by Kris Ripper
She nodded. “Was it awful?”
“The party was fine. And I’m super happy for my cousin. Med school was a total nightmare, and she’s wanted to be a doctor ever since we were kids, so this is a huge deal.”
When he started picking at the little bits of tape stuck to the side of the dispenser instead of continuing, Frankie nudged him. “I sense a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
“I don’t know. My parents are absolutely the greatest parents ever. They totally never put pressure on me to have a career, and they always let me know that if I wanted one, they’d support me, pay for school, whatever. They’re pretty wonderful. But then I was watching my aunt and uncle, and how proud they are to be standing at their daughter’s med school graduation, and it hit me that when people ask my folks what I’m doing, they have to be like, ‘Oh, he works for slightly more than minimum wage at a tiny bookstore in a strip mall.’”
Frankie winced, even though she figured that wasn’t really how Logan’s parents would say it. “Ouch.”
“Right.” He smiled wryly. “Ouch. I mean, most of the time I’m okay with being an underachiever. Today I’m feeling kind of not that thrilled with it as a life plan.”
“Okay. So what do you want to do?” She gestured around to the store. “Since apparently the fabulous world of Planet Book just isn’t enough for you.” For a second she thought she’d said the wrong thing, but his resulting slump didn’t seem directed at her.
“That’s the thing. Planet Book really is enough for me. For right now, anyway. I like the work, and I’m used to Izzy, and I know all the regulars.” Logan’s eyes drifted away. “And you’re here. I really like knowing I’ll see you all the time, and if we didn’t work together, I might not.”
The idea that Logan could leave the store hadn’t been real. And probably it wasn’t. But Frankie could see that future, too, and he was right. If they didn’t work together, she wouldn’t find excuses to show up at his apartment. Maybe he’d stop by the bookstore sometimes, but the constant daily experience of each other’s lives would fade until they were nearly strangers, occupying that strange twilight acquaintanceship of peers who’d moved on.
She jumped down from the counter. “I don’t want that. You leaving the store. Don’t do that. I mean, unless you want to.”
“Admit it: you’d miss me horribly.”
“You wish.”
Instead of coming back at her, he just stood there with a slightly crooked smile on his face.
Frankie relented. “I’d miss you a little, but only because I have an appreciation for your work ethic.”
“And I’m pretty sure you like hanging out with me.”
She decided to ignore that. “What do you want to do really? I mean, we aren’t that old, but sometimes I think I’m old enough to, like, have some kind of goal. My cousin Carey always wanted to be a lawyer, and now he is. My cousin Adam was a slacker for years and then just sort of stumbled into massage therapy, and now he’s deep into it, like it’s the only thing he could ever do. I don’t have anything like that.”
“Maybe we will later.” Logan shrugged. “Or maybe we never will. Maybe that’s not something everyone needs. I don’t know. But I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s happy with the job I have, even if it’s not a career. Anyway, now it’s your turn. Distract me with Derries.”
“Ew. That’s gross.” But she regaled him with family tales, including how apparently some of the cousins were actually thinking about marriage in a serious way that made it hard to tease them, which was both bizarre and unsettling.
Add “marriage” to “career” on the list of things Frankie was supposed to want, but didn’t.
*
Singer and Lisa Thurman walking in just after Frankie’s lunch was a little bit of a surprise.
“As I live and breathe!” she called. “Lisa fuckin’ Thurman, you’re out in the world!”
Logan elbowed her. “You want to watch your language?”
“What?” She gestured to their only customer. “Michael’s not going to complain. Are you, Michael?”
Michael half turned. “And voluntarily start a conversation with your boss? No thanks. Curse away. Even if it does demonstrate a lack of imagination, Frankie.”
“That’s enough out of you,” she shot back.
Logan held a hand out to Lisa Thurman. “You almost definitely don’t remember me from school. I’m Logan.”
“I’m Lisa.” Lisa avoided eye contact, which seemed to be her jam these days. It was weird trying to reconcile “Lisa 1.0”—who was desperate to be looked at—with the new version, who seemed to detest being noticed. Still, she shook hands with Logan like a normal person. Which was probably growth.
Sigh. Polite people were so boring.
Frankie focused on Singer. “Where’s your family?”
The skin around his eyes tightened. “Out to lunch with Cathy.”
“But not you? What’re you doing—babysitting Lisa?”
Lisa cracked a smile. Singer didn’t.
“Jake and Mother…” He trailed off. “Anyway, he already had Miles packed up before I realized they were going somewhere.”
Frankie narrowed her eyes, like maybe she could read whatever was going on if she only looked closely enough. “The hell does that mean?”
To her surprise, it was Lisa who explained.
“She bit his head off for putting away the pots and pans incorrectly, but it was really, you know, more about how she’s seething with resentment about being displaced. Mother really needs therapy.” At Singer’s pointed look, she shrugged.
None of this made a lot of sense, though the idea that Lisa had been to enough shrinks to say shit like seething with resentment about being displaced was pretty amusing.
Frankie was just gearing up to interrogate Singer about why the hell he hadn’t gone to lunch with Jake and Miles when he spoke first. “So, no dragon lady today?”
“Izzy went home already, so we can assume she’s doing naughty things with her new ladyfriend we aren’t supposed to know about.”
Logan sighed in resignation. “Frankie…”
“So, Izzy has a secret friend?” The wheedling tone in Singer’s voice immediately made her suspicious. “Who does that remind me of?”
No, no, no, fuck no. Frankie raised the book she was holding. “Don’t make me hurt you with literature, Singer.”
“You have a secret friend?” Logan poked her. “Who’s your secret friend?”
“Oh my god, no I don’t, and shut up.” This was going downhill fast. She brandished the book at Singer again. “Shut. Up.”
“You’ve never once hesitated to stick your nose in my business, Frances.”
“Because you keep screwing it up. My business is just fine without your interference.”
“Too late,” Logan said. “C’mon, Frankie, tell me who it is.”
“I want to know, too!” Michael called over, because apparently eavesdropping was more fun than the new James Patterson.
“Everyone shut up. You I can fire, and you three I can kick out of the store, so shut up.”
Singer blithely ignored her, turning instead to Logan. “Logan, out of curiosity, do you and Frankie text each other?”
Logan—that bastard, that turncoat—grinned. “Yeah, I was thinking I better be Frankie’s secret friend.” He poked her again. “You keeping me a secret for some reason?”
“It’s not like that,” she mumbled. Dammit. She should be messing with Singer right now. How the hell had he gotten the upper hand so quickly? “I have, like, work to do. In the back.”
“I think Frankie and I should be dating, but she insists it’s a bad idea, even though we both want to be dating,” Logan explained to them.
And maybe it was because of their conversation earlier, or maybe it was because this was the closest
to his usual light and cheery self he’d been all day, but she didn’t immediately contradict him.
She settled for death threats. Death threats were always appropriate. “I will kill all of you.”
Singer raised his eyebrows at her. “Why aren’t you dating Logan?”
“Because reasons, okay?” Fucking hell. Juggling omissions was really obnoxious. “It wouldn’t work out. And shut up.”
And oh, look, the penny dropped. Logan’s eyes widened. “Oh, okay. Sorry. I just assumed since Jake knows—”
“No.”
He looked stricken, which unsettled her. It reminded Frankie too much of that moment earlier, when he’d talked about not seeing her all the time, like he’d exposed a little more of himself than he usually did. “God, I’m such a tool. Sorry, Frankie. I am now that asshole.”
“What asshole?” Singer asked.
This was officially beyond what she could handle without outright lying. Frankie made a split-second decision, based on two simultaneously strong desires: to end the conversation, and to avoid it ever happening again. Fuck it. Singer could be trusted with this, even if he was making a wreck of his own life.
She rolled her eyes, as if none of it mattered. “I’m asexual. Okay? I’m not dating Logan because I’m ace and he isn’t, so thus, it wouldn’t work out. Christ. Can I go on with my day now please?”
Logan reached out. “Frankie—”
“We are so not dating now. Jerk.” But she let him leave his hand on her arm. It seemed to make him feel better.
Singer, though. He was gonna be a problem. “I think people make that work. Don’t they?”
“My cousin’s asexual,” Michael volunteered from the back corner. “He has girlfriends sometimes. I think they just don’t usually have sex.”
“Oh my god. This is my nightmare.” Frankie mimed slamming a fancy hardcover Dickens collection into her head. “This is that dream where you’re naked in front of the whole school, only it’s the bookstore, and I’m not naked, I just feel naked.”
Logan’s hand tightened. “I had no idea you weren’t out to Singer, Frankie. Shit, I am so—”
“Shut up.” It definitely wasn’t worth that much contrition, and it wasn’t that big a secret. It was just something she hadn’t gotten around to telling everyone yet. “Anyway, I trust the Thurman kids way more than I trust Derries.”
Singer visibly shook himself, and it would have been funny in a slightly less fraught moment. He opened his mouth, closed it, tried again. “Wait, you didn’t tell— Carey doesn’t know?”
“No, Singer. Because I actually don’t want to talk about it.”
There. End of fucking discussion.
Lisa looked up. “I get being afraid, but you should go for it. It’s not worth avoiding everything that’s scary.”
“Says the woman who never leaves her house.”
“Yeah.” Lisa gestured to the store. “Exactly.”
Jesus, outsmarted by Lisa goddamn Thurman. Unacceptable. Frankie was poised to attack when Logan’s hand slid down her forearm until his fingers interlaced with hers.
She promptly forgot what the hell she’d been planning to say. “Well, thanks for the pep talk, Thurmans. Move along now, unless you’re actually buying books.”
“You have any books on asexuality?” Singer asked.
Frankie raised the hardcover again.
“I’ll just browse.” He didn’t quite hide his smile. “I knew you had a secret friend.”
“I will kill you in your sleep.”
He waved her off and turned toward the nearest bookshelf.
Frankie started to shake her head, but when Logan tugged her closer, she went. “You’re in the doghouse,” she informed him.
“Yeah, uh, upon reflection, I think maybe I crossed a line at some point and didn’t notice it? Because seriously, I feel like that asshole who keeps asking a woman out when she says she’s not interested. I thought we were both sort of … playing? But I’m gonna stop doing that now, because I don’t want to, like, actually pressure you. That is so not fun.”
“Oh, like you could ever make me do anything, dummy. Please. You’re not in the doghouse for that.” She couldn’t bring herself to pull her hand away, so she settled for planting the other one firmly on her hip and staring at him.
“I’m still really sorry about, uh, outing you to your family.” His expression was so sincerely remorseful she couldn’t hang on to anything but the desire to make him feel better. Which was annoying.
She forced herself not to tell him it was okay. Because kind of, it wasn’t. But it also wasn’t as big a deal as she’d thought it would be, at least not with Singer and Lisa.
Logan shifted on his feet, a motion she felt through their joined hands. “Clearly I should do something to make it up to you. Black Butler marathon later?”
“I need a Sebastian.”
“I will totally cosplay Sebastian for you, Frankie.”
“Go away, you.” But he didn’t, and it wasn’t so bad, standing there close to him. In fact, it wasn’t bad at all.
Frankie decided she’d have to make sense of that some other time.
24
Singer
52 days with Miles
The phone rang a few minutes after 9:30 a.m. Singer was contemplating another half cup of coffee with weary obsession; it had been the rare bad night of sleep, and Miles had ended up between them in the bed, finally getting back to sleep around three with his head on Jake’s back and his feet tucked up against Singer.
It was the most connected he’d felt to Jake in days.
Brandi was on the phone. Marie was dragging Miles’s mom to Social Services for paperwork. If they wanted a visit and they were free, this was a good opportunity. Eleven o’clock. Sorry for the late notice.
He only had to meet Jake’s eyes to know their answer. A chance to meet Miles’s mother? A chance for him to see her? Of course they’d drop everything.
So he texted Alice the change in plans. (Her response was immediate: We’ll do lunch over the weekend then, and you can tell us all about her. Can you take pictures? I’d love to paint her for him.) Jake got Miles into one of the complicated and correspondingly cuter outfits Mother had bought for him during one of her frequent shopping trips, which Singer understood as stand-ins for actual engagement.
She couldn’t say, “You made me a grandmother.” She could say, “I picked some things up for him just in case you need to take him somewhere nice.” Implied: The rest of his clothes are trashy, but these could pass for decent.
They were out the door in forty-five minutes. A well-oiled machine. Mostly because he and Jake only exchanged the minimum words necessary for each interaction. Singer’s entire life was now avoidance. He avoided talking to Jake for fear of a fight. He avoided talking to Frankie for fear she’d see that he was avoiding Jake. Frankie had witnessed minor arguments before, had shared a pot of tea with him in the aftermath of nearly every disagreement he and Jake had ever had, while Jake was off taking a run, which may or may not have been code for smoking pot.
These days he wasn’t up late enough for tea, and Jake was neither running nor leveling out his anxiety with marijuana. And Frankie was no longer in the guesthouse. She’d been replaced by Mother, who was never good company, but least of all after a fight with Jake. Not that they’d had a fight. God, what the hell were they doing? Singer banished all thoughts and tried to concentrate on meeting Miles’s mom.
“I’m nervous,” Jake murmured as they entered the now familiar building, where the air tasted like cardboard dust.
“I think it’s happening too fast for me to be nervous.” Singer switched the diaper bag to his other arm and added, “Also, I had more coffee than you did. We’ll stop somewhere when we leave.”
Jake smiled at him for a second, like it was nothing, and Singe
r felt his stomach roll with disorientation. They’d lost easy smiles, he realized. They’d lost all noncrucial expressions.
Brandi ushered them into a different—but barely—visitor room, and Marie was already there, with a young woman who had to be Miles’s mother. She was tall, with sharp features and soft eyes, a hint of baby fat still clinging to her cheeks and neck, though otherwise she was slender.
“Oh my god, look at you! You’re huge! Happy almost-birthday, baby!”
Marie, off to the side, muttered, “That’s what happens when you miss two whole months of a baby’s life. I told you.” If Miles’s mother heard the comment, she ignored it.
“Regina,” Brandi said, and despite the vocal disapproval, she was smiling. “This is Jake and Singer. This is Regina, Miles’s mom.”
“Let me see you, baby!” Regina pulled Miles into her arms. “Mama, he looks fine. He looks just like his daddy.” To Jake she explained, “She said you weren’t feeding him right, but he looks fine to me. Sorry, I totally didn’t hear your name.”
“I’m Jake. This is Singer.”
They shook hands with her, greeted Marie, and nodded to Brandi when she said she’d be back in a few minutes. Mostly, Singer watched the way Miles stared up at his mother, not quite smiling, but transfixed by her, as Regina recited a nonstop narrative of everything she’d done since she last saw him.
Singer and Jake sat down beside each other on the little two-seater sofa. He could see Marie, beyond, also watching, but Marie’s face was set on anger as if at any second it could crack into grief. Singer was uncomfortably reminded of Mother and tried to banish the image.
“I can’t believe my baby’s about to be a year old. I forgot to bring his presents, but Brandi said maybe we can do another visit soon.” She paused for breath. “So how’d you guys meet?”
“High school, actually,” Singer said, suddenly self-conscious under Marie’s dubious scrutiny.
“Oh my god, were you high school sweethearts? Me and Miles’s daddy were high school sweethearts. He’s buggin’, he’s all, ‘I don’t want no baby, bitch.’ So anyway, were you guys like the cutest couple in high school?” She seemed immune to the conversational whiplash, squeezing Miles a little harder until he frowned. Regina laughed, and whatever was burning through Miles’s mind switched directions. His smile did not meet his mother’s, but answered it.