In Real Life (24 page)

Frankie runs her hand through her hair. “I don't know what's going on, Hannah. We are following all the rules exactly. Aren't we, Lourdes?”

“You sure are,” Lourdes says. “I would have played all those hands exactly the same way.”

“I guess I just have killer luck tonight,” I mumble. Following the rules and having it get me nowhere has suddenly become a theme in my life. Rules I understand, rules I don't understand, they're all leading me down a dark path to nowhere.

I'm about to give up on blackjack for the night, since I've lost almost all Frankie's money and don't want to dip into my own. I'm realizing what a loser I am, and my patience for this stupid game is wearing thin. Lourdes's pile of cards is through, so she takes a quick break to shuffle everything up again, and I take a huge gulp of my drink.

“I hope this isn't weird,” Frankie says, angling her chair to face me. “I need to talk to you about something. I know how close you and Nick are, and I don't know who else to go to.”

What is this? I was worried she was going to get mad at me about something, but if she is trying to have some sort of sex talk with me about Nick, I think I might lose my ever-loving mind. There's no way I can sit here and listen to her talk about doing stuff with him. Sitting through Lo and Oscar's encounter upstairs was already more than my delicate imagination could handle. A play-by-play and color commentary about Nick and Frankie getting it on will likely break me into pieces.

“What's up?” I manage to squeak out.

“Well, I'm sure you've noticed we're having a few problems.”

I had noticed a smidge of tension between them—but, honestly, I thought it was because of me. Is she going to confront me about it? Are the gambling tips a way to warm me up so she can sneak-attack me? I size her up. I'm not very big, but I'm definitely bigger than she is. If she tries to fight me, I have an advantage.

“I didn't notice,” I say as I pull my hair back into a bun. I don't want her to have anything to grab on to if she does take a swing at me.

“Oh, that's good.” She spreads her hands out on the felt table and stares at them. “We are, though. Having problems.”

“Uh … why?” I don't want to get in the middle of it, but I have to know more.

“My blog. He doesn't like it. He hates that I have so much personal stuff online. He hates that everyone who reads my blog knows we're dating.” Her phone beeps with a notification. She looks at it and puts it back in her pocket. “We just got in another fight about it, out of the blue. He blew up at me and stormed off. I don't know where he went, and he won't answer his phone.”

“Oh.” This isn't what I had been expecting at all. It's about Frankie's stupid blog this whole time. I take another huge swig of my drink. “Well, you know Nick's a private person.”

“I know,” she says. “I don't think he would ever leave his bedroom if he didn't have to. He told me the only reason he has a profile online is because of you. Is that true?”

I can't keep a smile off my face at the memory. “I started it for him and e-mailed him the password so he could keep it up. It was easier for us to keep in touch that way. The chat feature, you know?”

“He hardly ever updates the page.”

“I know. He only has tagged photos up there. Or ones he texted me that I uploaded for him. I don't think he has any idea where the upload button even is.”

She shakes her head. “We're so different that way, you know? I live my whole life online. My blog is who I am. It's not like I can not include him on it. That would feel like lying.”

“But he hates it.”

She nods and stabs her drink.

I try to figure out what to make of this odd situation, the girlfriend of the guy I'm desperately in love with—yes, even after everything—asking me for advice on how to work things out with him. She reaches over and grabs my hand, squeezing my fingers tightly. “I like Nick so much,” she says. “You know. You know he's special.”

As soon as she says that, I wonder how much she's aware of. How much do I wear my own feelings for Nick around on my face? Can Frankie tell? Or is she saying this only because she knows how deep our friendship is?

But she says she likes him. She doesn't say she loves him.

Has he told her he loves her?

I let her squeeze my hand, but I don't squeeze back. When she loosens her grip, I pull my hand back to my own lap. “Nick is special, Frankie.” I choose my words carefully. I don't want to say the wrong thing here. “He's an amazing guy. He's sweet and thoughtful and funny and talented. He's…” I almost say he's honest, but I wince and keep it inside. He lied to me. Big-time. The sting is dying out quickly, though, because I can understand it. I get why he did it, and I did it, too. “Well, of course he's hot.”

We both grin at that. “Yeah,” she says. “He's gorgeous.”

I clear my throat. “But there are other hot guys out there, you know? There's more to him than being hot.” I can't believe I'm having this conversation with her. I must be a decent liar after all, and hid my feelings for Nick better than I thought. Or maybe Frankie, as sweet as she is, is completely clueless. Or smart enough to not see things she doesn't want to see. Like, what does she think about the fact that Nick wears a flattened Disneyland penny around his neck every day? Has she bothered to ask? Does she even care?

“I need you to tell me what to do, Hannah. I don't know how to do this. I just need to figure out if this is worth it, you know?”

This is the moment of truth. I probably could have it all right here. Frankie seems desperate, like she'll do whatever I say. If I tell her it doesn't seem like things will work out, Nick will never change, they aren't a good match, any of that, I can tell from the look on her face that she'll take me at my word and probably end things between them. That will get her out of the way.

That will leave Nick free for me.

But I look at Frankie and I see myself. I see someone who cares about Nick like I do, who wants to be with him.

She didn't overlook Nick, and she didn't run when things got too serious. She didn't leave behind chance after chance to tell him how she felt. She knew she wanted him, and she went after him.

I can't do this to her. Not after she's been so nice to me since the minute I met her. Not since I saw the two of them together, the way she looks at him.

But I can't tell her that being with him is the right thing to do, can I? I mean, if I do, that would mean cutting myself out of the picture. On purpose.

Giving up everything we had on the dance floor, at the top of the Eiffel Tower. For good.

I have no idea which set of rules to follow here.

“Here's the thing,” I say. “It seems like you have to figure out what you want the most.” I look right at Frankie. At her red, red hair and her perfectly fitted jeans and her perfectly distressed leather jacket. At her face, so worried and so desperate. “I've known Nick a long time. And in some ways, he's changed a lot. He's become more open. He's loosened up. But in some ways he hasn't changed, and I don't think those parts of Nick will ever change. He's always been stubborn. He's always been really private. He's never really liked to share.”

I grin at a memory of Nick, when we were talking online and I told him I had a boyfriend the first time and he responded with frowny faces. He tried to act like he wasn't jealous, and he said he was just bummed because he knew we wouldn't be able to talk as often. He didn't want to share me. Of course I made sure nothing changed between us, and that first boyfriend lasted only two weeks.

I should have known right then.

“Yeah,” Frankie says. “He won't even share his food with me when we go out. I always like to order one dish, and then have the person I'm with order something else and then we can both split our stuff to try more things. But Nick orders what he orders and doesn't want to split or share with me. Not even a bite.”

I feel such a strong stab of jealousy that I flinch. I've known Nick for so much longer than Frankie, but I've never been out to eat with him. I'd never reach over to his plate and try to take some of his fries, because I don't like to share my food either. Other people touching the food on my plate? No way.

This whole time, I never knew we'd be perfect dinner companions.

“I don't think that's going to change about him,” I tell her, dropping my voice. “If he doesn't want to share you with your blog readers, and if he doesn't feel comfortable being a public part of your blog, that's how it's going to be. And I think asking him to be okay with it would be like asking him to be something he's not.”

Frankie lets out a sad sigh.

“I hate to tell you to change your blog, especially when it's so funny and good.”

She beams. “It is funny, isn't it?”

“Oh yeah, it's the best.” I chew the side of my mouth. I haven't even looked at her blog yet, but given everyone's reaction to it, I'm sure it's the best thing to hit the Internet since TMZ. Either that or everyone is easily impressed. “But I think what it comes down to is which Nick is more important to you? The Nick you write about online? Or the real Nick? The one who you can sit around and watch a movie with? Or that blog Nick from all your dates? Which Nick matters the most to you? That's what you need to ask yourself.”

And I realize I'm not even asking Frankie. I'm asking myself. Which Nick is more important to me? This person who exists only on the phone and the computer screen? The one I so wanted to preserve a friendship with that I was willing to remain a ghost? Or the one who is real? The one who I've screwed things up with so royally, and he screwed things up right back, I wasn't sure if we would ever be the same?

Frankie's elbow leans on the padded edge of the blackjack table, and she's watching me intently, her mouth twisted up in concentration.

“I mean, isn't having an actual boyfriend more important than the Internet knowing you have a boyfriend?” My stomach flutters nervously as I say this to her, because I feel like I'm making a decision here. Crossing a line. “Wouldn't you rather have the real Nick all to yourself? That's why you're with him, right? And isn't he worth some sacrifices?”

“Cut the deck?” Lourdes asks, reminding me what we're doing there. She holds a green plastic card out to me, and the rest of the stack of cards is on the table in front of her. I'm sure my face gives away my confusion over what she's asking me to do. “Take this card,” she says, waving it in front of me. “And stick it in here, wherever you think it will be a lucky cut.”

“I'm the last one to know about luck today,” I tell her, but I take the card from her anyway.

And as I lean over to stick the card in the stack, my elbow slides off the side of the table, hits my glass, and sends the half-full contents of my glass of Jack and Coke spilling all over the blackjack table, soaking the felt, drenching the cards, and dripping into a sticky pool collecting in the tray of multicolored chips right in front of Lourdes.

Based on the look of sheer hatred on her face, Lourdes no longer likes us.

Neither does Lourdes's pit boss, Bill, a large round man who frowns at us as Lourdes calls over to him to deal with the mess I caused.

“Oh my God, Frankie.” I scramble to pick up my drink and the ice cubes that slide all over the felt table when I grab at them. My heart pounds so loudly, I swear Bill can hear it. I'm not supposed to be drinking. I'm not supposed to be gambling. I'm not supposed to be in Las Vegas at all. Bill probably looks at IDs for a living. His home is probably wallpapered with fake IDs of stupid underage girls from California. He'll know in one second mine isn't legit.

“He's going to take us to the back and break our legs,” I whisper almost soundlessly through my teeth at Frankie. “We're going to get offed. He's going to off us.”

“We should probably get out of here,” she whispers back.

Bill glares. “What happened here?” He's studying us. Closely. Too closely. Adrenaline pumps through my body. I know I'm going into fight-or-flight mode, and I want to do nothing but GTFO.

I look at Frankie for help, but she's not giving me much. I hope that means her mind is working overtime to get us out of this situation.

Lourdes pulls out a towel from somewhere. “Well, these girls—” She jerks her head at us. “—spilled their drinks all over the table. And now I have to clean every—single—chip.”

“So, ladies,” Bill says, leaning over the table. He doesn't look kind. He looks at us like we're going to turn up dead in a ditch somewhere. Or at the very least suffer some broken kneecaps. So as he lectures us on proper casino behavior, I don't even think about it, I get up as fast as I can. I knock my chair over in the process of trying to make a hasty exit, which probably ticks ol' Bill off even more, but I don't even turn around.

I hear Frankie apologize and say, “She's had a little too much to drink. Twenty-first birthday party, you know. I'll take her upstairs,” and I assume she collects our chips. I don't even know, I just walk as quickly as I can away from the table, leaving my mess behind for Lourdes and Bill to deal with.

I weave through the labyrinth of tables at full speed with no real destination. It takes Frankie until I get to the elevator hallway to catch up with me. I lean over onto my knees to catch my breath. “Is he following us?”

“If he is, it's only because you were making a scene. What
was
that?”

“I thought he was going to arrest me.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize how ridiculous the idea is. My ID has been fine all night, and Lourdes checked it when we sat down. And I only knocked down a drink. Yeah, it was a klutzy move, but it wasn't like I was counting cards or stealing chips.