Let's Be Frank

by Brea Brown

  “Well, it’s not safe. You’re lucky it was me.”

  Snorting, she shuffles past me and motions for me to follow her into the kitchen. “I looked through the peephole and saw it was you before I answered. Dad.”

  In the kitchen, she stretches to reach a shelf in one of her cupboards and pulls down two pint glasses.

  “I don’t want to drink,” I immediately tell her what I’ve already told myself a hundred times in the past fifteen minutes.

  Ignoring me, she opens the fridge, reaches inside, and comes back out with a gallon of milk. “How’s this, Boy Scout? I’ll even try to find some cookies that aren’t too stale.”

  She scratches at her bare leg with her foot while pouring the milk.

  “It’s over,” I say quietly, testing out the sound of the words before repeating them, louder.

  “What happened this time?” she asks with a sigh as she disappears into an impressively organized walk-in pantry.

  “This wasn’t just a fight. It… I… Kyle was at Frankie’s.”

  With a clatter, a package of Oreos skids through the pantry doorway and across the kitchen floor, Betty following closely behind it.

  “Damn,” she mutters, crouching down to pick up the creme-filled cookies, some of which have shattered on the hard tile floor.

  I join her, kneeling and reaching for a few bits that have skittered under the fridge. She allows me to throw those away, but the ones she’s picked up from the middle of the floor she sets next to one of the glasses. “I’ll eat those; my floor’s clean,” she explains, before saying, “I’m so sorry.”

  “They’re just cookies.”

  “No! About Kyle. And Frankie. I really thought it might not be true. I’d hoped, anyway.”

  “Yeah. Me, too. Apparently, he’s her CEO-Oh-Oh.”

  She laughs. “What?”

  I tell her about the title of the manuscript that was open when I got to Frankie’s, before Kyle made himself known.

  “Yeah, I’m the Hippocratic Oaf, and he’s a CEO-Oh-Oh. She never even gave me a chance to…” I trail off, suddenly remembering I’m a) not alone and b) thinking out loud. “Anyway!” I smile sadly. “Whatever. I mean, I went over there to break up with her.”

  “You did?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I should be thanking her for making it so much easier.”

  “Still… that sucks.”

  I shrug. “Whatever. I’ve had more intimate relationships with my cable company. And they screwed me more often, too.” Immediately regretting that last sentence, I tack on, “Sorry.”

  I watch, mesmerized, as she holds a cookie in her milk for several seconds, then gently lifts it and drops it whole onto her tongue. After chewing and swallowing, she grins at me, her teeth an odd grayish-brown. “Good one,” she approves of my comparison.

  I grin back before realizing I shouldn’t be feeling so giddy. I just caught my girlfriend of seven months, a woman I fancied—in my wildest delusions, granted—as the mother of my future children, cheating on me. I shouldn’t be yukking it up with that ex-girlfriend’s best friend a whopping twenty minutes after the fact.

  As if confessing to something much darker, I swallow my smile and say, “I don’t feel sad. I mean, I’m pissed about… you know… And I feel like an idiot that those two have been going at it behind my back, but I’m… I don’t feel the way I should. I feel… happy. No, that’s not the right word. Maybe relieved…?” Suddenly unable to focus, I watch Betty repeat her soggy cookie routine, then wash down her mouthful with the rest of her milk.

  Brushing crumbs from her fingertips, she says, “You said you were going to end it. It makes sense you’re relieved.”

  “Yeah, well… I’m not completely off the hook. I’m still Frank.”

  She shakes her head and chuckles like someone in the presence of a crazy person and nervous about it. “Uh… Seriously?”

  Immediately, I reply, “Yeah. I was going to break up with her, but my offer to be Frank still stands. I don’t go back on my promises.”

  “You wouldn’t be,” she says quietly, looking down at her restless hands.

  I think about that for a second and let it sink in. The way in which my relationship with Frankie ended does make a difference, I suppose. I don’t have an obligation to her anymore. In fact, I can’t continue to be Frank. That would just be weird.

  “Oh, my gosh. You’re right,” I mumble.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  The anvil that’s been sitting inside my chest cavity for months disappears. “I don’t have to be Frank anymore. No more scarves, no more glasses, no more Facebook posts or tweets… I’m…”

  “Free,” she finishes for me.

  Without thinking, I step around the counter, lift her off the floor, and spin in a circle. “I’m free!” I repeat after her.

  “Put me down, you dumb-ass! You’re gonna make me barf!”

  I do as she says and quickly exit the kitchen.

  “Hey! Where are you going?” she calls after me.

  My answer is to return less than a minute later with some of the boxes from the trunk of the rental car. “Where do you want all this shit?” I ask, my voice shaking slightly.

  She blinks at me. “Uh… I don’t… I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter. Anywhere?”

  I place them next to the door I assume leads to the garage. “I’ll stack them here. You can give them to Frankie. Or burn them. Or whatever.” Before she can respond to that, I leave again, returning with two more boxes. After the final trip with the last two boxes, I come back to see her staring at the stack, her right elbow in her left hand, her right hand cupping her chin.

  “Wow. It’s really over, huh?” she murmurs.

  For the first time since leaving Frankie’s, I feel the type of pang typically associated with a traumatic breakup. Only it has nothing to do with the breakup. My smile fades with my evaporating euphoria as I watch her open the box on the top of the pile and pull out one of the paperbacks. She turns it over and looks at my picture on the back.

  I want to go to her, but my feet feel glued to the floor, and I’m too far away to reach out and touch any part of her.

  “Yeah, it is,” I simply say.

  “Like that.”

  “Like that.”

  She holds up the book, a copy of Girl Noir, cover out.

  I tilt my head, my heart pounding. “Let me guess… That one’s yours.”

  She nods. “Yep.”

  Judging by the set of her mouth and the tears gathering in her eyes, I know, “Not a flattering portrayal?”

  Her head-shake jars a few tears loose. “No, but you already know that.”

  “Still haven’t read it. Don’t plan to.”

  Any surprise at this information is quickly covered by resolve as she extends her arm, offering the book to me. “You should,” she tells me.

  I begin to object, but she interrupts. “Please. For me.”

  I straighten my arm and reluctantly take the book. “Why?”

  She shrugs. “You’ll know why after you read it.”

  I turn it over in my hands and stare at the glossy, stylized cover. “Okay. Fine. For you.”

  Crossing the kitchen, she opens her arms and wraps them around my torso, burying her face against my chest. “Goodbye, Nathaniel. I’m so happy for you.”

  “Bye…?”

  She raises her face and nods. “Yeah. I think so.”

  I try to imagine keeping in touch with her, how that would work, considering everything, and I finally have to say, “Oh. Yeah. You’re probably right.”

  “Usually am,” she quips, sniffling and pushing away from me before I can fully return her hug. “Sometimes it sucks.”

  She walks me to the door. Since this is goodbye, I’m tempted to return the kiss she gave me two months ago on this very spot, the kiss she must have remembered and told Frankie about, but something stops me. Not something nebulous, something specific. Something called “self-preservation.”

  Be
cause the fact she mentioned the kiss to Frankie but has never acknowledged it with me tells me she regrets it and wants to forget it. She probably only told Frankie out of some strange sense of duty to the type of honesty that exists in a friendship as old as theirs.

  So I don’t even turn around for one final hug or wave or smile or “bye” or anything. I get in the car and drive away without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror.

  It’s better that way, I tell myself.

  Chapter Twenty

  So far, being single again isn’t much different than when Frankie and I were together. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a single thing I miss about her.

  There’s plenty I don’t miss, though. I don’t miss the passive-aggressiveness, the pouty lip-pooching, or the petty arguments. I don’t miss the random factoids about football players. I don’t miss the sullen silences when I’m unable to hide my indifference about said factoids. I don’t miss the sexual bribery that rarely amounted to anything and when it did, made me feel like a dirty scumbag. I don’t miss the lies, the half-truths, or the secrets, either. No, life without Frankie is a-okay.

  I certainly don’t miss much about being Frank, either. Not the social media duties, not the glasses, not the scarves, and definitely not the skinny jeans. I don’t miss the nerve-wracking public readings, either, but my weekends are depressingly empty.

  Because there is something—or rather, someone—I miss like crazy. But that’s just too bad. There’s nothing for that but time and distance. And beer. Lots of beer.

  Plus, I know from experience it’ll get better. I just have to remember who the hell I am. And I have to stop thinking so much about starting over with someone I haven’t even met yet. It’s possible I might never meet someone else, so worrying about starting over with someone who may not even exist is pointless.

  Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel much better.

  I can’t truly start over, anyway, until I have absolute closure on the Frankie chapter of my life, which is what I hope to have in… oh, less than an hour, if all goes well when we exchange the things that have migrated to each other’s places during the past seven months.

  In order to avoid yet another awkward encounter with my replacement (is someone a “replacement” if they were installed before the incumbent’s departure?), I’ve carefully arranged this meeting via one phone call and two confirmation text messages on a day in the middle of the week, when Kyle should be in Chicago, taking over the oh-so-adult world of video gaming. But I wouldn’t put it past Frankie to ask him to make a special mid-week trip home for this, as if I’m the big, bad ex-boyfriend. When I arrive at her apartment, however, I’m relieved to see Kyle’s ostentatious auto is conspicuously absent from the parking lot.

  Really, I want to get this over with as quickly and amicably as possible. If we could do it without speaking to each other at all, that would be great. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be possible, though.

  After listlessly inviting me inside her place—hopefully for the last time ever—Frankie takes the box I’m carrying, glances into it, and sets it aside on her couch with a dull, “Thanks.”

  “I washed and sanitized your Packers travel mug,” I inform her, not sure how else to start this conversation. “It was, uh… pretty nasty. You left it at my place a long time ago, and it was full of coffee… and cream.”

  She wrinkles her nose. “Gross. Why didn’t you just throw it away?”

  “I knew it was your favorite. So I gave it an extra soak in bleach water. It’s fine now.”

  “Thanks,” she repeats, shifting from foot to foot and looking me up and down with pursed lips and a slight roll of her eyes. “Nice scrubs.”

  I glance down at my chest and will myself not to blush at my rubber ducky ensemble. The kids love these scrubs, and I wear them for the kids, not for her. Still, my attire is yet another reason to be glad Kyle isn’t here. When I don’t give her the satisfaction of a defensive response, she edges past me and leads the way down the hallway to her bedroom.

  “I have your stuff back here. You’re early, as usual, so I wasn’t quite finished tracking everything down.”

  “No biggie. I can help you find things.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t poke around.”

  Standing in the doorway to her bedroom, I rub the back of my neck and watch her carelessly toss my belongings onto the center of her unmade bed. My lip hurts from biting on it to resist pointing out that I carefully folded each of her t-shirts and double-gloved to wash her favorite travel mug before placing everything neatly in a box, so the least she could do is handle my things with similar respect, especially while I’m standing here, watching.

  Instead, I hint at the suggestion by saying, “I don’t want to turn this into some big fight, because it’s not worth it.”

  She whirls on me on her way into her bathroom and blinks at me.

  My testicles ascend a little higher at that look, but I wait for her to tell me what I said that was so wrong.

  “Not worth it?” She disappears into the bathroom and returns with my toothbrush and baking soda toothpaste, which she tosses on the pile.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t. Enlighten me. I’m not worth it?”

  I drop my hand to my side. “C’mon. Are you trying to make this more dramatic than it needs to be? I’d think you’d be relieved I’m not mad. I have a right to be, you know? Livid, actually. But I’m trying to keep everything in perspect—” I stop short and grin as it hits me. “Oh, I see… You want Kyle and me to fight over you, is that it?”

  “Not even close, Duck Boy.” But the vaguely guilty look on her face tells a different story. As does the blush creeping up her neck.

  No longer amused, I state bluntly, “Well, forget it.”

  She taps her foot and crosses her arms over her chest. “Maybe that’s why we failed, as a couple. Because you’ve always given me the impression you didn’t care all that much.”

  Heat climbs my neck and creeps into my ears, which I can feel reddening. “Um, no. We failed, in all aspects of our relationship, because you manipulated me. And lied to me. And cheated on me. How long has it been going on, anyway?”

  “You mean with Kyle?”

  “Yes, with Kyle! Who else…?” I swallow. “You know what? Don’t even answer that second thing. Let’s focus on Old McFratBoy.”

  “There wasn’t anyone else, anyway.”

  Instead of belaboring the issue and asking why she asked me to be more specific, I simply stare at her and wait for her to answer my original question.

  Finally, she shrugs. “A while.”

  “A while. One month, two? Six?”

  Again, all I get is a shrug.

  I figure I can assume the worst, although I’m not sure I can allow myself to believe she’s been with him the whole time, that I was “the other guy.” There are too many horrifying implications involved with that scenario. I try to cling to the scant relief she’s no longer insulting me by denying everything, but her taciturnity points less to honesty and more to concealment to avoid exposing the extent of her dishonesty.

  “Well. That explains a lot. A lot. About everything,” I mutter, feeling sick.

  “You’re not blameless.”

  “Not this again. I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me. After drinking a lot of wine at a dinner you and Lover Boy abandoned.”

  “Of course, you’d defend her and somehow make it my fault that she came onto you.”

  “It was your fault she had the opportunity. Maybe that was planned all along, huh? And you goaded me into an argument so you’d have an excuse to leave?”

  “Whatever. I wasn’t even referring to that kiss, originally. I meant, you played an active part in our relationship not working.”

  “What did I do wrong, other than continue to give you chance after chance after chance, hoping after the novelty of this venture wore off, you’d appreciate everything I’d done for you and reward me for
sticking it out? And before you mention it, I don’t count one manipulative blow-job that filled me with self-loathing and instant regret a proper reward.”

  “What, you wanted me to marry you, out of some sense of gratitude? That’s... pathetic.”

  A montage of moments flashes through my memory. “You said you wanted to marry me! Many times! Without my prompting!”

  “I said a lot of things to get you to do what I wanted you to do.”

  I close my eyes, hoping I won’t feel as foolish if I can’t see the self-satisfied look on her face. Nope. Still feel like an ass.

  My eyes open to her smug consideration of me while she waits for a dramatic reaction I refuse to give her. Instead, I say calmly, “Anyway, I don’t consider myself blameless. I did suggest being the face of your pen name, so the whole mess resulting from that is something I take equal responsibility for.”

  Snorting, she tosses my spare Kindle charger onto the bed from across the room, like she’s playing a casual pickup game of basketball. “Okay. Whatever.”

  That flippant remark erases any remaining magnanimous feelings I may have been harboring. “No, not ‘whatever.’ If you want to be a bitch about it, I don’t have to be so generous.” When she sighs at that, I snap, “You were wrong to use my picture without my express permission, only based on a tipsy conversation in a bar. I think I was more-than-understanding and accommodating when I caught you in that ruse.”

  “I explained to you why I did what I did!”

  “Yeah, you did. Now, I know it was probably all lies, but at the time, I believed you, which is why I agreed to go along with it. That doesn’t excuse your continuing to use me to further your writing career.”

  “Oh, poor you! Well, Betty has some great marketing ideas, but they’re not easy to implement. They’re time consuming and require a lot of effort. Seven months of time and effort, in some cases,” she tacks on with a pointed look at me.

  Her insinuation confirms my earlier horrific suspicion that I was never her boyfriend and makes me feel faint. I back up to the wall and lean against it, hoping I won’t need more support than that to keep me upright and conscious.