Page 121 of Summer Breakdown
“You don’t have to do anything,” Jasmine replies. “It can just be done.” Jasmine isn’t looking at her again. In the past two weeks, she’s forgotten that Frankie knows every iteration of her face. Frankie doesn’t think she’s doing it to test her. To see if she’ll fight for her. But it’s what she deserves either way.
Still, Frankie’s face crumples. “I don’t want to be done. I—please. Please. I don’t want to walk out of here and never see you again.”
Jasmine shrugs, her fingers tight against her own waist. “We can be friends after a while.”
Frankie’s chest constricts. Friends. She could be her friend. She could watch someone else make her happy. As long as she’s in her life, she could do that.
Frankie nods, desperate. “Okay. Okay, if you want. I can—I can do that.”
Jasmine chews on her lip. “I need to check on the kids… and then I can set up the guest room.”
“Okay,” Frankie replies. Jasmine is the only thing on her mind, but she’s missed the kids too. She didn’t realise how much until she got here and saw Marcel’s hoodie and Lani’s crayons. It was always strange to her, when parents missed their kids after a couple days on holiday. She gets it now. “How are they?”
“Okay.”
Frankie nods. “Can I say hi?”
Jasmine chews on her lip. “I don’t—it’s not a good idea.”
“Oh.” Frankie has felt her heart crush before. Just now when Jasmine said about a guest room, as if Frankie didn’t live here. Earlier this afternoon, when her therapist said she should wait a few days before she spoke to Jasmine. Every second of every day since she broke up with her. Frankie shuffles. She’s never felt uncomfortable here, but now, it feels like there are ants under her skin that she can’t quite itch.
“I—I’m not dangerous.”
Jasmine frowns. “What?”
“I don’t know what Ezra has told you because I am terrified to ask, but I want to tell you… if you want to know,” she replies. Jasmine shows nothing on her face. “I wouldn’t hurt them. I wouldn’t come here if I thought I would.”
“I know,” Jasmine says easily. Frankie frowns. “Frankie, you broke my heart.”
She feels like she’s been hit, even though she knew that. Jasmine told her that as she did it, and she did it anyway.
“I’m not saying no because I think you would ever be violent,” Jasmine says, but she’s not looking at her. “Laniasks for you every dinnertime, and she asks me to call when it’s time for voices at night, and I cannot bring myself to tell her you broke up with me.” Her voice breaks, and her cheeks are wet, and Frankie has no idea if she can even touch her now. “I have been doing everything to convince myself you didn’t, but every day that fucking passes, you don’t talk to me.”
Frankie crosses her fingers, but it won’t be enough. She did what she thought she should do, and she broke her heart. The only woman that has ever loved her how she wanted. How she needed her to.
“I know you were unavailable,” Jasmine says. “I do. I don’t know what it’s like, and I don’t know how—I don’t know anything. But you left, and you didn’t say bye to them, and I—I was never supposed to introduce you. It’s my own fault.”
“I didn’t want to break your heart.”
Jasmine shrugs. “Yeah, well.”
“I don’t—I don’t want to. Can you please check on them, and then can we talk after?”
Jasmine swallows, shuffling on the spot. She’s got her arms folded across her chest like Frankie doesn’t know she’s wearing her top.
“I can wait outside,” Frankie suggests. Desperation seeps through every pore, but she’d rather be called a loser than miss the rest of her life with Jasmine. “Please.”
Jasmine sighs, rubbing her eyes too harshly. “You don’t have to do that,” she says, then she leaves, and Frankie is left in the kitchen with more of her things than her own flat.
Frankie knew she’d hurt her. Jasmine never explicitly told her she’d kill her if she hurt her children, but Frankie read between the lines, and she hurt them all the same. It doesn’t matter if she meant to. Her excuses and pain don’t matter to a four-year-old hoping she comes for dinner. To her, and the teenager who pretends they’re not excited to see her at breakfast, she’s a letdown, like their father. The burn at the back of her throat is a permanent fixture in her life.Something she’ll have to deal with, like the surface-level anxiety and the bipolar. Her doctor will give her a pill for it, she’s sure.
But Frankie isn’t coming back the same, and she has spent every moment of the past few days trying to figure out how to explain to Jasmine that she might be more insane than she thought. That she hallucinated her for hours at a time. That something cracked this time, and she’s terrified. Jasmine shouldn’t think about being with her without knowing it’s worse than Frankie ever explained.
Frankie moves away, her fingers tapping in the need to fix something, do something. She puts stray glasses in the dishwasher and makes a fresh tea. The lemon mug that’s her favourite sits untouched, pushed to the back of the cupboard because she’s not been here to use it. Jasmine’s orange mug sits at the back too.
“Hi,” Jasmine says, a while later.
Frankie spins. Jasmine’s back. She’s tired, her cheeks puffy and her eyes red. She’s starlight.
