Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Parker

Ifelt like I was hungover and ready to murder. I’d never been drunk, let alone hungover, and I’d never murdered, but the feeling I got when I blinked awake—frustratingly half past five in the morning, since Unicorn had been rubbing off on me—I knew this was precisely the feeling of being hungover and ready to murder.

I never thought I’d miss getting dragged out of bed to do warrior pose, but as I slumped into the bathroom for a shower, I saw the living room all arrayed with the recording equipment and the yoga mats, and I just felt like I needed that back.

To be clear, it was because I missed Cass. Not because I missed warrior pose.

The apartment was quiet. No sign of where she’d gone. Checking my phone gave me a text, sent at nine last night. I hadn’t seen it. When had I fallen asleep? Last night had been a blur.

If it’s all right with you, I’ll be out tonight, okay, Parker? I’m meeting with someone to talk over the meeting with Gary.

Another text followed, forty minutes later. Are you okay? I can come home if not. I don’t want to bother you if you need space right now. I’m sorry.

And as if I wasn’t feeling guilty enough already, one last one. I’ll leave you alone for tonight. I hope you’re okay. Sleep well, sweetheart.

Ugh. I had no idea how to respond to that. And odds are, she saw the read receipt now, because I just knew she was up at five still.

I took my shower, thinking over everything I could have said, should have said, while I was there. After I got out, my heart jumped at the sight of another text, and promptly fell when I saw it was from Sutton.

duuude where’s your gf?? no morning miracle today?

I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. she’s not my gf shut up. I’m selling my company.

After a second, she responded with, wtf, and that was all, which—I had to hand it to her, she could be eloquent. A moment later, she was typing again. whyyyy??? ur still gonna be doing stuff with Cassie right??

Literally the only thing Sutton capitalized in her texts was Cass’s name. Apparently, loving Cass was a genetic Ferris trait. nope. she’s ditching me because Gary is a fucking asshole. After a second, I texted again. Don’t say those words.

umm dude idgaf how much of a fucking asshole gary is, i want more parkassie content

I sighed. don’t give us a ship name, dude. At least you’re upfront with your intentions. Sorry to ruin your content, but I’ve got to keep the family fed and crap.

But it just left a sour taste in my mouth. I opened my text with Cass and sent, Sorry. Passed out early last night. Woke up at five because my body is still waiting for an evil unicorn to bang on my door. Hope you’re okay, Cass.

I typed I love you on the end without even meaning to, stared at it for a minute, and I deleted it before sending.

Instead, I went to Tat’s contact, and I sent her a text.

Hey asshole wake up and smell the fucking knuckle sandwich I’ve got for you if you don’t meet with me right now to discuss what the fuck is what Gary’s doing even legal

I felt a little better after sending that, and I went about brushing my teeth and getting dressed. Surprisingly, she was up and replied before I was done.

I see your time with Cassie hasn’t taught you anything in the way of punctuation and sentence structure.

I scowled, stopping in the bathroom doorway to text back. Dodging the question like you’re in the Matrix.

She replied right away. There was no question. Just a very badly worded threat. But she was typing again right after. You’re meeting with Gary at noon, right? Come see me at Blackbird at seven.

I squinted at the screen. Blackbird? The place over in Catalina Village? Why on earth there, just to make me walk forever?

It took her a minute to reply. Neither of us have a contract there, so no one’s going to suspect a meeting there.

This was starting to sound more like I was the one getting murdered. At least I wouldn’t have to miss Cass if I were dead.

Instead of grabbing breakfast, I grabbed a coat and headed out into where the temperatures had dropped and it felt like winter again, and I took the subway out to Bentley Station and walked the last half a mile upwind in the dark, heading into the more residential area that was Catalina Village—the car people, I always thought with some disdain. Public transportation in Port Andrea was good enough—and car ownership was taxed enough—that cars were the mark of a rich snob, and walking through the rows of cookie-cutter houses with cookie-cutter SUVs parked in the driveways just made me want to go through and methodically key each one.

Instead, I kept my head down and kept going until I got to the block of shops on the corner where Blackbird Coffee House stood with black-and-red awnings and a dark postmodern interior. Stepping into the warmth inside was a blessing, and it looked like trendy concept art, white tile floors with big picture frames on the walls for small pictures, an espresso machine that looked like it had been designed by Escher. Black booth seats lined the perimeter of the shop, and the barista behind the counter was the quintessential hipster barista, a guy with a meticulously trimmed beard and a bowtie.

I was half an hour early, so I ordered a breakfast sandwich and a massive americano, and I sipped the coffee disdainfully as I sat waiting. It tasted like green bell pepper and awkward clove from some misplaced Sumatra, and I was in a mood when the doorbell jingled and Tat came in, dressed in a coat with a fuzzy hood pulled up. She made a beeline for me, sitting down across from me and looking both ways before she pulled her hood down.

“How’s it going, traitor,” I said airily. “Don’t get anything too espresso-forward here. It’s underextracted and the choice of blend is weird.”

“Good to know,” she said, settling back in the seat and unzipping her coat. She looked frantic, jumpy, glancing back either way at every little noise. “I, uh… got you something.”

“Judging by the nerves and the suspicious choice of meeting place, this something is going to kill me.”

“Might save your life, actually, if I’ve been following the situation right.” She opened her bag and pulled out a rolled-up brick of papers, spreading them out on the table in front of me. “It’s not very good, but it’s better than nothing.”

I stared at it, studying the headers, squinting. After a second, I took another sip of coffee, wrinkling my nose. “Ugh. Still tastes bad. Do you want the rest of this?”

“Well, with a sales pitch like that,” she said, but she took the coffee and popped the lid off, taking a sip. She wrinkled her nose. “Oh. I see what you mean.”

“Dude, what the fuck is this?” I said, gesturing to the contract on the table—a supply contract for machines and parts from Hugo Restaurant Supply. HRS had a patchy distribution in Port Andrea, and high prices because of it, so we’d never bothered signing up with them for parts and equipment, but here was a contract made out to Express Coffee Logistics.

“I know the terms aren’t great. I got what I could. Don’t complain too much.”

I squinted at her. “Look, dude, I appreciate the sentiment, but it would have been much nicer to just not give Gary the information to buy out my contracts at the last second, instead of cutting me off and then giving me this shitty contract.”

Not that I wasn’t happy for this. Who did she even think she was, just walking in here with a contract that could save my company? Even if it was a long shot—just at a cursory look, the terms were awful, and I wasn’t sure if I had the assets to qualify, and Gary would still be on my ass—it was something. And it might have given me a chance to ask Cass to come back.

But Tat just looked down, chewed her lip, and said, “Look, I… made a pretty bad mistake signing up with Gary.”

“If you’re trying to get me to hire you back, I don’t have much money to pay you with.”

“Things started off pretty well, but…” She shifted. “Before long, he was asking me to get into some manipulative crap. Shady business. I raised complaints.”

“Yeah, sure you did.”

“Did I not raise enough complaints with Express for you to believe I know how to raise complaints?” she deadpanned. I shrugged, looking away.

“Okay, so you got me on that one.”

“But…” She looked away, scratching her arm. “Well, he can be persuasive.”

“He give you a nice fifteen percent discount at the Morning Magic merchandise shop?”

“You are every bit as funny as I remembered, Parker,” she sighed. “He threatened Morgan.”

Shit. That helped put some things in perspective. Including her willingness to sell us out, her shifty contract-negotiating, and her wanting to meet somewhere no one would think to look for us. “He threatened your girlfriend?” I said, quietly.

“I don’t even know how he found out about her. We keep our relationship secret, obviously. But he started threatening for people to find out she was gay—but it was never framed as threats, you know. It was always someone at her office found out she’s gay, and if you cooperate, I can keep them quiet. Then someone in her family.”

I chewed my lip. “Shit,” I said. “Sorry, Tat.”

“Guess that’s karma. Should have stayed the course,” she muttered, looking out the window. “Crap like that sucks you in. Once you’ve done one questionable thing, it bends your morals a lot. Suddenly you’re a lot more willing to do another. Especially when it’s to protect your girlfriend.”

“Is she going to be okay? What happens if I sign this contract? Won’t he find out you had something to do with this?”

“I didn’t. Not really. I had a friend inside the company hire a subcontractor to negotiate this contract out to Express, and we told the subcontractor it was a poison pill for Express, and to keep that a secret.”

I rifled through the pages of the contract, my stomach twisting up in knots. Cass couldn’t go join him. Whatever I’d been picturing happening to her if she did, the reality would have been worse.

“He’s hellbent on getting Cassie from you,” Tat said, leaning over the counter and dropping her voice. When the doorbell jingled, she flipped her hood up, shrinking back behind it as a twenty-something girl came in. Tat watched her from the corner of her eye as the girl picked up a mobile order, thanked the barista, and headed back outside, only relaxing a minute after. “Sorry. I know he has no way of knowing I’m out here, but… I’m jumpy.”

“Yeah, no, I’d, uh… I’d be, too.”

“He thinks you two are in love. He rants about it all the time. He’s gotten mad with me because he thinks I introduced you two.”

I chewed my lip. “I mean… he’s not totally wrong,” I mumbled, looking away.

“Excuse me,” she said flatly. “Just because I refused to let you turn down a lesbian roommate at the bar, after complaining for weeks about looking for a lesbian roommate—”

“No, uh…” I cleared my throat. “I am. I mean, in love. With Cass.”

She flinched. After a minute of her eyes on me, I sighed, pulling my glasses off and rubbing them with my shirt.

“I don’t do this kind of thing well.”

“No… kidding,” she said, a second later. “I’ve never known you to—”

“I haven’t. Been in love, I mean. Ugh. It sucks. I took her to meet my family and everything.”

“Are you serious?”

“Told her what the money’s for.” I put my glasses back on, looking away. “Never even told you that. You asked a lot. I got great at dodging the question.”

“Uh—no kidding. You mean that mystery fund you always told me was none of my business?”

“Yeah.” I shifted. “It’s for my family. I, uh… I owe my mom a lot of money. Forget that. Details. I told Cass about it. Took her to see my sister in the hospital. Jason crashed the car—not hockey-mask Jason. Don’t worry about it. Cried on her when the contracts got bought out. I hadn’t cried since I was sixteen. Realized I loved her.”

“Parker, I just learned more about you in that one breath than I did in the entire time I knew you before.”

“She wants to accept Gary’s shitty deal,” I said, my voice shaking now in a way I didn’t recognize from myself. “What the fuck’s going to happen to her? She and Gary have history. If he’s willing to do that kind of shit to you and Morgan, what’s he going to do to Cass? I swear I’m a different person, Tat. I even like the morning routines. I mean…” I scratched my head. “A little. Not a lot.”

“I can tell. You’ve been getting into them.”

I paused. “You’ve been watching.”

She sighed, looking out the window. “Regretting leaving. Taking that out in the little ways I can. Pretending it’s for market research on the competition.” She paused. “I really liked Q&A three, with the donuts. You shared a coffee in that one. Did you not even notice?”

“Oh… yeah, now that you mention it.” I fussed with the contracts. “I got so used to us doing that all the time, I didn’t even think about it.”

“Have you been together all this time?”

I let out a sharp sigh. “Not… together. Not really. I guess. Dammit, I don’t know. At first we just had sex because she’d been strutting around the apartment in a towel in the mornings and I was turned on—”

“Did not need to know that—”

“—but then things started getting deep. I don’t remember where we just started kissing all the time, calling each other darling and sweetheart and…” I rubbed my forehead. “You see what I mean, I’m a different person. How the fuck do I make her stop, Tat? I don’t care if this is the best supply contract we’ve got, and we’re going up against Gary and everything. I don’t care if we fuck up and I can’t keep paying my family. I don’t care if I have to tell my mom to take a long walk off a short pier and keep the money for me and Cass. I’m in love with her, and it’s weird, but I don’t want a single thing without her. Ever.” I paused. “Ever. It’s weird. Is love always like this?”

She sighed. “Yeah. Welcome to the club.”

“It sucks.”

“It does. But it’s pretty amazing when it works.”

“Then tell me how the hell do I make it work,” I said, flipping through the contract. “What do I do? Sign this contract, call her up, tell her I miss her, I love her, I have a contract for something, just give us a try and see if it works?”

She gave me a big, dramatic shrug. “What else can you do, Parker? I wish I could change it. Go back and never sign up with this damn company. You were right to sign up with Cassie. We could have had a shot at it all. But right now, this is all we can do. And even if none of it works, just don’t let her sign up with Gary—no matter what he offers.”

I hung my head. “He offered the money to pay off my family. I don’t even know how the fuck he knew about that. I’ve never told anyone but Cass, and I know she didn’t tell him. He could have offered Cass the world, and she wouldn’t sign up, but she wanted to do it for me.”

Tat sighed, looking down at the floor. “You know she loves you, too, right? Judging from that kind of thing. And the way she looks at you on the page.”

I chewed my lip. “I want to believe it. I want to be her girlfriend. Is that weird?”

“Well, last I checked, you were a lesbian, so… not that weird.”

“I want to be the girlfriend to a bubbly Instagram influencer who hangs out with her ultra-straight girl squad and gossips about who’s wearing what latest designs. We got mani-pedis last week. She got me to go along with it. I was so mad. But I love her. It’s weird.”

She gave me a wry smile. “Love’s weird. I’ll bet you anything she’s waiting for you to pull her back from the brink. I know the contract isn’t much, but…”

I hung my head, setting the papers back down. “Not even that. I don’t think I can even qualify. Our sales numbers aren’t high enough to make these.”

“You’ve got assets—”

“We had to liquidate plenty of those.”

She chewed her lip. “Testimonials from the other suppliers?”

“They’re bought out by Gary, dude. What do you think they’re going to do for me?”

She shrugged. “Collateral? The terms on this contract suck, so you don’t even need a lot. I know you have something worth a couple thousand. A nice computer?”

“Dude, I own like twenty things and eighteen of them are hoodies. I don’t have a car, and my computer was eight hundred dollars four years ago. I’m…” I trailed off. “A couple thousand?”

“Just something to make it worth their while either way.”

I pursed my lips. “What… about an Armada watch?”

She looked at me like I’d suggested putting a kidney up. “A—what? Why the fuck do you have an Armada watch?”

“Look, I just… do.”

She stared for a second before she took the contract, flipping through. “From what I’m understanding…”

“Retail price is seventy-two hundred. I checked.”

She let out a long breath through pursed lips. “That’ll do it,” she said, after an eternity. “Put that watch up as collateral and you’ve got yourself a supply contract.”

God, now I really owed Cass. But then again, she said I didn’t owe her things, which was weird, new, and not something I really minded.

But maybe love was doing something for the other person because you want them to be happy, not because it’s part of an agreement.

Somewhere deep down, I got the feeling that should have been obvious a while ago.

“Thanks, Tat,” I said. “One more thing. Did you let it slip that Cass is gay? To Gary?”

She wrinkled her nose. “What do you take me for? He’d apparently been convinced for ages she must have been a lesbian, if she left him. It was the only way he could rationalize that to himself, I guess.”

“You knew? That they were together, I mean.”

She pursed her lips, scanning the windows and doors again. “Parker, I don’t think you understand how completely obsessed this man is. Morning Magic hasn’t been a business, it’s been a project to drag Cassie back into his control. He’s never stopped talking about her. He rants to the whole office about how he’s going to get Cassie Peterson back on board, as if she was ever with our company… you should hear what he’s like when you and Cassie aren’t listening. It’s terrifying how obsessed he is.”

Suddenly, I was just so damn tired. “You mean… he didn’t actually know for sure. He just threatened to out Cassie because he’d already suspected it, and the only reason he knows is because she confirmed it there.”

“It sounds like it.” She rubbed her forehead. “It’s something he does a lot. Gets up in your face, backs you into a corner—literally and figuratively—does everything in his power to scare you into admitting something, anything, he can use against you.”

“So, you didn’t rat it out.”

“No. Parker, I’ve been together with a closeted queer woman for three years. I know how to not accidentally out someone.” She gave me a wry smile. “But really. Look at you. You’re not even mad about me leaving Express for Morning Magic. You’ve been mad for Cassie’s sake. You really are in love.”

“Ugh… don’t remind me.” I rubbed my forehead. “Well… I’m glad to know it wasn’t you, at least. Knuckle sandwich has been put away for now.”

“You’ve kind of got tiny little hands, I doubt they’d hurt much anyway…”

I really was in love. And if I was going to do something in the name of that love, then that was going to be never, ever letting her go back to Gary.