Keys and Kisses: Untouchable Book Three

by Long, Heather

  The whole point was to make it senior year special for all the things she’d never done before. It hadn’t really occurred to me until we’d started on this that Frankie had never had a mum, and even when we hit Homecoming last year, she hadn’t done more than show up for an hour before she left.

  Sometimes, I felt like a real asshole. The looping purple ribbon I was doing would edge the mum, then we’d build them all together with mine on top of the ribbons Coop was stringing.

  “This thing is gonna weigh a ton,” Coop said as he held it up.

  I shrugged. “That’s why it said to safety pin it and use that to attach it to the dress. We can always take it off if it’s too heavy for her. But she gets to have it for the pictures.” And our arm garters would all coordinate with hers. Red mums against the purple of our school colors while hers was a white against the purple.

  “Yeah,” he said, setting the glue gun aside and chasing Tiddles away from swatting at the ribbons. The cats had been all about playing with it. We were both covered in cat hair.

  Maybe I could talk Frankie into using the lint roller on me again. The idea had its merits.

  “Why are you grinning like that?” Coop asked, and I chuckled.

  “Nothing. Just hoping she enjoys the surprise.” Because there were some pieces I still wanted to keep to myself.

  “Me, too,” he admitted. “Though to be honest, I think she will. With everything that’s been going on, she doesn’t talk about her mom that much.”

  “She’s talked to me some.” It wasn’t betraying anything. Though I wasn’t going to bring up the fact she’d cried or how lost she’d been. The dislike I felt for her mother had only intensified recently. If I could make it so the woman never breathed the same air as Frankie again, I would.

  “Good,” Coop exhaled the word, and I met his stare. “She needs to talk to someone.”

  “Don’t start on that abused crap.” Not that I didn’t believe it, because I did… “Not everyone wants to pour their heart out.”

  Muriel went through therapists like she did designers. Attending when it was in vogue and dropping them when they required she actually do some work. Sometimes, I wondered why she bothered. Then Jeremy would give her a gentle push, and she’d get thoughtful.

  It never lasted though.

  “It’s not crap,” Coop said as he added another length of ribbon to the garter mums. He’d lined the colors so they would match hers with just enough, but different enough that people wouldn’t totally freak. Prudish hypocritical assholes. “C’mon, Arch. I know you’ve seen it.”

  “Fine,” I huffed. “It’s not crap, but hammering on her for dealing differently than you or Bubba would with whatever emotional deficiencies she’s had to cope with her whole life doesn’t help anyone.”

  “Well,” he said, pausing to reach for the soda he’d opened earlier. “On that, we can agree.”

  “Good. I still can’t believe he dug a hole so big he fell in it.” What kind of idiot did that?

  “Well, we all dig our own holes.” The other guy shrugged. “We did it when we didn’t tell her about the affair. When we warned people off her. Points. I mean, she’s had a lot to forgive and get over.”

  Frowning, I glanced at him. “You think she’s run out of second chance cards?” Because, face it, I’d likely screw up again. I wanted to be everything, but my examples for a committed relationship wasn’t great. I wanted to protect her. Just like paying the rent on this place so it was secure through graduation. I didn’t want any more surprises tearing the carpet out from under her.

  “Could we blame her if she did?”

  The matter-of-fact nature of the question floored me. “Coop…we’re gonna mess up again.”

  “I know,” he said with a sigh. “We just have to do our best to not mess it up.”

  “Well, with everything from the points to the summer coming back to bite us in the ass…”

  “I’m less worried about that than I am the dick who did that to her car.” The comment was a blast of cold water in the face.

  “We never found out who did that.”

  “Nope,” Coop laid down the third of the garter mums. There was a fourth one, but we’d both been on the fence about whether we should make it for Bubba. Technically, it wasn’t a date.

  If we wanted to be really technical about it, none of us were taking her for a date, and yet we were all taking her.

  “That’s why it bothers me,” he continued. “Laura wrote the crap on her test. Sharon’s been trying to torture her using social media. Some asshat left the notes in her locker.”

  “But you said not Laura ‘cause the writing didn’t match.”

  “Nope. Didn’t match Rachel either.”

  Ugh. I made a face. Rachel. Most of the time, she didn’t bother me, but it was weird that she had a thing for my girl and couldn’t stand us. Not that she made any pretense of liking us either. “Not sure whether to be happy about that last part.”

  “Be happy about it,” Coop advised. “Frankie likes Rachel, and even if she wouldn’t be my first pick, she’s been a decent friend to her when we still had our heads up our asses.”

  “Well some of us still do.” Not really what I wanted to hear. “Okay, so who’s left that would hate Frankie enough to do that to her car? Or hate us?”

  “The list of who hates some of us is longer than others.” At his pointed look, I flipped him off. “Maybe it’s not hate.”

  “You think it’s jealousy?”

  “I think people can be cruel. Frankie never made waves. Most people like her. She’s funny, she’s smart. She doesn’t pigeonhole in any one group.”

  “You could make that argument for all of us though,” I pointed out. “Face it, Jake and Bubba are jocks, you’re emo boy, and I’m just a geek.”

  “You’re a rich geek.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine, I’m a rich geek. But the same thing applies. We all have different interests. Jake and I do the engineering thing, Bubba’s got his music, you and Frankie have your research and lit—though Jake’s arguably more into books and history with her than we are. You also like psych.”

  “You want to tell me something else I already know?”

  I wasn’t offended by the challenge. Actually… “Frankie’s done nothing but study the last few years, she’s pulled back on her extracurriculars.”

  “She has since she started at Mason’s.” Coop shrugged. “Part of why she kind of fell out with the other girls. She wasn’t doing anything with them, and we hogged the rest of her time.”

  I stared down at the ribboned circles I’d been decorating. Frankie worked, a lot. Coop had had jobs on and off over the years. Coop had been delivering food since he got his car, but he’d also had part-time gigs. But Frankie worked more than all of us combined.

  Money couldn’t solve everything, but it could make a person more comfortable. I’d never had to get a job. Not once. As far as I knew, neither had Bubba. He’d done volunteer work, but his parents were comfortable enough.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Of the five of us, Frankie had been working steadily since the day she turned sixteen in our sophomore year. She hadn’t even slowed down, heading to Mason’s right after school and applying for the job. Almost two years she’d worked there.

  “Hey, Arch…”

  “What?” I glanced at Coop, who was staring at me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking.”

  “About?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  His phone buzzed, and Coop picked it up. “Jake’s got the mums, and he’s almost here. Said Bubba’s following him.”

  “Yippee.”

  “I thought we worked things out with him,” Coop tested.

  “You one hundred percent good with the fact he hurt her?” Because I wasn’t. I still hadn’t forgiven myself.

  “No,” Coop admitted. “Jake told her she doesn’t have to dance with him tonight either. I f
eel bad for the guy—doesn’t mean he doesn’t need to do the work.”

  “Good.” Bad enough the assholes decided on her first dance without me there, but I could always make sure I got the last one. “Fuck…it feels weird that he’s on the outside.”

  “Yep. Feels like we should be helping him.”

  “But I don’t want to.” And I didn’t. “I told him what I thought. He dug that damn hole and tried to throw all of us in it.”

  “He meant well.”

  “They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” At the same time, it was true for all of us.

  “Look,” Coop said as he set the last of the ribboned cardboard circles down. “We don’t sabotage him. We’re there for him if he needs to talk. We support her. At the end of the day—it’s not about what we want.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It’s not.” But if he couldn’t find a way to make things work with Frankie, too…

  Huh.

  Should it matter if he was out, other than he was still one of our friends? One less person I had to split her time with, and I got that she was dating all of us, but…

  But if she did end up choosing, how weird would it be? Worse, how much would it hurt?

  Thoughts like that weren’t going to get us anywhere.

  I wanted to make some grand gesture and say no matter what happened we’d all still be friends. But Bubba was the poster child for how challenging that would be.

  Maybe we did need to do more to help right that boat.

  We could, but the real question was, should we?

  That one didn’t have an easy answer.

  Ian

  Bike parked between Archie’s car and Coop’s, I slid off and removed my helmet. Jake was already out of the SUV, the mums he’d picked up at the craft store in the bag. They were building a Homecoming mum for her. The fact that they’d all planned it together and the guys were working on it at her apartment while she was out stung.

  Not that I didn’t deserve it. I accepted the clothes bag from Jake as he passed me my suit and waited while he grabbed his own. We were all getting ready here. Archie had the car picking us up here, and it would drop us off after here.

  No hotel rooms. No after party plans.

  At least none that anyone had shared and, at the moment, I hadn’t wanted to ask.

  “Dude,” Jake said as he locked his car. “Lighten up. I get it. You’re not happy, but today isn’t about you anymore. It’s about her. We need to keep it upbeat and focus on her having fun.”

  Yeah. “Just tired,” I told him. It wasn’t totally a lie. I was tired. Sleep had been elusive, because last night after our little celebratory meal post-game, Frankie had gone home with Jake and Coop, and I’d gone home alone. Dad and Mom had left me a cupcake on the island with a congratulations note.

  Dad asked me whether I’d be home tonight after Homecoming. I hadn’t told them about the breakup or the fact I wasn’t going with Frankie. The way Dad stared at me, I knew exactly what he was thinking. Instead of a straight yes or no, I’d only told him the five of us were going to hang out and we might do a movie after.

  I was pretty sure he didn’t believe me.

  “Bubba…” Jake yanked my attention back to the present. “Where’s your head?”

  Same place as my heart, but that wasn’t what I said. “Just worried about tonight.”

  Sharon and Patty had been on a tear at the parade. They’d pasted on smiles, but I hadn’t missed the cutting looks.

  “Look, tonight is going to be great. We’re all going. We’re all going to have her back. No one is going to do shit.” The vehemence in his voice made me smile. Hell, my jaw still ached from his version of handling things. Not that he looked much better.

  We were both still sporting some yellow and green in our bruises. “You think she’s going to mind we’re still beat up in the pictures?”

  “They air-brush everything,” Jake said with a shrug. “It’s hardly the first time we’ve been bruised or beat up on each other, for that matter.”

  Also true.

  “It’s the first time she’s not teasing me about it.”

  Garment bag over his shoulder, Jake met my gaze. “You did it to yourself.”

  There was no sympathy in his expression.

  None.

  “Don’t you think I know that?” I’d been jealous. I was still jealous. I hated the fact that I was jealous, and at the same time, I hated all of them because they were right where I wanted to be and I didn’t want to feel that way.

  “No,” Jake said softly jerking me out of that spiral. “I don’t. I think you’re too busy blaming how you feel on everyone else. You let your dad get in your head, and you know, I get it. Joe’s a good guy. He cares. But he doesn’t know us—you do or you should.”

  “But he knows…he knows a lot of things, and he’s worried.”

  “Okay, so he gets in your head. Paints an ugly picture. You pull back, you cut her off. How does that help her?”

  “I wasn’t trying to cut her off.” Fuck. I blew out a breath and paced away from him and then turned. Were we really having this conversation in a parking lot? Fine. “I’m crazy about her. I have been forever. I asked her first, because I didn’t want you guys to have an in. Not that it stopped you, but I thought the grand gesture would do it, and even that didn’t work.”

  “I know.”

  That was it. Two simple words. I confessed to being the asshole, and Jake just shrugged it off. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Don’t be so damn understanding.”

  “I’m not.” Jake shrugged. “She’s still my girl. I don’t have to understand shit. But I get the impulse. I also had to get over it.”

  I frowned. “You would take off with her in a heartbeat if she said yes to only you.”

  “Not a doubt.” How did he stay so calm? “But I’m never going to tell her she has to choose. I’m okay with sharing. Sounds weird. Might change down the road. Kind of doubt it.”

  Disbelief filtered through me. “So, Frankie meets some new guy and she wants to date him too, and that’s going to be okay with you?”

  “Fuck no,” Jake answered, his eyes narrowing. “I told you I was okay with us. No one else.”

  “How do you get there?”

  Some of the irritation in his expression faded. “Because I want to be here.”

  “Just like that?” Because I wanted to be there, but I wasn’t. I had been, briefly and then…

  “No, not just like that. You don’t think I wasn’t envious that you asked her to Homecoming? Or that you put that look on her face?” He lifted his eyebrows. “Did you even see her face when you did the ask?”

  There’d been wonder in her eyes. Wonder and tears. That smile. Yeah, I’d seen her face.

  “Did you think I wasn’t envious when I figured out she’d been with Archie?”

  That had pissed me off.

  Between that and the fact that they hadn’t let up on their stupid ass plan for the French guy…

  “You ever ask yourself about why us seeing her bothers you when Frenchy didn’t?”

  “She didn’t care about Frenchy.” It wasn’t even a question. Jake pointed his forefinger at me, thumb up like he mimed a gun.

  “Exactly. But she does care about us. Before dating was on the table, that didn’t bother you.” He paused a beat, then studied me. “Or did it?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “I don’t think it bothered me. But we all tried to make sure we had our time with her. Tuesdays were my day.” If I got nothing else with her, we got to hang out on Tuesdays together, and I used to tell myself it was enough. Even if I had to share her time with the others.

  “I told you already, you need to figure this out.”

  He had.

  “And you need to be in a better fucking mood tonight, because if you bring her down, you and me are going to end up in another fight.”

  I sn
orted and then kicked at a rock on the blacktop. “I don’t want to be jealous, Jake. I don’t want to be that guy. I want to make her smile.”

  “Then focus on making her feel good and don’t worry about whether she’s paying attention to you right now.” For a moment, his expression softened. “Bubba, she cares, okay? She’s still hurting over the idea that you suddenly pushed her away.”

  “She’s the one who broke up with me,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, because it was something she could control.” And that was it in a nutshell. “Can you handle it tonight? ‘Cause if not—don’t do this to her or to us.”

  “I’ll handle it.” Because the thought of not being there or showing up separately was even worse than just being the odd man out. I sucked in a deep breath. “In fact, I’ll spring for pizza because I’m starving.”

  Jake studied me for a long moment. “Good. All right, let’s go over a few rules about tonight while we’re at it…”

  Rules?

  I followed him up the stairs to the apartment’s back door. When he pulled out a key, I had to swallow the sting of that, too. It was my own damn fault. Maybe if I reminded myself of that enough, it wouldn’t burn quite so bad.

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “Rules. Hey, we’re here,” he called out as he held the door open for me.”

  “Good,” Archie said. “We’re about ready for the mums part of this mess.”

  “Bubba’s buying pizza so throw in your orders. Meat lovers for me.”

  “Pineapple for Frankie,” came Coop and Archie’s dual responses. Jake smirked, and I laughed.

  “No shit,” I said. “She hasn’t changed her order in years.”

  “Just making sure.” Coop glanced at us as we walked through to the living room. Two of Frankie’s cats perched on the sofa. Tiddles was one and the other had to be Tabby. Tory was the shy one. “Hang your suits up in the bedroom. We put a rack on the door to her closet.”

  The mum construction was laid out on the table in the living room. The ribbons on Frankie’s were numerous along with charms and trinkets. There were three garters made already and a fourth sitting in pieces.

  “Rule number one,” Jake said as he returned up the hallway. “Coop got first dance, I got second, Archie gets third. You can ask her after that.”