Lottie watched his face for a moment, gnawing on her bottom lip. “Maybe,” she started slowly, like she was speaking a foreign language, “but most people don’t let their baggage dictate every decision in their life.” She tilted her head to the side and shrugged her shoulders. She wanted to say more, but she’d already said more than she intended. She wondered how it was possible for someone who talked as much as Parker to leave room for her to get out words she couldn’t seem to say in front of everything else. All the silence in her house and she hadn’t ever spoken this much. Sometimes people thought they knew people. They knew a few facts about them, and they pieced them together in a way that made sense in their binary brains. Lottie used to think that was the same thing, back when she didn’t know herself that well. But the truth was, that wasn’t her. That wasn’t her at all. It was a lot scarier talking to someone that knew her. “Like you,” Lottie smiled at him softly and bit down on the inside of her cheek, “you just…live. You don’t overthink every fucking moment of your life.”
She wrinkled her nose and grinned, swatting at his finger as she held back a laugh. “You’d certainly know, wouldn’t you, Parker Carson, playboy extraordinaire. I’m surprised it took you this long to make your rounds to the girl you bother every single day,” Lottie teased, tempted to shove him off of her lap. She’d probably end up pushing him off the couch within the hour, but for the moment she didn’t mind looking down and finding Parker’s smug smile. He was far too cute for his own good – or her own good. He was far too cute for anyone’s good. Lottie rolled her eyes and twisted her fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp softly. “Because that’s what gets me going, you in a red leotard and scaly green panties.” She tugged on his hair, hard enough to sting a little. Smoothing her hand over his head, she shifted and stretched her legs out on top of the coffee table. “And you kissed me, dumbass. I’m pretty sure it’s a miracle you didn’t pounce on me with ‘I love you’s and ‘you look like the sun’s the moment I walked into the room with your reputation. I mean, I’m a girl with a heartbeat. That is your type, right?” She winked at him and ran her thumb over his bottom lip to ease the sting of her jab. “A wiggle break is running around the house three times,” she hummed, rested her elbow on top of the armrest of the couch. She propped her chin on top of her knuckles and grinned, “Didn’t your father leave your babysitters with wiggle break instructions in case of thirty minutes of holding still?” She paused and ran her fingers through his hair, humming under her breath as she pretended to be deep in thought. “I suppose you could try to entertain me with other wiggle break methods.”
Her lips parted and she snorted after a moment, covering her mouth with her hand. “Oh my god. I’m terrible. I just meant – I mean, when you think hot physicist you don’t think Stephen Hawking – oh my god. I’m a horrible person. I’m a horrible person with a sexy brain.” Her lips twitched into a grin and she pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing dramatically. “And my sexy brain would like to inform you that some of nature’s deadliest creatures are smaller than my foot – and just because something is a rodent doesn’t mean it’s small. The capybara is a big as a large dog.” It was a lot easier to talk about rodents and how shitty she was at being sensitive to people with disabilities. Still, Parker’s hand over hers made the hard things a little easier. His heartbeat was steady and there was a strange sense of comfort in that. “I leave.” She shrugged her shoulders and the corner of her lips twitched into a sad smile, “I’m a leaver. When things get too hard, too overwhelming, when things don’t work out perfectly the first time – I leave. Because that’s what people do. They all leave eventually.” Lottie glanced at him and caught his hand, holding it against her cheek for a moment. Someone somewhere needed to tell her how to handle this, tell her how to feel. Because she was a star whose whole life had been filled with burning up and she was tired of watching bits of herself flare and die. “Even if they are a sure thing.”
parker remained uncharacteristically silent for a moment, trailing his fingertip down the center line of her neck until he found the hollow of her throat, brows furrowed with thought. “on the contrary, i think most people do let their baggage dictate every decision in their life. or most. or they at least consider their baggage.” as much as he touched her now, every action felt so small and precarious, like he could only allow himself soft, subtle movements because too much might shatter everything about their moment. it all felt as tenuous as gold foil—just the illusion of something beautiful to wrap around something common. “if you think i don’t overthink every moment of my life,” parker snorted, smiling back at her just as softly as she was at him, “then i am way, way better actor than i thought i was.” if there was anything he did, it was overthink everything. hell, he’d been overthinking this entire time. and it was his overthinking that had kept him from making any kind of move on lottie brooks for a painfully long time, although in retrospect, maybe that had been for the best. maybe this was how it was meant to happen between the two of them—all the time spent bantering, and bothering, and, well, befriending. and, okay, the whole elena fiasco had been a mistake, but in the end, it was the whole ‘ not talking to him for a week ’ thing that had brought them to this point, right?
speaking of the elena fiasco. “yup, playboy extraordinaire, that’s me,” he laughed, pulling a face. “just pulling women left and right. getting laid all the time. not calling them the next day. that’s the parker carson story, right there. you might as well put a turnstile in my apartment doorway.” still, he watched her with a wry smile; he could handle all her digs without complaint if it kept her looking at him like that, her hand in his hair. “that was the joke, duh. obviously it’s not what gets you going. hence the lack of kissing. p.s., i should warn you that hair-pulling like that is a huge turn-on, and you probably shouldn’t let your hands write a check that your body can’t cash.” he bit her thumb as it brushed across his lips, looking up at her with a half-hearted, not quite sad but not quite not sad shrug. “i liked you too much to pounce like that,” he said, and kissed her thumb to soothe the bite—as well as a quick way to draw her attention away from what he’d just said. it’d been an afternoon of confessions, to be sure, but that still felt too honest, somehow. too raw. “even though that’s not exactly my game. although, you know, you are the sun. and a shot of espresso. and every other cliche you can think of, too.” maybe he didn’t love her yet, exactly—or, well, he did love her, but he wasn’t in love with her—he knew he could be. knew he would be, in fact, if he wasn’t careful. “i’ve never heard of these wiggle break things before. but you can’t need three wiggle breaks during a movie. pausing in the middle completely disrupts the rhythm of the film and the immersion of the experience. ugh, you’re the worst.”
was parker laughing at her misfortune? why yes, yes he was, a quiet, resigned, airy laughter. and by misfortune, obviously, he meant her soulless mockery of a disabled man. “maybe not, but i sure think of stephen hawking when i think of somebody holding the secrets of the universe. i don’t feel that way about newton. didn’t he plagiarize everything from leibniz anyway? but i won’t tell if you don’t. the tattered remains of your morality and ethics are safe with me. and the pet capybara i’m going to adopt. they may go against my definition of rodent, but those things are cute as hell. i guess i should have clarified that most mammals smaller than your foot are not that dangerous.” ugh, he wanted to kiss her again. it had already started, the ‘ wanting to kiss her all the time, forever, probably for the rest of his life ’ thing. how gross. what a cliche he was. he grew quiet again as her tone softened, carefully watching her face as she spoke and chewing on his lower lip. “hey,” he started, sitting upright again—because this seemed like the sort of thing you sat up for, even if he was burying everything he wanted to say, as he always did, under several layers of bad jokes. “haven’t you figured it out yet? i’m like herpes—impossible to get rid of, and i come hand in hand with shame, regret, and questionable sexual decisions.”
