by Selena Kitt
* * *
Frankie
My ass was deliciously warm and tingly. I didn't know how it could be so considering the events of the previous days, but I was more turned on than I had ever been. For the first time in longer than I could ever even remember, I didn't feel empty. I wasn't focused on infertility, war or death. I felt so free—nothing else mattered in that moment.
Tony had given me more in the two days I'd known him than I'd ever gotten from anyone. Not physical satisfaction, but love, comfort and, most of all, this intimacy. And then he'd apologized. He regretted the one time I'd ever felt whole. That hurt worse than the spanking.
I clung to him, afraid he'd run away if he got away from me. "Tony." I had my face buried in his neck. "I want you more than I've ever wanted anything."
"No," he pushed me away, "you aren't thinking clearly…"
"Stop, wait. I know that we can't—we can't do anything. I just want you to know how I feel." It didn't make sense, and I didn't know how to make it sound better. He slid away from me and stood up. He turned his back to me and my heart crumbled like a fragile egg shell. Empty again.
"My behavior… I don't know what I was thinking. I need to clear my head. I'm going to take a walk." He barely met my eyes when he glanced back to me and then headed out the door.
I crumpled up and cried. I cried harder then than I ever had.
I cried for my baby.
I cried for Damien.
I cried for Tony.
I cried because I was exhausted.
But mostly, I cried because I was afraid. Afraid he would never come back. Afraid I would never know why he'd come to begin with. Afraid I'd never get the chance to thank him. I thought about calling him, making sure to apologize again, and beg him to come back. I didn't know his number…
* * *
I woke up when he let himself back in. How long I had slept, I didn't know. My heart rejoiced in the sight of him. Before that, I'd never realized how much I was afraid to be alone. It was all I'd ever really known. I didn't know the difference until I'd met him.
I restrained myself from running to him.
"Hey, I brought back some dinner. It's just Panera Bread, but…" I could smell it as he walked toward me. My mouth watered as my stomach growled, but mostly, I was just thrilled to have something do. Something to think about instead of everything we needed to discuss.
"Thank you, I'm starving," I said, following him into the dining room. "Did you walk all the way there? It's like three miles." I got us place settings while he nodded and started to unpack.
"I have a Mediterranean vegetable sandwich and baked potato soup. You might want to get bowls, too." He sat down in the seat he'd sat in that morning. Had it only been that morning?
We ate pretty much in silence. But I think it was a resting comfortable silence. It gave both of us some breathing room. Just like usual, though, as soon as I started eating, I was full again. I poked at my sandwich and took small bites, trying to draw it out until he finished his.
He finished his sandwich, even though it was larger than mine, in record time. Maybe he felt more comfortable with the table between us because as soon as he wiped his mouth, he sat back with a purpose.
"I've spent a lot of time in thought. The way I behaved is not the way I normally am. But nothing has been normal since the first time I heard your name." He raised a finger to his lips to shush me when I shook my head and tried to interrupt. "I have no right to touch another man's wife, especially when he's dead and only been in the ground six months. I can only assume that you have been so distressed and traumatized that you aren't behaving as you normally would, either. But you have an excuse. I do not—"
I did manage to interrupt then. "No, no. I don't think you know the facts. Don't try to make excuses for me. I am devastated about the loss of my baby, and that is about the only thing I agree with you on. You don't know jack shit about my marriage. My marriage was well over, long before Damien died. I miss him—I miss my friend, but it wasn't a marriage." I shoved my chair backward and stood up. I needed to pace, to stalk, to yell. But I didn't know what to say. My feelings were all locked up tight and I couldn't get them out.
"I never knew him." His admission took me by surprise. I stood in my place, confused, waiting for more. Tony picked up our dishes, set them in the sink behind him, and turned toward me again. "We came into the Kandahar Military Hospital at the same time after an IED, a bomb. I had a traumatic brain injury, memory loss like amnesia, but it finally came back. As you know, Blair—Damien—didn't make it very long at all." Tony covered his hands with his face and rubbed. I thought he was crying, but he seemed to recover quickly, coming toward me and wrapping his arms around me as he went on. "He kept calling out to you. He kept apologizing. He just kept saying, "Frankie, Frankie, I'm so sorry."
I welcomed the embrace but his words were a shock. I couldn't process them. They were important, but he could have spoken in French and I would have understood better. "I don't understand…" I said into his chest.
"I didn't know if you knew. Whether someone from the hospital told you—but it was important. He never said what he was sorry for, but he really wanted you to know that he was. I can still hear him, and I couldn't let it go until I knew you knew."
We stood together for minutes, maybe hours. I didn't know how long. Finally, his words permeated the fog surrounding my head.
"He was sorry," I repeated; the words leaving me of their own accord. "He meant for not helping me with the fertility problems. He refused to go, or to help, even though he knew how important it was to me. He said if I went and the tests came back clear, then the problem was him and I didn't need him anyway." I should have cried. I should have felt something, other than empty. His apology should have meant something.
Chapter Six
Tony
"I didn't know you had fertility problems. He should have been there for you," I responded, and then my brain kicked in. I had to know. Before I could ask, she stepped away and started opening cupboards. "What are you looking for? Can I help?"
"It's here. I saw it." She grabbed a chair and scooted it over to the counter. Before I could stop her she was on it, looking into the cupboard over the refrigerator, then she spun around with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. "Here it is."
"Oh no, you are not." I took it from her hand at the same time as I slipped my arm down behind her and lifted her from the chair to the floor. "You have had enough to drink for one day."
She didn't take the loss gracefully and I actually started to laugh when she came at me, jumping up and trying to grab the bottle from my hand as I held it high above her head.
"It's mine, dammit. Give it to me."
"No," I said firmly as I stepped around her and put it back where she'd gotten it from. "And if you touch it again tonight, I'm seriously going to blister your ass, and I won't feel the least bit bad about it this time." I leveled my most stern look at her and she had the decency to blush. "No. Move it. We need to go sit down and talk. No more playing games. I need answers."
"I don't like the sound of that." She pursed her lips and followed my lead. It felt a little like déjà vu as I resisted the urge to kiss her perfectly pink, pouting lips. I almost choked on my laughter as she spotted the wine bottle from earlier and had it to her lips before I could stop her. Thankfully it was empty.
"You are a very bad little girl, aren't you?" Taking the wine bottle, I tugged her elbow so that she plopped down onto the sofa next to me.
"I don't have the faintest idea what you mean." She crossed her arms over her chest and scooted away from me. She was visibly bracing herself for something. I assumed it was the conversation she was afraid of.
"Frankie, there is so much more here between us. I've never felt like this with anyone else. I don't know how it could be, but I'm in love with you. I think you feel the same way. I hope you feel the same. Please say you feel the same way." I wanted to pull her closer. I wanted her in my arms, but I didn
't want to scare her. I'd had a lot of time to think during my six-mile trek.
"I—uh, I don't know what I feel, but it's something. Something I don't recognize. Maybe it is love…" Her pout was gone. Frankie's eyes were the bluest of all the blues I'd ever seen, and I had flown over the all of the oceans. I knew they were imprinted on my soul and I'd never forget them, either. I had to close the distance between us. I scooted in until our thighs were touching. To hell with giving her space. She leaned into my hand when I rested it against her face and I had to kiss her. I brushed my lips against hers, and then her temple, and her forehead.
I didn't want to end that moment, but I had to know everything. "Frankie, I need to know." I leaned back and looked into her eyes again. My hand still rested against her cheek, I brushed the pad of my thumb over her lips. "How did you get pregnant?"
I expected her to look away, to draw into herself again. I was more than surprised when she did neither. Instead, she looked startled, as if it never occurred to her that I didn't know.
"It was the in vitro implantation. I told you that." Her head cocked to the side, curiously.
"You had in vitro fertilization a few months after your husband died?" Maybe that was brutal. Okay, I know it was brutal. I saw the light in her eyes change just before she stood up and stalked over to the window, turning her back on me.
"What the hell do you know about it? Have you ever been through it?" She spun around and glared at me. "What the fuck difference did it make if he was dead when he wouldn't have come with me even if he were alive?"
I jumped to my feet and reached for her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
"Didn't mean what?" She backed out of my reach. "That I was some sorry unfaithful bitch? Yes, you did. Don't think I didn't recognize it. I've seen it before."
"No, I didn't think. I didn't mean it…"
Before I could close the distance again, she'd reached the door and flung it open. Her implication was not lost on me, but she made sure I understood. "Get out. Go. I don't need more people like you in my life. Believe me, I've had enough."
I stood there, grasping for any reasoning with her, but I knew when I looked at her standing there, there was nothing in the world I could say in that moment that would redeem me. I found my duffle bag, shoved my laptop into it and tried still to think of something to say, but I knew there was nothing I could say. I walked out and didn't look back. I didn't need to. The door slammed so hard behind me the picture on the wall in the hallway rattled.
* * *
Frankie
I cried more for Tony than I ever did for Damien. I don't know why. I've thought about it over and over. I've turned every thought I have in my head about the man, inside out. This way and then that. Even in all of my anger, and I did still get angry, I couldn't help but feel like, in the last three days, I'd lost the best thing that had ever happened to me in all of my twenty-six years.
Even in his judgement of me, Tony was no different than anyone else, so why should I have held him, who had only known me for three days, to a higher standard?
I asked myself the same questions over and over as I walked down to the river. When I passed Panera Bread on the way to the grocery store. When I drank the Jack Daniels, and when I went to the store to buy more Jack Daniels. It was on day twelve A.T. (after Tony) that I found the cards. I don't think they had been hidden, I just hadn't seen them until I tripped on the rug and had to straighten it out. They were under the edge of the sofa. I shouldn't have had any tears left to cry and, in fact, I had just decided that morning to get my shit together. Life would go on just as it had B.T. (before Tony) and as it had B.P. (before pregnancy) and as it had B.D. (before Damien).
I had to move on. I was the only person in my life who was ever going to make me happy. So, I would do that. I would take a pottery class, volunteer at the hospital, get a puppy—I would make my own happiness and not wait around for it to happen to me.
That was why it didn't make sense for me to be clutching a deck of cards to my chest and crying my eyes out. I punched the pillow next to me on the sofa and then threw it across the room. Then I threw the deck of cards. I rolled over and almost fell off the sofa and remembered I was going to buy a new couch, too—one that didn't remind me of Tony.
Now.
I needed to stop lying around and start being more proactive. I stomped to the bathroom and grabbed a Kleenex for my face. It would probably take the whole box to make me presentable but I didn't care.
Yes, of course that was the day I would actually run right into Tony and not just imagine him, as I'd done so many times in the last two weeks.
"Whoa, slow down, lady." He steadied me, but my heart was more than racing. It was skipping across the street like the rocks we used to skip across the river. I braced myself against the gate of the courtyard. I had to do that or my traitorous arms would wrap themselves around his neck like they wanted to. "Are you okay? I'm sorry to catch you like this. It's not what I planned. Are you okay, Frankie?"
Chapter Seven
Tony
I was really concerned when I saw Frankie. After we almost barreled into each other, she seemed really unsteady. She hung onto the gate like she wouldn't be able to stand without the support.
"Frankie, are you drunk?" I stepped forward and picked up the Kleenex she'd dropped. She met my eyes when I handed her the tissue. She'd been crying. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed.
"No, of course not… yet." She looked to the road, the ground, anywhere but my eyes. "I'm going out to buy a dog, I mean a puppy. A damn couch. I'm going to buy a couch." She sniffed and tossed her chin in the air, her posture almost regal.
I might not have been as concerned if she'd been wearing pants. I mean real pants. She was wearing silky pajama pants with that little white cat that was on all the girls' clothes lately.
"You are drunk. You're not even dressed. I don't know how you could confuse a dog and a couch. Get back inside. You need your ass busted." She didn't fight me when I took her arm and steered her back inside the complex. She did argue.
"I haven't had a drink since… since I realized the bottle was empty. I was going to pick up some more after I picked out a dog from the shelter. I couldn't get it before the dog because I would need to get dog food too, so I might as well do it all at once, but I wouldn't know what kind of dog food until I got the dog." She stopped talking momentarily while she dug her keys out of her purse, but I wouldn't have been able to say anything if I could even find words because she kept right on going again. "But then I decided to get a couch first." If she didn't want me there, I don't know if she would have thought to tell me so in the midst of her confusion, but I didn't question that. I just closed the door behind me.
"How much, exactly, did you drink before you found out the bottle was empty?" I had to follow her. She was preoccupied with tidying now, it seemed. She picked up couch cushions and put them back in place, then something I didn't see was picked up and she took it to the kitchen. I followed behind her as she opened the trash and dropped it in. "Frankie?"
She turned back to me. "I'm thinking. It's been a couple days." Her brows were scrunched and she was either really concentrating on the answer or she was really angry.
"You've been drinking for a couple days, or—"
"You must really think I'm a piece of shit! I haven't drunk in a couple days. I don't even know where you got the idea or why you are still yammering about it." Her eyes were clear blue, maybe still puffy, but as clear as the beautiful sky outside.
I stepped forward and rested my hand on her arm. I was still apprehensive, not wanting to upset her again. "I'm sorry. I can't seem to say the right thing. I… I mean, you were not yourself outside. You weren't making sense, buying dogs and couches… and you have pajama pants on."
She looked down then, and a chuckle rolled upward with the movement of her head it seemed. When she faced me, her eyes were lit with mirth.
"Okay, I'll give you this one. I don't know why I forgot
to change but the dog and couch can be explained, just not right now." She took a deep breath; I watched her chest rise and fall with the heaviness of her breath. "I need to know why you are here."
"Fair enough. Can we sit down?" I looked toward the sofa and she headed that way beside me. I didn't wait any longer. It seemed I'd waited an eternity already. And then I almost hadn't come, but I had to. "I don't deserve the chance to come back and apologize or explain, so I can't thank you enough for letting me in."
"I'm reserving the right to slam the door on you again until I hear what you came back for."
I wanted to kiss her, to laugh with her and draw her into my arms, but I had to earn that. I knew it.
"Frankie, I've never said anything stupider than what I said to you last time. I have no right, nor does anyone else, to measure your grief or judge your choices. Please say that you will forgive me." I took her hand but restrained myself from pulling it to my lips. I wanted to turn it over, kiss her palm and pull her tight to my side.
"Thank you. I've never been happier to see someone than I was to see you outside. I thought I'd never get a chance to tell you that I overreacted." She scooted closer and pressed her cheek to my shoulder. I saw the glimmer of new tears in her eyes before I pulled her tighter to my side and kissed her head.
"Can we start over?"
"Yes, please, but can we skip the wine and poker? I'm out of wine and I just threw the cards away." I felt the vibration of her giggle against my arm.
"Oh my God, come here." I drew her to her knees next to me and cupped her head in my hands. I had to kiss her. I had to taste her. I plunged my tongue into her mouth, wanting more than anything to be inside her with my cock and not just my tongue. I couldn't get enough of her. When she drew her leg over my thighs and straddled me, I almost lost it.
I cupped her ass in both hands and pulled her tight against me. I wanted her to feel the rigidity of my cock and know how badly I wanted her. She ground against my bulge and I could've come just like that but I couldn't forget her fragility. I had to get control of myself and the situation again.