Muffin Top

by Avery Flynn

“Probably,” Zach said, glancing at something behind her. “But I’m also off duty.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Reinforcements have arrived,” he said before mumbling something that sounded a lot like “thank fucking God.”

  She pivoted on her barstool to take a look at what had caught Zach’s attention. However, it wasn’t a what. It was a who, three of them to be exact. Fallon was there, face clean of makeup and her hair thrown up into a messy bun, not because that was even close to fashionable but because she’d probably just got off shift in the emergency room. Gina stood next to her, wearing one of her signature pink dresses with the buttons not quite fastened correctly because more than likely she and Ford had been messing around before the friend 911 call came in. Tess, per usual, stood a little bit behind the other women with her hands clasped tight together in front of her, peeking out from behind long bangs that almost covered her eyes completely. Peopling in places where there were lots of people was definitely not Tess’s thing.

  Lucy turned back to Zach. “How did you get them here?”

  “I talked to your assistant Reva,” he said with a smirk that had probably gotten him in plenty of trouble in his life. “She has a thing for the whole tatted-up bad boy thing.”

  She snorted. “If only she knew the truth about you.”

  Zach, being Zach, ignored her comment because the man loved ignoring things he didn’t want to acknowledge and got off his stool. He was standing and reaching for his wallet in his back pocket by the time her girls got to them.

  “Thanks for making the call,” Fallon said, looking at him like she wanted to double down on what the jerk Zach had punched had said but she was trying to keep it friendly as a favor to Lucy.

  “No problem,” he said, tossing more bills than necessary on the bar. “Just make sure she gets home okay.”

  “I’m right here, you know,” Lucy grumbled. “I can hear you.”

  Zach just shrugged, tipped an imaginary hat at her, and walked out—his step definitely lighter now, probably because he no longer had to deal with Lucy. She couldn’t blame him. She didn’t really want to deal with herself, either.

  “Please tell me you were giving him advice about how to play so we actually make the playoffs next year,” Gina said.

  “Amen,” Fallon added, her relief at finally being able to get that off her chest evident in how her shoulders sagged with relief.

  Nope. They weren’t going to distract her from the topic at hand that easily. “Never mind Zach, what are you guys doing here?”

  “Where else would we be?” Fallon asked.

  And this was exactly why she hadn’t called them. “I don’t want to put you in a weird position. Frankie’s your brother.”

  Fallon threw back her head and laughed. “You think I’ve never wanted to knock his head off before? Oh, the sweet imaginings of an only child.”

  Lucy turned to Gina, needing to make her friend understand that the last thing she wanted was to put anyone in an awkward situation. “And he’s going to be your brother-in-law.”

  Gina gave her a quick hug. “But you’re my best friend.”

  Turning to Tess, Lucy gave it one last shot. “You don’t feel weird stuck in the middle?”

  “Have we met?” Tess asked, her voice quiet like it always was in crowded places but still filled with warmth. “I feel weird all the time because I am weird. Seriously, this is my starting point for life.”

  That closed Lucy’s trap. Looking around at her friends, who’d automatically formed a protective half circle around her barstool as if there were attackers coming at her from all sides, she let out the breath it felt like she’d been holding for sixty years. She had the most stubborn, pigheaded, fabulous people as her best friends in the whole wide world. And it wasn’t just the vodka that had her tearing up a little at the thought. “You guys are the fucking best.”

  “We also have an Uber out front waiting,” Tess said, already shifting toward the door, obviously more than ready to get somewhere less crowded.

  Sure, she’d been imbibing, but her girls all looked stone cold sober. “Why?”

  Gina rolled her eyes and all but yelled out duh. “Because we can’t drive around with a body in the back of our own car.”

  Finally. She was with her people who understood. God, she loved her friends.

  “Come on,” Fallon said, patting the backpack she had slung over one shoulder. “I got a bottle of the extra spicy, set-your-mouth-on-fire vodka from the craft vodka bar on Fifth.”

  “Plus we have ice cream,” Tess said.

  “And shovels,” Gina finished.

  Lucy stood up and pulled all of her girls in for a group hug. “I love you guys.”

  “We love you, too,” Fallon said, cutting right to the point. “Now let’s go.”

  They may have scared the Uber driver with their loud laughter and detailed plans for removing most of the men from the planet. That was okay, Lucy could live with it, because they made it to her apartment building faster than normal. LeRoy, the world’s best doorman, tipped his hat in greeting as they made their way to the elevators in one giggling mass of estrogen and booze. They’d opened up the vodka bottle in the Uber. Hey, dire times called for dire measures.

  “Thank God you have a real TV,” Tess said as they spilled into Lucy’s apartment, heading straight into the living room and ignoring the floor-to-ceiling windows that provided an amazing view of Harbor City’s sparkling skyline across the water. “Doing this at Gina’s house when Ford temporarily lost his mind was a giant pain in the ass.”

  Lucy gasped and clapped her hands before flopping down onto her couch and kicking off her heels. “You got angry chick flicks for me?”

  “Even better,” Gina said, holding up the tub of ice cream as if it were the Stanley Cup. “We got kickass sci-fi chicks!”

  Lucy’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t.” They understood how much she was hurting without her having to explain a single thing to them. She really could not have better friends.

  “Yes!” Gina and Tess hollered at the same time.

  “I’m scared to ask, but what are you guys freaking out about?” Fallon asked, looking at the three of them as if they were totally clueless.

  “It’s tradition, sort of like Paint and Sip,” Lucy said, relaxing for the first time in days. “When something shitty happens, we regroup with some of our favorite chick flicks.”

  “And the sci-fi scream dance thing you just did?” Fallon asked.

  Gina grabbed the remote and pulled up Netflix on the smart TV before going straight to the strong female leads section. “We only break out Aliens and Mad Max: Fury Road for the most dire of situations, because if you can watch Ripley or Furiosa and not walk away feeling like you can kick ass, then you are watching a different movie than I am.”

  “But first we need ice cream and glasses.” Tess hooked her arm through Fallon’s and started tugging her toward the hallway that led to the kitchen. “Come help me with supplies.”

  As Tess strong-armed Fallon into the hallway with all the subtlety of a moose in a field of fluffy white bunnies, Lucy shook her head and turned to Gina. “So you drew the short straw, huh?”

  “More like they thought I might know what in the hell to say.” Gina sat down on the couch and laid her head down on Lucy’s shoulder.

  “Do you?” Damn, she hated sounding so hopeful.

  “I might, if you tell me what happened.”

  Yeah, that part. That was what she didn’t want to do. It hurt too much. It made her really think about what went down when she wasn’t overwhelmed with embarrassment and hurt. So she shoved that away and went with the awful part on the surface.

  “He told some guys in the bar that he was doing the fat girl fuck party.”

  Gina gasped, and her eyes rounded. A red blotch of anger bloomed on her throat as she reached for the vodka bottle, snatched it from Lucy’s grasp, and took a swig straight from it. Then she gasped again because that vodka was
no joke.

  “Two things,” Gina said, her eyes watering a little as she thumped her palm against her chest. “One, did he use those words? Two, what does that mean?”

  “No.” There went that string of guilt tightening around her stomach and making her shift in her seat. “But that’s what they were talking about—how fat girls work harder for it in bed because we have to be freaks in the sheets or we’d never get laid.”

  “That’s awful.” Gina put the vodka down on the coffee table and wrapped her arms around Lucy in a tight hug. “I can’t believe Frankie would agree to something like that. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just having to really process that.”

  “Well, I never heard him agree, but he didn’t deny it, either.”

  Gina cocked her head to the side. “So, he didn’t say it, and he didn’t say he didn’t say it?”

  Lucy had played and replayed the conversation in her head a million times, and she couldn’t shake the idea that her initial reaction may have been more about the shoe she’d been waiting to drop rather than anything that Frankie had really done. But if she admitted that, even to herself, what did she have to think about other than what he’d said to her?

  “It wasn’t just that,” she said, taking in a shaky breath as the guilt of knowing she wasn’t giving up the whole story ate at her. “He told me I was projecting all of my emotional baggage on him.”

  Gina lifted her head and looked her dead in the eyes. There wasn’t any judgement there, but there wasn’t any coddling, either. They’d been through too much together as friends for all of that.

  “Do you think that might be possible?”

  “No!”

  She wasn’t holding her parents’ sins against him. She wasn’t. She was just being cautious, smart. She’d seen how love could fuck someone over. What kind of an idiot would she be not to protect herself from that by being realistic about how things really worked?

  “Look, I love you,” Gina said, which was never a message followed by “and you’re totally right about everything.” “There is no one else in the world like you, and I’d be lost without you, so don’t take this the wrong way… But you have been known to try to take control of a situation by embracing the worst of it and forcing it to do your bidding.”

  “Well yeah, it’s what makes me so good at my job.”

  “True.” Gina gave her a patient smile. “But those skills aren’t always the ones you want to break out when it comes to relationships.”

  Lucy sat up, anger streaking its way up her spine so fast she was kind of surprised it didn’t shoot out her fingertips. “So I should just roll over and accept what I can get?”

  “Absolutely not.” Gina shook her head, sending her brown waves flying. “You deserve to have someone who loves you for who you are, which is a pretty human being who is equal parts fierce and amazing.”

  Fuck. It was really hard to stay pissed when her bestie said something like that and actually meant it. Still, she grumbled, “I’m not fishing for compliments.”

  Gina rolled her eyes. “Please remind me of a time when you ever needed to do that with me or Tess, or Fallon for that matter. We love you because of who you are, as should anyone with half a brain. And I’m not telling you that Frankie was in the right.” She paused and took Lucy’s hand in hers before letting out a deep breath and continuing on. “But here’s my question: Is it possible that he may not be the only one in the wrong?”

  She was saved from having to think too much about that because Fallon and Tess came back into the living room armed with shot glasses and bowls of ice cream.

  “We would have given you more time, but the ice cream’s melting,” Tess said.

  “Yeah, and I couldn’t eavesdrop at all,” Fallon said. “Your kitchen is too far away for that.”

  Blunt as always, Fallon cracked her up—even with all of the questions swirling around in her because Gina’s words echoed that little voice in her head that she’d been doing her best to drown out. Tonight wasn’t about that, though. Looking at her friends gathered around her, she knew that this was about the one relationship she could always depend on no matter what happened—her friendship with this kick-ass bunch of women.

  “Well, if there’s ice cream and booze, then I declare it movie time,” Lucy said, getting into the spirit of the night whether she felt it all the way to her toes or not.

  “Aliens or Mad Max?” Gina asked, aiming the remote at the big screen.

  “Let me think about that,” Lucy said, shaking her head at the other woman. “I can ogle Tom Hardy and cheer on the most badass gang of motorcycle grandmas ever? How is there even a thought about which one should go first?”

  “Point,” Gina said and hit start on Mad Max: Fury Road.

  Everyone settled in on the couch to watch the awesomeness, but no matter how loud the cars’ engines or the screaming guitar, Lucy couldn’t quiet the question Gina asked. And if her bestie and that annoying voice in her head were right, what in the hell was she going to do about it?

  Because unlike when her clients came into her office, Lucy had no go-to plan for how to fix the mess she’d made of her own life.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In all his years as a firefighter, Frankie had never called in sick—not once—until the morning after the fight with Lucy. That was days ago. He’d spent the ensuing time binge-watching crap shows on Netflix and picking fights with Finn, hoping to provoke his twin into a little brotherly brawl to get some of his pissed-off energy out.

  Unfortunately, it was impossible to get under his twin’s skin. The man was Mr. Even Keel. It was annoying as shit.

  “Another day of sitting on your ass?” Finn asked in a tone that perfectly expressed the fact that even if he wasn’t going to get annoyed, he wasn’t going to pussyfoot around the situation.

  Yeah, his twin was quieter than he was, but he was no less of a pain in the ass. Frankie just flipped his brother off and kept scrolling through the never-ending list of B-list horror movies.

  “You’re lucky you still have that leave time to burn off,” Finn continued, not taking the hint to shut the fuck up.

  “Hansen took the extra shifts to pick up the slack for Washington being out,” Frankie said.

  “Oh, as long as that’s taken care of,” Finn said as he collapsed onto the couch. He kept his mouth shut for a whole five point three seconds, long enough to do a dramatic sniff of the air around Frankie, and went on, “I guess there’s no reason for you to take a shower.”

  Okay, so it had been a day. Or two. Who in the hell was counting and who gave a fuck? “Do you need something? Or can you shut up, because I’m trying to find something to watch.”

  Keeping his mouth shut, for once, Finn sat back and propped his feet up on the coffee table next to all the empty Mountain Dew cans.

  There were a lot of them. Frankie had gotten a case for Lucy and then had proceeded to drink his way through in record time to get rid of any memory of her. The only thing was that he’d failed to get the empty cans from the coffee table to the recycling bin, and he’d growled—literally—when his twin had tried to do it for him yesterday. Some people might have read something into that. Frankie just chalked it up to him wanting people to leave him the hell alone.

  “Are you going to get your ugly mug up and go apologize to Lucy for whatever it is that you fucked up?” Finn asked.

  Frankie punched the arrow button on the remote harder. “What makes you think it was me?”

  “Because you only sit around and beat yourself up when you do something wrong.”

  He glared at his twin, not appreciating the truth of the statement. “Screw you.”

  Finn reached over and swiped the remote from Frankie. “Come on in,” he hollered toward the kitchen. “But I’ll warn you, he smells, so stay as far away as possible.”

  That’s when Ford walked into the living room, along with their dad. Of all the people in the world Frankie didn’t want to see, those two were at the top
of the list. Ford because he was so fucking in love, it was hard to be around him. And his dad? Because that’s the reason why Frankie wasn’t walking around with the same idiot-in-love grin that Ford was. The apple never fell far from the tree.

  “What is this, some kind of touchy-feely intervention?” he asked, putting plenty of snarl in the question.

  None of the other men in the room flinched. They just looked at him with matching you-big-dumbass expressions. That’s the way they wanted this to go down? Fine. He didn’t give a shit.

  Finally, Ford broke the silent pissing contest. “So what’s it going to take to get you to go after her?”

  Yeah, because it would be just that easy. “She doesn’t want me.”

  Ford crossed his arms over his chest and rolled back on his heels, like he couldn’t decide if he was good cop or bad cop in this interrogation. “From what I’ve heard from Gina, that’s a bunch of shit.”

  “Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter anyway,” Frankie said, sinking back into the couch and giving into the agony eating away at his gut that made him feel like a man who was suffering from the flu, a hangover, and the mother of all migraines at the same time. “It’s all over.”

  Finished.

  Done.

  Kaput.

  “So you’re just giving up?” his dad asked.

  Up until that moment, Frankie had been doing his best to pretend his old man wasn’t in the room. He didn’t see any reason to change tactics now, so he ignored the question.

  “Son,” Frank Sr. said. “I raised you better than to act like that to someone you care about.”

  To act better than that? The words hit him like a lead weight dropped overboard. To act better than that? Years’ worth of denied resentment, of bottled-up anger, boiled over, rushing through him like a back draft. He turned his attention to his dad but forced himself to keep his ass on the couch or else he wasn’t sure what would happen.

  “You are the last person,” he said, not bothering to hide the disgust in his voice, “the very last person in the world I want to have this conversation with.”

  His old man didn’t say shit after that. He just sat there like a stone, staring at Frankie with an inscrutable expression on his face. Frankie didn’t need to say any more. His dad knew exactly what he meant.