by Lucy Score
“I’m going out the alley. Be back in a few,” Marco said, shrugging back into his coat.
Frankie drew her blinds, throwing the apartment into the gloomy kind of darkness she felt in her heart. She let Gio talk her into at least getting out of bed and brushing her hair, but when she spotted Aiden’s comb and a stray pair of boxer briefs in the hamper, she lost all desire to behave like a human.
They slumped on the couch staring at a rerun until Marco returned.
“Okay, we got some glossy magazines that don’t say anything about keeping your man on the cover,” he said unloading the bag on her coffee table. “Some tissues in case that thing that happened in there happens again. Six different kinds of chocolate bars. Two pints of ice cream because any more than that and you’ll hate yourself in the morning. And a quart of chicken noodle.”
“What’s in the other bag?” Frankie asked, with a sniffle.
“I bought a bunch of blow ‘em up Blurays that we can watch. And the taco truck was two blocks over, so I got some of those, too.”
“Thanks, Marco,” she said. “Thanks, Gio.”
Gio ruffled her freshly brushed hair and flipped her off. “Family.”
--------
Aiden hadn’t called. When she finally got the nerve to turn her phone back on, she had fifteen missed calls from him, but that was before the showdown at his penthouse. He hadn’t called her since. But he had texted.
Aiden: I know you said no calling. But you didn’t explicitly say no texting. And until you tell me otherwise, I’ll keep texting. I miss you. I’m sorry.
Aiden: I have exactly everything I had before you, but now it feels like nothing.
Aiden: I wish we were on your couch. You cuddled up to me. Me playing with your hair. Leftovers going cold on the table. I miss you.
Aiden: I’m suing a bunch of people today. I thought you should know. No one gets away with hurting you, Franchesca. Not even me. I’m in misery without you.
The next morning the gifts started. No direct contact. Just little gifts with handwritten cards delivered by messenger. On Tuesday, he sent a stack of romance novels and a hefty gift card to Christian’s salon to her apartment. On Wednesday, when she finally returned to work, he had gourmet hot chocolate delivered for her, Brenda, and Raul. Frankie didn’t want to know how he knew she was at work. If he was still keeping tabs on her, he still had hope. Something she didn’t.
On Thursday, Frankie found a bundle of fuzzy knee-high socks outside her apartment door. The kind she loved to wear under her boots.
Friday brought a silky soft set of pajamas. Not sexy lingerie but the kind you’d pull on after a long week and live in for the weekend. She’d put them on immediately and curled up on the couch with Aiden’s Yale sweatshirt that she’d pulled from the laundry basket so it wouldn’t lose his scent.
The week was a blur of “no comment” when she (rarely) ventured out in public and unenthusiastic “I’m fines” at work and around her mother’s dining table. She felt cold inside as if she’d taken the winter within her and would never again warm up.
And every night, she fell asleep on the couch without ever turning on the TV, avoiding the big, beautiful bed and its memories.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Aiden gazed out his office window, ignoring the pile of things that demanded his attention on the desk. He had nothing to give. Just showing up drained him. He was tuned out, shut down, and it was affecting his work. Oscar was walking on eggshells around him. Meetings were magically rescheduled for future dates. His mother spent their entire dinner together last night smiling sympathetically at him.
And Aiden couldn’t rouse himself to care.
His desk phone beeped.
“Yes?”
“There are two burly gentlemen from Brooklyn here to see you,” Oscar announced.
“We’re comin’ in, Aide.” Aiden heard Gio’s voice through the door.
Great. Just what he needed. The Baranski brothers ready to beat the hell out of him.
“Send them in,” he sighed.
A second later, his door opened, and Gio and Marco sauntered in. They were probably playing it cool so Oscar didn’t call security right away.
Marco slumped into one of the visitor’s chairs while Gio prowled the office. Aiden couldn’t tell if he was admiring the view or looking for security cameras.
He waited for one of them to speak first, hurling threats or accusations, demanding sacrificial kneecaps or whatever body part it was the Baranski brothers would break for their little sister.
“Bro, what the hell?” Marco asked, breaking the silence. “You gotta watch yourself around girls like that.”
“Girls like what?” Aiden asked calmly.
“That Margeaux chick,” Gio filled in, coming over to lean against the corner of his desk.
“She exudes evil, man. I’m surprised you fell for it and let her set you up like that,” Marco sighed.
“Set me up? You believe me that nothing happened?”
Gio snorted. “Frankie’s prime rib, and we’re supposed to believe you’d go through the drive-thru for some Skeletor, pinched-face, ball buster?”
“So, you’re not here to beat the shit out of me?” Aiden clarified.
The brothers threw back their heads and laughed but didn’t give him a definitive yes or no.
Aiden’s phone buzzed, and he glanced down at the screen.
Oscar: Do I need to call security?
Aiden: Not unless you hear me sobbing for my mommy.
He returned his attention to the brothers. “Then why are you here?”
“Frankie is wrecked,” Gio announced.
“We figured you probably weren’t doing so hot either,” Marco chimed in.
“You could say that,” Aiden said, looking down at the disorganized mess on his desk. “I need to get her back.”
Marco sighed, and shoved a hand through his thick hair. “I don’t know, man.”
Aiden rubbed a hand over his brow. “No advice, no magic key to make her forgive me?”
“She ever tell you about our second cousin Mattie?” Gio asked.
Aiden shook his head.
“Yeah, that’s because she won’t speak his name. He got gum in her hair when she was nine, and Ma had to cut it out. She didn’t speak to Mattie again until his wedding last year.”
“She’s not big on forgiveness,” Marco said. “Like ever.”
“It can’t be over,” Aiden said, pushing his phone around on the desk. She’d not once responded to one of his texts or gifts. Desperation made his chest ache.
“Ah, shit,” Gio sighed, scratching the back of his head. “Look. You can’t keep texting her and sending her stuff, okay? Anything you do is gonna look like psychological warfare.”
“You want me to just give up?” Aiden asked.
“Nah, man,” Marco said. “Just make it look like you’re giving up.”
“Look, guys. I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m not getting what you’re trying to say,” Aiden said.
“She’s a smart girl, our Frankie. Stubborn but smart,” Gio began.
Marco shifted in his chair. “You fucked up, pretty big. But so did she.”
“She didn’t do anything,” Aiden argued.
“She’s had one foot out the door your entire relationship because she figured it would end bad. She was scared, and if you ever repeat that to her, I’ll fuck you up and lie about it,” Gio said, pointing a finger at him.
“She was just looking for an excuse,” Aiden said half to himself.
“Yeah, but given her current level of misery, if you give her some space, she’s gonna figure it out that she isn’t the innocent party here either.”
“How much space?” Aiden asked. He needed them to spell it out for him. The idea of abandoning his efforts—giving up control—was terrifying, but a tiny spark of hope lit in his chest.
“All the space,” Marco said
.
“No texting, no presents, no nothing,” Gio added.
Aiden covered his eyes for a minute trying to wrap his head around the idea of giving up and hoping for the best. It went against everything in his DNA to leave things up to chance.
“I was thinking about paying off her student loans,” he admitted. His small gestures hadn’t gotten her attention. Maybe a bigger one would. She would have at least been compelled to come to his office and scream at him.
“Oh, Christ, no!” Marco said, looking horrified.
“She’d hate that, man,” Gio agreed. “Do not, I repeat, do not go throwing piles of money at Frankie. She’ll just set them on fire.”
“So, I just give up? Leave her alone?”
“You make it look like you’re giving up,” Marco said as if there was a difference.
“If I do this, do you think there’s a chance she could forgive me?”
“Yeah,” Gio said supportively. “I do.”
“A real small one,” Marco piped up. He shrugged when his brother shot him an incredulous look. “What? I don’t want him to get his hopes up if she decides to Frosty the Snow Bitch him permanently.”
“Listen, you gotta think of something else, Aide. Are you prepared to forgive her? She walked out on you instead of having your back—again, if you ever say this to her I will ruin your very nice face also probably your fancy suit—and if you’re going to let that fester, you don’t have a chance.”
The philosophers of Brooklyn were sitting in his office giving him advice and the tiniest sliver of hope.
“I won’t let it fester,” he promised.
“Good.” The brothers nodded.
“You got a nice place here,” Marco said, glancing around.
“What? We’re making small talk now?” Gio demanded.
“I’m just being polite.” Marco kicked Gio’s knee where it rested on the desk.
“Ouch! Fucker!”
Oscar: Was that a body blow I just heard?
“Anyway,” Gio said, looking at the clock on his phone.
Aiden felt himself tense. He didn’t want them to leave. They felt like his only tangible connection to Frankie.
“You wanna go for a drink? Maybe some steak?” Marco asked Aiden.
Aiden nodded as relief coursed through him. They weren’t abandoning him. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
“I’m not sure how to tell you this, Frankie,” Raul began for the third time, clearing his throat. Brenda sat next to him at the conference table stemming her tears with a third tissue.
Frankie saw her employee file on the table and had connected the dots within five seconds of walking into the room.
“We lost our grant,” Raul announced. “Two of them, actually. They’re not even being funded anymore, so it wasn’t anything that you did in the grant writing. It wasn’t anything that we did as an organization, it was just… bad luck.”
Her life felt like it had been nothing but bad luck these past few weeks.
“So, what I’m trying to say,” Raul took a deep breath, “is that we’re shutting the office down. We can’t continue to serve the business community without those funds, and we’ve been talking about retiring for a while now.”
Brenda blew her nose noisily.
“And that means that your employment is also terminated.” Raul choked out the words and reached for his coffee, managing to spill most of it.
“Okay, then,” Frankie said, too numb to process anything. It was the trajectory of her life, plummeting straight down. By this time next week, she’d be warming her hands on the open flames in hell if her descent continued. “I’ll just pack up my stuff and go.”
Brenda’s quiet sniffles turned into full blown wails. “We’re so sorry, sweetie! And after everything that you’ve been through…”
Frankie rose and gave each of them a mechanical hug. They had been mentors, second parents, and friends to her. And now they, too, were out of her life.
“Can we take you to lunch or… something?” Raul asked.
She shook her head. “No, thanks.”
“We’ll send you your vacation pay with your last paycheck,” he said, looking glumly at the table.
“Thank you,” Frankie said, pausing inside the door and taking a last look at the room.
Downstairs, she shoved what she could from her desk into an empty paper ream box and stepped out into the mocking sunshine. The end of March was showing signs of the spring to come. But nothing could thaw the ice inside her.
She sat down on the curb in a scrap of sunshine that filtered between the branches of the trees. Was this rock bottom? No job, six weeks shy of finishing her master’s, and she was going to have to decide between rent and tuition. Oh, and speaking of school, this job and her social media workshops had been part of her thesis project. So, graduation this spring was no longer an option.
And worse was the fact that Aiden had stopped contacting her a week ago. As if he’d vanished from the face of the planet. But he was still here. Still working. Still existing. Still living his life.
She knew because she couldn’t stop herself from opening those blasted Google alert emails every damn morning.
He went to work every day, had dinner in the city, made appearances. Meanwhile, she’d stopped talking to everyone. Her parents, her brothers, Pru. She was avoiding human contact because she no longer felt human.
The anger, the hurt, had shifted inside her making room for a new feeling. One she didn’t understand. Guilt.
“Frankie!”
She winced at the cheery greeting. She couldn’t do Pru right now. She was incapable of even pretending to be happy to see her best friend.
“Hi,” Frankie said flatly.
“Why are you sitting on the sidewalk with a box of… Oh.”
“I got fired. They’re shutting down the center,” Frankie said.
“Then you’ve got time for me to buy you lunch,” silver-lining-finder Pru announced. “Let’s go.” She dragged Frankie to her feet and picked up the box. “I’m feeling like pizza.”
Frankie stumbled over her own feet. “You’re voluntarily eating pizza? Do I really look that bad?”
“You look like a zombie. Sort of alive on the outside but totally dead and gross on the inside.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Pru led the way to one of Frankie’s favorite pizza shops, chattering about the weather and gossip. Frankie didn’t bother responding. It took too much effort.
Pru slid into the booth across from her and interlaced her fingers, smiling expectantly. “I’ve got some things I need to tell you.”
“Is everything okay?” Frankie asked, rousing herself into a minimal level of caring.
Her friend nodded.
“What can I get you ladies?” Vinnie the proprietor demanded, leaning on their table with a combination of charm and impatience.
“The biggest, greasiest pepperoni pizza you can make,” Pru decided. “And how about some of those garlic twists?”
Frankie’s eyebrows winged up. Her friend was serious about all the carbs today.
Vinnie took their drink orders and headed back behind the counter.
“So. I’m pregnant,” Pru announced.
Frankie’s mouth opened. Her brain wasn’t prepared for new information of that magnitude.
“Wha…?”
“Pregnant. Like with my husband’s baby?” Pru said, beaming at her. “Thanks, Vin,” she said when Vinnie returned with their waters.
Frankie chugged half of hers, trying to get her brain back to functioning. “You’re going to have a baby?”
Pru nodded again. “Honeymoon baby, which was a surprise. But we’re so excited.”
Frankie could see it. The sheer delight on her friend’s face. And even though her own life was in the gutter, she still felt a stirring of happiness for Pru.
“Wow. Congratulations. Chip mu
st be thrilled.”
“He wavers between thrilled and hyperventilating. He ordered sixteen parenting, pregnancy, and baby books and wants to start interviewing nannies now.”
“Wow,” Frankie said again. A rush of memories washing over her. Pru dressed as Carmen Miranda strolling into their dorm room on Halloween. Pru dancing on the bar at Salvio’s after one too many margaritas. Pru trying on her wedding dress for the first time. “I know I don’t look it, but I am so happy for you.”
Pru reached across the table and grabbed Frankie’s hand. “I know your life sucks right now. But you’re going to be an aunt, and that’s worth something. And I want you to hang on to that aunt thing while I say this next thing.”
“Uh-uh.” Frankie braced herself.
“Why haven’t you talked to Aiden?” Pru asked.
Frankie felt herself shutting down again. “Look, Pru. There are things you don’t know. No, he didn’t cheat on me with ol’ one-eyebrow. But there was something else. Something much bigger.”
“I know,” Pru said, squeezing her hand. “He told me. He talked to me and Chip last week.”
“He told you?” Frankie asked, astonished.
“He planted the seeds for Chip to break up with me.”
“And you’re just okay with that? He robbed you both of years of happiness, Pru. Just because he thought you weren’t good enough for his friend.”
“He thought I was immature and flighty, and to be honest, he may have been right. Not that I’d tell him that. I was fresh out of college and had diamond rings in my eyes. I had no idea what marriage was actually about. I just wanted a sparkly ring and a big party. If we hadn’t broken up and both matured a bit, I don’t know that we’d still be together. And I do know that this little low-carb baby wouldn’t be growing in me. I’m stronger than I was then. Happier. Maybe the slightest bit more mature. And in the end, Aiden was just looking out for his friend. A friend who made the decision through no coercion, I might add.”
“He hurt you,” Frankie pointed out.