Brothers of Paradise Series

I’m sitting on the couch, legs pulled up beneath a blanket, and I’m reading a book. It’s been years since I last finished one. Somewhere over the years, of Lee and motherhood and trying to make ends meet, hobbies had fallen by the wayside. Other priorities had asserted themselves, and they’d never left. Not until now.

I put the book down and look at the candles I’ve lit on the coffee table. Two years into our relationship, Lee had thrown my splurge of a scented candle into the trash. Never waste my money on things like that again, he’d said. Are you truly that stupid?

It hadn’t been a question that invited an answer, and for years, I’d been great at not giving him one.

I shouldn’t think of him, or the past. I don’t want to. But with the house empty, Mom away at her book-and-wine club and Emma asleep upstairs, the thoughts find me at last. They always do.

He hasn’t called or texted again, but I know it’s coming. With him, something’s always coming.

There’s a knock on the front door.

I startle, the book falling from my lap. Has he found us? My eyes flick to the candles. I should blow them out.

In the next instant I hate myself for the thought. It can’t be him, and I’ll buy however many candles I want with my own money. Familiar guilt follows, at ever allowing him to control me.

There’s another knock on the door. They bounce in a pattern, insistent, but not threatening. I inch toward the living room window and peer out.

Parker is standing on my mother’s porch with a brown paper bag in hand.

My muscles relax immediately, the fight or flight response de-activated.

“Jamie!” Parker calls. “I’m leaving a special delivery for you outside!”

I hurry toward the front door. Too late I remember I’m in my pajama shorts with tiny boats on them, a cast-off from my mom, with unwashed hair. “Wait, wait…”

He turns on the steps, and a smile spreads across his tanned face. He got more color yesterday during the regatta. “Hello, James.”

“Hi.”

His gaze drops to my T-shirt, with the logo of a small brewery on it from out of state. I’d designed their website. “Nice outfit.”NôvelDrama.Org © content.

“I wasn’t expecting company,” I say, and nod toward the bag on the porch. “What’s that?”

“That,” he says, climbing the steps again, “is a feast for your palate, my friend.”

“You brought us food?”

“Not just any food. Look inside.”

I open the bag and take a deep whiff. The scent of spices and something else, something that smells like cooked lobster and fried fish, fills my nostrils. “Oh.”

“Kristen cooked her suggestion for the new menu tonight. I brought you a sample of everything to try.”

“A sample of everything?”

“There was enough left over,” he says, and his eyes drop down to the bag. “And I want your opinion. Think you can bring yourself to eat delicious food?”

“It’ll be a struggle, but anything for you, Marchand,” I say. My hand pauses on the doorframe. “Do you… want to come in?”

Parker pauses on the steps. There’s no grin on his face now, no teasing glint to his eyes. I wish I could inhale my words, unsay them, because I must have crossed a line. He’ll say no in the nicest way possible and I’ll have to move towns again.

“I’d love to,” Parker says. “If that’s okay with you and Emma?”

And instead I float, like one of her bubbles. “Yeah, it is. Absolutely. I mean, she’s asleep.”

He chuckles. “Well, I suppose it is okay with her, then. Sure I won’t wake her up?”

“Her bedroom is upstairs, and that girl could sleep through an earthquake. Come on, come inside.”

It feels intimate, and unexpected, to have Parker in the entryway. To watch him shrug out of the thin jacket and throw it over one of Mom’s chairs. He’d worn a similar jacket all through high school, I remember. You’d see the sailing club written over his back as he walked through the hallways with his friends, his hair sun-bleached and longer than it is now.

“Sure it’s okay?” he asks, hands curling over the back of the chair. “I can leave if you had a quiet evening planned.”

“No, I’m sure. Of course. It just struck me that you’ve never been here before. Right?”

“Never,” he says, and then he smiles. “Except the night I walked you home from Turner’s party. But I dropped you off outside.”

“Yes, you were very respectable.”

“I had to be,” Parker says. His easy voice follows me toward the kitchen island. “You were Lily’s best friend, you know.”

I focus on unpacking the food onto the counter. “So if I wasn’t, you’d have come inside? I’m shocked, Marchand.” My tone is teasing, but there’s nothing calm about my insides. I feel unmoored, adrift.

Had he really thought that?

“I might have tried to, yeah,” Parker says, casting me further at sea. “This is a lovely house.”

“My mom’s not here to hear you,” I say, looking at him over my shoulder. He’s inspecting some of the drawings on the fridge.

“More boats?” he asks.

“Yes. After that day in the restaurant, she draws them all the time.”

A satisfied look settles over his features. “Of course she does. She’s a clever girl, like her mom.”

The praise sinks into my bones, softens my movements. I survey the spread on the kitchen island. Tupperware boxes large and small.

Everything looks good.

“She really cooked the entire menu, straight through?”

“Mhm.” Parker bends by one of the windowsills, inspecting an old framed picture. It’s my mother and I in Antelope Canyon, one of the last trips we’d taken with my grandparents. I’d worn Doc Martens into the desert and a long-sleeved black tee.

“Did you eat all of it?” I ask.

“Some of each, yes,” he says absent-mindedly. “But I wasn’t alone.”

“Who tasted it?”