Page 23 of Craving Francesca

“She seemed surprised she hadn’t seen you.”

“I was around quite a bit with the Wanker shit,” I explained, pulling out the little package wrapped in purple tissue paper. “But that’s been calm for a while.”

“Poor kid. What a cluster.”

“No shit.”

“Gimme one of those,” he ordered, taking one of the joints. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled deeply. “Little Frankie knows her shit.”

“You want one?” I offered.

“Nah, those are yours. Let me check out the label, though. I wanna get some.”

***

Dinner with myparents and Harper went like it always did. My brainiac sister dodged questions about when she was going to find a job that didn’t take her away for most of the year, Ma walked around like she was living in a dream she didn’t want to wake up from, my dad watched her happily, and I just soaked it all in. All families had issues, and ours wasn’t any different, but we were luckier than most. My parents were still as enamored with each other as they’d been when they got together, and they fucking adored me and my sister. When I was a kid and my friends had bitched about their parents, I’d never had anything to contribute.

My mom bitched at me for leaving water all over the bathroom floor? Dad’s on my back about mowing the lawn like I’d promised a week ago? That was the extent of my experience.

I didn’t especially want to go to Francesca’s birthday Friday, but I still found myself headed over to pick up Harper and take her to the new house. When Dad had mentioned the party, Harper’s entire face had lit up. I hadn’t had the guts to tell her that she should go without me, not when she was so excited to see everyone.

“You look pretty,” I greeted as she strode out of the house.

“I couldn’t wear a dress since we’d be on the bike,” she complained.

“You could drive.”

“Then I wouldn’t be able to drink,” she countered, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Plus, I haven’t shaved my legs in at least a month.”

“Who cares?”

“Don’t ever change,” she ordered with a smile.

It was always a funny sight to watch my nerdy as fuck sister casually yanking on a bike helmet. She looked like she should be driving around some kind of electric Smart car, but she’d grown up on the back of a motorcycle.

“This helmet sucks,” she called out, her voice muffled.

“Ma would kill me if you didn’t have a full face guard.”

“It presses my glasses against my cheeks,” she informed me as she climbed on the back. “It’s fucking annoying.”

“Big girl words,” I joked in mock surprise, making her jab me in the ribs with her thumb.

“Get a move on so we can get there, and I can take this thing off.”

“Stop whining.”

The ride to Lou and Frankie’s new house didn’t take long. Most of the club and their kids lived within fifteen minutes of each other in any direction, and Tommy kept his rental houses in that general area, too. He said he didn’t want to drive an hour to do maintenance when something inevitably when wrong.

“Oh, it’s cute!” Harper called out when the little blue house came into view, a couple of people standing out on the front porch. I just nodded.

I was pretty sure the boyfriend the boys had been discussing was watching us pull up. I couldn’t see anything wrong with him beyond the tight way he held his body. He didn’t look happy, and neither did Francesca.

Her eyes followed us as I parked. There wasn’t a lot of room, but thankfully, there were mostly just bikes parked out front, and it was easy to nose in between them. The boyfriend was saying something that we were too far away to hear, but she didn’t seem to be paying him any attention.

I stayed put while Harper climbed off, my gaze on Frankie.

“Cute house,” Harper called as she took off her helmet. “I love it!”

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