As soon as it locked, I was taking Frankie out to celebrate, but I didn’t want to jinx it. I also didn’t want to rub her face in it because I was pretty sure she’d applied for that scholarship, too. After the other day with G and the fact he said she scored low on that practice test. Her face. I was never going to forget that disappointment. The others hadn’t seen it, but I had.
Part of why I wanted Archie to shut the hell up about it. I should never have told him, except he’d been there when I opened the letter. No, I didn’t want to jinx anything, and I didn’t want her to feel bad.
She was amazing, but she was taking hit after hit, and it was pissing me off. The Rachel thing might be funny later. Maybe. Still wrapping my mind around the fact another girl had made us look like a bunch of idiots after she set Frankie up to basically walk away from us over the summer.
Yeah, I couldn’t totally blame Rachel for that. We deserved Frankie’s ire, but I could blame Rachel for telling Frankie when she damn well had to know it would hurt Frankie’s feelings.
Again, that was on us.
Coop was in the parking lot when I got there. His expression was tense as he had the passenger door open and slid inside before I’d even fully stopped. “What’s eating you?”
“I am struggling with my intense dislike for her mother,” Coop admitted. “And when I say struggling, I mean, I’ve known her mother as long as I’ve known her, and the woman is a selfish, self-centered flake at times, but I always thought she cared more.”
“People are who they are,” I told him with a shrug. My dad was a stand up guy that people admired and always pointed to—look at how honorable he was, distinguished service, the military loved him, blah blah blah. Yeah, he was so great, he constantly left Mom to do all the heavy lifting, and when she wanted to go back to the States rather than live in Germany, he told her that he and the girlfriend would be fine if she wanted to do that.
That conversation haunted me, even when Mom insisted it hadn’t been true. The problems between her and Dad were just bigger than the caring. He’d never had an affair, she tried to tell me, but that was also because she didn’t want me to blame Dad. I didn’t care. If he could say something like that to hurt her, then he could go straight to Hell. Mom had always been there, Dad couldn’t say that.
“That’s mature,” Coop commented, and I shrugged.
“It is what it is,” I said before turning around and scanning the parking lot on my way out.
“Her mom’s car isn’t here and neither is Archie’s dad’s, I looked. I also went by and checked on her cats. Figured she’d like to know they were all fine.”
“Did you send her pictures?” I had to know because that sounded like a Coop thing to do.
“I send her cat videos, of course I sent her pictures.” He grinned, and I laughed. It wasn’t that far to the Pit. My phone rang and it was Becca’s number, so I hit answer.
“What’s up, Squirt?”
“Mom wants you to bring milk and bread on your way home after the game.”
I snorted. No she didn’t, but I played along. “Sure, if I come home. I’ll bring it.”
“If you come home?” Becca squeaked. “Dude you better come home, you keep spending school nights away, Mom’s gonna kick your ass.”
“A, it’s not a school night, and B, she already knows I might be crashing with the guys and Frankie tonight. We got lots to do.” I grinned as Becca swore. “If Mom told you to go get it and you forgot it, that’s on you.”
“Dammit.”
“But since I’m a nice big brother, I will grab it tonight or tomorrow morning, whenever I’m heading home.”
“Thank you!” After a beat, she said, “Since you’re a in giving mood, how do you feel about pizza?”
“I feel like you have your own money, bye.” I hung up on her squeak, and Coop laughed.
“Little sisters.”
“Man, you have one, I have three. When you get three, talk to me about little sisters.” I loved them all, even when I wished Mom had drowned them at birth. But the girls were all independent and feisty. Becca was getting more like Frankie every day, which was a good thing. I wanted her to be tough.
“Yeah, still—Archie and Bubba don’t get it.” No, they didn’t.
“Hey,” I said slowly, what Bubba had said earlier kept niggling in the back of my mind. “Question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Wednesday night didn’t bother you, did it?”
He coughed. “You mean when you spent the night with Frankie?”
“Yeah, that Wednesday.” Hopefully, he wouldn’t try to make a joke about it.
Coop shrugged. “I wasn’t thrilled, but she seemed pretty happy, and you didn’t get all pissy when I kissed her goodnight or good morning. So—while I might have been jealous, I wasn’t mad.”
Cool. “Okay.”
“Why?”
“Just—Bubba said something, and it’s chewing on me.”
“That she’s going to have to choose eventually and when she does, that’s gonna end up hurting some of us?” The question was so close to the mark of what Bubba said, I frowned.
“Yeah, but I don’t see why she has to choose.”
“You don’t want her to choose you?” Skeptical didn’t begin to cover it.
“Of course, I want her to choose me. I’m not an idiot. But—I don’t mind if she doesn’t.” Apparently, I was weird.
“Life doesn’t work that way,” Coop said. “I mean, it would be nice if it did. We get the girl, we’re still friends, and we can go on with our life. But… you know. People have expectations. Frankie has them, too. She’s never dated before. We’re it so far, and we’ve been doing such a great job.”
Yeah, okay, that last bit of sarcasm. We did deserve it. “It hasn’t all been horrible.” Far from it.
“For us, maybe,” Coop said slowly. “I worry about her.”
“Why?” What else did he know?
“Just… she’s not acting like her. She’s totally off her game. The stress is getting to her, and I can see it. So right now, my focus is making things as easy as possible for her.”
“I can get behind that.”
“Good,” Coop said. “Cause next week on my birthday, I really want her to have fun and not be a stressed out mess who needs a puppy pile hug.”
I laughed. “Puppy pile hugs can be fun.” It had been the night we all piled onto her bed and watched movies together. The only one not there had been Bubba. “What are the chances the idiot parents come back to her place tonight?”
“You know, I used to wish her mother was around, and now I’m kind of hoping she isn’t.”
Yeah. Me too.
Maybe we should all make plans to crash at Frankie’s tonight. We’d make a hell of a barrier, and I was really tired of people making an end-run around us. She didn’t need to take any more hits.
Ever.
Coop
At the Pit, I was out of the SUV before Jake even threw it in park. The agitation had been like an itch between my shoulder blades since I left Frankie with Archie to get ready and go out to dinner with their parents. The whole week had been a mess really. From the genuine worry in her voice over the idea her mom would get rid of the cats to the fact people had trashed her car to that damn red mark on her face that morning.
It wasn’t the first time Ms. Curtis hit Frankie. In fact, I was pretty sure she’d done it a few times before. I’d seen it—once. We’d been ten, or maybe it was eleven. Frankie and I had been in and out of the apartments all day, sometimes at my place and sometimes at hers. We’d played video games, watched movies, and raided the ice cream in my freezer—cookies and cream, damn, that had been good. It had been hot as hell outside, and neither of us had actually wanted to go swimming.
When Frankie’s mom got home though, she found out Frankie had forgotten to take something out of the freezer. I couldn’t even remember what it was Frankie was supposed to have taken out, but her mom just unloaded on
her.
It had been an ugly thing, and when Frankie tried to stand up for herself, Ms. Curtis had slapped her so hard, it had echoed in the kitchen. I must have made a noise because then, Ms. Curtis ordered me out of the house. I didn’t see Frankie for four days after that, even though I went by every day and knocked.
When she did come out next, she didn’t mention it at all, pretended it hadn’t happened. I let it go. What did I know? I was just glad to have my buddy back. But seeing that red mark on her face, it reminded me of it all over again.
It wasn’t busy inside the Pit. I picked out Frankie and the guys easily enough; they were sacked away in the big circle booth in the back corner. Frankie had a giant banana split in front of her. So that meant it had definitely gone bad.
Ice cream was her go to comfort food.
I swung through the line and ordered a double dip cone in a bowl and paid for it. Jake was right behind me, and he ordered pretty much the same thing. Ice cream in hand, I headed for the booth. Frankie’s green eyes were shadowed and tired, but her smile was real.
“Hey,” she said, and even her voice sounded tired. Why couldn’t her mom just give her a break? I felt for Archie, too, but he acted like this was no big deal to him. All his focus was on Frankie, too.
“Hey, you look like crap,” I told her cheerfully, and her grin grew warmer as Bubba glared at me.
“I look better than you,” she retorted. There was my girl.
“Alas, that’s not hard,” Archie said. “Everyone looks better than Coop. The question is, does she look better than me?”
I snorted, and Frankie laughed. It was worth it, particularly when Bubba and Jake chorused a “Yes” right along with me.
Frankie’s eyes warmed, and something in my gut unlocked. Okay. That was better. She dug a spoonful of chocolate ice cream, what looked like caramel syrup, some whip cream and more nuts than should be legal on something like that up to eat, and I sighed a little.
She always made little orgasm faces when she ate ice cream, and I was pretty sure she had no idea. Having now seen her orgasm face though, I could say with certainty that she really liked ice cream.
“See,” Archie said, as he glanced at Frankie. “They like you better than me.”
“Obviously,” she retorted. “Apparently, you like me better than them, but I’m not falling into this trap of who do I like better.”
No, she would never do that to us. “No one’s asking you to,” I said before Archie could make another smart-ass comment, but all he did was point to me.
“What he said.”
“Thanks,” she said with a sigh, then took another bite. She was decimating that banana split. My ice cream was good, but the fact she was so singularly focused worried me.
“How was the game?” she asked abruptly.
“We won,” Bubba told her. “Barely. Guy they have subbing in for Jake isn’t that good.”
“He was fine,” Jake said. “And Bubba did a nice save in the last quarter, don’t let him play you. We won, and he helped set that play up.”
Bubba shrugged. “It was the team, we had a good play, we made it.”
“But winning is good, you’re 4 and 1, right?”
“Technically,” Jake said.
“That makes you second in the division.” The fact she even knew that earned more than one pair of raised eyebrows. “Don’t look so impressed, I do follow the wins and losses, and Archie told me earlier.”
Jake laughed and Bubba grinned. “Fair enough,” I said. “But the minute you start knowing stats, I start worrying the world has gone upside down.”
I kind of regretted saying that because her eyes went all shadowed again, and that was killing me. I hated when she was unhappy, and I didn’t hate much. Even when I dreaded dealing with the tension around Mom and Dad, I didn’t hate them or it; I just didn’t want to deal with it. When Frankie was unhappy, the world just seemed like a darker place.
She always had everything so put together. It was the face she showed the world. I was proud of our girl in a way I couldn’t express to the others. More because I knew that face was a mask, but one she could wear because she was so good at what she did.
When she floundered or struggled, so did I, because I wanted to fix it for her, and I wasn’t sure how. We could take on the bullies at school, that wasn’t even an issue. Take her car to the detail place and clean up the obnoxious mess on it? No problem. Hell, Jake punched the one asshole who slut sneezed, and Laura had been suspended for her crap. We could help with that.
But the thing with her mom? I had no idea how to fix that situation. Push too hard where her mom was concerned, and Frankie would shut down. It didn’t seem possible to push back without Frankie trying to defend her.
“The world is already kind of upside down.” She glanced at Archie. “And you still haven’t had anything resembling food.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking after ice cream, we get pizza and pick out some absolutely terrible movies to watch.” He trailed a finger down her arm, and the corner of her mouth tilted up again.
“Actually,” I said. “That’s not a bad idea. Jake mentioned something like that earlier.” Totally making that shit up, I threw a look at Jake.
With a lift of his chin, he caught the toss and said, “Yeah, we can all pile on your bed, eat pizza, drink sodas, watch movies. Whatever you want.”
Her expression turned worried. “I don’t know if they went back there.”
“So?” Bubba actually joined in. “You live there too, and there’s more of us. We can even be quiet.”
“Might make them want to go somewhere else,” Archie said, his tone musing. “Either way, it’s about you. Would that make you feel better? You can keep an eye on your cats and relax in your bed. We’ll hang out, stuff you with pizza, and make you laugh. I volunteer Coop to even take out the trash after.”
I rolled my eyes, but I didn’t argue because the corners of her mouth tipped again. “For what it’s worth, they weren’t there when Jake got me.”
“Thank you for the cat pictures, the tail one was really cute.” Her smile warmed, even as she looked thoughtful. “Though, I don’t know if we’ll all fit on my bed.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Bubba said. “Sitting on the floor never killed anyone. What do you want to do?”
“Not talk about problems, watch movies that make us laugh and groan, and eat pineapple pizza.”
“Cool,” Jake said. “Anyone need to clear it with the ‘rents that we might end up crashing at Frankie’s?”
Archie
Sharing my date night wasn’t high on my list of things I wanted to do, but Frankie needed all of us. Dinner with the parents had been a disaster before we got there. I’d half-expected it to implode—hoped really that Edward would cancel at the last minute because it was what he did—before we even had to make the drive. Unfortunately, we didn’t get that lucky.
The fact he had actually given Ms. Curtis a ring was bad enough, but to continue with the farce of they were getting married? And he planned to move Frankie and her mom into our house? I didn’t mind the idea of Frankie living with me. Quite the opposite, but she wasn’t up for life with Edward Standish and all the bullshit that entailed. Year together or not, his mistresses had a habit of vanishing the moment he got bored.
The fact he bought Frankie a dress bothered me more than I’d told her. I hadn’t been kidding about the fact he bought clothes for the women he dated or kept. Frankie wasn’t going on that list.
Ever.
The very idea was disgusting.
So whatever game he planned to play, I was taking Frankie off the board. The ice cream and the guys helped to lift her mood. Back at her apartment, I was more than grateful to discover a distinct absence of our parents. I was all set to go another round with my dad if I had to. Thankfully, for Frankie’s sake, that proved unnecessary.
We figured out the seating in her room, and it ended up with most of us on the floor on cushions, sprawled aroun
d each other, boxes of pizza open—and the TV we stole from the living room set up in the corner.
Frankie leaned against Bubba as we scrolled through the choices on Netflix, and I glanced at my phone. No word from Mom on her sudden French relocation. Jeremy, however, confirmed she’d had her trunks sent.
So at least that much of Edward’s story might be based in fact.
What the hell was he doing?
A toe tapped my leg, and I glanced over to find Frankie watching me. She curled her toes against my thigh, and I put my hand over her foot and grinned. She mouthed you okay? and I nodded. I was okay. Surrounded by my best friends and allowed to kiss her the way I’d always wanted to?
I was more than okay.
Everything else, we’d figure out later.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We All Fall Down
By the end of the first movie, I was full, sleepy, and almost content. All the rough edges had been sanded away by the fact the guys just hung out. It was almost like old times, only—better. I’d changed into sleep shorts and a tank top after we’d gotten home, they were down to boxers and t-shirts and queuing up the next movie. I’d started off the first movie leaning against Ian, ended up curled up next to Coop for the second with my head pillowed against his stomach. Jake had been rubbing my feet, and I must have fallen asleep there.
When I woke up, I was sandwiched in bed between Coop on one side and Jake on the other. The cat walking across me irked my bladder, and I smothered a yawn as I tried to figure out how to get up. A faint snore escaped Coop, matching one coming from farther away, and I leaned up to look. Archie was sprawled on his back amongst two of the cushions with a blanket over him, and Tory sleeping on his chest.
Changes and Chocolates: Untouchable Book Two Page 32
