by N. N. Britt
“You have your hands full.”
“That doesn’t mean you should hide things from me. That’s not how it works.”
Frank was silent. His gaze wandered around the bedroom aimlessly. I’d left the shades up when I went to sleep and daylight was slowly creeping inside through the massive window. The ocean rumbled softly as the clouds of morning fog floated lazily across the sky.
Sensing his tension, I sat up and studied his face. “You wanted me near, so here I am. Talk to me.”
His features remained hard, his eyes dark and stormy. “The doctor said there’s a risk the plate fragments could reach the artery.”
Dread prickled my spine. I needed a moment to process. “What does that mean?”
He dismissed my question. “It’ll be fine. It’s only a temporary setback, doll. The surgery should take care of the problem.”
“Frank.” I turned to face him. “You need to take a break.”
He looked at me strangely. “I am taking a break.”
“No, you’re not resting enough.”
“What do you suggest? That I just let it all go? Twenty years of my life? I thought we had this conversation yesterday.”
“I know you’re going to hate me for saying this, and yes, Dante is an asshole, but he’s right. You’re not well enough to keep up with the touring schedule.”
“Don’t, Cassy.” He shook his head in denial.
“Okay, fine. Have it your way.” Annoyance coursed through me. I slid from the bed and grabbed my phone from the nightstand.
“Where are you going?”
“To do some work,” I said as I headed out. “Please get some sleep.”
The office was quiet. My laptop sat on the desk next to Frank’s. The first rays of light that peeked shyly from behind the mountain range spilled over the walls and floor. I flopped into a chair and spun, trying to get my thoughts in order.
Levi was right. Frank monopolized all my time, even when he wasn’t around, and I hated it because there were other things that required my attention. My brother, my mother, my prior commitments to Rewired. End of the year editorials. Lastly, Isabella’s documentary.
We’d already conducted over twenty interviews and collected a great deal of new footage. It made sense to start cutting the rough draft, but Levi wanted to wait a few weeks in case Frank was willing to make another appearance at the upcoming rehearsal or a live show. Only, I wasn’t sure he had the time or desire for philanthropy. At least, not right now.
I spent the entire morning researching potential venues for the screening and sending emails. It was nearly noon when a Jay Brodie PR press release hit my inbox.
An hour later, the news was all over social media.
KBC Universal confirmed they weren’t sure Frankie Blade was fit to continue as the lead singer of Hall Affinity.
There were no further comments from the label’s rep or the band’s management, but the following morning, Jay Brodie issued another statement to the press.
Dante Martinez Doesn’t Want to Tour with Frankie Blade, the tabloid headlines screamed.
Those weren’t Dante’s exact words, but he agreed with KBC nonetheless, and that was all the press needed to spin it the way they wanted for more shock value.
Something was coming. I felt it with every cell in my body. Something dark. Something disturbing.
It happened right after Thanksgiving.
The world was festive and happy in anticipation of the upcoming holidays. Brooklyn hired a designer to set up a huge Christmas tree in the front yard and another one in the living room. Billy and Janet flew back from Arizona because of the legal dealings with the rest of the Hall Affinity band members. Nothing was official yet, but it was going to happen sooner rather than later. Dante and Johnny were in talks with their attorneys as well.
The word lawsuit lingered in the cool air like a stray snowflake after a storm.
As opposed to Frank’s family, mine was modest when it came to celebrations in general. My father had always managed to make our holidays miserable.
Thanksgiving at my mom’s was quiet. On Black Friday, I took Ashton to the mall to buy him a video camera. Then we went to help our mother with her Christmas tree.
After six hours of unpacking, arranging, and hanging all the ornaments, we sat in the living room and stared at the results of our labor with cups of hot cocoa in our hands.
“When were you going to tell me about your boyfriend?” my mother questioned out of the blue.
I shot a sideways glance at Ashton. He slumped in his chair silently, eyes wide.
“When the time was right?” I squealed, slurping on my drink.
“What does he do? Isn’t he in some kind of rock band?” Apparently, my mother knew very little, which was a relief.
“He is.” I nodded.
“I hope he’s not doing drugs, Cassy.”
“No, Mom. He’s not.”
Liar! my voice screamed inside my head.
We left my mother’s an hour later.
“Did you tell her?” I punched Ashton on the shoulder as soon as we climbed into my Honda. I didn’t dare drive the Porsche in this part of town.
“Ouch.” He winced.
“You know this is just between me and you.”
“I know, but you’re gone all the time. She keeps asking where you are when she calls.”
“Tell her I’m in the shower.” I flung my hands in the air and gave him a dead stare.
“She’s going to find out sooner or later. It’s online anyway.”
My brother’s words were an equivalent of a kick in the head. “What’s online?”
“You and Frank.” Ashton pulled out his phone, typed something in, and handed it over to me.
There on the screen was a collage of our TMZ photos, along with the information about my height, weight, hair color, and a list of all the places I’d allegedly either been seen with Frank or in his proximity. Not all the information was accurate, but the blogger made a pretty good argument.
My pulse tripped as I read through the post. “Shit.” I heard myself mutter as I returned the phone to Ashton. “Can you send me the link?”
“Why can’t you just come out with it?” he pondered.
“It’s a little bit more complicated than that.” I started the car.
“What’s complicated about it?”
“Oh, Ashton.” I shook my head with a sigh. “Trust me. You’re about to find out. Adulting is hard.”
I dropped off my brother in Burbank and headed to Malibu. It was nearly midnight when I finally pulled up to the house. The lights inside were off and the darkness worried me.
Frank didn’t care about electricity. There was always something blazing either on the terrace or in the living room at this hour, especially with guests over and the Christmas decor extravaganza set up.
I marched through the house, looking for signs of life, but the silence was thick, almost impenetrable. Chills rolled down my spine.
“Frank?” I called, traveling over to the east wing. The door to the studio was wide open, and that’s when I saw him. He was hunched over the mixing board, a drink sitting next to him.
I stopped on the threshold, unsure whether entering his private space where he created his songs was okay. It was one room inside the house I’d been to once briefly, the room that was off limits to anyone who wasn’t somehow involved in making music.
Cold danced along my skin.
“Hi,” I said, shuffling my feet.
Frank lifted his gunmetal gaze from the board and looked at me through the darkness. The studio didn’t have any windows, so its only source of light was the glimmer of the control buttons and the streak of moonlight hitting the stretch of hallway behind me.
He continued to stare. No words were said. I took it as permission to enter the room.
My eyes slid to the drink. I took a deep breath and tried to calm the burst of panic and rage forming within me.
“How was your day?
” Frank asked absently, leaning back in his chair. His voice was a soft slur, and his right arm, which was still set in a cast, hung limp. He was scheduled for a second surgery next week.
“I saw my mom and hung out with Ashton. How was yours?” I skipped the part about the fan site my brother had come across. I’d send the link to Linda instead.
“Oh, you know. Same shit. My best friend is trying to steal my band.” The anger in his tone was disturbing.
I reached for his shoulder. “Let’s go to bed.”
He shifted and rested his left hand on my thigh. I felt the tremor of his grasp against my skin and smelled the liquor on his breath. Old memories of my father swept me under. He hadn’t been a violent drunk, but his indifference had hurt me just as much. He hadn’t been there for us when Ashton and I needed a ride to school, because our mother was working two jobs. He hadn’t been there for us when everyone else’s parents took their kids to Disneyland, because he didn’t want to leave the comfort of our apartment. He didn’t like the world and the world didn’t like him, and in the end, his responsibilities had crushed him. We, his own family, had crushed him.
The darkness inside the studio began to choke me, but I stepped closer and gave in to the lingering warmth of Frank’s sloppy embrace. I let him wrap his arms around me, let him rub his stubbly cheek over my shirt. He was like a child. Uncertain in his thoughts and his movements. Together, we were plummeting into an abyss of desolation. And I didn’t like the emptiness this fall filled me with a single bit.
“Come on,” I whispered, brushing my fingers through his hair. “You need to lie down.”
“I hate this,” he mumbled into my chest.
“Frank, you’re drunk and it’s late. Why don’t we talk about this tomorrow when your head is in the right place.”
“My head hasn’t been in the right place for years, doll.” He laughed bitterly.
“Don’t say that.”
“I counted all my surgeries today. Do you want to know how many times I’ve gone under the knife?”
I felt the hard press of his cast as he slid closer and molded his body to mine.
“Sixteen.”
“Do you want me to call the doctor?” I asked the first thing that came to mind. I didn’t know if he was in pain or just delusional from the mixture of pills and alcohol, but the shake in his voice worried me sick.
“No.”
“Do you want me to get Janet?”
“They’re gone.”
“Back to Arizona?”
“Yes. I’m tired of people.”
“Frank, you need rest. All this legal stuff is wearing you down. Can you stop worrying about it for a few days?”
“That’s easy for you to say, doll. You don’t own a fucking million-dollar enterprise.”
His words cut me open. I pulled my hands out of his hair and took a step back, needing to create some sort of distance between us. He hadn’t been the same since the accident, and each day that passed put us on completely different ends of our relationship spectrum.
“I’m sorry.” I heard his whisper. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” I asked, balling my hands into fists.
The silence grew thick. The room felt hot and the air burned my lungs and throat. I couldn’t breathe. This, the way we were now, was suffocating me. It was as if he was speaking an entirely different language, a language I didn’t understand.
Ignoring my question, Frank posed his own. “Have you ever skydived?”
“No, Frank. What does that have to do with us?” Exhaustion clutched my voice.
“I did it a couple of times before the crash.” He fell back into the chair, his gaze never leaving mine. “There’s this moment, right after you jump out of the plane, when the wind hits you and all your bones vibrate… That’s always the scariest part because you lose control of everything you are and your mind freezes. It’s beautiful. That fraction of a second when you don’t need to decide or do anything. Instead, you just let the world carry you. Then it hits you. All the responsibilities that are waiting for you below. You have two options. Keep flying or deploy the parachute.”
Frank quieted.
My heart thump-thumped in my chest like crazy.
“You know what I always thought about when I was deciding whether I wanted to die flying or go back to Earth and continue being the puppet that I was?” He gave me a sad one-sided smile.
I shook my head.
“I wondered if people needed me. I wondered if I was making them happy. Because if I couldn’t make my own mother happy, how would I make a stranger happy? I felt her repulsion toward me every single day of the first three years of my life.”
“What are you talking about, Frank? You make your parents happy. You and your music make millions of others happy. You make me happy.” Not at this particular moment, but he did nonetheless.
“I made you sad, Cassy.”
“That’s not true.”
“That’s what you said when we met. Remember? ‘Ambivalent’ reminded you of your father. The ones we love the most hurt us the most. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it will always be.”
“You made me feel, Frank. That’s what music is meant to do.”
“Feelings are overrated.”
That was the strangest thing that had ever come out of his mouth.
“You’re drunk.”
“Look who’s talking.” He laughed softly. “If my memory serves me right, you were hammered when we met.”
“It wasn’t my best moment.”
“Oh, it definitely was. I wouldn’t have asked you out otherwise. Yoga is a big turn-on.”
I bit back my smile as the memories of my first unofficial meeting with Frank during Dante’s party flashed through my mind. The man could be a charmer when he wanted.
“You don’t believe me?” He cocked an eyebrow.
“I believe you, but can we talk about it later?” I held out my hand, hoping he’d get the hint. “I have a really long day tomorrow. My mom and I are trying to find Ashton a decent car for his birthday, and I need to be up early to make it on time for Isabella’s studio session.”
“Give him one of mine.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I stepped closer, gesturing for him to get up. “He’s eighteen. A Ferrari will be out of his league probably for another ten or fifteen years.”
“You underestimate him. I drove my first car when I was fifteen.”
“You’re an exception, Frank. My brother is not. He needs to learn what it means to actually earn things, not just get them at the snap of a finger from his sister’s boyfriend.”
“Say that again.”
“Which part?”
“The boyfriend part.” His lips stretched into a lazy, drunk smile. He was impossible to be mad at. “I like it.”
“Will you please stop being a baby and let me help you?” I grabbed his hand, and when he wouldn’t budge, I rolled my eyes and said, “Boyfriend.” His smile turned into a huge grin and he stood.
His body swayed dangerously as we walked through the hallway. The house was still and quiet, and all the Christmas lights in the living room were off. I stopped for a second to turn them on, and Frank continued into the bedroom on autopilot. He slowed down when he was halfway there and leaned against the wall for support. Then his back brushed the frame of one of the paintings as I hurried to catch him. He was heavy against my shoulder and we were a messy tangle of clothes and limbs when we finally reached the bed. He sat on the edge, his head hanging while I rearranged the pillows to make sure they were high enough for him to be comfortable.
“Don’t do this again,” I said, my voice something between a shake and a gasp as I struggled to lay him down.
The smell of liquor hit my face when he began to ramble, “I’m putting you through hell, aren’t I?” His palm slipped over the curve of my hip.
“You are,” I agreed, sitting next to him. “But I’m willing to sti
ck around.” It was half joke, half the truth.
“You don’t have to.”
“That’s what people do, Frank.” I drew a deep breath through my teeth. My stomach was woozy with what I was about to say. “When they love someone. They stick around.”
The elephant had entered the room.
Frank didn’t react. His fingers were a fixed grip around my waist. I didn’t know whether the lack of response was a case of melted brain from excessive liquor consumption or just an honest kind of reply because he didn’t have anything to say to me in return, but the silence hurt.
I freed myself from his grasp. The floor beneath me shifted and the oxygen left my lungs.
“Cassy?” he rasped out in a weak, dying whisper.
I wanted to take my last sentence back. Badly. I’d messed up. I shouldn’t have said it while he was drunk, but I’d been carrying these feelings around in me for so long, they were bound to run free one day.
“I think I’m going to work for a bit. Get some rest.”
I walked out of the bedroom and shut the door. My chest went in and out, following the mad beats of my weeping heart. I hated how attached it was to Frank, how my every cell wanted to be glued to his forever. He was like the nucleus of an atom, binding all my neutrons and protons together within him and keeping me whole.
Stupid, stupid Cassy, my inner voice screamed as I rushed to the living room, toward the lights. The walls and the windows glittered as greens, golds, and reds slid across them.
My phone squawked in my purse on the couch. It was late, but I grabbed it anyway. The text was from Linda. She wanted to know how I’d come across the article about Frank and me.
My brother. Do we have a problem?
Linda Schwab: Not unless it gets on TMZ or BuzzFeed’s radar, which is highly unlikely. I’ll keep an eye on it.
Thank you.
Then I paced. This house was suddenly suffocating me with its luxury, but I was too scared to leave Frank alone. What kind of woman would desert her man when he was at his lowest? It didn’t feel right. So I stayed. I returned to the bedroom and lay by his side, listening to the sound of his labored breathing until sleep finally swept me under.
Frank was still in bed when I left for Hollywood. A conversation about what had happened last night, specifically the drinking part, was in order, but I decided to postpone it until the evening because my mother was waiting for me.