Page 62 of Summer Breakdown
Jasmine laughs, but it’s still breathy, even as they stand still. “Shut up.”
“Man, I don’t have pearls of wisdom. I love Frank, and I want her to be happy. I want you to be happy too. No one would judge you for not going for it. If you only want to be her friend, she won’t hate you for it.”
Jasmine wonders if she’d hate herself.
“But,” Ezra says, stepping a little closer, “she’d love you better than anyone. You wouldn’t regret it.”
“I think about her all the time,” she whispers. “I don’t know how to not. I keep reading books on being bipolar to try—“
“Bro, what? You know?” Ezra asks, his eyes the widest she’s ever seen them. Frankie said he knew, and Jasmine would have assumed he did anyway. “She told you, or you figured it out?”
Jasmine frowns. “She told me.”
“When?”
“The night I met you.”
His eyes get wider, and it’s weird. Ezra’s eyebrows aren’t supposed to be that high. She’s not supposed to have seen so much of his eyelids.
“Holy shit.”
“What does that mean?”
He sighs, running his hand over his head. The door opens with a clang, and everyone turns to face whoever dared interrupt their session, but Jasmine smiles despite herself when Frankie walks in, in a tight vest and stupidly short shorts. She’sso unfair.
“Frankenstein!” Lani shouts, wheeling over.
“It means,” Ezra starts quietly, “if you want anything with her, you have to be explicitly clear, and she’ll still trip over herself trying to figure it out.”
Jasmine frowns. Why does she have to figure it out?
“It’s not fair,” Ezra carries on, “for it to land on you—especially not if Frank already hurt you—but she has never told anyone about her illness. I know, and Cam knows because we were there. Our parents don’t talk about it. Frank only tells people she wants to keep. If she thinks her life would end if they disappeared. So, just for me—or for her, I guess—please, only be explicit if you’re sure.”
Jasmine looks at her, at the way she’s running around wheeling Lani as they chase Marcel.
“I better be the woman from the fucking bar.”
Ezra hums, knocking into her. “Swear jar.”
Frankie managed to be forty minutes late to badminton, even though she was waiting on her sofa with gym gear on the moment she read Jasmine’s group text. Then, of course, she talked herself out of it. She was going to sit on her couch on a sunny day and sulk instead of getting up and going like she was invited too, because her brain is annoying, and her pills said they wanted a day off.
Then, Jasmine asked her specifically. Ezra probably told her to, but she did it either way. So before she could overthink what Ezra had talked to Jasmine about, she was already in the car. She had to wait in the car park for ten minutes lest they think she ran out of her house the moment Jasmine asked her to, obviously. She couldn’t look too keen.
The horror of letting people know she wants to be around them worked out, though. Now, she sits at Jasmine’s dining table as the sky turns dark, her chin in her palm as she watches Jasmine talk. She invited her in for tea, and Frankie has managed to convince her she’s still thirsty after her second cup, an orange juice and a shared flatbread.
Jasmine doesn’t seem to mind, her hands fly around as she explains how Frankie should let her be a sponsor for the women’s team just so her name will be on the shirt.
“You’re so ridiculous,” Frankie says fondly.
“I just think you’d look good with me all over you,” she shrugs. Frankie blushes but she leans a little closer anyway. Frankie can’t tell if Jasmine is flirtier when it’s dark out, or if the lowlight in the kitchen makes everything more romantic. Either way it makes Frankie turn inside out. She can’t decide if she wants to hide under the table, or crawl across it.
All she knows is that she’ll do anything for Jasmine to look at her like she is right now, for the rest of time.
Frankie runs her forefinger against Jasmine’s hand on the table, tucking her fingers under her palm until they hold hands like schoolgirls. She wants to flirt back, but there’s never been someone she wanted as badly as she wants to keep Jasmine. She’s not sure how people are ever alluring when the person in front of them has the power to destroy them.
“Was that too much?” Jasmine asks, head tilted like she knows she’s ruining Frankie’s life. Frankie shakes her head.
Jasmine hums. “Just so you know… I am always waiting to talk to you, too. The other day, I paid Kai a fiver to trip over during training so you’d want to come and tell me about it.” Frankie cackles, Jasmine is so unserious and it worked flawlessly because Frankie immediately ran over to tell her and then didn’t leave for fifteen minutes.
