Page 20 of Summer Breakdown
“Mama,” Lani says, looking up at her from her chair. Hell, the puppy-dog eyes are out. Jasmine will have a butterfly on her face so fast. Lani probably won’t get sick from it. Jasmine gets nervous because when she gets sick, she’s so ill. It’s terrifying. “Can I get my face painted?”
But she can’t do so many things other children can. “Sure, baby.”
There’s no one at the table, so they line up and wait. It’s warm here, even with the doors open. Jasmine loves the summer. She wishes everything was outside. Still, the atmosphere is chill. It seems nice. She doesn’t immediately want to run out and never look back.
Jasmine finds a pocket of sunshine to stand in as she flicks through some leaflets. The Titans. Cute name. There are a few signs on the noticeboard. A PR job that appeared to have closed months ago. So many community posts. Coffee mornings, rugby for the elderly, food drives. Everything with the wordsspeak to Frankwritten on them. Jasmine smiles despite the immediate heart palpitations at being reminded of her night with Frankie. She hopes she can get Marcel on the team.
There’s also an accounting job that Jasmine looks at because there are about six exclamation marks on it. She’snot interested—she already has a full roster, and she just got over the end-of-quarter-four hell. Besides, it’s almost school holidays, when she’s out of office for six weeks. Working for herself is the best thing she was ever lucky enough to do.
It’s so close to being actual summer. Jasmine is hoping for scorching weather, even to prove to her parents that buying a house with a pool, in the middle of England, was a good idea. Also, because she loves it when the kids are off school. This might be the last year she gets Marcel to stay in the house for longer than half an hour. She can imagine the late evenings as Lani chases Marcel around their new garden. The barbecue dinners. The shine of Marcel’s cheeks because he has no idea how much suncream is appropriate and is terrified of looking like an old leather handbag.
Soon, her days will be full of her kids, and she won’t have to worry about trying to put herself out there to make new friends just to be ran out on. God, she’s a loser.
“Oh, hey. Cute top.” Jasmine frowns. Why does she recognise that voice? She spins, and oh…Oh no…
Frankie.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Oh,hey.Cutetop,”Frankie says, and the young girl bends forwards to smile. She’s so sweet with her little braids and her T-shirt with daisies all over it. Kids are adorable. Frankie wants Ezra to hurry up and have some. She doesn’t think he’ll have them himself, because she saw a few adoption leaflets at his place the other day and Cam can’t have them. Either way, he could get on that. Mal clearly wants kids because sheawws every time she sees a child under twelve. The Titans could invest in a highchair.
Frankie takes a moment to try and figure out if she should bend down to wheelchair level, or if the girl wants to get out of the chair. It would help if her mother would stop blatantly ignoring them both as she faces the other way. Frankie hates parents. Well, she dislikes many parents. (Even if this one has flowers on her dress. Small, dainty ones. Frankie wonders if they’re supposed to be matching.)
Frankie only ever meets parents when they don’t want to do anything their children want to do. It’s judgy, because she only sees them for an hour a week, and they probably need a break, but it hurts her heart when a child bounds over to their parent with a smile only to be told “in a minute” or “I’ll watch.”
It’s probably from her own childhood. Her parents are fine. They let her live with them until she turned thirty, they didn’t disown her when the doctor diagnosed her as bipolar (it wasclose), and they kept their annoyance at her being alesbian mainly at bay. But when she was younger, she had to do what Ezra did. Even if she wanted to spend time with them. It worked out. She played rugby because she had no choice, but she got good at it. Her mum thinks it turned her into a lesbian, and Frankie doesn’t have the brain power to explain to her why that’s not true, so she says yes, it’s all her mum’s fault.
“What are you wanting today, babe?” Frankie asks.
“Please may I have flowers on my forehead? Some white with yellow, and some yellow with white? Please.”
Frankie blinks. Are all small children this well-spoken? “Sure! Do you want them to filter out, or all over?”
“What does that mean?”
Frankie wonders if her mother can hear. Probably. Frankie understands the rugby club is really a place for parents to drop their kids and go, but today is not like that. This child must be somewhere between three and twelve years old. (Frankie’s not good with guessing ages.)
Frankie grabs the painting examples.
“Uhm, so like, there’s lots here and then none there,” she replies. Can she touch her to show her where the face paint will go, or will the girl’s mother finally turn around, only to stab Frankie in the throat? Frankie places her finger against her own forehead, then moves it up to her non-existent hairline. She frowns, so Frankie’s not sure it was useful.
“Uhm,” the child speaks, and she sounds unsure enough that finally, her mother spins. Or her guardian, she guesses. She can’t assume.
Frankie looks up and almost dies. Straight-up thinks she might cease to exist.
Jasmine looks right at her. It’s not friendly. It’s not flirty. It’s nothing like that night. The look on her face is cold, and Frankie wishes she knew exactly what she was thinking, even if she can figure it out herself from the look on her face. The hatred is evident in the crease of her brow, the weight of her bottom lip, the clench of her hands.
“Baby,” she says, bending down to talk to her child. Kehlani. Frankie knows that. So, it must be Marcel next to her. “It means you have more flowers here,” she says, pointing to Kehlani’s forehead, close to her brow. Then she moves her fingers up towards her hairline. “And less here.”
“Okay! Do you think that will look cute?”
“You always look cute.”
“Mama.”
Jasmine smiles, and Frankie’s jaw drops open. “I think it will look cute.”
Kehlani smiles back, then looks back at Frankie. “Okay. Yes, please.”
