Page 3 of Summer Breakdown
Cam looks at Mali, who takes another sip of her drink with her eyebrows high. Mali will be hungover tomorrow and completely fine. Zach will stroll in with a sausage sandwich or something, and she’ll be grand, while Frankie dies under her desk. (Zach often offers to get her something too, but she thinks he makes them at home, and Frankie’s seen Buffy waltz over their kitchen countertops. She’s not risking fur when she’s already dying.)
Calmly, Mali says, “We’ve spotted the hottest woman we’ve ever seen and you’re going to lose your shit.”
Frankie scoffs. “I am not.” She takes another sip. It goes down easy. Frankie can’t drink too much on her pills, but she gulps this down with ease. Her phone lights up with a text from Cam telling her the drink isn’t alcoholic. Cam always knows what Frankie needs.
“Go to the bar and you’ll see her, but you’re not allowed to leave.”
“You are so dramatic, and I already have a drink.”
“Yeah, but I’m out,” Cam says, swirling her empty glass, “and the Titans won today, so we should celebrate!”
“We were shit. Ezra and Kai were practically old ladies. We’re lucky the other team was worse.” It’s so early in the season that Frankie could let the team get away with it, but she doesn’t want to set a precedent.
“Ezra had allergies,” Cam says, with a shrug. She’s so unserious.
“You’d defend Ez if he tripped over his own foot.” Mali slurps the last of her drink. “But, Frank, I’m out too,” she says, placing her glass down.
“Why do I have to go?”
Mali looks at Cam with a smile, then shrugs. “Cam and I voted, and you lost.”
Frankie laughs. “You’re so annoying,” she says, but she’ll go anyway. It’s what she gets for being late.
Even though they’ve been best friends since they were kids, Frankie wonders if Cam likes Mali more than her. Something to mull over until it kills her later. “Who else is coming?” she asks.
“Ez and Zach.”
“No Kai?”
“I think he’s avoiding you for the next few days,” Mali replies. He’s so dramatic. Frankie didn’t even call him shit to his face.
“Fine,” Frankie replies, getting up. “But I’m getting singles.”
Mali laughs, and Cam pouts at her. They know she’s lying. Frankie is a crowd-pleaser. Cam lets her be because she knows it makes her happy to be liked, but she refuses to let her be a pushover. Once, someone asked Frankie to get them a coffee, but in a “Darling, grab me a coffee”like she was the help kind of way, and she said yes, but Cam had sat on Frankie’s lap, because it was a ridiculous request and Frankie wasn’t allowed to do it. She will take a drink, though, especially when Frankie’s late.
“Here come the team sheets,” Mali says, as the emcee starts touring the room, handing paper out to the various groups.
“Let’s win this fucker,” Cam responds, pulling her gel pen from her bag.
With a smile, Frankie makes her way to the bar. She doesn’t always like to be out of the house, but she always likes Mali and Cam. And Ezra and Zach are fine, she guesses. She’d see Ezra at their parents anyway, and she and Zach aren’t friends—they’re friendly. She doesn’t hate him or anything. They got over their drama from last year, but she’s not going out of her way to chat with him.
Kai is her friend, and she feels guilty that he isn’t coming. Maybe her attempt at being a coach on the pitch and a friend off the pitch isn’t working. Though there is a chance he’s using his poor performance as an excuse to get out of the quiz when, really, he’s getting his dick wet. The nervousness that he might be sad swirls in her stomach. She can be a hard-ass at times. She grabs her phone and shoots off a text asking if he’s alright.
After she’s ordered the drinks and dropped Ezra’s name to convince the barmaid they need table service, Frankie is ready to go back to the table. As in, ready to make her legs move, not ready to chat. Being bipolar is mostly fine. She has therapy and a whole load of pills. Sometimes, it’s still a struggle. A click of the clock and she’s gone. The energy to not cry is all she has, and sometimes not even that. But she’ll be alright tonight, she’s sure of it.
Not everyone knows. Only Ezra and Cam. Most people think she’s sad or down, and that’s how she likes to keep things. Otherwise, people start looking at her and reading too much into every movement she makes. Someone will ask her if she took her pills that day because she’s frowning, and the only reason she’s frowning is because she saw an old man at the café, sitting alone. She’ll make a hilarious joke about offing herself and then won’t be able to find her scissors for three days. All this to say, she’d forgotten about the hottest woman Cam and Mali had ever seen.
Frankie remembers now, and she turns, feeling a gravitational pull towards the only woman they could possibly be talking about. She sits behind their booth, with smoulderingeyes and her hair wild with curls. She’s stunning—dangerously so. She shouldn’t be able to walk around with that much power. Her dark gaze, the way her lips shine even though she’s in a shadow. The way that, even from across the bar, Frankie can see that her jawline is sharp. God, she’s so fucking hot.
They were right.
And the worst thing is, she’s looking right back at her.
Frankie is used to getting pretty women. Pretty straight women glide into her arms. She may as well have the word “gay” illuminated above her, as if it’s a green triangle and she’s a Sim. This woman can’t be straight. It would be a crime against humanity for her to like men. Truly and honestly, what could a man have done to deserve to be in her presence?
Frankie’s never seen someone like her. She demands attention, and she’s not doing anything apart from sitting at a table, her ankles crossed and her shoulders back, casually powerful, like a statue in an old town.
Frankie can’t look away. It almost feels wrong to look elsewhere.
