Beach Reads Box Set

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  Mildred’s cackle echoes down the hallway. Maybe I’ll cast her as a witch instead.

  I stumble outside, then freeze as I see Frankie sweating over her car. The hood is thrown open, her hair’s up in a haphazard bun, and she has car grease on her cheek. I stand there stupidly, committing the image to memory.

  “What?” She straightens and wipes her hands with a rag that’s draped over the headlight. “Never seen a woman fix her car?”

  I swallow. “Sorry. I was…That is…” Walking closer, I peer down at the crazy puzzle of wires and parts. “What’s wrong?”

  “Loose spark plug. Easy fix. Just making sure nothing else is off. First my ‘check engine’ light, now this. Some punk is enjoying fucking with my car.”

  I’m going to throttle a seventy-five-year-old. Mildred obviously doesn’t know Frankie very well. I could have told her tampering this trivially was a waste. Frankie’s the most fiercely independent person I know—of course she can troubleshoot her car’s basic issues.

  A loud noise from nearby makes both of us glance up. The asphalt machine rattles, a slew of construction workers waiting at the edge of the parking lot.

  “Well,” Frankie says as she drops the hood, “thanks for coming to the rescue, but I managed to save myself.”

  “I never doubted it, Frankie.”

  She squints up at me, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Here.” I grunt as her fist connects with my stomach, her blazer balled up in her grip. “Take this inside for me, will you? I’ve got to move the car already, and I’m sweating my ass off.”

  Throwing open her car door, Frankie flicks off the pavers when they whistle at her and peels away toward the alternate parking lot.

  4

  Frankie

  Playlist: “The Love Club,” Lorde

  My whole life, I’ve either been a puzzle or predicament. As a girl, I was obsessed with routines, anxious, and prone to emotional outbursts. I screamed when clothes were put on me and slept terribly. I had one best friend, and I wanted her all to myself. I hated noisy spaces and cried every week at Mass when they used incense.

  As a tween, I’d get so absorbed in reading stories that I forgot to eat all day, talked about books I loved incessantly, cried when they ended, and exhaustively read all fan fic there was. I flipped my shit when my older sister, Gabby, chewed too loudly, when my pants had static cling, when Ma deviated from the meal plan, and when something I left in one place wasn’t there when I went to find it.

  Sometimes, I drove my family nuts. Confused Ma, irritated Nonna, and frustrated Gabby. But Daddy always got me. He’d hold me tight and rock me in his arms. He gave me warm baths and asked Nonna to sew me loose, swingy dresses to wear over the only kind of leggings I could tolerate. Under Nonna’s firm matriarchal power, I was drilled to sit still, focus, listen, be polite. Social clues and unspoken messages whispered around me, too slippery and evasive to catch, so I turned to my peers, watching and mimicking their movements, gestures, sayings, and facial expressions. I played sports, was a good student. I did my best to pass as one of them.

  And for a while, I did. I seemed like a typical kid—whatever the fuck that is—until depression and anxiety after my dad’s death threw me into a tailspin, obliterating the emotional reserves it took to fake normality.

  I was thirteen when I was diagnosed with autism. The psychologist said I’d have been diagnosed sooner if not for my fantastic ability to follow rules, copy behaviors, and pretend I was “normal.” Everyone hits a breaking point, the shrink said. It was only a matter of time before I’d have to stop pretending and get honest about my neurological difference.

  In our traditional Italian Catholic household, dominated by Nonna’s skepticism for anything but prayer as a solution to all problems, it was a wonder I’d been brought for an evaluation at all. It’s a testament to how worn out my mother was that she defied Nonna’s insistence I was just a normal, albeit stubborn, handful. But my mom trusted her intuition, sneaking me to a number of appointments with the pediatric psychologist who eventually diagnosed me. I probably haven’t thanked her enough for that.

  After diagnosis, I started therapy for managing my anxiety, dealing with deviations from my compulsions and obsession through emotional regulation, and coping with that sometimes depressing outside-looking-in feeling most autistics experience.

  Then, as I hit puberty, a growing presence of aches and stiffness creeped into my life. For my seventeenth birthday, I got another diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis. Over the span of one summer, I went from a daily runner and highly active person to someone whose knees and hips were so stiff, I couldn’t get out of bed. A teenager whose hands couldn’t open water bottles or use can openers.

  And that’s when I became a problem, not a person. Perhaps if it had just been autism or arthritis, I’d have been allowed to be an independent, empowered young woman. But with my mother’s fear and anxiety after my dad’s death, she easily tipped into oppressive, infantilizing hovering. Frankie was fragile, broken, and weak. It was suffocating.

  No noisy places, Frankie doesn’t like them.

  Not that ball game, those seats are too hard for her to walk to.

  Frankie can’t be left alone. Who knows what would happen?

  I was an impediment to fun activities and locations, a source of worry and exhaustion, a burden. Wet blanket. Party pooper. Eeyore.

  Until I moved away. My family got to have fun again. And I got a shot at proving to myself I was capable of living on my own, strong and safe and independent.

  And I have proven myself, and then some. Even so, I can admit there are days my life is hard. Autism is a lifelong reality that you’ll never quite catch the cues, follow the timing, see the world like a lot of people do. And sometimes that has isolating, frustrating, depressing reverberations.

  And then there’s rheumatoid arthritis, a bitch of an autoimmune disease for which there’s no cure, only damage control. The sooner you slow chronic inflammation created by the body attacking itself, the better. Because I was quickly diagnosed, medication largely spared my joints permanent damage. But even with good medication and care, flare-ups happen.

  Each time, each flare, my left hip hurts the worst, a favorite hub for my immune system’s overenthusiasm. Three years ago, I developed enough chronic pain and weakness in the joint that a cane was necessary. My family fretted—shocker—that it was a sign of my frailty, being twenty-three and needing a cane.

  But I embraced it. Perhaps because of my autistic brain and its analytical practicality, I didn’t have feelings about the cane. I simply saw its functional advantage. It helped. I was steadier with it. My leg didn’t give out. I didn’t fall on my face. What the hell was bad about that?

  Didn’t hurt that I found a cane that made me feel like a badass Hogwarts witch, either. Do you know how much mileage you can get out of owning an ersatz wand and a stunning memory of charms and hexes? A lot, that’s your answer.

  No, life isn’t always easy or pain-free, but I have a few friends who know and love the real me, and I’ve found comfort and stability with the Elder Wand. I also go to counseling, do physical therapy, ride my stationary bike, practice yoga, swim. I take my meds and find my discomfort and challenges survivable most of the time.

  In short, I have my life managed for the most part. And when it feels less managed, when my immune system and autistic brain sabotage me, I have my trump card: cannabis, which provides a much-needed break from chronic pain and anxiety.

  That’s right. Sometimes, to cope with this wild ride that is my life, I get high. Sometimes, my guy Carter at the medical marijuana dispensary convinces me to try this new “perfect strain,” and after I smoke up, I fly so high, I’m in the stratosphere, and that’s when I know it’s time for Frankie to go to bed. But first she must order Chinese. After sticking a pizza in the oven.

  I’m so hungry. I just polished off the pizza and have moved on to inhaling gummies while I wait for my moo shoo pork, egg rolls, and wonton sou
p, when the doorbell rings. Pretty fast turnaround for the Chinese, but I’m not complaining. Slowly, I shuffle over to answer it.

  Struggling with the bolt, I eventually manage to unlock the door. After I throw it open, I extend a hand to receive my Chinese feast when I realize who I’m seeing.

  I knew I shouldn’t have had that last hit on the doobie. I’m imagining things.

  A mirage of Ren Bergman stands on my stoop, smiling as always, with a blazer thrown over his arm and a small paper-wrapped package in his hands. Tousled, half-wet hair. A sky-blue long-sleeved shirt that makes his eyes pop. Worn jeans and a pair of beat-up Nikes. Goddamn, the man can wear clothes.

  His gaze quickly travels my body as a tomato-red blush stains his cheeks.

  Ah, yes. There’s reality, punching me in the face: Attention, Frankie, you’re in only a pair of boy short undies emblazoned with the Deathly Hallows, barely covered by an oversized Kings hoodie.

  I tug down the sweatshirt, wishing it was long enough to reach the tops of my neon green compression socks, which stop just above my kneecaps. I wear them because they give my joints a sensory-friendly, pain-relieving squeeze.

  My cheeks burn as heat more intense than any flare roars from my toes to the crown of my head. Just staring at Phantom Ren stirs a heavy ache low in my belly.

  As I take stock of my raging-to-life libido and the less sexually appealing aspects of my outfit—which would be all of them—I begin to have a crisis of sorts. I am aroused by the sight of Ren Bergman. Again. First in the locker room, then at Louie’s, then in the training room today. And now, here, at my front door. I’ve always thought him striking—because duh, he is—but I just tried to ignore it. And now, it seems I can’t anymore. I saw an enticing side of him when he threw down with Matt, and now I can’t unsee it. I can’t stop thinking about it, honestly.

  He’s not real. That’s what I need to focus on. The real Ren has no reason to be here, looking like sex on a cinnamon stick. Meaning it won’t hurt anything if I allow myself to ogle this figment of my high-as-a-kite imagination.

  I stare at him, falling headlong into those wintry irises. I stare. And stare. And stare.

  But like all fantasies, my indulgence in it has to end. Taking a deep breath, I slam the door on the mirage. Otherwise, I might get imaginatively carried away and invite Fictitious Ren in, then fantasize about undressing him with a ferocious need to know if the carpet matches the gorgeous ginger curtains.

  And that, I simply can’t afford to do.

  I’m not sure how long the door’s been closed. How long I’ve been panting for air, my back against its smooth surface as I wait for my body to cool off from my hallucinations. I am never smoking that weed again, seeing as it’s clearly laced with something else. Carter at the dispensary has some answering to do.

  But then Ren’s voice dashes all hope that this is a drug-induced fantasy. “Frankie?”

  I yelp, jumping away from the door as nimbly as I can.

  “Y-yes?” I peer through the peephole.

  Mary Mother of Jesus Riding on a Donkey, that hair. In moonlight, it’s the precise color of a faded copper penny.

  I must have been a real asshole in a past life, because karma seems bent on punishing me this round. Namely, my inability to moderate myself with those prohibitively expensive root beer gummies that I can only buy from extortionist third-party sellers, and being a total freak for the ginger man-candy of this world, who are of course the most statistically rare of male species.

  In retribution for whatever I did as some remorseless cat in a former life, cosmic forces placed the United States’ finest redhead specimen in my sphere and made him entirely off-limits. He’s a team member. I’m staff. Ren and I are forbidden. Verboten. Impossibile. Interdit. Not. Allowed. I can’t be attracted to a player on the team. I can’t even think about being attracted to him.

  “Frankie.” Ren’s voice is muffled from the other side of the door. “Is everything okay?”

  Clearing my throat, I wrench open the door again, quickly tugging down my hoodie in a hopeless effort to look dignified.

  “Sorry about that. You surprised me.” Stepping back, I motion him in. “I was expecting Chinese food.”

  His brow furrows. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “That’s okay. I just ate a whole pizza and pounded a bag of root beer gummies. I’m due for some GI rest.”

  Leaning his shoulder against my doorjamb, Ren’s features shift to something warm, maybe amused. There’s that cheery, ain’t-nothin’-gonna-bring-me-down smile that drives me up the goddamn wall. Mostly because I wish I could replicate it. Then people might not think I’m such a grump when in reality I just can’t voluntarily make myself smile.

  “You’re stoned, aren’t you?” he says.

  “Excuse you.” I sniff indignantly. “I’m as sober as a nun.” As soon as I say it, I search my extensive memory for that simile and come up empty. There’s a good chance I just pulled it out of my ass. Damn.

  Ren grins. “The nuns I know are notorious partiers.”

  There he is, rolling with it, being nice. Curse him, this unreasonably nice man.

  “Guess you found the cool nuns, then,” I tell him. “The ones I knew smacked my hands with rulers in grade school and made me stand in the corner for my insolence.”

  Ren’s laugh is soft and warm. “You? Insolent?”

  I turn toward the kitchen as I hear my dog Pazza start barking from the backyard, just in time to see her throw her paws up to the window.

  When I glance over my shoulder, I notice Ren is where I left him, at the threshold. He seems hesitant to advance.

  “That’s just my dog out back. She’s harmless…sort of. Well, not really. I was worried she’d maul the delivery guy, so she’s outside.”

  Ren blanches.

  “I’ll keep her outside,” I tell him, dropping onto my giant exercise ball with a groan. “I just need to sit, Zenzero. Come on. If you want to talk, here’s where we’re doing it.”

  Ren closes the door behind him and walks slowly through my living room, his eyes roaming the place curiously. His smile stays but he looks… Is it shy? Nervous? God, what I’d give to better read faces.

  Gently, he sets down his arms’ contents. First, a blazer, which I now recognize as mine. Then, the package he was holding. He slides it across the kitchen counter, pushing it my way. “Your jacket that you left behind,” he says. “And a gift of thanks for letting the Shakespeare Club angle go.”

  I frown up at him. “You don’t understand how much that hurt. We’re the LA Kings. I had a skit in my head. Costumes and lines. So much material to work, ya know? King Lear. Henry IV, Henry V, Richard II, Richard III, Macbeth. Cymbeline. King John. That’s not even all of them…” My voice dies off as I search Ren’s enigmatic expression. “What? Have I shocked you with my categorical knowledge of Shakespeare?”

  “A little bit.” It comes out hoarse.

  “Don’t get too attached to the idea. I just know all the titles and some lines here and there that I had to memorize for a quiz back in college. I don’t know much about most of them otherwise.”

  Ren clears his throat and shakes his head, snapping himself out of whatever that was. His easy smile is back as he pushes the package closer. “Right. Well, I didn’t want to make it weird by giving it to you at work tomorrow, and I thought it would be even weirder if I mailed it to you. Plus, I had your jacket, so…”

  Yanking the package my way, I tug warily at the string. Knots are the bane of the arthritic’s existence. But the string unravels effortlessly.

  I glance up at him and feel myself smile. “Thanks for avoiding the double knot.”

  He smiles bashfully and nods. My smile deepens as an unfamiliar warmth floods my chest. I pull the paper away, tearing it easily. A bundle of soft cotton drops onto the counter and I lift the fabric. “A dress shirt?”

  Ren steps closer, flipping it over before he smooths it along the granite counter. I stare at his hands l
onger than is most likely “appropriate.” But they’re…beautiful. Long and faintly freckled. Upon closer inspection, they’re also red at the knuckles, like he recently punched something.

  “Maddox ruined your other one,” he says. “And I was pretty sure it looked like this. Is it a good match?”

  I stare at the shirt, processing what he’s saying, my fingers sliding along the buttons. They’re different. I can tell that immediately. I have four of the same shirts, pants, and blazers that I wear to all games, and while this shirt looks almost identical, I can feel its difference. I pull at the shirt gently and watch it snap apart.

  “The buttons—” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “The buttons are adhered to a durable magnet. The panel around them holds the opposite magnetic pull and is reinforced so they can take a good tug.”

  I normally leave my shirts buttoned but for the top two, so I can slip them over my head and not deal with buttoning them. Buttons are a bit hard for my hands—especially early in the day or late in the evening, when they’re at their stiffest. Despite the pains I take to ensure my clothes are comfortable, I never considered clothes could be easier while still allowing me to wear what I wanted.

  “Ren, where did you…” My throat feels weird, thick with an emotion I can’t begin to name.

  “My sister is a physical therapist, but she’s an overachiever who nerds out on adaptive everything, from clothing to kitchen utensils.” He shrugs. “She’s mentioned them before, said a shop in the Fashion District sold them.”

  Peering up at Ren, I am so damn confused. Clearly, he’s aware of my challenges, to the point he bought something for me out of consideration. Yet there’s no trace of that stifling, demeaning claustrophobia I’ve felt with just about everyone else I know. In this moment with Ren, I just feel…seen. And I feel a terrible need to kiss him.

  Damn weed. It’s all to blame.

  Weed never makes you this horny.