Page 14 of The Ex Effect
It definitely felt like I was back in high school watching the two pick back up their love-but-mostly-fake-hate relationship. For a second, it felt like no time had passed. Sure, bitterness replaced sparkly feelings, but right now, it was a typical Saturday afternoon when my annoying brother and spunky girlfriend tried to out-jab each other.
With only one lawn chair, I stood next to Frankie. It took all of ten seconds for Frankie to get wrapped up in the game. “Come on, kids, you got this. Watch your instep! Dude, no. What are you doing? Don’t use your hands!”
Frankie ripped off her jacket, tossed it in the chair, rolled up her sleeves and…shit. Frankie’s white Henley was fitted, perfectly snug, and freaking hot. How did she get such defined forearms? Yoga? Weights? Carrying guilt for a decade?
Soon, Sam couldn’t sit still and paced next to Frankie. Together they lamented about formation and push kicks and toe kicks and whatever-the-hell moves and agreed about not caring if the kids were in first grade, the ref should allow penalty kicks. When Henry made a goal, Frankie stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled so loud it reached the clouds.
I checked my watch. “We should probably head out.”
“Ah. We’re good.” Frankie waved me away without removing her gaze from the field.Rude. “We can leave in like five minutes.”
My jaw flexed, and I sucked in my lips. People like Frankie disregarded time like they were brushing away a gnat. But timewaseverything. It maintained order. It kept things flowing. It showedrespect.
Three minutes passed and my heartbeat kicked up an uncomfortable notch. “I really think we should go just in case we hit traffic.”
Now Frankie flicked me a side-eye. “On the way to Maple Creek? Really?”
“Minnesota construction season, you know?” I tried hard to swallow back the annoyance in my voice. “You might have forgotten that while living in the big city.” Minnesotans liked to joke that we had two seasons—Snow and Construction. But without knowing all the detours or road lane reductions, travel time could increase by ten or twenty minutes. And if that happened, we’d be late. And if we were late, whispers would spread of me being untrustworthy and irresponsible and incompetent and?—
“Tommy and Olivia will be fine,” Frankie finally muttered, breaking my train of thought. “Just a couple more minutes. Game’s almost over.”
The heartbeat now thudded in my throat. “I know I’m only tagging along, but these aremyclients and if I’m present, I absolutely do not want to be even a minute late. Can we go? Now. Please.” I wasnotletting anything ruin my chances at executing this wedding. Frankie’s give-a-shit-less attitude would not poison my good name, no matter how hard she might try.I shifted toward Sam while tugging on my scarf. “Tell Henry I’m so proud of him.”
Frankie grabbed her jacket from the chair and patted Sam on the back. “It was mediocre seeing you again.”
“If by mediocre, you mean similar to the root canal I had last year, then agreed.” Sam’s eyes twinkled. “You two have fun. Mo—hit me up later if you want me to look at your car.”
Frankie dug keys from her pocket. “It’s just the spark plugs.I ran to the hardware store before I grabbed the cupcakes and got a replacement. Should only take me like an hour to replace.”
Wait… what?Frankie, a superb pain in my ass, had checked out my car, bought the parts, and was going to fix it? Everything stopped. But why? What did she have to gain by doing this? And yet, God, it’d be nice to have this fixed. “You…you don’t have to do that.”
“Yeah, I know.” Frankie shrugged and unlocked the truck door. “But I figure forcing you to listen to Bon Jovi during the photo shoot will be a little payback.”
My heart softened. More than I wanted. And way more than what I was comfortable with. I would not let my guard down, ever again. “You’restilllistening to them?”
Frankie climbed in the truck and fastened the seatbelt. “Greatest band of all time, and I’ll never stop.”
As we rolled out of the parking lot, the tiny flicker of hope I felt disappeared the moment I checked my watch. I gripped the handle and tried to breathe out a shaky breath. If we were even one minute late, no matter how kind Frankie had been this last hour, I would lose it.
FIVE
FRANKIE
Well, look at that. We’re practically right on time. Not that Morgan’s body language seemed to agree. On the way up to the farm, Morgan had remained almost totally silent, swiping manically on her phone and glancing at her watch no less than three billion times. If that didn’t give me some serious relationship PTSD, I don’t know what did. During our relationship, Morgan had never trusted me with anything—not buying our prom corsages, or making date-night plans, or filling up my truck with gas (it only ran out once and she acted like it happened daily). Nothing. Sure, was it nice sometimes? Yeah. My brain was like a ping-pong machine, and details and me were not friends. But did it also feel demeaning and frustrating? Yeah.
Morgan was almost as fidgety as me, which was not a good sign for someone normally borderline robotic. Thank God I’d run back to switch my motorcycle for the truck because when I got to Peaches’s place, I realized I forgot to take my ADHD medication that morning. The beauty and curse of those meds—they kicked in right away. But then left my system just as quickly. Seemed like an invitation for disaster for someone likeme—who was constantly forgetting tasks or procrastinating—to remember to take it when I was unmedicated.
I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was twenty-one, when finally some of my doomscrolling on social media one day paid off, and I was inundated with “is this you?” type content. I saw myself in all of those ads and knew I had to make a change. As a kid I could never stay in my seat, often got in trouble for interrupting people or blurting out answers in class or constantly forgot lunch bags or backpacks at home. But as I entered into the professional world, the inability to complete tasks and forgetting things was no longer acceptable, and I was fired from my first few jobs after high school. I knew if I was serious about my photography career—which I was—I had to get some help.
The truck tires bumped over a gravel road, and I gripped the wheel. There was something so comforting about being behind the wheel in Peaches’s truck—the same vehicle my grandma taught me to drive in at twelve. Yeah, country roads or not, there was nothing legal about me driving that young. But neither was my grandma refusing to wear her seatbelt and taking small sips of strawberry schnapps from a flask. “It’s not even real alcohol,” Peaches used to say while smacking her bright-pink-lipsticked lips and checking her reflection in the vanity mirror.
Thinking back on it now, everything about that sounded unethical and dangerous. But that was just who Peaches was.
I’d started sifting through all the things in Peaches’s house, but I’d barely made a dent. I had been prepared for Peaches’s death. Ready, even. And yet, two days ago I bawled in the kitchen over a stack of oldGood Housekeepingmagazines. Every item replayed a memory. The bags of scraps used for quilts, the clunky wooden sewing machine and drawers of threads, plastic Cool Whip containers used for Tupperware. Tucked away in a mothball-smelling closet were a millionknitted blankets, sheets, and pillows, like an army of children might arrive and need to take a nap on her green shag carpet.
But selling this truck was going to break my heart. I ran my hands across the steering wheel, the familiar ridges massaging my palm. Every time I was in town, I slipped into the truck like a bath. The torn seat, the smell of the years imbedded into the fake leather, the clunky shifting gear, was like home. The truck itself carried memories, and I glanced at Morgan more than once to see if a flicker of those flashed through her during the drive. For all I knew, Morgan didn’t remember the truck at all.
But surely, she rememberedatruck, right? Sophomore year, during the fall, crisp orange and brown leaves passing by as we drove up the hill in Duluth for the million-dollar view of Lake Superior. Unhinging the tailgate, gathering blankets and candy. Staring at the water until the sky turned dark, then lying back on the truck bed and gazing at the stars. We held hands and talked about our dreams, and whatever cliché existed about the first time in the back of the vehicle didn’t apply. It was magical. Trembling hands, nervous fingers, the chill in the air matching the goosebumps on skin. The stars and moonlight providing just enough light for two self-conscious girls exploring bodies for the first time.
