Page 44 of Gravity of Love
He carried her the rest of the way, piggyback, one hand holding her leg, the other pulling his bike. When they got to the house, he gently set her down on the back steps, picked up the garden hose, and washed off the blood. The water was freezing, and she hissed.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
Once it was free of dirt, he helped her inside to the kitchen, found the first-aid kit, then sat her on the counter and went to work. She remembered watching his hands as he pouredthe hydrogen peroxide over her cut and it fizzed and bubbled. She couldn’t take her eyes off his fingers as he squeezed the Neosporin from the tube onto her knee. She was transfixed as he dug through the kit until he found the exact bandage that he wanted, then removed the backing, and secured the Mighty Mouse Band-Aid on her knee, smoothing it down against her skin.
After tossing all the trash away, he opened the freezer, grabbed two Otter Pops, opened them both with his teeth, which made her six-year-old heart flutter, spit the tops into the garbage can, and then offered her the choice: Louie-Bloo Raspberry or Strawberry Short Kook. She chose blue.
“Don’t tell anyone I was nice, Mighty Mouse,” he said, voice low.
She promised she wouldn’t. She never did. From that day forward, she kept Liam’s secret.
That summer day was arguably the most pivotal in her life. It imprinted on her. She fell in love, got her first and longest-running nickname, and acquired her greatest fear, heights in general, and tree climbing specifically. She’d only had to face that specific fear once in her life, and Liam was there to rescue her again.
Their neighbor, Miss Gigi, was an Old Hollywood silver screen starlet. Frankie thought she was the most glamorous woman in the world because she wore silk robes and fuzzy slippers with clear kitten heels during the day and always had a fancy glass of whatever she was drinking in her hand and called everyone, “Dahling.” Not darling, dahling with an h.
Looking back, Georgiana Mayflower was an alcoholic who never got dressed, but young Frankie idolized her. Miss Gigi’s cat Rascal was an ‘indoor’ cat with the heart of a hunter. He constantly escaped, and Gigi would stand on her porch, martini in hand, silk robe waving in the wind, calling his name.
Whenever Frankie heard Miss Gigi, she would pretend she was a private investigator hired on The Case of the Missing Cat. Rascal wouldalwaysturn up before dark with either a mouse, a bird, or other small prey he’d killed in his mouth, except for one day, when the sun set and there was no Rascal. Miss Gigi was still on her porch screaming his name, and it was getting darker by the minute. Frankie, who was eight, grabbed a flashlight and headed into the woods. She discovered as she searched that tree shadows in dusk looked a lot like monsters. Was she scared? Yes. But she loved Rascal, and her concern for him being alone and hurt overrode her fear.
She was about to give up when she heard the faint sound of a meow. It took her a while, but she finally saw that the sound was coming from the top of Frankenstein. She knew she couldn’t leave Rascal up there. So, she set the flashlight down and rubbed her palms on her jeans to dry them because she was so scared and her hands were wet. She took a deep breath and put one foot and hand in front of the other. She didn’t look down, she just kept going up. Finally, she got to Rascal, who was about a third of the way to the top of the tree. As soon as she reached for him, he flicked his tail and jumped from one branch to another all the way down to the ground.
Once she looked down, she became instantly paralyzed with fear. She sat straddling a branch and hugging the trunk for what felt like hours but was probably ten or fifteen minutes before she heard her name. She opened her mouth, but the problem was, she couldn’t scream. Her vocal cords were no longer working.
Thankfully, her flashlight lying at the base of the tree served as an IRL location pin. Not long after she heard someone calling her name, she heard branches rustling and a voice telling her that everything was going to be okay. The next thing she knew, she felt a strong arm wrap around her. She looked down and sawthe same hand that had smoothed the Band-Aid down on her knee was on her stomach.
“Hey Mouse, what ya doin’?” Liam’s voice sounded in her ear, but it was like she was underwater. “Come on, don’t leaf me hangin’.”
She felt herself smile at the pun.
“I was… Rascal was up here. I came to get him, and then he jumped down.”
“What a rascal. I guess he is living up to his name,” Liam teased, and this time he didn’t sound a million miles away.
Frankie wasn’t sure how long it took for Liam to get her down the tree. She had no concept of time. But he stayed with her, keeping his arm around her at all times, so she knew she would not fall. When she got to the lowest branch, he hopped to the ground, lifted his arms, and told her to jump. She looked down at his hands reaching up for her and he told her he would catch her. She closed her eyes and jumped, because she knew he would. And he did.
One of those hands was just inches away from hers now. She kept having the strongest urge to thread her fingers through his. It was like there was a magnetic force pulling her hand to his.
She tried to distract herself and think about the party. It had been so much different than she’d expected, not because she’d ended up working it, but because of the way she’d kept catching Liam looking at her. Even his sisters had noticed. When she was changing out of the Elsa costume, they were asking what the deal was between them. She didn’t know what to say or not to say, so she kept it vague. She said they knew each other as kids. Phoebe said it was obvious that Liam was a “smitten kitten.” Pippa chimed in that he was clearly “in lurve.” And Lina added that she’d never seen him walking around with “cartoon hearts floating around his head.”
She also learned the reason they were all so concerned about her being “Poppy’s Frankie” was because they had a running bet on which sister would introduce Liam to “his person.” Every time one of the sisters set Liam up with someone, even if it was just for a casual coffee or an introduction, the other three sisters put twenty into ‘the pot.’ They started the bet five years ago, it was now over four grand, meaning he’d been set up or introduced to over sixty women in the past five years. If she was “Poppy’s Frankie,” Poppy would have won the money, because they thought Liam wanted to be with her.
But they didn’t know their history. Liam cared about her. She knew that. She could even believe that he loved her. But what they were talking about was different. The first time anything physical happened between them, he disappeared and didn’t speak to her for over a decade. The second time, when she’d been drunk and kissed him, he recoiled in horror. So, yeah, the track record wasn’t great.
Still, she had to admit the vibe tonight was different between them. Something had shifted. She just didn’t know what.
Once they passed the shuttered bait shop, which looked infinitely more sinister at night, and then turned onto Main Street, where the last of the shop windows glowed gold and inviting against the gloom, she knew that their time together was drawing to a close. The silence between them wasn’t awkward, it was heavy and expectant, like the moment before a curtain rises.
Frankie felt the aftereffects of the birthday party settling between her ribs, the sweetness of cake on her tongue, the warmth of Liam’s niece’s laughter, and the way her chest had gone soft and aching when Liam pulled her into his arms and hugged her to thank her for “saving the day.” She didn’t know what to do with that feeling.
“What?” he asked.
“What, what?” she repeated the four-letter word back to him, maybe a little more defensively than she should have.
“What is that smile for?”
Shit.She couldn’t actually tell him what had caused that smile. She couldn’t say that she was smiling the way she was because she was remembering the way she’d felt when she’d been in his arms.
