Blame it on the Tequila by Fiona Cole (reader novel txt) 📗

It’d been a little over a month since my digital run-in with Parker. A month filled with indecisions, doubt, memories—happy and…not so happy—curiosity, more doubt, and another dash of doubt for good measure. Add in the wave after wave of remembered feelings, and I barely came up for air. I’d traveled more, trying to find a comfort his phone call disrupted. I’d put off Aiken’s emails and not so gentle nudges to make decisions about where I wanted to go with my conglomerate of businesses.

Instead of thinking about how I wanted to plan my future, I lingered over the past.

That first week, he’d called, messaged, and stalked me on Instagram. Then they slowed down a little more each week. I held my breath for the moment he followed through, and Rae came to me to let me know Parker Callahan reached out to her. I called his bluff, and part of me wished he hadn’t been lying.

However, he still called me. Just not as often. Just enough to never let me sink back into the normalcy I’d found over the last few years. It was like as soon as I shut the door, he’d stick his foot in it just in time to make me keep it open.

Usually, I resisted.

When I came close to giving in, I shoved past the good memories and remembered all the reasons why we were apart. I remembered every ounce of loneliness that consumed me. I remembered the fear and pain. I told myself he was just like my father and would always pick his dream over me. I told myself I deserved more than these doubts, and that helped to shove the phone away when his name popped up.

But tonight? Tonight, I wanted to call him. Something about the stars and the air and the aching hole in my chest he’d left behind. Maybe he’d ripped the flimsy band-aid off, and without it, it grew a little more each day, and tonight it finally grew big enough to not ignore.

Whatever the reason was, this time, when my fingers twitched with the need to call him, I did. I held my breath with every ring, hoping it went to voicemail and dreading that it did. My heart thundered so hard the beating pulse almost blocked out all other noise. It worked too hard, and my lungs struggled to keep up.

Just when I planned to pull back and end the mistake before it began, the ringing stopped.

“Supernova,” he answered.

The organ in my chest came to a screeching halt, and I sucked in a breath. “Hey, Rock Star,” I exhaled.

Some of the tension eased when I heard a huff of laughter on the other end of the line at the nickname I gave him. It was better than the fuck you, I expected.

“I’m pretty sure we said the next day, not the next month.”

“Yeeeeaaaah, about that…Life got a little crazy.” The excuse sounded lame even to me, and he didn’t hesitate to call me out on it.

“For a month? For even a text response? I live one of the most hectic lives, and I was able to find time to call you.”

“It wasn’t always that way.” The sharp words slipped past my lips before I could think better of them. That was the thing about the past; sometimes, those hurts lingered in the shadows unnoticed, popping out when you least expected it. Sometimes you forgot they were even there.

“Yeah, it wasn’t,” he admitted sullenly.

I winced. We’d been on the phone all of two seconds, and I’d already brought up the bitterness of our past and how he’d been the one to not respond or call. Maybe I’d been subconsciously punishing him with my lack of response.

But I’d called him. And not to fight about what was already done. In fact, I didn’t even want to think about it, let alone talk about it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.” We both knew I did, but before he could call me on it, I pushed on. “I did get busy and lose service on that first trip, but when I got back, I got lost in my head, and…I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?”

“I don’t know,” I laughed, looking up at the stars for answers. “I guess, maybe I wondered if talking would be good or bad. I wondered if it would be better or worse or if maybe we’d changed so much, we didn’t have anything to talk about. Or our lives were too different, and we didn’t have room for anything else.”

Or if we had someone else in our life that may not like us talking to each other. I recalled the image of him with Sonia at a dinner and the way her glossy hair shined as her red-painted lips smiled adoringly at him. Remembering the photo that had been splashed all over Instagram had jealousy punching me in the gut, almost forcing the words up and out, but I bit them back. I’d already let enough bitter comments slip free.

“Talking to you is always good, Supernova. Even when it’s bad.”

“Thank you?”

His laugh rumbled low like the deep ocean waves, and I closed my eyes to let it wash over me.

“It’s a compliment. Even when you were a feisty pain in my ass, I enjoyed your company.”

“I’ll be sure to list it on my resume.”

A silence fell between us, and I wondered where he was. I’d made a point to take off the Google notifications I had set up. The less I knew, the better.

“How about this,” he started. “We just talk—like old friends, and we skip the past.”

Another chord of tension around my chest broke free. “I like the sound of that.” I made it a point to always skip talking about the past. Even Rae and Vera didn’t know my history.

“And Nova?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s always room in my life for you.”

Unbidden, the past crept out of the shadows, but I saw it coming and shut my mouth before it could escape.

You hadn’t always. Once upon