#parcib

Slowly, Parker lifts his head to meet Cib’s eyes. Cib is staring at him like he’s seeing a ghost, like Parker is going to disappear. Parker wishes he could disappear.

Parker swallows. His throat is dry. He has to reach to the shelf next to him and grab on to steady himself. He doesn’t remember what he was looking for anymore. “Hi,” he says, and he’s proud of how level it is, how unaffected he sounds.

“You’re here,” Cib says in disbelief. “You- we’re in Illinois, what are you doing here?”

“Jeremy booked me tickets. Something about small-town inns being good for writers, but I think he just wanted me out of the house for a week.”

“A week.” Cib’s eyes skate down Parker’s face, up his body. “You’re here for a week?”

“Three more days.” Parker glances down. They’re still standing close. Not touching, but he wouldn’t exactly say there’s room between them. His hand drifts up the shelf until he’s gripping a can of… something. “What about you?”

“I-” Cib clears his throat. “Sami Jo’s visiting family. She asked me to come.”

“Oh,” Parker says. There’s a roaring in his ears. Of course he’s here for Sami Jo. Of course she’s here too. “That’s… that’s good.”

“It’s good,” Cib agrees. Something in his face twists. “It’s good to see-”

Parker lifts the can of whatever he’s holding and takes the smoothest step backwards that he can. He stumbles, a little, but the important part is that there’s room between him and Cib. It makes it a little easier to breathe.

He holds up the can like it’s going to shield him from the actual hurt in Cib’s eyes. “Gotta go,” he says. “The, uh, the books, they don’t write themselves, I’ve gotta-”

“Parker,” Cib says, looking desperate. “Wait. I haven’t seen you since-”

“Not now,” he says. He’s white-knuckling his can of- he glances at it- of crushed tomatoes. The aisles in the grocery store are too narrow. He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have let Jeremy kick him out of the house, or decided to eat anything other than takeout, or dated Cib for three years, or broken up with him seven months ago. He shouldn’t be here, and the aisles are closing in. “I have to go.”

It’s stupid, but he walks past Cib on the way out. Maybe it’s masochism, maybe it’s just the fastest way to the door of the grocery store. Either way, there’s a moment of electricity as he moves past Cib. Like his body is calling out to Cib’s even as he walks away.

Cib doesn’t move. He doesn’t even bother saying anything. That, more than anything, is how Parker knows he’s upset. But Parker doesn’t care about that. Parker doesn’t get to care about that, because Cib is his ex-boyfriend, and Cib is here with Sami Jo, and he’s not the person who cares for Cib when he gets like this anymore. He’s not the one who’s going to pull Cib down on the couch and wrap his arms around him and wait for him to be able to talk again. He’s not going to kiss Cib’s temple and hum useless melodies until Cib tries to sing along, like he knows what Parker’s thinking before Parker thinks it.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he’s outside the grocery store and the wind hits his face. He doesn’t even remember buying the can of tomatoes. He’s going to have to order takeout again. Somehow, he thinks that’s going to be worth it.

#

Missed Call

Sami Jo Siedband (4)

#

He calls Jeremy, because there’s nothing else for him to do, nobody here who he can turn to. As soon as the ringing stops, he doesn’t even wait for Jeremy to say hello, just says in a rush, “Did you know Cib would be here?”

Jeremy doesn’t answer at first. Parker waits it out, because he knows Jeremy is doing some kind of internal math to figure out the answer. God, he might’ve known that Cib would be there. It’s not the kind of thing he’d put past Jeremy.

“No,” Jeremy says at last, and Parker’s breath catches. Jeremy sounds… well, Parker can’t identify most of Jeremy’s emotions, but he knows that this is one of them. “Here as in the hotel?”

“I don’t know.” Parker swallows and digs his spoon a little deeper into the can of crushed tomatoes. He’s not even eating it, just… re-crushing them. “He said he’s here visiting Sami Jo’s family with her.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“But you didn’t see her.”

“No, I didn’t see her.” He smashes down some of the tomatoes. Some of the liquid from the can sloshes up onto the desk. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

There’s another long pause, which Parker takes to eat a spoonful of the tomatoes. It’s disgusting. He hates tomatoes. He eats another spoonful.

After another minute, Jeremy says, “If you want to come back, I’m not doing anything that I can’t delay. The house is still in livable condition.”

“I don’t think I can leave,” Parker says miserably. He keeps thinking about the look on Cib’s face and the way his voice sounded when he said Parker’s name, for the first time in months. “I’m depressed, and I don’t want him to be the reason I don’t do things.”

“Okay,” Jeremy says, more kindly than Parker expected. “If you need anything, just call me. Plane tickets home or an assassination or most things in between.”

“Neither of those.” Parker pauses. “Yet.”

Jeremy makes a little noise that Parker has come to know as his version of laughing. “I’ll be in touch,” he says, and hangs up.

Forty minutes later, two pizzas appear at Parker’s hotel room. It is, Parker supposes, Jeremy’s midway point between plane tickets and an assassination. Whatever it is, it’s better than the can of crushed tomatoes.

#

The thing is, then he makes a stupid mistake, which is: he leaves the hotel again the next day. He doesn’t go to the grocery store, even though he still needs fresh food and also knows Cib will probably be avoiding it. No, instead he goes to the coffee shop, with a notebook and noise cancelling headphones.

It seems, for about an hour, like nothing bad is going to happen. He sits in the corner and works on outlines for a while. His books aren’t bestsellers, but they’re popular with twelve-year-old boys, so he’s going to keep writing, because God knows that twelve-year-old boys could use all the good books that they can get.

And it’s good. He gets into a groove, he outlines a couple chapters, he’s working his way through a problem section and listening to pop music and everything is fine. Everything is fine until Sami Jo sits down across from him and pops one of his headphones off.

Parker flinches back, his body reacting before his brain has even caught up with the situation. It takes him a minute to process that it’s Sami Jo, actually here in front of him. He hasn’t seen her in a few months either, and she’s glaring at Parker like he kicked her puppy.

Well, he sort of did, he figures. He upset Cib, it’s the same thing.

“Sam- uh, S-” he swallows, pulls his headphones off the rest of the way, drops his pen to the table with a clatter. “Hey?”

“You need to stop avoiding him,” Sami Jo says, matter of factly.

Parker flinches. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I don’t think what you’re doing is a good idea!”

“We broke up,” he says, and it still feels like glass in his mouth. “We should- I don’t- I can’t just be friends with him, not after something like that.”

“He still won’t tell me why you broke up,” Sami Jo says exasperatedly. “And it’s really sweet of him to, I don’t know, spare my feelings or whatever he thinks he’s doing, but I’m tired of him moping about you.”

Parker chews on his lip for a second. He wants to ask if Cib is doing okay, but that’s not his business anymore. Instead, he says, “Why are you visiting family?”

Sami Jo shrugs. “I just haven’t been in a while. And my girlfriend couldn’t come because of work things, but I didn’t want to go alone, so Cib offered to come with me.”

“Girlfriend,” Parker repeats. That doesn’t make sense. She’s here with Cib. “Girlfriend?”

Sami Jo blinks at him. “Oh,” she says, with too much understanding in her voice. “Oh, Parker, honey, he’s my best friend, but I don’t think he would love me, even if he wanted to try. He’s never gonna have eyes for anyone but you.”

Parker blinks a couple times. “I don’t even really remember what we were fighting about,” he says. His voice sounds far away. He’s too busy thinking about their apartment- Cib’s apartment. He’d been so worked up that he hadn’t been thinking about what he was saying, not really. Cib probably remembers every word that they said, he’s uncanny like that, but Parker just remembers the yelling. The weird knot in the pit of his stomach. The voice in his head that whispered that this was it, this was going to be it, and Parker had tried to ignore it until he realized it was right.

Sami Jo is looking at him. He thinks she might’ve said something. He’s not sure. He thinks his hands are shaking.

She reaches across the table and gently flips his notebook shut. “You two are both idiots,” she says, but he can hear the real affection in her voice. “And you’re going to thank me for this later.”

Parker looks up. He’s not even surprised when he sees Cib standing a few yards away, hovering, looking uncertain.

“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” Sami Jo says firmly. “And if it looks like everything is going up in flames, I’ll take him away. But you two should talk. Just for a little bit.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Parker says. Or, he thinks he says it. It’s barely a whisper. He thinks he might be having trouble breathing, but it’s hard to tell.

“Hey.” Sami Jo grabs his hand and squeezes, not an affectionate squeeze but a death grip. It pulls him back into his own body. “Ten minutes. And if I’m wrong I will never bother you about this again, either of you. Okay?”

“No,” Parker says, but she’s already getting up. “Sami Jo-”

“I’m doing this because I miss being your friend,” she says, and that one… she probably means for it to guilt him, and it works. He’s definitely been avoiding Sami Jo along with Cib, and that’s not fair to her. “Ten minutes. Please.”

Parker glances back at Cib, who’s still watching them. If he didn’t know Cib so well, he’d think that Cib wasn’t nervous at all. But he knows all of Cib’s tells. “Okay,” he breathes.

Sami Jo pats his shoulder as she goes over to talk to Cib. Parker takes the opportunity to straighten up his things, as methodical as he can manage. Coffee cup on the side of table against the wall. Notebook in bag, headphones in pocket. Cell phone on table, ready to call Jeremy if he needs an escape before Sami Jo comes back. He straightens the collar of his T-shirt, like that’s going to help him breathe easier.

He can hear Cib coming, almost like Cib is making his footfalls as loud as possible. He probably is, actually. Parker’s not surprised when Cib slides into the chair across from him, sprawled out bonelessly. “So,” he drawls, “hear you wanna talk shop.”

Parker has a lot of things he wants to say, but he can’t remember any of them right now. He needs a minute to just be… overwhelmed. And he is overwhelmed, by everything Cib is doing, by the sheer proximity of him.

Cib must pick up on his hesitation, because he keeps going. “Or maybe you wanna talk chop, you know, no matter how you slice it, no matter how you dice it. Samuel Josephine thinks it’s a good idea but I think it’s a roll of the dice, you know, sugar and spice-”

He’s rambling. He’s nervous. Parker doesn’t know why he’s surprise.

“I miss you,” he says, not quite of his own accord, and Cib stops. Every bone in his body tightens, like he’s frozen in this relaxed sprawl, like he can’t move. Parker wants to reach out to him, but he’s pretty sure he still can’t move either. “Kind of a lot.”

Slowly, Cib straightens his posture, until he’s sitting a little more like himself, like he’s paying attention. “You haven’t talked to me in months,” he says, somewhere between cautious and heartbroken, and Parker’s chest aches. “I haven’t seen you since you moved out. I thought we would at least be friends afterwards, but you were just… gone.”

Parker opens his mouth, closes it. Cib waits him out, because he was always good at that. At handling Parker’s silences, and Parker’s nerves, and Parker’s… everything.

“I don’t know how to love you halfway,” Parker says at last, and he can feel his voice cracking. His throat is raw, but he can’t cry, not yet, not now. “I thought… I thought it was always going to be all or nothing with you and me. And so I ended up doing nothing. But it was horrible. It was always horrible without you.”

Cib reaches to take Parker’s hand, but Parker can see the exact second that he thinks better of it and freezes, hand hovering centimeters above Parker’s. “I’m tired of being without you,” he says, in this horrible, candid way that makes Parker want to collapse into his arms. “I don’t know how we can fix this but I want to. If you want to.”

Parker sucks in the deepest breath he can manage and grabs Cib’s hand. “I want to,” he says, and presses his thumb into the back of Cib’s hand, the way he always used to.