Parker Austin, Part Three.

A successful writer of Young-Adult fiction, Parker Austin was now just coming up on 26 years of age. He still had the same extremely dark hair, and those light gray eyes with the black circles underneath juxtaposing them. He had quit smoking when his parents discovered his bad habit back during senior year and had never started up again. He had been to college, seen what it was all about, and then dropped out. He had been to several countries on book tours and signings, lectures and reviews. But he was a very bored man. Bored with his life and his future. Always stuck at home writing for his publisher's next deadline. And that's where he was now. At his flat in Providence, situated right next to Brown University. As he dropped his keys on the counter he grabbed his slightly stained ceramic mug filled with coffee and started to lazily sift through the week's mail. His bleary eyes passed over advertisements for grocery stores, bills and the occasional fan letter but one unremarkable piece of paper caught his eye. He picked it up and could barely believe what it said. He set down his cold coffee and read:

"You are cordially invited to the premiere of the year, the movie of the month, up-and-coming director Hanna-Jane Goldstein's "My Life in a Golden Aquarium"
This edgy feature film will be presented in Manhattan on..."

He stopped reading.
He picked up his chilly coffee and put it back down.
Instead he dug a crisp apple out of a grocery bag on the counter and bit into it thoughtfully.
He walked over to the alcove in his loft that served at a closet and dug around until he pulled out a thin black tie and a suit. It worked for his book talks and it would work for this. He was going to a movie premiere and maybe, just maybe, she would be there too...

She was.
He saw her sipping her flirty, artificially colored drink from a mile away. No, not really sipping, just holding it. He knew she hated Red Dye 40. It was strange seeing her without those braids. But really short hair did suit her just as well.
He went and found his seat and waited for the movie to begin.

It was at the after-party at the Tribeca that he worked up the courage to approach her. He felt like a character out of one of his books, a stuttering sweating adolescent, ridiculous.
He said "Hey...Aubrey...Remember me?"
That same face she had made when he told her he loved her all those years ago came back in a flash.
Then it was gone.
She cocked one eyebrow, formed her mouth into that famous smirk of hers known for being on billboards and said "Of course I would, how many 'Parkers' does the average person know?" Like it was some personal joke.
He wasn't sure what to make of it but chose to carry on with small talk. After asking where she lived, what she did and if she liked the movie, he still knew the same amount about her.
He had Googled her name before the party so as to be better prepared when they spoke.
Then she startled him with five words, nonthreatening by themselves ,but at a whole, the scariest thing he could think of.
"Do you still love me?"
and this was his one word back:
"Yes"


Over the next year Parker Austin realized something truly remarkable. He was no longer bored.
Sharing his loft with Aubrey was wonderful.
Sharing a bed was even better.
But sharing his life with her was something else entirely. The most raw and pure emotion imaginable.
He knew he would never make the mistake of giving that up again. And he never did.

Parker Austin, Part Two.

At that precise moment, 4:19am, Parker was waking up with a start and experiencing that startling feeling of not knowing where you are. He looked around himself realizing the fact that he wasn't at home in bed, but rather at Aubrey's home, in her bed. A sharp crack of lightning reminded him of the reason he had woken up in the first place. Aubrey slept through everything, she was great like that. Once she hit the pillow, she was dead to the world until she was awakened by the need to eat. "The exact opposite of me, ironically enough," Parker thought. He rarely had a good night's sleep that didn't involve a sedative. As the storm got closer and louder outside, as if purposely trying to wake him from his first undisturbed sleep in weeks, he gingerly laid back down in bed. He faced Aubrey and her ashy blond braids falling over her face.

He thought back to the month earlier when they had first met. After he had bought his book he had left the store, only getting about 13 feet away before he realized he had forgotten his wallet in "Hanna-Jane's". He turned back, stepped back in the shop, and found that Smirking Girl looking though it! Without even checking outside to see if she could catch him before he left! Parker's first thought at this discovery was about how outraged he was. It involved a lot of unsavory language. Immediately following that first thought came a second, less hostile one. He was actually kind of turned on by this random girl's utter lack of conscience...
"Find anything good?" he said.
"Nope," Smirk Girl said, still smirking. "But since I know your name now, I guess It's only fair to tell you mine. It's Aubrey."
"Audrey?"
"No, AuBrey. With a B."
"Oh. Pleasure to meet you Aubrey," said Parker. Then he took his wallet, turned, and left.
Skip to 3 hours later. Parker sits home on his bed, blowing smoke out of his barely cracked open window. "Jesus Christ it's cold," he muttered as he removed his wallet from his coat pocket. Recalling the earlier incident with Smirk Girl/Aubrey, he flipped open the creased leather wallet to find a half of a ripped yellow sticky-note with an address, time and date on it. Parker was almost shocked by this turn of events. And shocked was something he hadn't been in a long time. Sure he was used to girls hitting on him, he would have had to be completely dumb not to get the fact that high school girls loved the brooding type, not to mention the college girls. But they were all so boringly predictable, always asking him to tutor them at their houses after school or over-complimenting his appearance. What he had not counted on that day, was the fact that this Aubrey girl had been so crafty about it. Who sneaks a grungy paper into someone's wallet, not knowing if they'll come back to get it or even if they will look inside it on time anyway? That would be Aubrey. The note said to be there, and the curiosity of it all had won him over.
On the day he was to meet her at the inconsequential corner of 8th and Frost, he arrived 15 minutes early. She was already there and eating some sort of exceptionally gooey and sugary looking pastry out of a white paper bag. As he approached, she looked up and handed him the grease soaked bag. "Here, eat this and then let's get going." she said with the authority that only came from being an older sibling.
"Oh?" said Parker. "Where to?"
"Who knows," Aubrey said, and how right she was.

As Parker laid there in bed, staring at the textured ceiling in Aubrey's apartment, with a torrential downpour occurring outside, he recalled that particular conversation as the start of it all. They had spent the rest of the day sampling ice cream from four different shops around town, while Aubrey kept a ledger deciding the rating and description of each store's flavor. He continued to think of that day and others like it in a dream-like state until the rain turned to drizzle and the black night sky shifted to a bleak morning gray.
"Hey, you" said Aubrey, smirk-less, as she cracked one eye open to the day.
"Hey yourself" said Parker smiling.
And then he said, "How do you feel about ice cream for breakfast?"

Parker Austin, Part One.

He was 17. His name: Parker. Your average kid on the verge of the rest of his life, not sure of where he was headed or what he wanted to do. 5'9" with hair so brown it looked black when he wasn't in the sun. On an average day you could find him reading crappy novels under his desk in class, constantly pushing dark chunks of hair out of his eyes. Gray eyes with hints of blue that no one ever noticed because of the ever-present dark circles under them. It was hard not to notice those circles, his skin being so pale and all. They were a constant souvenir of the long nights he stayed up researching colleges and cult movies on his lap top, all the while catering to his sometimes-vice of smoking cigarettes. And smoking a cigarette in the side yard of his families New England town house was just what he was looking forward to that day as he made a bee-line out of his 7th period class. "Chemistry is such a bitch", he thought to himself as he threw his scarf on and headed toward the city bus stop. It seemed to him what with winter ending and all, the chill in the air seemed a bit out of the ordinary. He climbed onto his bus when it came and headed to the back so he could read without anyone bothering him. He pulled the used paperback out of his black canvas rucksack, at the same time searching for that apple he knew he had packed purposely to eat at that moment. A book (poorly written as it may be) and an apple were the two constants that made up his daily ritual on the bus ride home. Right when he was about to settle in for the ride, two things happened. One, he realized it had started snowing, and two, he noticed there was 10 pages left in his book, give or take a few. "Shit." Parker said under his breath before he decided the only thing to do was to stop on his way home to get a new novel, prolonging the time between then and when he would be reunited with his beloved pack of Camels. Within 10 minutes of climbing on the bus he was clambering back off again, trudging through the fresh snow with his head down and collar flipped up, hitching his backpack further onto one shoulder as he went."Maybe they would have something new for once", he thought sarcastically to himself as he pulled open the door to 'Hanna-Jane's Used Books'.
Hanna-Jane was a saucy older woman who never worked at her own store, but preferred instead to stay home with her yellow legal pads and write what she hoped would someday be prize-winning screen-plays. She often hired people who she felt could be used as unique characters in her movies. On that peculiarly snowy day when Parker pushed the bookstore door open, he was so preoccupied with brushing the snow off his coat that he failed to notice the newest employee behind the register. A girl his age with pale blond straight hair, a nasty smirk on her face and one cocked eyebrow watched him fidget with his coat while lounging behind the till on a tall wooden stool. She held a coffee in one hand and a paperback from the store in the other. He glanced up and then quickly straitened himself. "Umm, Do you have "Replay" in yet?" he said, naming the Ken Grimwood novel he'd been dying to read, yet never had gotten around to on account of all the crappy-novel reading he'd been doing lately. "Yup," Smirk Girl said, "This way." Then she tossed back the last of the coffee in her paper cup and led him through the dust-jungle that was 'Hanna-Jane's Used Books'.