But understanding it didn’t mean I agreed. We weren’t taking advantage of her. When she bumped my hip and darted away, I had to swallow a sigh. Even the lightest touch left me panting like I was getting my first erection all over again. Sometimes I wondered, was she for real?
Just looking at Frankie was enough to make me want her. But it was more than that. Frankie was this fixed point in my life. We’d been in each other’s back pockets since before I realized girls were supposed to be icky.
She never achieved that status with me. Other girls? Sure. But not Frankie. She was my best friend. Then Jake came along, and he was all right, but I lived closer. When Bubba joined the mix, it was cool, and Archie. They each brought a different dynamic, but I liked having a big friend group.
The simple truth was, I liked her more. I liked seeing her every day. I liked it when she rolled her eyes at me. I liked it when she teased me.
I fucking loved it when she spoke French.
When she dove into the water though, I had to resist the urge to dive in right after her. Particularly because Archie stared at her the same way I was, and the asshole had been in his room while she changed in there.
Like I said, jealousy wasn’t a good look on anyone, and I was damn jealous of Archie at the immediate moment. Considering I knew exactly where Jake was last night, all night.
“Are you planning to get in the pool?” she called. “Or just stare like a pair of doofuses?”
The comment pulled me out of my reverie, and Archie let out a laugh as he strolled forward. Like me, he was dressed in swim trunks only, and he dove right in the pool. I hesitated, but only because I needed to get my mind on other things like…
Yeah, that wasn’t working, the only thing I could see was her, and I didn’t want to think about math formulas or baseball stats.
Not that I knew any stats.
Fuck.
Here was hoping the water was cold.
I hit it at speed. The water, while cooler than the temperature outside, wasn’t cold. Frankie’s laughter was my only warning before she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and twisted. I pivoted, catching her legs for balance and then got a face full of water from Archie.
Oh. It was on. I shoved Frankie up and back. She twisted as she dove back into the water, and I started flinging water at Archie before having to fend Frankie off, too.
“Two against one!” I complained in between bouts of laughter. The water was flying fast and furious.
“Aww,” Frankie said. “I’ll help!”
She vanished under water, and I couldn’t see where she went as I kept fending off Archie. Then he yelped, and I cracked up as she tugged his leg and dunked him.
When she would have shot away, he caught her leg and hauled her backward, and then lifted and tossed her. She emerged giggling, and I had to grin. There had been so much crap the last few weeks, I’d almost forgotten how good it was just to laugh with her.
Damned if I didn’t love her laughter.
She darted around me when Archie went for her again, and I blocked happily. We ended up wrestling, and both of us got dunked for our trouble. When I came back up for air, she was leaning against the side of the pool, grinning.
“Cannonball!” served as Jake’s announcement before he landed in the deep end with a terrific splash. The wave was impressive.
“Oh, I can beat that,” Archie announced as he climbed out. I pushed away from the center and swam over to Frankie in time to catch Archie’s demonstration.
He definitely made a bigger splash.
She snickered, and I grinned.
“Five bucks says Jake does it again,” she told me.
“No takers,” I countered and pointed. Jake was already climbing out of the pool. Her deep green eyes brightened as Archie let out an “Oh shit” a half-second before Jake hit the water not a foot from him, and he got nailed with the splash.
“Ten points!” Frankie called.
“But the Russian judge takes off at least one for artistic style,” Bubba called as he finally came out of the house. What the hell had taken him so long? I hadn’t seen any bruises on either of them when they came upstairs, but you could have cut the tension on Jake and Bubba with a knife.
Then Jake hit the pool almost a full five minutes before Bubba?
The smile lighting up Frankie when Bubba played along made me wistful. It really had been a while since she totally relaxed. Who could blame her? It had been a shit few weeks, despite how much I loved the fact she was interested in dating.
Dating.
Making out.
Kissing.
The kissing was good.
“Fuck the Russian judge,” Jake called out as he swam toward us.
She snickered, and I had to laugh, too. This was what it used to be like. The five of us playing, teasing, giving each other hell, even before Frankie wanted to date. Sometimes we’d had girls over, but they hadn’t really mattered when Frankie was here.
That should have been my first clue.
Jake caught her arm, but she clasped my hand so when Jake pulled her away from the side, I ended up following. Bubba dove in the far side, no cannonballs, and Archie yelled something.
“Up,” Jake said as he ducked under the water, and then Frankie let out a gasp and a laugh as he rose up with her suddenly perched on his shoulders. “Coop, you wanna base for Arch or the other way around?”
Oh, hell.
Bubba cut through the water to us. “I can do it,” he said as he came up. “Arch or Coop, whichever.”
Jake smirked and the look that passed between them wasn’t friendly.
“C’mon Coop,” Bubba invited, and I rolled my eyes.
“All right.” I waited for Bubba to duck into the water, and then I was on his shoulders and going up.
“Hey,” Archie said. “What about me?”
“You gotta be the ref!” Frankie said. “And throw us some noodles!”
“Fine.” He let out an aggrieved sigh, but I didn’t miss the way his expression shifted at her smile, or the fact that Jake was currently stroking her thigh with his thumb.
“Okay, first one to topple the other wins,” I suggested before anyone else could add some ridiculous rules to the competition. Jake and Archie were both overachievers, but at the moment, I was more worried about the animosity between Jake and Bubba.
Archie passed us the foam noodles, and then it was on. Frankie wielded hers like a champion, laughing as I batted hers back. Bubba and Jake kept moving, and we were heading for the deeper end of the pool.
I half-expected the shove when it came, but Bubba recovered, and I managed to hold onto my balance. Frankie’s expression tightened briefly. Yeah, I wasn’t the only one who saw it. She bopped me and then flicked her eyes at the pool and made a wavery motion.
She wanted to throw the match. I didn’t blame her, but I could take the dive. The guys lunged at each other, and I bopped her and she went sideways, and if I hadn’t been watching for it, I would have missed it. Instead of just sliding off Jake, she hooked her legs under his arms and pulled him with her.
They both came up laughing, and I had about two seconds before Bubba dumped me backwards.
Eh, all fair.
No more water battles, instead Frankie hooked her arms around the noodle and floated, head tipped back. Archie dove back in and we all sorta wound down a little.
“We still need to talk homework,” Frankie said after a while.
“Yes!” Archie lifted a fist, and I laughed. “She didn’t make it an hour. I win.”
Frankie snorted and kicked water in his direction.
“Yeah, no one took that bet,” Jake reminded him. Nor would we. Frankie was too damn determined and driven to get the right grades to get into the right college and get out of that apartment and life with her mom.
I couldn’t blame her.
“All right,” I said, grabbing the edge of her noodle closest to me and tugging her. “Everyone out, and we can get food while
we talk the academic stuff, and then we go back to celebrating.”
“I have homework,” she reminded me, then gave me a hug and a kiss. It was just the barest of brushes, but the stupid grin on my face had to give me away. ‘Course, she grinned wider, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that.
“If I help, do I get a kiss, too?” Archie teased as he held a hand out to her. He’d already gotten out of the pool.
“You can have one whether you help or not,” she said as she let him pull her up. Like she had with me, it was a light kiss, a bare brush, and it still sent a shiver down my spine. Not as hot as when she and Jake had been intent on devouring each other, or as hot as when she came alive in my arms, but I didn’t mind watching.
‘Course, she also leaned into Archie and laughed when he blew a raspberry against her throat. That was how Archie Standish, dude with more money than all four of our families put together, always delighted her. He had the capability of being a dork.
“You coming?” Frankie asked as she headed toward the table where the towels and the food waited in the shade.
“Yep.” Couldn’t keep me away.
Bubba and Jake glared at each other. When I whistled, they both looked at me. Yeah. Let’s not piss on Frankie’s day. “C’mon, time to eat and to plan. You snooze, you lose.”
Archie
Yeah, that bikini looked fantastic on her. It had more coverage than the string one she’d borrowed here, but it wasn’t the skin so much as the way it fit Frankie. Or maybe it was the way Frankie moved. She had a smile on her face, her eyes lit up, and she seemed genuinely happy. Whatever Bubba said to her, hopefully it fixed that stupidity.
We had enough bullshit going on without him suddenly getting cold feet. Then again, if he wanted to bow out, fine. Less competition. I wasn’t too worried about it at the moment. We all got time with her, and I knew I meant something to her.
I was the one she’d called when she needed to get away from her mom. While I wasn’t fond of the tie, the idiot affair Edward was having with her mother added another bond. ‘Course, it also meant I needed to make sure Edward didn’t do anything stupid.
Just thinking about him was enough to sour my mood. As far as Jeremy knew, Edward was in New York. Apparently, he and Ms. Curtis had scampered off there late on Friday. Things didn’t go well at dinner—and by well, I meant I shut that shit down because the hell I was going to let them browbeat Frankie into going along with this farce. Seriously, Edward had done some shitty things, but fucking around with Frankie’s mom? That was low, even for him.
Usually he went for the single, childless chicks. Maybe I should figure out a way to convince him to take Frankie’s mom to New York permanently. They could live in the apartment on the Upper East Side, far, far away from us.
Frankie shot me a look as she squeezed the water out of her hair. The openness in her expression tugged at me. I’d seen her kicked, wrecked, wounded, and hurt enough in the last few days. I never wanted to see it again.
Her smile faded, and she frowned, then mouthed, “You okay?” without saying the words aloud.
Shit, I shook off the melancholy and gave her a quick grin and a thumbs up. “Was thinking about Thursday,” I lied. “We still need to decide what we’re doing for Coop’s birthday.”
“Good call,” she complimented me. “Actually, I’m gonna rinse the chlorine off real quick.” She snagged a towel and headed for the outdoor shower.
Bubba grunted as he bumped me on his way past.
“Are you two going to be pissing on each other all evening?” Coop asked as he slung a towel around his neck. He wasn’t looking at me, but at Jake and Bubba. Yeah, I’d noticed that, too. I was also ignoring it. Jake had a temper. Bubba was biting off his nose to spite his face.
But tonight wasn’t about them…
“We’re not,” Jake said abruptly. “At least I’m not. He made his call. Friends it is.”
Bubba sighed. “You know, fuck you, Jake. I’m done trying to explain it to you.”
I glanced at him. “Explain what?”
“Why I’d rather take this slower than the warp speed the two of you are moving at. Why she deserves a hell of a lot better than to just be another point.”
“She’s not a point,” I gritted out between my teeth, even as I cut my gaze between Bubba and her. She was on the far side of the patio where the outdoor shower was, standing under the water. “She’s never been a point. That game is done. I’m not playing it anymore.”
Frankie had never been a game.
“We’re not going to talk about it here,” I said hurriedly. “Do you understand me? She has enough shit to deal with, and that ended before school started.”
Technically, the last time we called points had been the last blowout of the summer. The day all those fucking pictures were taken. But after we got back to school and Frankie, I had zero interest in pursuing the rest.
Patty and I had broken up before that party. She thought it changed things. I told her it didn’t.
Frankie had changed everything.
“Cut it out,” Coop said softly as Frankie stepped out from the water and used the towel to start drying off. “Gonna go rinse off, I suggest the rest of you do the same and everyone cool down.”
“Agreed,” I said with a nod. “Tonight’s about Frankie, and Jeremy got us ice cream cake for her, so let’s eat, get the homework planning out of the way, and get back to partying.”
If nothing else, that seemed to decide them. They dialed back on the glares, and we all took our turns rinsing off. There were sandwiches in cold pans, chips, and sodas. So even if it took us an hour to get to the food because we’d been romping, it was still chilled and ready to go. Jeremy had loaded us up with everything.
The man was a gift.
Frankie curled up into a chair between me and Coop with Jake and Bubba across from us. She had her laptop open, and I pulled out a tablet and booted it up in between bites. Jake and Bubba killed three sandwiches each.
Were they even making eating a contest?
“So,” Frankie said. “What are we doing after planning and homework?”
All the things I’d like to do required the guys getting the hell out of here, so I settled for, “It’s your party. Whatever you want to do.”
The moment her eyes lit up, I knew I was screwed.
“Mini golf?”
Coop laughed, and then Jake did, and even Bubba cracked up.
Yeah. For that smile? “Sure,” I said. “Mini golf it is. But we’ve got ice cream cake, too.”
“Yes!” She clapped her hands and then flipped open her notebook. “Who’s going first?”
It took us all of fifteen minutes to nail down the schedule for the week—Frankie would still go over to Bubba’s on Tuesday for Calculus and whatever, but she said she would drive herself. Ouch, slapped by a simple comment, and Bubba knew it.
Wednesday she had work, but Thursday we had all day. “That’s Coop’s call,” she said. “It’s his birthday.”
So we all looked at him. When he left tonight, he was taking a sedan with him. The insurance was ready to go, and Jeremy had added him to the coverage. It could come out of my allowance until Coop could afford to pay for it. No one brought it up to Frankie. It was going to be Coop’s surprise.
My part in it was not for public consumption. We all had pride. The look on his face when I told him earlier to just say he managed to get it for his birthday had been worth it.
Maybe I could give it to him outright. That would really even the playing field.
“Nothing like being on the spot to go absolutely blank,” Coop admitted. “But we could drive up toward Arlington. Go to Six Flags for the day.”
We could. It was a hike. Lots of rides.
“Then back here later,” Coop said with a quick look at me, then the others. “I’d kind of like to just take Frankie out for dinner.”
“Damn, thrown over for a chick,” Jake drawled. “But since that chick is Frankie…�
�� He laughed when she threw a chip at him.
“We’ll play it by ear, but yeah, your birthday,” I said. “Friday is the game, and Frankie’s with me…”
It was funny, we were doing homework planning in this mess, but we also made sure we could account for dating time. I’d bet even dollars that Jake would be at Frankie’s after work on Wednesday, especially if her mom was still out of town.
I’d get us a hotel for Friday if I had to. The more we kept her away from them, the better.
“Are we good on projects, since all we’re doing is date planning?”
“Damn,” Coop said, clutching his chest. “She’s caught on to our cunning plan.”
“It wasn’t much of a plan,” Bubba said drily.
“Or that cunning,” Frankie teased. “But I do want to talk college.”
You know what… “So do I, applications open on Friday.”
For everyone planning on early admission, the sooner we got them in, the better. That scholarship put Frankie over the moon, but I wanted to put Frankie in Harvard, thousands of miles from her mother and the bitches at school.
Not to mention, whichever asshole vandalized her car. College was a first step in that plan.
“Yeah, I’m ready to record that audition tomorrow,” Bubba said, focusing on Frankie. “If you’re still willing to help.”
Audition?
Frankie’s smile grew. “Of course, I’ll help.”
I narrowed my eyes at the exchange. Wasn’t he on the shit list?
“What audition?” Jake asked.
“Yeah,” Coop glanced between them. “Spill.”
“It’s a secret,” Frankie said.
“Not much of a secret if you’re talking about it right here,” I protested, and she put a hand on my arm.
“Let’s start with essays. Do you guys actually need them for MIT? And are you going to apply to Harvard, too? You know, for real?”
I’d told Muriel I was. I covered her hand with mine. “Damn straight I’m applying.”
“Whatever we do,” Jake said. “Once we know where we’re going, we’ll nail down the place to live.”
Keys and Kisses: Untouchable Book Three Page 9
