Dragging my attention off the mums, I glanced at him.
“What are we doing?” Archie asked.
“Giving Bubba the rules for tonight.”
“Ahh…fine, rule number two, there will be no scenes at Homecoming. We’re all going to just have fun.”
“That’s kind of a rule for all of us,” Coop argued. “Not that I object to it, just saying.”
“So we’re making these rules specifically for Bubba or for all of us?” Archie glanced at me, then at Jake.
Jake shrugged, and I rolled my eyes. Then laughed. “You know what the first rules we had work…”
“No texting on a date, and Sunday nights are Jake’s?” Archie raised his brows.
“Eh,” Jake said. “The important thing is Frankie has fun. That we all have a good time. No drama. Just partying and dancing. She wants to make memories.”
Oh, she’d been making memories the last few weeks. I diverted down the hall to her room and hung my garment bag with the others. The stand was hooked over the door and jutted out like its own clothing rack. The bed was a little disheveled, and there were scattered clothes near her laundry basket.
Frankie tended to be neat, but those were Jake’s socks, and the shirt on the back of the chair was one of Coop’s.
“Fine,” Archie’s voice climbed, but I missed whatever he was responding to. “Rule number three, no one disappears with Frankie at the dance.”
Wandering back out, I tugged my phone from my pocket to order the pizzas.
“No taking off, or ducking out to make out. We start the evening together, we end the evening together.” Archie was hot gluing purple ribbon to the fourth and last of the smaller circle cutouts.
“That’s fair,” Coop said. “One of us always with her.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Who gets to the restroom with her?”
“Rachel,” Coop and Archie said at the same time, and the corners of my lips twitched.
A laugh that had nothing to do with humor worked its way up, but I wouldn’t let it out. I plugged in their favorites for pizza and made sure I got Frankie’s too before I paid for it and hit send.
“Fair,” Jake said. “Even if I can’t stand the bitch.”
“Join the club. But she’s good for Frankie,” Coop said. “And you heard her this morning.”
“Yeah, yeah.” In the kitchen, Jake opened the fridge. “Want a soda, Bubba?”
“Thanks.” Then I glanced at the table where Archie worked, and Coop had begun adding the actual mum to the pieces they’d already made. Frankie’s was going to be stunning. “You guys mind if I work on that last one?”
Archie cut a look up at me. “Glue gun’s right there. Jump on in.”
Stripping off my shoes, I shoved them over to the side and then knelt to get to work.
Jake passed me a soda and said, “You still in for tonight?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “For as much or as little as she wants to put up with me, and I got it—" I motioned to all of them. “I have to ask her to dance.”
None of this was how it was supposed to have been. None of it. But Jake was right. This was my fault. So tonight, tonight I started making it up to her.
What did Coach used to say? Being involved with the team didn’t come with an engraved invitation. You involved yourself.
I almost had myself psyched up for it by the time Frankie walked in. Thankfully, we’d gotten the mums done and hidden—even mine. I’d done mine a little less elaborate, but very much with her in mind, right down to the pen trinket I slid on it.
‘Course, once I got a good look at her, I damn near swallowed my tongue because even in a tank top and shorts, she looked stunning. Her hair was smoothed out and hung beautifully, and her eyes were bright.
“Holy crap,” Coop exhaled.
“Wow.” Archie said a beat before he wolf-whistled. “You could start a whole new Homecoming trend in that outfit.”
Jake just grinned. “I think I hate Coop right now.”
“Yep, too bad, so sad.” Coop laughed.
But when Frankie glanced at me, the hesitation in her eyes? That flash of worry? It hit me right in the nuts.
That was what I’d done.
“You look amazing,” I told her, meaning every word. “How do you feel?”
The tremulous smile on her lips inched upward. “A lot fussier than I ever imagined. It was kind of fun and…wow, people do that all the time to get ready for stuff?”
There she was with a teasing roll of her eyes and shake of her head.
“It’s a memory,” I reminded her and held up my phone. “You want a picture?”
She laughed, then spread her arms. I got one snap of her, then Coop slid in miming hugging her, and she mugged for the camera. I snapped the shots as they all got in there for ones with just her and Jake, or her and Archie.
When she curled her fingers and told me I needed to be in the group selfie too, I didn’t argue.
It was a step.
I had to involve myself.
Chapter Twenty-Two
All of Yesterday’s Parties
Thankfully, some of the awkwardness of Ian’s presence diminished as I devoured pizza. We still had another hour before we had to get ready, and all I had left was to put on a dress. When the guys teased me like they were gonna give me a kiss, I fended them off.
There was no way I wanted to mess up all the work Carol had done with my hair and my face. Sitting on the floor, legs crossed though, I kept studying them one at a time. Between what Maria had told me about someone roofying her and the other girls, and the fact that she’d mentioned Cheryl in the same breath as one of the girls who’d…
Yeah, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t spend the whole night wondering which of them Cheryl had slept with. I liked Cheryl. Arguably, I had liked a lot of them, but Cheryl had been going out of her way to be my friend, and the idea she had sex with one of the guys and they’d never mentioned it just turned my stomach inside out.
Fuck, did I want a list?
As nauseating a concept as that might be, I kind of did.
“Guys…” Yeah, there was no way I wanted to spend my night turning myself inside out. I was already biting my tongue about Maria. She’d confided in me something that was really personal and horrible, but the other…
One by one, they focused on me, and some of the humor fled Coop’s expression. “What’s wrong?”
“Just want to ask something straight up.” I glanced down at my drink and then set the can on the coffee table. There was a bit of glitter on the carpet, but I didn’t want to focus on that. “Um… I’d prefer a straight answer, too. No sugar-coating.”
Scratching his jaw, Archie eyed me. “You’re going to ask us about a girl.”
“Pretty much.”
Exhaling, Jake set his own can on the table. “Shoot.”
Ian frowned, but he didn’t say anything to dissuade me. Which was good, he’d been all about telling me uncomfortable stuff, including the points thing.
“Was Cheryl one of your points girls?”
The immediate distaste on Archie’s face sent relief through me. Coop opened his mouth, then shut it with a grimace.
“No,” Jake answered swiftly. “Hell no.”
Dropping his shoulders, Ian ran a hand over his face and then shook his head with a short, but firm, “No.” I couldn’t tell if the answer relieved him or not.
“Babe,” Archie said, blinking as though he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the question. “One, she talks way too much.”
“Two, she has no filter,” Coop added. “And she’s…”
“Sweet,” Jake intoned that word like it was a bad thing. “The kind of too sweet that rots your teeth. Three, she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body and…she and Mitch were already hooking up.” Though he glanced at Ian for confirmation. “Right?”
“Far as I know, I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were doing—they were at a lot of the parties. But she w
as there with the other girls first, he started showing up later.”
Had they been at Ian’s birthday? A lot of that night had been laser-imprinted on my brain, but it was more in sharp relief as to where the guys had been and who they’d been with. Everything else was kind of a background blur.
“Frankie,” Coop captured my attention. “I’d have told you before the dress shopping. I swear.”
“I didn’t know about the points before the dress shopping,” I reminded him. Ian winced, and Jake shot him a dirty look before focusing on me again. “I didn’t want to think about it, I’ve spent the last few hours telling myself it didn’t matter…”
“…but it does,” Jake finished for me, and I nodded. “Baby girl, we’re assholes, but we’re actively trying to not be dicks. I wish I could tell you we hadn’t screwed around as much.”
“But we did,” Archie said, owning it. “Cheryl, however, was never on that list. And at the risk of painting myself as a bigger asshole, I’ll say it was because we wanted a challenge and she would have been too easy.”
That was a horrible thing to say, yet, I had to be a horrible person, too, because I was grateful to hear it. “You swear?”
“Yes.” Four, solid, unflinching answers. Even Ian. Looking at him, I tilted my head. Of the four of them, he’d probably show every ounce of that guilt on his face.
“No lie,” he said, spreading his hands. “Why are you asking?”
“It came up today.”
Aggravation flashed across Jake’s face. “Who the fuck brought it up?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “It really doesn’t. Just—someone who knew about it, and they mentioned her along with a few others.”
Ian dropped his head, and his shoulders slumped. “Frankie…I don’t want to give you some kind of list.”
“Why not?” Archie asked. “You’re the one who told her in the first damn place.”
“Stop,” Coop said before I could. “We’re not turning this into a fight. She asked a question, we answered it. She needed to know…for what it’s worth,” Coop continued, focusing on me. “If…if I think you need to know because you’re getting close to someone and they were on the list, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, I don’t really want to give you that list either.”
The idea that there was a list was nauseating enough. “I don’t want a list.”
“I want to know who told you,” Jake gritted out. “No one gets to try and hurt you like that.”
“They weren’t trying to hurt me.” Of that much, I was pretty certain.
“Who tells you something like that if they aren’t trying to get a dig in?” Archie’s challenge was fair, but…
“Because it wasn’t what they were trying to tell me. It came up in passing and without going into details…” While I wanted to ask them because what happened to Maria shouldn’t have happened to anyone, I couldn’t without betraying her. “I promise,” I said before Archie could press the point on it. “So, in a weird way, maybe it’s better that Ian told me when he did.”
Even if I’d never wanted to know.
Doubt echoed on three faces, but Ian actually gaped. “What?”
“I’m glad I heard it from one of you and not from someone else.” Blowing out a breath, I reached for another slice of pizza. “I’m sorry if I killed the mood. Like I said earlier, I kept trying to tell myself it didn’t matter, but it did. I like Cheryl. She’s…been really great the last few weeks, and as much as last summer seems to be hanging over all of us, I’m doing my best to not make it a thing.”
“It’s the past,” Jake promised. “It’s never going to happen again.”
Hard to ask that really, especially when I was still dating three of them. No, I wasn’t going to press my luck at the moment. How much of a hypocrite was I?
“I believe you,” I told him, and guilt assailed me at his harsh exhale. “I’m really sorry if I…”
“No, babe,” Archie said. “You don’t have to be sorry. Our fuck-up. We deserve the bite in the ass. And you haven’t ruined anything, especially if you feel better.”
“You do, right?” Coop caught my hand and studied me.
I nodded. I did. “Yeah. I do. Weird, right?”
“Nope,” Ian said, surprising me. “Can’t really say it’s weird when you have to ask us in the first place, you know?”
“True.” Head tilted back, I exhaled. “Okay, for the future…no more crazy sex parties.”
“Only crazy sex party I plan to have is with you,” Jake stated, and when he dropped a kiss on my lips, I laughed.
“Am I invited?” Coop teased.
“Depends,” Jake retaliated.
“On?” Archie leaned forward.
“Yeah, on what?” Not that the idea wasn’t crazy, because it really, really was—and at the same time, I had to admit, Jake’s possible responses intrigued me.
He grinned. “The venue. The hostess. The rules.”
“Venue can be arranged,” Archie said with just enough seriousness that the curl of lust in my gut immediately went taut.
“Rules can be coordinated,” Coop added, linking his fingers with mine.
“So that just leaves the most important part,” Jake finished with a wink, then gave me another kiss. The heat flash firing through me probably boiled my face like a cherry tomato. I might even have been charmed by the teasing between the three if I hadn’t been so damn turned on by the idea. The glint in Jake’s eyes suggested he had a pretty damn good idea of what he was doing, too.
And on that note…
I gave him a shove. “No touchy boys, I cannot reapply the magic here.”
“Ha!” Coop snorted. “You don’t need anything to look fantastic. But…” He held up his hands. “This is me backing off. You’ll notice I wasn’t the one to smudge the lipstick.”
“Hey.” Jake popped him in the arm lightly, but both were laughing. Beyond their antics, Ian stared at all of us with a kind of hungry intensity that made me blink. When his gaze snagged on mine, he looked away, and I sighed.
With a shrill whistle, Archie cut through all of the antics. “Car is here in forty minutes. Who wants to get ready first?”
Everyone looked at me, and I motioned to myself. “All I have to do is put on my dress. Why don’t you boys get ready and I’ll clean this up and feed the cats.”
“I’m going to borrow your shower,” Archie said as he stood. “I hope you have a lint roller ready after I’m in my suit.” His words and wink reignited the fire they’d lit earlier with their sex party comments.
Laughter burst out of me. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Yay.”
“Do I want to know?” Coop asked, playful suspicion in every syllable.
“You do,” Archie called as he walked away. “But you’re not going to.”
I laughed again and reached for the pizza box on the table. Ian closed his hand on mine as we both grabbed for the same one. Frozen, I met his gaze, and he yanked his hand back. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Not like I was trying to take his hand. That little tendril of disappointment needed to just die. We were friends. “I’m just gonna get rid of the empties.”
“I can do that.” He was gathering the others and grabbed the one from my hand. “Want me to just consolidate all the leftovers into one box?”
“Um, sure, it’s not like anyone here cares if their food touches the others.”
“This is painful,” Jake commented. “I’m gonna change, baby girl.” He rose and pressed a hand to my lower back. “You good?”
“I’m fine.”
Coop just shook his head. “I’ll take care of the cats.” Then both left me in the living room with Ian, who took care with setting the pizza together and carefully not looking at me.
Folding my arms, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Then I snagged the last box with pizza and added it into the one he’d been compiling. He glanced at me.
“You really okay with me goin
g tonight?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Eyebrows raised, I dared him to challenge me. “We just hung out for the last hour, and we were fine.”
“Yeah but…”
“Friends, Ian.”
“Angel…”
I shook my head. “No. Frankie. Angel was sweet when we were dating, but we’re not.”
“And if I want to again?”
Was he serious right now? I stared at him.
“If I screwed this up, then you’d have every right to tell me to…”
“Stop.”
He grimaced.
“We’re not doing this.” Breaking up with him had been hella hard. Having him here right now and trying to be friends was hard. “You said you couldn’t do it, and that you just wanted to be friends. Well, that’s what I’m doing. Don’t…don’t make this a thing.”
Tears burned in the back of my eyes, and I grabbed the empty boxes from his hands.
“Frankie…”
“Ian, please don’t.” Pivoting on my heel, I headed for the kitchen. Coop stood there, his expression tight and worried. He eased aside as I brushed past him and didn’t try to stop me as I carried the pizza boxes out. The ground was hot against my bare feet, and I probably screwed up all the softening they did at the nail place, but I didn’t care.
All the way to the dumpster, I fought off the tears. Where the hell did he get off just launching that at me tonight? Was that why he wanted to go? Because he changed his mind?
Well, la-de-fucking-dah.
I threw the boxes in the dumpster. The cardboard didn’t have enough weight to actually land with any kind of a bang, and that robbed it of any kind of satisfaction. The stink of the trash didn’t help either.
Turning around, I locked gazes with Coop, who stood waiting on the sidewalk. “He means well,” he said as I approached. “He’s an idiot, but he means well.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Arms spread, I tilted my head back toward the sky. It was still this absolutely perfect day. The sun was warm, the air was cool, and away from the dumpster, it didn’t smell like garbage. “I just want to go and dance and have fun and pretend…”
Keys and Kisses: Untouchable Book Three Page 30
