Page 1 of Summer Breakdown
CHAPTER ONE
“Fuckingwhopper!”Frankieshoutsas the van goes screeching past.
“Jesus wept!” Gus (her taxi driver and new bestie of seven minutes) exclaims as his shoulders slowly go back down. Frankie moves too, as if making herself thinner affects the width of the car. “When will the council sort this bloody road out? It’s a right mess.”
“Innit,” she replies, shaking her arms out. It wasn’tclose. Gus was driving about twelve miles an hour, because this road is barely wide enough for one car, let alone two. It’s the same with most roads in Toulshire—some trade-off they give up for cute, winding streets. It was their right of way, though, and the van was too close for comfort.
“Anyway,” Frankie says, over it now. “I’m just saying, if you worked tonight, you’d be able to take me home later.”
Frankie makes friends. That’s her thing. She only just met Gus, and she already knows he has three kids and a wife much too good for him. He knows she’s on her way to get laid and maybe say hi to Cam and Mal. She has a debilitating need to overshare the fun, flirty things she thinks people might like.
“As desperate as I am to see who you take home with you, Adebayo, the missus will have me in the doghouse if I’m not home at eight with a takeaway. You think you’ll be done by then?”
Frankie flips the mirror down, rolling her lips together as she checks her face. Another perk of becoming mates with a taxi driver is that she can sit in the front and utilise the charging cable and the aux. She’s been playing Reneé Rapp the whole time. (Gus thought his daughter would like her and made a note on his hand. Cute fucker.)
Frankie’s makeup looks much like it usually does. Natural, even if it took her forty-five minutes and one semi-breakdown to achieve. She doesn’t like the way she looks, but she’s not about to share that with Gus, or let it consume her on the way into town. She doesn’t need to be hot to take girls home. Straight girlsloveher.
“Dunno.” She shrugs. “Might be.” Her arms are out, so chances are she’ll be swarmed by a hen party the moment she walks in.
Frankie swore she was over straight girls who desperately wanted to trybeing with a woman. She said when she turned thirty, she was done with it. She was settling down. White picket fence, kids (that aren’t hers because she doesn’t want anyone to have to inherit her messed-up brain, but she could be the mum that stepped up with no problem), cute dog, the whole shebang. Then she turned thirty, and it turns out the number of lesbians that live in Toulshire is still three—Frankie, and the two chicks already selfishly together. Frankie gets jealous, so she can’t be bothered with that.
There’s no timeline in which Frankie imagined she’d make it past twenty-five, so the future she never pictured doesn’t have anyone in it. It’s more vague silhouettes. She’ll blame it on being bipolar, like that’s to blame, not her. Well, she is bipolar, sotechnicallyher fault, but she likes to pretend it’s a completely different entity. Her therapist says she thinks thatbecauseshe’s bipolar. Frankie thinks it’s because she’s funny as fuck.
Alas, Frankie was forced to stay in the land of the living because of three things: her brother, her best friend Cam, and the fact she doesn’t know how Grey’s Anatomy ends.
Despite the brain fuck-up (or due to it, if you ask her parents) Frankie is gay. A stereotypical bald, masc lesbian. So the fact that she looks like she fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down doesn’t stop straight girls from flocking to her, ready to tear her clothes off.
She’s also hilarious, great at drawing, and, depending on how much pasta she’s consumed that day, her body is tight. But the people she goes home with don’t care about that. (The ‘also’ is a mechanism her therapist taught her to do whenever she said something bad about herself. It’s rude that it works so well.)
Gus hums the melody to “Poison Poison” as he pulls up out front of Carl’s bar. Frankie might ask for his number, even if he does step on the brake a little too firmly.
“Thanks,” Frankie says. “You coming to the match on Saturday?”
Gus sighs. “Tickets’ve been sold out for weeks.” They have. Frankie’s giddy about it. Three (winning) matches into the season and they’re sold out each time, even the away matches. They’re at home this weekend. They’re her favourites.
“As if I’d make you sit in the nosebleeds,” she responds. Frankie hands him a twenty, even though the ride only cost thirteen pounds. Gus fumbles in his fanny pack, and Frankie frowns at him.
“Keep the change, and my number is in your phone for the game. Text me!”
Gus smiles, a wide thing she barely sees from underneath his moustache.
“Already told you I can’t stay out ’til midnight to pick you up.”
Frankie rolls her eyes. “I just don’t wanna jingle! How am I gonna pick up a hottie sounding like a piggy bank?”
Gus cackles, and Frankie smiles at the sound. Being liked is her favourite thing. It’s why she takes people home for one night, only to never see them again. It makes them happy. She likes it; they like her. It makes her like herself.
It’s still humid when she gets out of the taxi. The air is gross and too close to her. Frankie loves the summer, but she could do without sweating just standing still. The sun hangs low behind the brick building, but the sky is still bright. July is when Frankie starts to thrive. Somehow, she got stuck with depressionandseasonal depression, so now is the only time of the year she feels somewhat normal.
Still, even with the sunny days and late evenings, Frankie doesn’t always meet up with Cam and Mali. Ever since Mali joined the group a few months back, there have been events left, right, and centre. Mali and Cam are a force to be reckoned with, the little eager beavers. Frankie’s not sure how they have the energy. Cam owns her own bakery, and Mali is working around the clock to get sponsorships. Frankie has one team to coach—that’s it! And accounts to fix, but she’s not thinking about that right now. She wrote a job listing. That’ll have to do.
Frankie is, however, fucking fucking mint at a pub quiz, and her mountain of pills seems to be doing something this week. So, she strolls into the bar at exactly 8:07.Fuck.She’s late. She turns to wave Gus off, and he peels away from the curb a moment later.
Frankie goes to tuck her hair behind her ear, then promptly remembers she shaved her head a few months ago, when she couldn’t be bothered to figure out another wash-and-go style. She’s been trying to work out if she misses it, but she’s not sure if she’d survive the in-between stage, so she shaves it every couple of days. Mali keeps telling her to try her wigs on. The other day, when they were having a pamper evening, Mali whipped hers off in the living room, but Frankie laughed too hard at the casualness of it and fell off her pouffe. Though, to be fair to Mali and herneed for a bi-weekly girl’s night, Frankie’s skin has never looked so banging.
The girls are in the same place they’ve been every week since they started coming to the quiz. (The landlady fancies Ezra, and Frankie’s not above whoring him out for a table in peak season. Why the landlady does whatever they want when Ezra only ever glares at her, Frankie’s not sure.)
“Hi!” Mali says, waving her over. She’s changed her hair from purple to pink and has different eye makeup on. She’s so sweet. Frankie wasn’t sure what to make of Mali when she first started working with them. She seemed too nice to get anything done, but being nice works for her. Her energy isn’t fake, and that’s why people fall over their feet to do whatever she asks.
