Chapter Text
I need you to know I’m not crazy.
I don’t know if that’s something normal people ever say—I think they just know. But they don’t have any reason to justify it. They do regular things. Keep a family, keep a job. Turn keys in the lock of a regular door to let themselves into their apartments. And I don’t do any of that, so I need you to know. It’s a Sunday morning and I’m on Nate’s couch and I’ve just been hit with the realization that I don’t exist.
And the thing is—I know I did. Whether I was four or twelve, she was real. Just for a little bit. It makes me feel crazy. I think that’s why I need you to know.
There were footsteps on the stairs. I didn’t need to look to know they were Nate’s.
“Parker?”
Twelve steps. Right foot first, right foot floor. Four steps. End on right again.
“What are you doing here?”
I looked up from the magazine I wasn’t reading. “Waiting for Hardison and Eliot. They’re taking me to brunch.”
It might be my birthday. I mean, I told them it was. You never realize how big a part of your identity that is until you don’t remember what day it falls on anymore. I could be twenty-four. I could be thirty.
No, who am I kidding. I could never be thirty.
“And you’re meeting at…my apartment.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Hardison said I could let myself in.”
Nate’s face twisted into some kind of look, and he placed his hand on the back of the seat to my left.
“Okay. Well, I’m going back to sleep… you know….in my home . You, uh….you just let me know if you need anything.”
Nate looked at me like Archie, sometimes. It was something I’d never tell him.
I threw on a dazzling grin. “Okay! Sweet dreams.”
I was good at lying—not in the way Sophie needed me to. I was good at pretending to be me .
The “me” that they knew, at least.