Page 80 of Gravity of Love
He scoffed, eyes wild, hands gesturing so wide he nearly knocked the lamp from the nightstand. “You want to talk about bad guys? How about your perfect littleDr. Dreamy? You want to tell me you haven’t been texting him all night? I know it was him who told you. I’m not stupid. I know you’ve always had a crush on him, and I know it was him who told you,” he repeated.
When Tristan started repeating himself in the same argument it was bad.
She waited, letting the words hang in the air until they stopped vibrating. “I wasn’t texting him,” she stated boldly. She hadn’t texted him once that evening, which was actuallywhyshe’d been upset. “And what was he supposed to have told me?”
Tristan’s eyes narrowed, gaging if she was telling the truth or calling his bluff. After a moment, he shook his head, voice dropping to a low, calculated register. “I know he told you that I was talking to her at the fitting, but, you know he’s full of shit. The guy’s a robot. He’s probably in his lab right now building a girlfriend.”
She almost laughed. “Maybe he is, but I bet he wouldn’t ever FaceTime the woman he’s cheating with from a balcony while the woman he’stryingto get back together with is in the bathroom.”
It landed, just the way she knew it would. His face went blank, all the color draining from his cheeks.
She continued, “Liamnevertold me about you talking to Emmanuelle at the fitting, but thanks, becauseyoujust did.”
His eyes darted to the bathroom, and she could see the wheels turning as he tried to figure out a way to do damage control and spin this. “You werespyingon me?”
She rolled her eyes, suddenly even more exhausted than before. This was a whole new level of gaslighting. “You were three feet away behind a glass door. You weren’t exactly trying to hide what you were doing, Tristan. You were FaceTiming. You hate FaceTime. It didn’t take CIA-level skills to figure it out.”
“See even you admit it.CIA. That’s spying, Frankie. Fuck this. I don’t deserve to be spied on.” Tristan pushed out of bed, pulled on his sweats, grabbed a sweatshirt and his phone, then stormed out of the room.
Frankie stared at the ceiling, and tears began to fill her eyes. She wasn’t sure why she was crying. She wanted to blame it on her migraine and not admit her emotions were behind her welling up, but thenshewould be the liar. She blinked and blinked, trying to hold them back, but her vision only got blurrier. She tried to focus on the ceiling, tracing the cracks in the paint, counting the number of dots in the texture. Anything to keep her mind from spinning out. But then, it all just became too heavy, and she let herself stop fighting. The disappointment and anger at herself seeped in everywhere. It covered her like a blanket, heavy and suffocating, insisting on being felt.
What had she ever seen in Tristan? She was pretty sure she’d figured out why he’d asked her to marry him. Losing his momreally messed him up. She reminded him of home, of the time when he was taken care of. Butwhyhad she stayed with him? Why had she settled?
The air in the room felt thin, and she found it hard to breathe as she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, trying to force the tears back into her body. This was so stupid. She wasn’t even sure what she was crying about, Tristan’s lies or the fact that she’d wasted so many years with him.
Maybe she was just tired. Maybe it was the fact that she’d gone to New York to prove to herself that she could be strong and independent and follow her dreams and ended up devoting her life to Tristan, to building his dreams. Maybe it was the fact that the minute she’d come home, she ran into Liam, and she was putty in his hands once again. Her heart split back open, and she was a lovesick, hopelessly devoted teenage girl, again. And now he was ghosting her, again.
She lay there shivering, even though the room wasn’t cold, her body racked with silent sobs that she refused to let escape. She thought of Liam. Of the weird, fussy way he’d organized every closet and cabinet, including the medicine, in his home. Of the way he smiled—really smiled—when she’d made him laugh by doing that dumb impression of Yaya at the grocery store. Of the way he’d held her in his bed as they fell asleep. His arms wrapped around her, breathing in sync, heartbeat to heartbeat.
She missed him so much it hurt. Not in the melodramatic, crying-in-the-rain way, but in the real, physical way that made her entire body hurt. She wanted to text him, just to ask for a hug, but she didn’t want to seem as desperate as she felt. Instead, she scrolled through her camera roll, stopping on a photo she’d taken at his niece’s birthday party, Liam, hair damp from the dunk tank, shirt plastered to his chest, arms crossed and pretending to scowl at the camera, but his eyes lit up with a secret smile. She stared at the photo until the sadness shiftedinto something else—not quite hope, but not despair, either. Something in between.
They just had to get through a few more days, and then their parents and Tristan would be gone.
She heard a knock at the door. At first, she ignored it, assuming it was Tristan coming back for round two, ready to relitigate the same fight with an even worse attitude. But then it dawned on her he would never knock, but her mom would. She was just down the hall. What if she’d heard the fight? Panic shot through her, and she jumped out of bed. She didn’t wantanythingto ruin her mom’s weekend.
Frankie wiped her eyes as she padded across the room. She hesitated at the door, taking a deep breath and pasting on a fake smile. When she opened it, she could barely see anything in the darkened hallway, just a distorted blur of very tall, very broad, very squared-off shoulders. Definitely not her mother, who she’d inherited her five-foot slip of a frame from.
It was Liam. He stood there in a t-shirt and sweats, holding a pair of Otter Pops, one blue, one pink. For a second, he just stared at her, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to be there.
She blinked, caught off guard. “What are you doing here?”
He looked down at the ice pops, then back up at her, his face carefully neutral. “Emergency delivery.”
For a split second, she almost lost it—again, but this time with relief, or maybe gratitude, or maybe hope, or maybe all three. She let out a weird little laugh, more of a hiccup, and opened the door a little wider.
She shut the door after he walked inside, and her heart was beating so hard, she was scared that it was going to beat right out of her chest. Luckily, if it did, there was a doctor there.
He lowered down onto the end of the bed, and she sat beside him, and it hit her that it was the first time they’d been alone since her mom, his dad, and his brother had shown up. Theydidn’t say anything. She had no idea what to say. Maybe that was why she’d always felt safe around Liam—he didn’t need her to fill the silence. He’d just wait it out, letting the air settle, until she was ready to talk.
She wanted to ask him a thousand things—how he’dreallyfelt about the wedding, if he missed her like she missed him, if he’d ever lied to her, even once, in all the years—but before she could, she looked at the Otter Pops.
“When did you get those?”
“On the way home from Sue Ann’s the night everyone showed up.” His lips curled in a half grin. “I thought you might need ‘em.”
Tears filled her eyes, and her lip quivered at how sweetly romantic that gesture was as she started to reach for the blue ice pop. When she did, she realized she’d have to open it. “Oh, I might have scissors in my?—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Liam lifted them both to his mouth and ripped the tops off with his teeth. The sight caused a thrill to chase down her spine and explode between her legs. Tingles spread through her entire body as he spit the tiny plastic pieces into the trash can beside the dresser and handed her the opened frozen treat. Just the way he had when she was six. It still did it for her.
