Page 63 of Gravity of Love
This performance was even better than the first. He deserved an Oscar for this one. She rolled her eyes and forwarded him the information his assistant had sent her. His phone dinged with the notification as she grabbed her hoodie off the armchair in the corner, which was actually Liam’s hoodie she’d borrowed during the hike, and pushed her arms through the sleeves.
Before she went out to the balcony, she glanced back and saw Tristan hovering over his phone, staring down at his screen. Sheslipped out the sliding door and shut it behind her. The air was fresh and smelled of pine and firewood.
The ringing stopped as soon as she lowered down into the chair. Frankie exhaled, trying to steady her hands enough to unlock her phone. The mountains across the valley looked solid and reassuring, and the crisp night air cut through the haze of anger like a blade.
She called him back, but it went straight to voicemail. That happened with the two of them a lot. If one of them missed a call, they called back at the same time the other was trying to get ahold of them again, they truly did share one brain. She hung up and waited for him to call, staring down at her screen, willing it to light up with his perfectly symmetrical face before her toes turned into icicles.
As she waited, a wave of realization hit her of just how much she’d missed him. He was such a big presence in her life. Not just physically, although he was tall. Zion Ash was six and a half feet of living, breathing confidence, but never in a way that was overbearing, always in a way that was precisely calibrated to the situation at hand. His body, maintained from his teen modeling days, still moved with the grace of someone who’d learned how to wear a tux before he learned how to ride a bike. His father was Nigerian royalty, and his mother was a British diplomat, giving him a multicultural, mixed-nationality background that resulted in his passport being stamped with more countries before he turned ten than most people have their entire lives. His hair was a halo of tight curls that he wore with an ever-evolving array of artistic colors. His dark, thick lashes outlined golden brown eyes that glinted with a private joke at all times.
Frankie met Zion her second day at NYU. They somehow ended up in the same “team building” group, and they were paired together to do a trust fall, which was a questionable piece of event planning considering no one could be trusted to catcha six-foot-five man except perhaps a sumo wrestler or a small forklift. It was the perfect storm of dysfunctional personality types. Zee, with the supreme confidence of someone who’d spent his life being photographed for J. Crew catalogs, catered to, and waited on, he simply closed his eyes, folded his arms, and tipped backwards. Frankie—five-one on her best hair day—held out her arms with the gumption of a lifetime of keeping up with the boys andneverbacking down from a challenge. The two ended up falling backwards and breaking a table, which they both thought was hilarious. From that day forward, they’d been inseparable.
After graduation Zee let Frankie move into his East Village high-rise apartment and live there rent-free for six months until she moved into Tristan’s Downtown Brooklyn brownstone. Zee followed her to Brooklyn Heights and bought a penthouse. When Tristan decided theyhadto move to a townhouse in Soho, Zee sold his penthouse and moved to a luxury loft apartment two blocks away.
Not being able to talk to him while her life was imploding had been hell. When he didn’t call her back, she finally called him, and it went to voicemail again. She disconnected the call, and he texted her, saying that he was calling her.
It rang once, and she answered, “He?—”
“What thefuck?” He skipped the pleasantries and got right to the WTF of it all.
“Yeah.” Just hearing Zee’s voice made Frankie want to cry. Tears may have swelled in her eyes, but she ignored them. “Are you back in New York?”
“No. I’m in Jaipur.”
She had no clue where that was.
“India.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I was going to stay another two weeks, but I can come ho?—”
“No,” she cut him off as she sniffed back emotion. “Stay. I’m fine. There’s nothing you can do. This is… I don’t even know what this is.”
“Fucked up, that’s what this is.”
“Yeah.”
“So T-bag still doesn’t know why you left?”
“Tea bag?”
“It’s when men put their balls in?—”
“I know what it is. I just…that’s a new nickname I hadn’t heard before.”
“Well, if he wants to go dip his dick and balls in everyone, then I figured?—”
“Okay, fine.” Frankie shook her head and glanced over her shoulder.
Tristan was pacing up and down the room, speaking on the phone. She couldn’t hear him, but he lookedpissed. She hoped she didn’t get his assistant fired, but honestly, she never liked her. Petra had always given her weird vibes. SheworshippedTristan, which he enjoyed but was strange. And she acted like she wanted to be friends with Frankie, but all she did was talk about Tristan. About a month into her employment, she asked Frankie if she could cut off a swatch of her hair to bring it to the stylist for a color match. Frankie said she didn’t feel comfortable with that, but the next week, lo and behold, she came in with hair frighteningly close to hers. She even started dressing like her, and she began adopting phrases and vernacular similar to Frankie’s. People in the office noticed, and they thought that Petra looked up to Frankie, but Frankie always had a feeling it had more to do with Petra’s unhealthy obsession with Tristan and nothing to do with her.
“Tristan knows, I just told him.”
“How did that go?”
“He denied it.”
“How? It’s a video.”
