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She tried her best to pretend she was okay, but Joey sat down their drinks and wrapped his arms around her. They woke up the next morning, spooning on the couch. Joey laughingly told her this proved his point that she must be no good in bed – passing out on the couch just after midnight and after only one kiss, before anything good could happen.
She shoved him onto the floor.
He left a couple days later. Paige went with him to the airport, and held onto him for a ridiculously long time when they got up to security. She almost felt like crying, but held the tears in check. Finally, he pulled away from her.
“Don’t give up, babe. He has to come back here eventually. He inherited his dad’s condo, and I know he hasn’t sold it, so there’s that,” he offered her.
“I think it’s best to just get over him. It’s what he wants,” she replied. Joey looked offended.
“Since when have we ever cared about what he wants!? I want Amazon babies! So when he gets back here, you find him, and tie him up, and never let him go!” he insisted, and she laughed.
“Okay, I promise, but on one condition,” she offered. He raised an eyebrow.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t tell Parker about this visit when you talk to him.”
“Paige, that’s stu-”
“I’m serious, Joey. I don’t want him knowing I’m here in Seattle, thinking I’m pining away for him. I don’t want him to think he has to come running back to save me, so please. Don’t tell him,” she begged. Joey looked pained, but he nodded.
They kissed goodbye and he got on the plane, promising to call her when he landed, and saying she should plan a trip to Galveston soon. She could hear him loudly complaining to the TSA agents about their lack of red carpet and gift bags. Hadn't they known he was coming through!?
January passed by in the blink of an eye, and it was the end of February before she knew it. She'd thought that with the knowledge Parker wasn’t in Seattle, and that he was apparently over her, she wouldn’t want to be there anymore.
But she couldn’t leave. She liked the bakery, and Marlo had become like family. She loved writing for the magazine – it was something she'd never in a million years pictured herself doing, and now she didn’t want to stop.
And she felt closer to him. Parker had spoken often of Seattle, about things he'd done there with his dad and sister. Though he hadn’t grown up there, he spoke of Seattle like it was home more than New York. Sometimes, when she walked through an area he'd talked about, she could almost imagine he was there. With her.
She got really crazy at one point. Remembering that Parker’s sister was a cello player, Paige decided to look her up. Penelope Carrington – definitely couldn’t be too many of those.
Turned out there weren’t, and she was easy to find. She'd transferred to Washington State, and then taken the year off. She wasn’t playing the cello with any symphony now, but she was working at Benaroya Hall, the home of the Seattle Symphony.
Convincing her co-worker Chad to go with her, Paige bought tickets to a show. When they entered the large hall, she'd recognized Parker’s sister immediately. She had slightly darker hair, but her eyes were the same as his – large, and expressive, and the exact same shade of hazel. Paige found herself walking up to her.
“Hello, welcome to Benaroya Hall! Do you need any help?” she'd asked energetically. She was actually pretty short – Paige had expected her to be tall, like Parker, but she was a sprite of a girl.
But she had the same infectious energy about her as her brother, the same big smile.
“Penelope,” Paige said, gesturing to the girl’s name tag. “There’s a name you don’t see very often.”
“Oh, I know. It was my grandmother’s. Most people just call me Penny,” she laughed. Paige raised an eyebrow.
“Not Pen?” she asked. Penelope laughed again, cocking her head to the side.
“Oh wow, only my brother calls me that. My father used to, too. Most people think it’s strange. Which auditorium are you in?” she asked, reaching for Paige’s ticket.
Paige hadn’t been able to sit through the whole show. Seeing Penelope had been too much like seeing Parker again. She knew Chad must've thought she was crazy, but he followed her out of the hall, asking her if she was okay. He seemed reluctant to leave her, so she made up an excuse about bad sushi and laughed. He surprised her by hugging her and offering to bring her soup the next day.
What is this? I hope I haven’t started something.
Paige promised herself she wouldn’t go back to Benaroya. She wouldn’t become a full fledged stalker. She went home that night and with a heavy heart, deleted Parker’s number from her phone. She'd tried it several times since Thanksgiving, but it had never worked. Best to just let it go, the same way he'd let her go.
She threw herself into work and by the end of March, her manager at the cafe was actually demanding that she take time off. Paige knew it was because the older lady had a soft spot for her and could see she was stressed. So she let herself be talked into a week’s paid vacation.
But the next morning, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She lay in bed, staring at her ceiling, her cat was curled up on her stomach.
Joey had wanted her to come to Galveston immediately, but not only did she not have the kind of money to just go flying off on a moment's notice, she didn’t think she could handle being in Galveston yet. There were too many memories there, too many bad decisions.
