Page 61 of Gravity of Love
He slumped, falling to his back on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling.
“It didn’t mean anything. Me andEm. She just… I didn’t see her coming. It wasn’t serious.”
Em. She’sEmnow?
It didn’t even matter. Frankie wasn’t jealous at all. She wasn’t even mad, not at the affair. She was upset that he’d been cheating on her for years. It was the lying she hated. Why hadn’t he just left her?
She sighed. “Okay.”
“Okay?” he repeated, his voice sounding hopeful.
What did he think she was going to do? Flip out. Scream and yell? Attack him? She’d known about it for over a month. Even if he’d said they were in love and getting married, she would have had the same response.
“Yeah, okay.”
He rolled over and slid his hand across her stomach in one practiced move.
She immediately pushed him off of her. “What are youdoing?!”
He lifted up on his elbow, peering down at her. “You saidokay?”
“And?”
“And you saidokay,” he repeated, every word soaked in entitlement.
“That doesn’t mean okay, I forgive you. It just means, okay, I’m not going to argue with you because what’s the point?”
He flopped back down on the bed, behaving as ifhewere the injured party. She was honestly so over this. It was taking every ounce of self-control she had not to go sleep in another room. If she thought for one second that her mom wouldn’t catch on and sniff out trouble in paradise, she would do exactly that.
Frankie was so far beyond furious it was a miracle the bedsheets didn’t combust from the heat radiating off her body. She lay rigid and awake, not because she could still feel the phantom touch of Tristan’s arm on her waist, but because she could still hear the echo of his words in her head.It didn’t mean anything.Me and Em.It wasn’t serious.But the worse,I didn’t see her coming.
She knew if Zee was there, he’d say,um, I beg to differ, sir, youdidsee hercomingthat is the problem.She grinned thinking about it. This was why Zee was her best friend, even from halfway across the world, no matter what she was going through he could make her feel better.
I didn’t see her coming. That sentence kept spinning in her head like a blade on a ceiling fan.
It wasn’t about Em. Frankie would never blame the other woman. But Tristan made it seem like she was a natural disaster, a force outside his control, and he was some innocent bystander. He was taking zero accountability, and he knew what she’d seen. He was acting as if Em, the femme fatale, was up against the wall totally naked and he just happened to be walking by minding his own business, also nude, but that detail didn’t matter, when she summoned hurricane force winds that pulled him between her mile-long, supermodel legs, then she wrapped around them around his blameless neck.
It was infuriating.
He’ddonethat,and yet he had the nerve to lie in this bed next to her and act like he was the one who had been wronged in this situation.
“You know what this is, right?” His tone was tranquil and loaded.
She wanted to puke.
She didn't respond because she knew it was a rhetorical question. She forced herself to remain quiet and listen despitewanting to jump out the window. Or throw his phone at his head. Or put a pillow over his face. Instead, she lay there, remaining silent the only way she could, by imagining she had anactualzipper across her lips, while she allowed him to monologue.
“It’s the same thing you always do. You shut down. I make a mistake—in this case, abigmistake, yes, but still—” He took a deep breath as if he needed to keep his calm. “—it was just a mistake, and you punish me by freezing me out. That’s not healthy, Mouse. It’s not effective communication.”
In that moment, she wasn’t even participating in the conversation anymore. She saw herself in the third person, a frozen statue of a woman, lips pressed together so tightly they were as good as sewn. In some small part of her brain that was in charge of consequences, she was scared if she opened her mouth, she would say things that she couldn’t take back. Horrible things that she didn’t want to say to someone who had been her friend for a quarter of a century. Who, for better or worse, in some sick twist of fucking fate, was now going to be herstepbrother.
The mattress dipped, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tristan prop himself back up on one elbow and gaze down at her. “I’m not saying I’m perfect, but there aretwopeople in a relationship. You never take responsibility for your part in anything. Have you ever asked, ‘Why? Why did Tristan do what he did?’ Or did you just ghost? Did you just run away to California?” Tristan pushed up so he was in a seated position and ran both hands through his hair in frustration. “Look, I know I messed up. But how long are you going to keep punishing me?”
Frankie looked up at him, and for the first time, she saw that he truly believed this was temporary. Somehow, in his phantasmagorical mind, he was honestly under the impressionthat they were coming back from this. That he was in some sort of ‘time out.’
What sort of delusion land was he living in? She actually knew the answer to that. Tristan got what Tristan wanted. He always had. He was good-looking, tall, smart, funny, charming, charismatic, athletic, oh, and rich. There were not a lot of doors that were closed to him, if any.
“Don’t you think you’ve made your point?” he said in what might have been the most condescending tone she’d ever heard in her entire life.
