RUIN(5)

He pulls his hand through his brown hair, his fingers separating the curly locks. "It was two or three weeks ago."

"Two or three weeks," I repeat back in a mumble. "Where did you meet him? Did he contact you?"

His hand glides from his hair over his face stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I met him outside your apartment building. I was standing on the street when he came out of the building."

"How did you know where to find me?"

He shrugs. "I thought about going to see Alexa to ask her but I didn't want her to rail on me. I thought you might have stayed in touch with your old boss so I stopped by there."

"Vivian told you where I live?" I ask before taking a drink from the bottle of water.

"She said I missed you by twenty minutes." He leans back, smoothing his hands over the front of his shirt. "I had to get up the nerve to talk to you. I stopped at a bar by your place and had a few beers."

I doubt that anything would have turned out differently had I known Parker was only a few feet from the front door of my building just days ago. The fact that he confirmed that he left me for someone else would have come to light then. Seeing his gentle smile would have only been a brief reprieve from the inevitability of it all.

"Once I decided I was ready to talk to you, it was dark out." He glances at his wrist as if he's expecting to find a watch there. "It had to have been near ten. That's when I saw him."

"Ben was outside my building?" There's more surprise woven into the words than I intend. Although our time together was spent mostly in his apartment, he was at my place a few times.

"He almost ran into me when he opened the door." He rolls his eyes. "I was already feeling pretty good from the beers if you know what I mean."

He was bordering on drunk. I don't need him to spell it out for me. When we lived together, Parker would be passed out in bed after two or three beers. "I know," I offer because it's the step I need to take to keep Parker on this path with me. I want him to keep talking so the less I chime in, the better.

"I tried to get into with him." He rolls his hands into fists and darts them into the air between us. "I was on edge and pissed that he bumped me with the door."

Parker, always the charmer almost hit Ben? "You tried to punch Ben?"

"I egged him on but he just stood there with a smirk on his face."

That sounds exactly like the Ben I've come to know. The idea of him randomly getting in a fistfight with a stranger on the street is foreign to me. I feel a hint of shame wash over me thinking about Parker acting like an asshole. It's misplaced but it's a lingering leftover from all our years together when I had to witness that behavior first hand.

"He said I looked like I could use a beer." His tone is even. "I asked if he was buying and we went back to the bar."

I lock my eyes on his face. "You and Ben drank together at the bar by my place?"

He closes his eyes briefly. "It was for a few hours. He talked about his brother and some chick he was falling for. I wasn’t really paying attention."

I don't react. I can't. "What else did he talk about?"

"Nothing. He just listened while I confessed everything to him."

"Confessed what?" I push my hair back behind my ears suddenly feeling very overheated. "What did you tell Ben?"

He hesitates briefly as if he's searching for the right order to place his words. I've seen him do that before. It's a ploy he uses when he wants to soften the emotional blow of whatever he's about to say. He did it repeatedly the night he left me. "It was mostly about her."

"Her?" I don't even know her name. I don't need to know it but he's about to tell me.

"Elsie," he offers softly. "That's the woman I …"

"Yes," I interrupt. I don't want this discussion to jump into a tailspin and rocket off into a direction I don't want it to. "You talked to Ben about her?"

"I told him she left me that day," he begins before he stops himself. "I mean I told Ben that Elsie and I broke up."

I don't care. I truly don't care if Elsie walked out on Parker when he was begging her to stay. I've emotionally left. If I had any doubt about that before tonight, it's all been erased and replaced with a sense of quiet closure.

"I'm sorry, Kayla." He sighs before he continues, "I told Ben that I realized what a mistake I made and that I was in love with the girl I broke up with. I told him I was in New York to ask her to marry me."

"You told Ben that was me?" There's no excitement in the question at all. Right now, they are only empty words that are strung together to get me to the truth of what's going on. I'm still reeling from discovering that Ben has been using me as a pawn to get back into Noah's life. Knowing that he enlisted Parker's help to do that doesn't change anything about the way I feel. I don't want Parker in my life. I certainly don't want to be engaged to him.