“Want some tea?”
Yes. Yes, I do. Their kitchen is clean and I trust their food. I nod and feel some weird warmth blossom in my chest when Parker’s smile turns genuine, turns real just because I agreed to drink some tea. He tilts his head toward the kitchen, and I follow him without a word. He tugs the chair at the island out for me, and I take a seat, grateful to just breathe because tonight feels like a runaway freight train. I watch as Parker moves comfortably around the kitchen, with the ease of a man in his own home.
He fills the kettle, then stands at the stove to wait for it to whistle. A few moments later, he fills two mugs with hot water, carefully plopping a tea bag in each mug. The warm smell of peppermint rises up, settling all my nerves. We sit in silence for a few stilted moments as the tea takes forever to steep. Parker watches me with slightly narrowed eyes as I lift the mug and take a hesitant sip. It’s still too hot, but the scalding heat of the tea helps ground me in the moment.
“It’s going to be all right,” Parker assures me. He leans against the island with his elbows, some of his hair still escaping his messy bun.
“I killed someone. I can’t go to prison.”
Parker’s eyes narrow and his jaw tightens. “You aren’t going to prison. I won’t let you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?” Parker asks, confused.
“Why won’t you let me go to prison? I killed a man. Myuncle, to be more exact. And to be honest, I should feel worse about that, right? I took a life. It wasn’t my life to take.”
I take another sip of the tea to settle my nerves that are rapidly starting to send me into anxiety-attack territory. Parker just keeps staring at me. It feels like he’s looking through me—not trying to figure me out, but trying to see to the root of me. I am not sure I really like it. I don’t think anyone on earth actually knows me.
“I’ve killed ninety-five people.”
Well. That puts things into perspective. “Why?”
Parker shrugs, looking down at his tea to avoid my curious gaze. “Bad people should die.”
“But why do we get to decide if someone is bad?”
“Sometimes the judge and jury don’t do their jobs, and other people need to take care of the rotten pieces of society who don’t belong because they find a way to escape their consequences.”
I hum as I think over his argument. There are a lot of bad people in the world who just get away with everything. My uncle was one of them. He made sure kids lost their Medicaid, voted for laws that took away the rights of queer spouses to be with their partners on their deathbeds, fought against life-saving dollars going to other countries for things like ending fucking malaria—things any normal human being would be okay with, my uncle had wanted no part of. Is the world a better place without him in it? Yes. But it feels wrong that I was the one to decide he should die.
“Your uncle was going to die tonight no matter what. If you hadn’t shot him, then the 400 milligrams of lisinopril that I put in his scotch would have killed him.” Parker leans even farther forward, lowering his voice so I have to strain tolisten. “Pretend I killed him so you don’t have to live with the guilt, okay?”
“How do you live with it?” I ask, because I genuinely want to know how.
Parker taps his fingers against his temple. “Make these little boxes in your head. I envision a cardboard box, fill it with all the memories of the people I killed, then I tape it up, and store it away in this closed room in my brain.”
“That’s a serious coping mechanism.”
Parker chuckles, and the sound rolls right through me. He has a nice laugh. It’s just like his voice—deep, a little melodical, andreal.Everything about Parker is real. Too real.
“We all have to find ways to cope with life, right?”
And that hits me like a punch to the gut, because I’m coping by making my world as small as I can. Yeah, the medicine helps, but it’s not a cure-all, and my OCD will always be a part of me. At least I don’t have my compulsions anymore, it’s just the anxiety of… life that remains with me. The fear of getting sick. The fear of dying. But not feeling the need to wash my hands hundreds of times a day is a nice trade-off.
“Hello,” Hayden says as he slides the door open to step inside. “Your uncle’s body is gone.”
“Huh?” Parker asks with a deep frown. “Like, Robin cleaned it up?”
Hayden shakes his head furiously. “The crew got there to disappear it and his body was gone. No blood. No body. Nothing.”
Parker looks even more confused. “Uh?”
Reid joins us in the kitchen. “Wait, what?”
Hayden frowns and huffs. “Listen, I already said it. His body is gone. I don’t know what else to tell you. But for now,we sit and wait.” Hayden aims a steely look at me. “I think you should stay here.”
“Oh no… No. I need to be in my own home.”
