Page 9 of Parallel

Crap. I was really hoping she wouldn’t bring it up. “Yeah.”

“That was the name you used to mention when you were little. Those nightmares you had. I guess it was just a coincidence?” There’s a hint of pleading to her voice—she desperately wants it to be a coincidence—but my God I wish there was one person I could discuss this with. To say I miss someone I’ve never met. I grieve for him. My mother, however, will never be that person. “Yeah, I guess.”

“It was…shocking…hearing you ask for him,” she says quietly. “Just like it was when you were small. You seemed so certain it was true.”

I hesitate. I remember little about the year I spent in therapy, aside from the strain on my mother’s face each time she brought me in. I was her miracle baby, the child she never thought they’d have, and I was flawed. I wanted to become normal for her, but at the end of most sessions my mother seemed a little more hopeless than the time before. “Did the psychologist ever tell you why it was happening?” I ask cautiously.

“She just said you had a very active imagination. But it finally stopped. And the other stuff…” There is a long, awkward pause. We really don’t discuss the other stuff. “Well, after what happened with the Petersons, you seemed to grow out of it, mostly.” Her words end on a whisper. Perhaps she thinks saying it quietly means she’s admitted to less. “Anyway, the nightmares stopped, and that’s what matters.”

I wish I shared her certainty that this is over. But when I think of Nick—of his laugh and the way he looked at me, as if he knew me in a way no one else ever has—a sort of panic thrums in my chest. I didn’t want the nightmares. But I don’t want this either. In some ways, it scares me even more.

That night, Trevor and I head out for drinks, swinging by my friend Caroline’s office to grab her on the way. Though Caroline was my friend first, she and Trevor have been attached at the hip since I started throwing her work for the magazine.

“Quinn,” she says, shaking her perfect, jet-black bob as I walk in, “what are you wearing?”

I sigh. I never take her comments too personally—as a stylist, she has a far higher bar for clothing choices than most people—but occasionally, I wish she’d just let it go.

“Instead of telling me how I’ve chosen wrong, just go ahead and dress me.”

She squeals and claps her hands. “I love when you let me dress you,” she sings. She grins at Trevor. “It’s like having a grown-up doll to play with. You should make her come see me every morning.”

Trevor’s palm shoots out. “No. Absolutely not. Dee already resents her just for being young and pretty. You start putting her in nice clothes and makeup every day, and we will all suffer.”

Five minutes later, I walk out of her bathroom in a Dries Van Noten dress that could pay my mortgage, and Caroline is appeased. “So much better.”

I have to agree. I wouldn’t say I’m frumpy under normal circumstances, but when Caroline gets her hands on me, I wind up feeling like Gigi Hadid, which is an experience words can’t sufficiently describe.

“If only Lindsay could see you now,” says Caroline. “You could tell her to shove that Hermes purse right up her ass.”

I laugh. I cannot believe Caroline is still holding a grudge about the purse incident nearly a decade later. I’m not sure I’d even remember it if she didn’t reference it so often.

“Who’s Lindsay?” asks Trevor.

“This girl on our floor freshman year,” I reply. “She was awful to everyone but she hated me the most because I was there on a scholarship.”

“No,” corrects Caroline, “she hated you because you were her first experience of not being the hottest girl in the room. That’s why she went out of her way to throw her money in your face.” She turns to Trevor. “You know that Hermes Kelly bag? Real ones are like ten grand, but we found the best knock-off and I talked Quinn into it. And then we get back to the dorm, and Lindsay says, ‘Bless your little heart. It almost looks like a real Kelly bag.’ And then the bitch goes and buys a real one, just to show she can.”

I shrug. “Well, I’d suggest karma would get her eventually, but she’s got this amazing job and she’s married to some millionaire, so I guess she won in the end.”

Trevor and Caroline glance at each other. “You could have that too, if you wanted,” says Trevor cautiously.

I roll my eyes. “I don’t want that. You know I was just joking. And you’re in my wedding in seven weeks, remember?”

“But the job,” Caroline says. “You’re only twenty-eight. You could still go back to school.”

I wrap an arm around each of them and pull them close for a moment as we walk down the street. “I appreciate your concern, guys, but I don’t need Lindsay’s life. The one I have is just fine with me.”

I force myself not to think of Nick as I say these words. But inside, it sort of feels like a lie.

When I finally get into bed, I’m exhausted and a tiny bit buzzed, which I hope means there will be no dreams of Nick. I want to have nonsensical, boring dreams—the kind where the toilet floods and I have to fix it using a car engine, or where my boss is at my wedding demanding I return to work to correct something, although the latter seems completely within the realm of possibility. But even as my eyes shut, I already feel Nick calling to me, as if he’s been waiting for me to find him again, somewhere inside my head.

Nick stands on the dock, shirtless and surrounded by sunlight, like some kind of mythical figure. Watching me float away.

“Hey!” I call, just a hint of panic in my voice. “I don’t know how to sail this thing.”

I don’t know how to sail anything, not even the tiny Sunfish that the current took as soon as he untied it from the dock.

“It’s okay,” he calls out. “Just pull the sail to the left.”