’d certainly started to care deeply for him since he took me in after the accident.
I also knew that Cal cared for me, too.
Going back to him now would confuse him. It would probably confuse me too, but I needed him to know that I remembered him. I needed him to know that I was going to be okay. If I could remember him, I had to believe that I could remember everything else.
35
CALLUM
Even though Asher was eye level with the grocery cart, he still managed to push it through the store without running anyone over, which was an impressive accomplishment. As he pushed it along, one wheel inadvertently strayed to the side as if it wanted no part in our New Year’s Eve grocery shopping trip.
I threw things into the cart: chips, ingredients for pasta for dinner, vegetables for salad, dip, and the little cream puffs my father liked so much.
Asher stopped the cart and looked up at me when I plucked a bottle of sparkling grape juice from the top shelf of one of the aisles. I waggled it back and forth. “What do you think, Ash? You want a celebratory drink tonight in a fancy glass for when we watch the ball drop?”
Asher grinned at me and nodded. “Yeah!”
“Grape?” I peered at the row of sparkling juice beverages. “There is also cranberry—eww—lemon, blueberry, and raspberry. What do you think?”
“Grape,” Asher said decisively.
I put it in the cart. “Good choice. That’s the one I would have picked, too.”
“What else do we need?”
