I raised the picture between my fingers and felt Frankie’s eager eyes follow it. Then I released my grip and dropped it into the garbage with a tinkle as the glass shattered.
“Out with the old,” I said.
“In with the new.”
Ducking under his arms, I walked back to my seat.
Cash grinned that crooked smile at me, rubbing one hand over his stubbly chin.
What would that stubble feel like up my thighs. . .
He had been such a comfort to me. Never giving me pity. Just support.
Everyone in the bar hooted and hollered their appreciation as I went to sit by Cash again.
“YOU CAN DO BETTER,” Augustus trumpeted, as his boss Earnest poked him in the ribs and whispered hastily in his ear.
“TAKE MY BOSS,” he added. “I HEAR HE COOKS QUALITY LASAGNA FROM SCRATCH!”
“Come on,” Frankie said, following me back to my seat and doing a goofy little tap dance. “You gotta forgive me. You’re like my own personal brand of protein powder.”
You could have heard a pin drop. There was absolute silence in the pub at his joke and everyone stared at him in cold-eyed disdain.
Well, when a man who is used to every audience eating out of the palm of his hand suddenly has to face a hostile crowd, he doesn’t do well.
“You know, like—what Edward says to Bella—like—because he loves the scent of her blood?—“
“Shut up about Twilight!” Bonnie shrieked. “Just go away! No one wants you here.”
Frankie dropped to his knees in front of me in appeal.
“Please,” he begged, clasping his hands together. “I don’t care how long it takes! Let me make up for my mistake!”
And then Christabelle came in.
The entire bar erupted in boos again.
Frankie looked distressed. “Get out of here!”
“Franklin, we don’t have to hide it anymore!” Christabelle smirked. She already looked a bit tipsy and as she walked in she grabbed someone’s shot and drained it. “Our secret is out and it’s better this way. Jillian, I never meant to hurt you.”
The entire bar booed again, loudly, and I saw Ronnie and Bonnie make sinister clicking motions with their knitting needles.
“We don’t want your kind in here!” Tuppy said warningly. “By your kind, I mean skanky trollops.”
I shrugged.
“She doesn’t have to leave on my account. At first, I was surprised, but maybe this is for the best.”
Christabelle once again looked uncertain, like she was expecting me to be broken down, but I was underneath Cash’s big arm and against his thick thigh.
Frankie looked green. “Go away!”
“Oh, please,” Christabelle said. Her lipstick was a little crooked.
“Don’t act like she’s not devastated after her perfect little life at the coffee shop got exposed as a lie.”
So apparently Frankie liked this kind of small-minded cruelty. It just went to show I didn’t really know him at all.
