Changes and Chocolates: Untouchable Book Two

by Long, Heather

  There were three voicemails.

  Fun.

  The first voicemail was, surprisingly, from my mom. "Frankie, I had several calls from Joe, regarding an incident both at the school and online. I spoke to him a little while ago, and he filled me in. Why didn't you tell me? I had no idea! Are you all right? I've spoken to Eddie about it, and he's having his attorney contact the site to get that post removed. Call me when you get this message."

  I just sort of sat there and stared at the phone for a minute. It was probably the most caring thing she’d said to me in a while. Although her tone when she asked why hadn't I told her sounded more aggrieved than it did concerned. Maybe Mr. Rhys’s calls hadn't annoyed her as much as I thought it might.

  The second message was from Cheryl. "Holy crap, girl!” At the first screech over the phone, I had to hold it away some. Sweet girl, but way too loud. “I saw the post. Everyone has seen it. Wicked bad. You still going to Homecoming with Ian? Even if you're not, we should still get dresses. You could totally go with me. It's fun to go to these things with friends if you can't find a date.” No it wasn’t, but nice effort for trying. I had been to plenty sans date. I was looking forward to doing this with Ian. “Anyway, I want to get together and pick out dresses. Hit me up."

  Yeah. Cheryl could wait till tomorrow, although that was a really kind message. In her way. I’d text her the next day.

  The last message caught me off guard. "Frankie, it's Rachel. You disappeared before lunch today, and the fight Jake got into with Rodney was the talk of lunch. I swung out to check on your, car but it was also gone. Let me know that you're okay. Worried about you."

  One, since when did Rachel check on my car? Two, she was worried about me? We had a kind of love-hate relationship and had for a really long time. Then again, she seemed to have been on my side more often than not lately. When Patty posted the little nastygram on one of my photos from junior year, Rachel immediately clapped back on it. I just deleted the photo to get rid of both comments, but still.

  I sent a text to Cheryl that I'd reach out later that week, I had a lot of stuff on my plate to do, and I needed to get it finished.

  Then I sent a text to Rachel and told her I was fine, just buried. We had to get our college applications ready, and that included scores, essays, and transcripts. She didn’t hit me back, so hopefully that solved that. Speaking of applications, I needed to check the mail. Shoving off the bed, I headed to the front door but there was a whole stack of mail sitting on the table just inside the door. The mail key hung in its spot.

  Coop.

  He knew which box was ours, just like I knew his.

  It was really weird that they were all doing all of this stuff for me. I was so used to having to do it all for myself.

  Weird, but nice.

  I went through the stack, pulling out the dozen or so different college brochures and postcards all saying check me out, you want to go here!

  Newsflash, no I didn't. Somewhere right around the end of my junior year, the mail avalanches started coming in. Most of it ended up in the recycle bin, and I couldn't quite figure out how to tell them to stop sending me so much junk.

  As it was, I found two bills, both of which I knew were on auto pay so I didn't worry about them, and the last was a letter hand-addressed to my mom with no return address on the corner and a New York post mark. I didn’t open Mom’s mail, so I just carried that one to the desk in her room where I was supposed to leave her mail. The stack I’d put there the week before sat untouched, and the letter went on the top.

  I paused, just standing in her room. I didn’t come in here often. Not cluttered, but not barren. It was just—hollow feeling in here. Maybe because she was gone.

  Though it smelled different from the rest of the house, and then it dawned on me it might have something to do with Archie’s dad, and I left. Closing the door behind me, I headed straight back to my room after dumping the rest of the mail into the recycle bin.

  Sitting back on the bed, I stared at my phone for a minute and then fired off messages to let the guys know I was awake and thanked them for what they’d done, then added I needed to check homework to see what we missed, and to Coop, I sent a private apology.

  His message in return was funny.

  Coop: It's no big deal. You were really tired. I'm glad that we could give you a good night. And it would have turned out to be a boring date, since I have to babysit. Don't worry about my mom, she got the notice and laughed it off. Said boys will be boys. On the one hand, that's good news, right? On the other hand, not sure I want us just to be labeled as boys will be boys. Thoughts?

  Oh God, Coop was in a philosophical mood.

  My reply was pretty succinct: I don't have any thoughts. I can't brain today. I haz the dumb.

  I got a series of crying and laughing face emojis in return.

  Everyone else seemed to be doing okay. Jake wasn't grounded. Thank God. His mother was still not pleased with him, but she said that she had discussed it with Ian's father, and that she felt his actions were somewhat justified, however, she “encouraged” him to use alternative methods, rather than fighting.

  Personally, I agreed with his mom. However, he was still on the hook for the anger management with Diane, and I felt bad about that. He was also on the hook for sitting out a couple of games. Still, he summed it all up with a final worth it!

  What was I going to do with these guys?

  Ian said he had a long talk with his dad after he got home, and that everything was going to be okay. Said his dad was worried about me, well, that could be good. So was his mom. He followed it up with we’re still on for working on the song tomorrow night?

  Yep, I sent back. Need to get the audition recorded. Also need essays written. Gonna write one tonight. Want to see it when I’m done?

  Ian: Absolutely. And I’m just sitting here working on some chords. Call if you want to talk.

  Me: I can’t believe I fell asleep on you.

  Ian: Kind of liked it. You snore, just the tiniest bit. It’s cute.

  My face flamed.

  Me: Snoring is not cute.

  Ian: It is when you do it, and the guys have to sit there and watch me cuddle you. Definitely liked that part, too. You feel better?

  Did I?

  Me: Undecided. But I’m not falling down tired, and I can think. That’s better.

  Ian: So if I ask what was wrong this morning, will you tell me?

  I stared at the message.

  Me: Mom stuff. And I really was tired.

  Ian: Ugh. Sorry. Go do your essay. You’ll feel better.

  I chuckled. He wasn’t wrong.

  Me: Can I ask you something?

  Ian: Always.

  Me: If I said no more PDAs at school, would that bother you?

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. That worried me. A little.

  Ian: We’ve always put our arms around you.

  True.

  Ian: Hugs were okay, too.

  He wasn’t wrong. In fact, more than once that had annoyed the then flavors of the month, because they would hug me or tease me. One of them always slung an arm around my shoulders as we walked. I’d craved the contact and taken a lot of comfort from it.

  Me: You didn’t kiss me.

  Ian: Ahh. I like kissing you.

  A shiver rippled through me

  Me: I like kissing you, too. But—if you kiss me and Jake kisses me and Coop and Archie…

  Ian: So then only one of us kisses you at school. That would solve that.

  Me: That seems a little unfair, and how do we even decide who?

  Ian: I volunteer as tribute…

  Laughing, I hit answer when he called almost hot on the heels of that comment. “Since we’re talking and you’re not working on your essay, I thought this would be faster.” A smile lit his words. “And I like hearing your voice.”

  “Hi,” I greeted him, and he chuckled.

  “Hi.”

  “So you volunteer as tri
bute, huh?”

  “Well, I am taking you to Homecoming, and I absolutely intend to kiss you at the dance. Just seems to make sense that I can kiss you at school.”

  “How do you propose we tell the guys that?”

  A moment later, my phone vibrated and I pulled it away to see a message to the group chat with all of us.

  Ian: Heads up. No more PDAs at school. I’m the only one who can kiss her there.

  Eyes widening, I had to smother another laugh, even as I put Ian on speaker. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  “Why not? You snooze, you lose.” Laughter eddied to the surface in his voice as my phone began to vibrate and his echoed over the open line. “Oh yeah, see—they get it.”

  Jake: No fucking way. Who called that?

  Coop: Ha ha, very funny.

  Archie: You jumped on asking her to Homecoming. You don’t get to do that.

  My face had to be hot, but under the embarrassment was a current of delight.

  Ian: You snooze. You lose. Frankie called it.

  “Hey now…” I corrected him and typed my reply.

  Me: What I said was I thought we should dial back on the PDAs at school and Ian asked me to define the PDAs.

  “Aww, you’re going to rain on my fun,” he teased, but there was no real recrimination in his voice.

  Ian: Hugging her and putting an arm around her is normal, but all of us kissing her—she’s not sure she wants to flaunt that.

  “Okay, I didn’t actually say that.”

  “No,” he agreed. “But it’s what you meant. It’s what’s got you worried. We kiss you, other people see it and comment. Then we get posts like what Sharon did.”

  I grimaced. “Does that make me awful? I’m not ashamed of any of you but…”

  “But dating all four of us no matter how we try to swing it right now is weird,” Ian said. “I get it, Frankie. Just like…I know you made out with the other guys, and not a huge fan, but it doesn’t make me wanting to kiss you any less intense.”

  I licked my lips.

  Coop: Then no one kisses. That’s fair.

  Ian: I’m taking her to Homecoming. I’m kissing her at Homecoming.

  “Everyone deserves that kiss pic, besides…” Ian said. “I reiterate my earlier point, I like kissing you.”

  “You were my first real kiss.” It just slipped right out. I couldn’t even remember if I’d mentioned it before, but the phone’s vibrations punctuated the silence.

  Jake: If you’re not comfortable with all of us kissing at school, then Coop’s right, none of us. Might be easier on you with the bitch squad.

  Archie: It’s up to Frankie. What do you want to do, babe?

  “See, you say something like that, and I want to kiss you again—right now. But you’re all the way over there.”

  “Tomorrow,” I promised him. “I’ll be over there tomorrow. Get to ride on the bike, too.”

  “You bet,” he said. “And ugh…fine. If you want to keep the PDAs down, it just means we might need extra when we’re away from school. We can do the down payment tomorrow.”

  I laughed, and my second line rang. “Hang on a sec, Jake’s calling.”

  Answering it, I said, “Hey, I have Ian on the other line, gonna conference.”

  “Cool.”

  I conferenced it in. “Hey, I got Jake with me.”

  “I found Coop,” Ian said drolly.

  “I already had Archie,” Jake said, and we all laughed.

  “Conference call, nice. Sorry I fell asleep on all of you.”

  “No problem,” Archie said. “You were beat. You snore really cutely.”

  “Oh my god,” I groaned.

  “See!” Ian chortled.

  “You do, Frankie. Course, I’ve also heard you snore like a bear in winter, so I’ll take the cute one.”

  “Coop, you’re close enough for me to come find you and hit you.”

  “True,” he said, almost bemused. “That might be my secret plan. Besides, you snore. It’s a fact.”

  Archie chuckled. “It’s really not that bad.”

  “I hate you all.”

  “Awww, I didn’t mind it at all,” Jake promised. “You’re super snuggly, too.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “She is very snuggling, I noticed that.” Archie was not helping with the conversation.

  “Well, I’ll have to let you know,” Ian said. “But I have a good feeling about it.”

  Tingles swept me from head to foot, and before Coop could pipe in, I said, “Anyway…I just think it might be easier on all of us if we don’t—play it up at school. Jake’s already gotta talk to Dr. Miller, and everyone apparently was talking about the post today. I just don’t want that much attention focused on us—especially not while we’re applying to colleges.”

  The laughter still present evaporated.

  “Yeah,” Jake said slowly. “Schools look at our social media.”

  “Exactly,” I reminded them. “So if you’re thinking about getting even, don’t.”

  “That’s what an anonymous account is for,” Archie suggested. “I didn’t see her posting it under her own name.”

  “Yeah well, apparently your dad’s lawyers are gonna talk to the site, or that’s what Mom said, so don’t be so sure that anonymous is anonymous anymore.”

  Archie snorted. “Got it. Look, we’re not going to do anything right now.”

  “Unless she doesn’t back off,” Jake continued.

  I sighed.

  “I told you, I’m not letting anyone treat you like crap,” he said to the rumbled agreements of the others. “So if you want PDAs off the table at school, we can go back to just being friendly, but that means holding your hand and tickling you. Tickling you has always been fair game.”

  “Oh,” Coop said. “He has a point—tickling is definitely not PDA.”

  “No,” I groaned. “It’s torture.”

  Ian chuckled.

  “Since we’re on the phone,” Archie said, clearing his throat. “Maybe we should also lay down some ground rules… like no more two a.m. dates on school nights.”

  “Bite me,” Jake said. “We needed the break, and we had fun.”

  That we had. “It was not fun to wake up this morning though.”

  “Nope,” Jake retorted. “But I don’t care, I’d do it again.”

  Yeah. “Me, too.”

  More groans. “Okay so let’s say midnight on school nights? Frankie works hard enough, we don’t want to break her.”

  “See,” Coop said. “We’re involving you in this discussion.”

  I had noticed. “Thank you,” I said, still smiling before I opened up my bottle of water. “And on that note, I am going to hang up and actually write my college essay. We have like ten days left before they open applications. I want to get as many of these written ahead of time as I can, because we don’t know what the essay questions will be exactly.”

  “There she goes being all over-prepared,” Coop teased. “Go. Write. Be a genius. Show us how it’s done. Then maybe write one for me?”

  They were still laughing when I hung up.

  Ian: Still thinking I like being your first kiss.

  I grinned.

  Me: I know I liked you being my first. It was awesome.

  Ian: I really like you, Frankie.

  Me: I really like you, too.

  Ian: So how long does the no PDA rule extend after school?

  Me: Let’s play it by ear?

  Ian: Got it. Kiss your ears first.

  He added a laughing emoji, and I grinned.

  Me: Go away, funny guy. I need to use my brain now.

  Ian: Be kind to that brain, it’s one of the sexiest things about you.

  Okay, that sent a wave of heat crashing through me and set my face on fire. Groaning, I put the phone in do not disturb and got my crap out of my backpack. It was just after ten when I finished my final draft. I’d knocked out some homework and took care of the lit reading assignme
nt Coop sent over. He’d added his notes, but it was all basic stuff.

  I emailed Mr. G to let him know why I was absent from AP Euro, but I was already ahead on my reading for there, and it wasn’t like it was a grade. Calculus took ten minutes. But the rest of the time, I spent on the essay. I read it four times, corrected some minor typos, and then sent it over to Ian.

  There was an essay from him in the inbox, too. He’d chosen the any topic and written about falling in love with music. It was deep and it was passionate.

  Suddenly, mine seemed like so much garbage. I’d written about my job and trying to balance school with working twenty-five hours a week. Discussed how hard it could be to make sure I had enough money for gas or unexpected repairs, while still saving to offset the cost of college when I got there.

  When you find the perfect minor chord between two majors, you can live there for a moment. It’s the perfect note. The perfect beat. That’s where songs are born. But it’s also where the emotion we experience when we exist in that place between is my homework done and I wish my friends were here. It’s a place of inexplicable joy. Every song has that one note, finding where it resonates with you is the key.

  Mine was so—ordinary. Here Ian was writing about the passion in a note of music, and how coaxing genuine songs from an instrument was almost a seduction of his senses, because that was how he felt it.

  It was… gorgeous.

  I made a couple of minor corrections as I went through, shifted a comma and broke up a run-on sentence, but the last paragraph captivated me.

  Music is another world for me, a place I can journey whenever the mood strikes. It doesn’t matter how I played on the field, what my grades are, or if my parents are so busy helping others, they don’t have time for me. With my music, I’m never alone. I’ve only ever felt this way with one other person, and she’s nearly as magical as the notes. It’s a good thing she likes to listen to my music, because she’s as much my muse as music is my passion.