Page 6 of Summer Breakdown
“What’s wrong with my face?”
Cam frowns. “Nothing,” she says, then her brows rise. “Oh! I meant people as pretty as you are usually weird! Like Tyra Banks.”
Jasmine smiles and places her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. “What’s your weird thing, then?” she asks. Cam beams at her.
“Girl, quit playing!”
“Cam’s not the two,” Frankie says in a sing-song voice, then Cam replies, “I’m the one!”
Laughter flits around the booth. Suddenly, Mali says, “Yay, Zach is here!” Jasmine shudders.Men.“And I think he brought Ezra.”
“Kai really didn’t come?” Frankie asks, and she looks away from Jasmine, which Jasmine doesn’t love, but she’ll get over it.
“You scared him,” Cam replied.
Frankie snorts, and Jasmine’s about to ask what they’re talking about, but two of the largest men she’s ever seen turn up. She’s not sure which one is Zach and which is Ezra, but even as a lesbian, she can appreciate their attraction. She glances over them both, stopping for a moment on the one with dreads. The hairstyle has always worked for her, though she thinks they look better on women. She won’t tell him that, though, because it’s rude.
Mali stands up, puts her hands on the cheeks of the one with dreads, and pulls him into a kiss. She’s guessing it’s Zach, because she’d said his name with such love a moment ago, and he got ayay. Ezra didn’t get ayay. Maybe that’s why he frowns at the table. But Frankie and Cam wave, so Jasmine assumes that’s just what he looks like.
He’s massive. Bigger than anyone she’s ever seen before. She wonders if they play sports, but that’s only because halfher mind is on sports at the moment. It’s the only thing Marcel wants to talk about. If this quiz asks which footballer was sold for the highest price last year, she’ll be all over it. She could slyly take a photo and send it to him. If they were footballers, he’d tell her who they were.
Jasmine looks back at Frankie. She’s kind of adorable. Her muscles are defined, and Jasmine wants to learn how to paint just to figure out the perfect way to replicate them on canvas. Lani would help her. She loves beautiful things. Jasmine is delighted with the way Frankie is already looking at her. Not her face—her eyes are tracking something else. Maybe her collarbone, maybe her boobs, she’s not sure. She’ll wait for her gaze to come back around to her face, though.
Jasmine sits and watches. It takes Frankie a moment, and a lip bite, and Jasmine doesn’t care if it’s all for show. She’s the one who’s watching. Frankie’s gaze falls back on her face, and if it was all for show, Frankie is a bad actress, because she blushes the moment she realises she’s caught. She screws her nose up, and Jasmine smiles at her—a true smile. A slight giggle that she’ll curse herself for later kind of smile. She keeps her lips closed, but it’s a struggle.
“Hey,” Zach says to everyone. Jasmine smiles at him with a small wave, but his attention doesn’t stay on her. He kisses Mali again. At the table. Like teenagers.Ugh.Jasmine is so jealous. She loves love, but she’s been without it for so long that it’s made her a green-with-envy hater, on the inside. Outwardly, she’s smiling.
“Don’t hate them because they’re overly gross,” Frankie says quietly, leaning over the table to talk to her.Oops.Perhaps she wasn’t hiding her face all that well.
Jasmine looks at the thick muscles in her forearms, the way they twist into the most insane biceps she’s ever seen outside of her dreams, and almost sighs.
“They’re cute,” Jasmine replies, with a shrug. She wants to look at Frankie again, but she’s caught on the way Frankie’sfingers tap against Jasmine’s drink. Her rings clink against the glass, but Frankie doesn’t touch her. Jasmine assumes that’s all part of it. The lure, the effect Frankie must have on any woman she looks at. It works.
Frankie ducks her head a little, like she’s looking for Jasmine’s gaze. “Tell your face that.”
Jasmine looks up at her and smiles, teeth and everything. Frankie is funny. It’s also funny when her jaw drops a little.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” Frankie says, her voice soft. Jasmine knows Frankie says this to everyone she chats up. Cam has made it clear. Still, her heart thumps in her chest all the same. Frankie has a confidence Jasmine wishes everyone had. She clearly sees what she wants and goes for it.
“You think so?” Jasmine asks.
“I do.”
Jasmine hums, then slides closer to the middle of her side of the booth. She looks down at the space next to her. “Wanna sit here?”
Frankie looks down at the table when she smiles, and Jasmine wishes she was closer so she could tilt her face back up to her. She forgives her, though, because she slides out of her side, and before Jasmine knows it, Frankie’s sitting right next to her.
CHAPTER THREE
Frankieisdesperatelyholdingon to the one thread of restraint she has. Her pills have been working all week, and now, when she needs them most, she can feel it slipping away. She’s been on medication long enough to know when something is happening. There’s no worry she’ll have a meltdown, thank God, but she won’t be useful. (The last time she almost had a breakdown, she shaved her head. She’s so 2007 Britney.)
If this was a normal evening, she’d already be leaning back and letting Mali and Cam dominate the conversation. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it sure feels like it when Jasmine sits next to her. There’s not going to be another night a woman this pretty takes a liking to Frankie, not when half the bar looks at her every time they walk past.
Frankie wants to pretend she’s only making the effort because Jasmine is a smoke show, but she’s afraid it’s not that. Jasmine is ridiculously attractive; that’s true. Frankie finds it hard to breathe if she looks directly at her. But she also rests her hand against Frankie’s thigh when she wants her attention, and Frankie wants to know why she wipes every new glass she gets with a tissue she pulls from her bag. How it’s possible that she fits in with the group so easily. Why she never swears.
So, because of everything that Jasmine is, Frankie pushes past the warning signs when she laughs at something Cam said. Frankie missed the joke. She’s missed most of the quiz,but Jasmine’s hand has stayed steady on her thigh, so she’s not missing anything she cares about.
Frankie leans forwards, moving some of Jasmine’s curls because they keep falling in front of her face and Frankie wants to see her. She rests her hand at the back of Jasmine’s neck.
