Page 108 of Rules, Roses, and Rivals
Maybe, for just a few hours, that was exactly what I needed.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
FRANKIE
By Monday, the school looked like the inside of a Pinterest board that got into a street fight with a Valentine’s Day parade.
The glitter hadn’t faded. The drones had multiplied. And someone had installed a rose wall by the cafeteria that was definitely not school-approved. But no one was taking it down. Because apparently, homecoming week had officially become a full-blown aesthetic war.
“I swear,” Rachel muttered as we walked past it. “If someone suggests a coordinated color palette for the pep rally, I’m walking into traffic.”
I offered her my coffee. “Mood stabilizer?”
She took it without protest. “You’re a saint.”
I was not. But I didn’t say that out loud.
Because today… Today was already weird.
Not bad. Not good. Just weird in the way your skin feels right before a storm hits—electric and tight and too aware of itself.
It could have started with Mom’s sudden disappearance over the weekend. After her repeated messages on Friday, she hadn’t even been home when I finally got there. A note waited on thefridge, she had to go out of town for business. She’d be back. There was money on the counter for groceries if I needed them.
Despite the quiet weekend where I worked almost exclusively on my applications for colleges and holed up in my room, I still felt—off. The guys had all messaged or called. The vibe was “normal,” almost too normal.
That added an element of strange. Because our normal hadn’t been normal in months. Every conversation seemed to vibrate with all the things we weren’t saying. Was the pressure there real? Or was I just imagining it? When did it become so hard to talk to them?
Maybe it was because Jake was back. Not just physically—he’d returned on Friday like nothing had happened—but emotionally, too. His participation in the group chats had seemed quiet, centered. Like he’d done some kind of soul inventory over the weekend and decided to try again. At the same time, he kept our interactions to the group chats only.
Was he waiting for me to reach out? Should I reach out? Over a decade of friendship said I should. Friends fought. We all did dumb things. But I couldn’t say that his actions hadn’t left a sting of pain that still burned.
Then there was Coop. I did see him over the weekend, as well as maintained an ongoing conversation we picked up in person then back to messages. Coop had been acting suspiciously chill for three days straight.
Too chill.
Like the kind of chill that always came right before he dropped emotional TNT in the middle of the living room. I hated thinking that. I didn’t have many memories that didn’t involve Coop in some way. He’d been my best friend from kindergarten on. We’d lived in this apartment complex for years, he was my closest neighbor, my summer buddy, and the guy I would say I knew better than anyone.
And I was right.
Because he found me during free period—in the back of the library, where no one went unless they were skipping or having a breakdown over college apps. (Both were valid.)
He didn’t say anything at first. Just stood next to me, staring at the long aisle of reference books. I tended to study back here because it was quieter and no one bothered me.
Finally: “Hey.”
I glanced up. “Hey.”
“You okay?”
It was Coop, so I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
He nodded like that tracked. “Me either.”
We stood there for another minute. Then he turned toward me, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his shorts, gaze steady.
“So… I wasn’t going to ask. Figured it didn’t matter. Or that you already knew how I felt.” He looked down, exhaled. “But I realized that wasn’t fair. To you. Or to me.”
