Page 18 of The Ex Effect
Several moments passed, and with each one my heart thumped stronger. Tommy’s head tilted from side to side as Olivia paced with her lips pulled tight. I could almost see Olivia’s wheels turn as she looked across the property, at the barn—that seemed no longer sobrokenas it wasweathered—and back at her fiancé. My belly fluttered while my mind shifted into fifth-gear overdrive. This would solve 90 percent of our problems. The only issue would be time and crew. But my parents owned a remodeling business… Pete and Patty’s place had a shed… We could rent high-quality portable toilets that flushed and had sinks… Since their tree farm was already a licensed business, they probably had the right insurance and things.
Maybe.Hopefully.
I eyed Frankie’s neutrally frozen face. Probably scared to skew Tommy and Olivia’s response. But dang it, right now, Frankie better skew.
Tommy grabbed Olivia’s hand. “What do you think?”
Olivia ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek, then glanced at Frankie. “You think your aunt and uncle would go for this?”
A long moment passed. “Maybe?” Frankie said. “Myparents said they’ve been talking about retiring, so they might either be super open to it because it will up the value if they sell or totally opposed because of the hassle.”
Please.I pulled Frankie to the side in case I had to get on my knees and beg.“Would you talk to them?” I gripped Frankie’s forearm like my nephew Henry pleading for a holiday gift. “I’d take care of all the details…the cleanup, the hiring, the prep. We could use that big machine shed to store the…leftovers. The only thing we might need from them is signatures. But they could sit back and do nothing.”
My voice was rushed, but I couldn’t help it. Right now, everything hinged on this space working. Absolutely no other options, existed. If Frankie didn’t think this could work, we were done. The wedding could not happen the way the couple wanted, I would lose my wages, and my business would officially close.
For the love of God, this had to work.
“I don’t know about this…” Frankie said, her arms crossed. “That’s a ton of work.”
I gritted my teeth. “Please, Frankie. I’ll handle everything. You know me. If I put my mind to something, I’ll do literally everything to make it work.”
A scoff left Frankie’s mouth. A real, genuine scoff, enough where I flinched and took a step back like she’d flicked me on the forehead.
She dipped her head at me, her whiskey-brown eyes narrowing. “Youmustbe joking.”
Heat filled my face. That tone was like a punch to the gut, a cross between condescending and incredulous, and I felt it directly in my core. I tossed a quick glance at Olivia and Tommy, who were thankfully in a quiet discussion out of earshot.
This right here was not about our past, what may have happened, who let who slip away all those years ago. This wasabout my business and livelihood, not that Frankie knew that, and her family friend getting married. I opened my mouth to snap something snarky back but instead pulled in a deep breath through my nose.
“Listen. Whatever history we have, right now, can we please bury it? I think this place is our last option. All I’m asking you to do is have a conversation with your aunt and uncle.” I twisted the rings on my fingers. “Please. Just ask them. Not for me, but for Tommy.”
Frankie tipped her head at Tommy and Olivia. A moment passed, then two. Frankie nibbled on the inside of her cheek and finally her shoulders softened. “Fine, I’ll talk to them,” she said. “But that’s it. I want nothing to do with this after that. I’ll let you know what they say, then after that I’ll see you in August.”
SEVEN
FRANKIE
I walked past the crisp American flag next to the even crisper pride flag waving in front of Peaches’s house. God bless my grandma, the first in the neighborhood to raise a pride flag outside her home the moment I came out at twelve. I’ll never forget biking here after school one day and watching Peaches hoist that thing tall and proud, the rainbow waving majestically in the wind. Throughout the years, as Peaches’s garden overgrew, her lime-green couch sunk, and the crank on her windows stopped working, she still replaced both those flags with new ones every two years.
I tossed my keys on the side table and looked around the space. No matter how many times I entered the house, the smell covered me like a warm weighted blanket in the middle of a snowstorm. The scent of my grandmother’s Elizabeth Taylor Passion signature perfume, cinnamon from decades of baking, old carpet, and dusty furniture imbedded into every fiber. I wanted to capture it in one of the thousand mason jars Peaches had in the basement and bring it with me when I returned to New York.
After being back for over two weeks now, I thought I’d befurther along with packing up Peaches’s house, but I swore it looked the same as when I started. But every item held a memory, and every memory deserved to be honored. For years, I smirked about Peaches being a hoarder and holding on to things like random container lids with no containers. And here I was, looking at the same box of multi-colored crocheted granny squares that I’d been staring at all week, refusing to add them to the donation pile.
I flopped on the guest bed I’d been staying in since returning to Spring Harbors, and the bed springs croaked in response. My parents had reluctantly offered me a room in their house, but I figured I’d be dragged into some MLM presentation with my mom or forced to join my dad at the pawn shop. Renting my dad’s Harley for a hefty fee for the summer—even though he could no longer ride—was a favor enough. Although Peaches’s ghost lingered the halls, sleeping at this house was a safer bet.
Last night, I got ahold of Pete and Patty and chatted with them about using their property for a wedding. At first, it was a quick and resounding no. To which I nearly said, “Oh, thank God,” and hung up. But guilt gnawed at me. I could see the desperation in Morgan’s eyes, and only marginally cared to help her if I was being honest. Was there a little lingering bitterness between Morgan and I? Obviously. And her lack of options wasn’t my problem. I was hired to shoot the wedding and engagement photos, not make sure they had a venue.
But I’m also not an idiot. I’d seen Woodlands and could recognize that the likelihood of other options existing were minimal if nonexistent. And Tommy’s mom had been solid to me growing up. A neighborhood woman with a kind smile and a lush strawberry field who liked to bring buckets of the fruit to our house. She was someone who’d often “pop by” when Quinn and I were little, probably noticing our parents were gone and we were too damn young to be alone. And it didn’t sit right withme that she might not have a place to properly watch her son get married.
So, I pressed Pete and Patty some more, asked what Morgan could do to sweeten the pot. Was it money? Making sure certain things weren’t touched? Preserving the land? Finally, it boiled down to this: The amount of shit they accumulated over the years overwhelmed them, but they didn’t have the energy to sift through it all. Some of the items were valuable, some had family history, and most was junk.
So, they’d agree to Morgan’s rental fee offer and remodeling idea on one condition: I had to be there every step of the way to oversee, to make sure that Morgan—a family outsider—didn’t throw anything meaningful and respected the property.
I shifted my focus back to everything I needed to do today, and grabbed my phone and called my sister.
“Hi, you’ve reached Quinn,” she said after two rings. “Sorry to have missed your call, but I am currently tits deep in a heaping pile of unread emails and Slack messages. I’ll call you back when I’m dead. Beep.”
Oh, Quinn. I missed the dramatics. “You know voicemails don’t actually beep anymore, right? Mom may still have her answering machine from the nineties, but we do not.”
