My chest ached at the please. Not talking to them had less to do with “punishing” them or even being “mad” so much as not knowing what the hell to say.
Right now, I was facing a similar choke. How the hell did I even open this conversation:Hey, warning, Maddy might be looking to drop an emotional bomb on you. Maybe just block her number.
Not like that wouldn’t generate a dozen questions. Throw in his naturally confrontational attitude, and he’d likely go find Maddy just to see what the hell she wanted.
Yeah. Not a good plan.
I downed half the coffee before I finally just stopped trying to find a way to sugar coat anything. This wasn’t news that could be dumped into a text message. We needed to talk, face to face.
Me:
Hey, I know it’s early, but can we meet before school? It’s important.
It went from sent to read in a blink. Then three dots popped up. They disappeared, then reappeared. Then stopped and my phone rang with Archie’s face staring up at me from the contacts.
I froze.
Of course he’d call. Archie wasn’t built for slow or subtle. Most of the time, he didn’t seem built for patience either. That last one I knew was a lie, because he’d apparently been waiting on me for four years.
That just made my stomach drop all over again.
“Frankie?” He sounded like he was half-asleep and half-alarmed. “You okay? What’s wrong?”
Just like that, my throat went tight all over again. He’d tried to reach out to me all weekend and I hadn’t responded, but the minute I reached out to him—he was right there. Immediately. I really was a shitty friend some days. No matter what else went down, and based on the posts there’d been a lot of going down and bad decisions, we were supposed to still be friends.
I’d dropped the ball there.
But that soft panic edged by rough concern was a sucker punch. Telling him was absolutely the right thing to do, but I was going to be the one delivering the unexpected blow and I kind of hated myself a little.
Okay, a lot.
“I’m fine,” I lied automatically, which fooled exactly no one, least of all him.
“Frankie,” he said again, slower this time, gentler. “Talk to me. What happened?”
I closed my eyes, pressing the phone tighter against my ear, as if closeness could make it easier.
“I just… need to see you,” I said. “Before everything gets messy.”
A beat of silence. Then: “Okay. Ten minutes. Starbucks. If it’s crowded we can talk in the car.”
Before I could second-guess any of it, he hung up. I could almost picture him dragging on clothes and grabbing his keys. Somehow, I didn’t think he’d even pause to brush his hair.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the phone screen gone dark, with that nervous, electric hum beginning to slide under my skin again. Nothing had been the same since spring.
Nothing.
It was about to get a lot worse.
I headed back to the bedroom to nudge Rachel. With care, I gripped her shoulder lightly to give her a gentle shake. “Hey,” I whispered. “Rach?”
She stirred, stretching like a cat herself before squinting up at me. “What time is it?”
“Too early,” I said, trying to smile. “I’ve gotta go meet Archie before school.”
That woke her up fast. “Wait, now? Like,nownow?” She rubbed at her face, already sitting up. “Do you want me to come with you?”
For half a second, I almost said yes, because the idea of facing any of this alone made my chest ache. But then I shook my head.
