“No,” Archie answered, his hand still on mine as he moved my mostly empty salad plate and set the crab cake in front of me. “If you can’t be blunt with her in front of me—because as you’ll notice Edward and I have no boundaries—you don’t get to drag her off and yell at her. I’m here because I’m Frankie’s friend. You’re not going to hurt her again.” Then he glanced at me. “That’s really good. I have a feeling we’re not going to make it to the main course, so go ahead and eat that, yeah?”
I stared at him, eyes wide. He was really doing this, and I didn’t know whether to kiss him or smack him. Maybe both. But he wasn’t backing down.
“Frankie,” my mother said again, and I glanced at her. Locking my gaze on her, I dug my fingers into Archie’s hand and sucked in a deep breath.
“I’m good right here. I’d tell Archie what you said anyway, and you and Mr. Standish are engaged, so, no secrets, right?”
The look in her eyes promised retribution.
Well, I’d really torn it now. But I had Archie at my back, and he was right… I really didn’t want to go find somewhere my mother could slap and rail at me for not having her side in this. I wanted her to be happy, but so much about this was just wrong.
“Maddy,” Mr. Standish caught her hand. “Maybe we’ve gone about this the wrong way…”
She sank into her chair. Her expression was so stricken, my heart squeezed.
“We have sprung this on them rather abruptly.” Mr. Standish sounded all kinds of reasonable. “Maybe let’s start over at the beginning…and with the goals.” Then Mr. Standish focused on me. “I know it’s just been you and your mom, and I know you’re protective. She’s very protective of you, too.”
Archie snorted, but Mr. Standish ignored him.
“This is really important to her, and it’s even more important that she has your support.” He leaned forward. “And there are a lot of benefits here for you, too. Like the brand new car waiting for you outside.”
Brand new car.
Was he for real?
“And we’re done,” Archie pulled away his napkin and stood, then took hold of my chair. “C’mon…”
I glanced up at him then at my mom. I could read the don’t you dare in her eyes.
“Frankie’s not for sale, Edward. You two have a lovely dinner. You really do seem well-suited to each other.”
I couldn’t even get the words out as Archie hustled me out of the restaurant. The valet went to get the car, but not fast enough. My mother was outside and she caught my arm. The bite of her fingers hurt. “Frankie, we need to talk.”
“Not here, Mom,” I told her as Archie moved to get between us. “Please…I don’t want to have this fight.”
“Why are you doing this? Do you want me to be unhappy?”
“No, but I also don’t think this is what you think it is. It’s not just about you. You want to change everything in my life, get rid of my cats, and expect me to just stand here and say yay? Why? Because he has money? I don’t want his money.”
“Let her go, Ms. Curtis.” The warning in Archie’s voice seemed to give Mom pause, and she let me go. The fact we also had something of an audience in the other valets who were present also sank in.
“Archie,” my mom turned to him, from furious to imploring in a heartbeat. “If you would just be more open to it, you and Frankie are close. You surely can’t object to having her around more.”
“Not even in the slightest, but Ms. Curtis, I know my dad. This is not going to end well for you. I wish I could make you see it. Frankie’s worried about you, and she doesn’t want you hurt. But all you can see is what you want, and that’s pretty normal for the people in Edward’s world. You don’t get to hurt Frankie in the process, we are close and I am going to protect her, even if you won’t.”
“You’re ruining everything.” My mother’s tone turned almost mournful. Then Mr. Standish came out.
“Come along, Maddy. Let the children go home and have their temper tantrum. We can celebrate privately.” He wrapped an arm around my mother like he really cared, then he looked at me. “I hope you reconsider, young lady. I am well aware of everything your mother has had to give up for you. It would be a consideration if you could be bothered to do at least a little kindness back.”
“Fuck off, Eddie,” Archie said with a tight smile. Thankfully, his car pulled up and he opened the passenger door for me before the valet had even hopped out of the driver’s seat.
The fact his tires squealed when he accelerated actually helped the semi-sick feeling in my stomach. Reaching over, I caught his hand, and he gripped mine as he drove.
“Sorry, Frankie,” he said. “I thought I’d make it longer before he pissed me off.”
“No,” I said. “You don’t have to be sorry. I thought you were amazing. You said all the things I was thinking, and you didn’t even bat an eyelash.”
“Oh, I batted a few. This whole thing is just fishy as hell. I don’t know what game he’s playing, but I don’t want you in the middle of it.”
It wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be either.
“Did you mean it about the roomies thing?”
“Hell yes, I meant it. We wanted to get a place all together for college. We could totally start now, and then you don’t have to worry about your cats.”
I sighed.
My phone buzzed, and I let go of Archie long enough to pull it out of the bag I’d brought with me. The message was from my mother.
Mom: You and I need to talk. I did not appreciate your behavior tonight. I understand your friends might be a bad influence, but it was unacceptable to treat Eddie that way.
It didn’t bode well.
“I’m thinking ice cream,” Archie said as I closed the message and glanced at him. “Text Coop and the guys? By the time we get back, the game will be winding down.”
“You didn’t really get to eat,” I reminded him.
“Yeah,” he said. “The wagyu steak there is to die for. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure we get to have it another time. When we can enjoy it. So—ice cream?”
“I could go for some ice cream.”
“Then text the guys. I think we could all use some.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Good Intentions
Ian
The game was brutal, but only because we were lacking part of our defense. Jake’s power on the field couldn’t be matched by the kid bootstrapped into his place. No offense to Tommy, he just didn’t have it—yet. Still, we eked by with a win, scoring points in the last seconds of the game. This was our last home game for a few weeks, too. After Homecoming, if we could score a couple more wins, we were headed straight for playoffs, and we’d be taking the field through Thanksgiving.
If not, then we could wrap the season. At this point, I was ready to call it now. I still enjoyed the game, but between practices and the games themselves, I lost a lot of time with Frankie and the guys. Jake’s interest had begun to wane, as well. When he got benched for the next two games, he hadn’t even cared.
Between us, we’d checked out all the schools in the northeast with viable football scholarships that would allow us to also study our chosen interests, none of them were close enough to Harvard to matter. There wasn’t a doubt in either of our minds that Frankie wouldn’t get in, and where she went, I planned to follow.
Maybe that made me a bit of a joke to some, but I didn’t care. I knew where I wanted to be. She’d been my best friend for years, even before she revealed she did actually want to date, I hadn’t wanted there to be some huge distance between us.
I didn’t waste a lot of time in the shower, just washed the sweat and dirt off then headed to my locker for my clothes. My uniform was in a bag, I’d get it cleaned over the weekend like I did after every game. Jake leaned against the locker next to mine.
“Frankie and Arch are almost back, they got caught in traffic. I’m gonna go pick up Coop and meet them at the Pit Stop.”
“That was fa
st,” I dragged on my jeans and raised my brows. We didn’t spend a lot of time discussing any of them in the locker room. Too many ears.
“Yeah,” was all Jake said, but his guarded expression spoke volumes. The fact Archie and Frankie had gone to have dinner with their newly engaged parents had promised to be a shitshow as far as they were concerned. Especially after what went down with her mother. Jake had been pissed, and Coop, for all his calm, had been equally furious. It wasn’t news to any of us that Ms. Curtis wasn’t stable, but her typically neglectful behavior masking actual abuse was not something we discussed, much less with Frankie.
Her defensiveness over her mother made sense. Once, and only once, had my parents discussed them where I could hear them. I hadn’t even meant to listen, but Dad had expressed deep reservations to Mom about Frankie’s situation, listing some classic hallmarks for abuse he saw in her behavior from her need to please others to the fact she didn’t speak up to defend herself. It wasn’t ego, he warned, it was the fact she didn’t think she deserved the defense.
“Too often,” he said. “Kids in her situation, they don’t see that it can be any better or they deserve any better. So they defend what they have and pretend the rest doesn’t matter. It’s an obstinate blindness they need to survive.”
Those words haunted me, to be honest. I also couldn’t see what the hell he’d meant, not until that night at Frankie’s when Jake knocked Coop through her coffee table and she unloaded on us. All these years, Frankie rarely got pissed off enough to rail at us for our behavior. To be honest, as much as it stung, we deserved it.
Once I was dressed, I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed Jake out of the locker room. The parking lot was still emptying from the game, but we avoided the clusters of other players, cheerleaders, band kids and more that formed as friends got together.
There’d be a huge rush for Mason’s—another reason to be glad Frankie didn’t work on Friday nights. After practice Wednesday and Thursday were bad enough. Fridays were a zoo.
Sharon glanced at us from a cluster of her friends, and I met her stare. When she tried to smile, I didn’t return it. At the moment, I had no idea what I’d ever seen in her. A pretty face and a great ass didn’t do much for a crappy personality. Not after she’d attacked Frankie. When she finally dropped her gaze, I nodded. The sooner she learned I wasn’t ever looking to her again, the better.
We broke up before Frankie, anyway.
Digging my phone out, I glanced at the messages. Frankie had sent one to the group chat with us, like she had the night before about her mother and Mr. Standish being at her place. I wished she’d let one of us come get her or just come to one of our places. The handprint on her face had been…
“She’s all right, Archie’s probably driving which is why he isn’t saying anything,” Jake said as we headed out to where he’d parked. My motorcycle wasn’t that far. “But she did say Archie was a badass.”
I laughed at the faint snort in Jake’s words. “What, you don’t think he can be a badass?”
“No, he’s capable of it. Most of the time he’s just—the guy who takes what he wants, you know?” At his SUV, he said, “Wanna throw your stuff in the back? I can drop it off tonight or tomorrow for you.”
“Thanks, man.” I put my gear in, but kept my backpack. Then sent a text to say we were on our way to the Pit. “You getting Coop?”
“Yep, he’s waiting.” Jake rolled his head from side to side, but he didn’t make a move to get in the SUV.
“You wanna talk before we go?” There weren’t a lot of other reasons to linger in the lot. No one was parked near us, so we at least had some privacy.
“I don’t know,” Jake admitted. “Part of me thinks we could have avoided a lot of this.”
I shrugged. “There’s a lot of what ifs and shouldas or couldas, thing is, we didn’t.” Not that I had to ask him what he meant. “We started it, if you think about it.”
“You mean I did.” Jake pinned a look on me.
“If I meant you, I would have said you. I’m not a mute. I could have told you to knock that shit off when you started giving any guy who looked at her the stink eye. I could have gotten in the way when Archie basically started making it clear no one was allowed to ask her out. I could have said something when you punched that other kid. I didn’t. So when I say we started it, I meant we.”
With a snort and a shake of his head, Jake sighed. “You always gotta be the level-headed, perfect one.”
“Hardly. If I were so perfect, I wouldn’t have played the hint game, I’d have gone straight to her and told her how I felt.”
“Well, you kind of did. You asked her to Homecoming before the rest of us could get our heads out of our asses.”
“Archie was already trying to date her without her knowing they were dating.” A fact Jake and I had discussed when he claimed Friday nights and staked out his territory. “He wasn’t going to slow down. You needed a minute, but I had no doubt where you would take your chances the minute you caught your breath. And I wasn’t wrong.”
Jake spent the night there the week before, kept her out most of the night on Sunday and then Wednesday? Yeah, he was there all night again. The minute I read Coop’s message, I got it. Archie got her in bed first, Jake got her next, and I turned her down.
“Man, you know it’s not like that.”
Folding my arms, I leaned back against the bike seat. “Then what is it like, Jake? We’re all going to try and get her in bed and then expect her to choose? How does that not lead to hard feelings? How does that not in the end turn out to be awful for her? She deserves better than that. She sure as hell deserves better from us.”
“I’m not going to make her choose,” Jake stated flatly. “Do I like that Archie isn’t going to back off? Or you or Coop? No. Can I live with it? Yeah. But I told her, only you guys. No one else.”
How the hell was that supposed to work? “This is nuts. Seriously, nuts. We’re going to screw this all up for her because we’re selfish.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about last night, she couldn’t focus, we had to stay on the phone with her, remind her what was next, talk to her about assignments, and keep her eye on the prize. When was the last time Frankie needed anyone to help her study? We slow her down. I know I do. Hell, I took a damn AP Calculus class just so I could hang out with her. And because I knew she’d bootstrap me through it.” And I wasn’t proud of it, but I wouldn’t drop, and I wouldn’t let her down.
“Well, we broke it. We fix it. But it’s not just us, it’s the fucking notes and the crap with her car and her mom.”
Notes. I rubbed my hands over my face. Rachel Manning had a thing for our girl and showed us all up with those roses. But they’d made Frankie smile. “Hey… we need to do something nice for her.”
“Yeah, it’s why we’re gonna pick up Coop’s lazy ass and go meet them for ice cream.”
“No, jerk, I meant something nice for Frankie, like those roses. Something that’s just about her and makes her feel good.” She’d liked the songs I sent her the night before, I could do more of those.
“Let’s figure something out.” Jake reached for the driver’s side door, then paused. “Bubba… man, you’re not really pissed about the other night are you?”
“Did you have sex with her?” It was the most blunt I’d been.
“You punched Archie when she told you about him,” Jake said slowly, facing me. “Need to do that to me?”
“Debating it.” I’d punched Archie because he’d taken advantage of what she didn’t know and pushed. There was no way he hadn’t pushed. I got it, she didn’t regret her choice, and I was glad for her there were no regrets. But Archie deserved the punch in the mouth.
“Then get it out of your system, because what she and I share is between us. I’m not going to drag you if you do or if Coop does or if she and Archie are again. That’s personal, if she wants to talk about it or you do. Fine. I�
�m still your friend, I’ll still listen. But I’m not backing off, Bubba, and if you want to fight over her, I’ll fight you. I don’t want to, but I will.”
Yeah. That was pretty much what I figured. “Just take care of her,” I said slowly. “Don’t… do anything she ends up regretting.”
“What the hell do you think I’m going to do?” Jake glared at me.
“I don’t know, we didn’t mean to hurt her before, and we did. So just be careful.” It was the very least we could do.
Jake glanced past me for a moment, eyes narrowing and I turned. Maria was standing next to a car, phone in her hand looking over at us. When she turned her back, I sighed. Shit like this was getting us nowhere. Sharon had already gone after Frankie. Who knew what Maria or the other girls would pull? And why the hell had they decided to do it now? Frankie had been in our circle from the beginning, long before them, and she’d be there long after them, too.
Friends first.
It was the one thing that seemed to give her reservations about dating us, so I kept myself fixed to that point. I was going to date her and be her friend and prove to her I could.
It was the only way to do it.
Jake
“Let’s go,” I told Bubba, and it came out a lot gruffer than I intended, but fuck it. He was a big boy. Not like he wasn’t used to me snapping. It took everything I had not to march over and demand Maria tell me what the hell was going on.
Sure, Frankie said she’d defended Frankie to Sharon, but that didn’t change the fact she likely knew more than she was saying. At the same time, I didn’t want to get into it with her. Meeting her at the diner last Sunday had been bad enough. The fact someone took a picture of it and immediately posted it just added to crap falling on Frankie’s head.
I wouldn’t do that to her. Not again.
So, I left it alone.
After sending a message to Coop to let him know I was on the way, I headed out. Bubba would head straight to the Pit. Fine. Sitting out the game sucked, but it hadn’t been as bad as they probably thought it would be. I’d already qualified as one of the top three finalists for a scholarship I had forgotten I’d applied for. It meant I was getting at least ten thousand for school and possibly up to a hundred thousand.
Changes and Chocolates: Untouchable Book Two Page 31