Let's Be Frank (36 page)

Betty barely glances at me as I skirt the two of them, exchanging my mug for the dog-eared
Sports Illustrated
on the coffee table on my way through the living room, rolling the magazine into a tube to conceal the photo of the model in the wet, white swimsuit on the cover.

“Yeah. We’ll be fine,” she says distractedly, then, “Ah, there it is!” when she locates the “sweet spot” that makes Reba’s leg flap rapidly. “You like that?”

During the fastest shower of my life, my mind works in double-time to try to predict why Betty is here. Based on her worry I may have refused to see her if she’d called ahead of time, I don’t have high hopes. That still leaves endless possibilities.

Maybe… Frankie and Kyle are getting married? (If so, good for them; they’re made for each other.)

Or… Do I owe her money? No, I paid for everything during our Frank weekends.

It’s no use. I can’t imagine what she could possibly have to say that would make me refuse to see her. Whatever it is is obviously not as bad as she thinks.

Meanwhile, this is a golden opportunity to ask about what Frankie told me when we broke up. I may go insane if I don’t find out what—if anything—Betty knew all those months.

Asking her about
Girl Noir
is another story. Do I have the proverbial balls to broach that topic without my typical fumbling and blurting and making it sound like her answers will affect how I feel about her? Because her answers don’t matter. Maybe it’s best to leave it.

When I backtrack to the living room, self-consciously fingering my wet hair, hoping I don’t look too much like a little boy all spruced up for school picture day, Betty and Reba are no longer on the floor or even in the room. I follow my ears and my nose to the kitchen, where Betty stands at the stove, with Reba not too far away, eyeing the bacon I smell.

“What are you doing?” I ask with a chuckle.

Betty flinches and glances over her shoulder at me but quickly returns her attention to the sizzling, popping pan in front of her. “I hope you don’t mind. Reba showed me where everything was. I figured you were hungry after that run. Thought I’d make you an omelet and some bacon. Protein, right?”

I smile at her back. “Yes. And no, I don’t mind. But you don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

Pulling out a chair at the kitchen table, I say, “Well, I’m not going to object. This is nice.” After a few seconds, it feels too weird to sit and watch her, so I join her at the stove. Under the guise of observing her cooking technique, I stop just shy of pressing my chest against her back and rest a hand on her shoulder, again taking in the intoxicating smell of her, now improved—is that possible?—by the scent of bacon. It’s like an ultimate fantasy, almost more than I can process. “Make enough for yourself, too.”

“Not hungry,” she declares dully.

Uh-oh.

I withdraw, then lean against the facing counter, bracing my hands behind me. She’s given me a perfect opening to ask her why she’s here and what she wants to talk about, but I can’t seem to concentrate. All I can think about is,
Gosh, I’ve missed her!
I can’t tell her that, though.

When all else fails, go into Nurse Mode. “You should eat something.”

I can’t see her face, but I can practically hear her eyes rolling when she says, “I’ve been up since six. I ate a banana and some cereal.”

Knowing better, I retort, “You had a Pop-Tart.”

She laughs. “Okay. I had a Pop-Tart. It was all I had in the house. Grocery shopping hasn’t been a high priority lately.” She flips the omelet in front of her. “You, on the other hand, are all stocked up, making bachelors everywhere look bad.”

“I have nothing better to do than hang out in the produce section,” I say, then realize it makes me sound pitiful and add, “Plus, I like to cook. It keeps me busy.” Marginally less pitiful, but at least it doesn’t conjure the image of me spending my Friday nights all misty with the lettuce misters.

The bacon goes on a paper-towel-covered plate and receives a firm, de-greasing pat-down. Wordlessly, Betty hands back the damp paper towel, and I take it from her, crossing the kitchen and depositing it in the flip-top trash can while she plates my food and sets it on the table.

“There you go. Spinach and feta omelet with dead pig.” She adds the coffee mug to the arrangement. “This should still be hot. Would you like some orange juice?”

I shake my head. “No. This is fine.” I grab a fork from the cutlery drawer and sit, staring at the perfectly golden egg pocket in front of me. “Wow. This looks… great.”

I wish my stomach would unknot enough for me to eat, but the anticipation of the conversation we’re about to have—whatever it ends up being about—is killing me. Under her watch, I cut a bite with the side of my fork but promptly set the utensil next to my plate with a clatter, telling myself my hands are shaking due to low blood sugar but knowing I’m full of shit and literally quaking in fear.

“So, what’s up?” I finally have no choice but to ask.

She nods at my plate. “There’s nothing worse than cold eggs. Eat.”

“I can’t,” I admit. “Not until I know why you’re here.”

Instead of taking the seat directly across the table from me, she chooses the one next to me, so I have to turn my head to watch her face, which looks decidedly apprehensive. That ramps up my anxiety level. What is she afraid of telling me? Is she afraid of
me
?

Before thinking better of it, I curl my hand around hers on top of the table. “Hey. Are you okay?”

She nods and gives me what’s probably supposed to be a smile but looks more like a grimace. “Yeah! I mean…” She thinks about it for a second, then repeats, “Yeah,” a lot more firmly. “Everything’s fine.”

Thinking maybe she needs me to say whatever it is for her, I smile encouragingly. “Wait. Let me guess… You need me to be your date to Kyle and Frankie’s wedding?” I half-joke, gratified when she relaxes enough to laugh.

“You
do
owe me one, you know,” she replies. “But no. Those two…” She wrinkles her nose but doesn’t finish her thought.

I don’t want to know any details. “Okay… So, this isn’t a walking wedding invitation. Darn. I was so looking forward to doing the Macarena again.”

She laughs, and I congratulate myself on diffusing the tension. Her expression is so much less strained than it was a few seconds ago that I feel confident enough to take my first bite of the breakfast that smells so good.

As I’m chewing and shooting the chef a major thumbs-up and closed-mouth smile to let her know it tastes delicious, she blurts, “I need you to be Frank one more time.”

Medical fact: solid food can go down the wrong “pipe.” This particular mouthful certainly does. Then it comes back up. Which is a good thing, actually; aspiration can be dangerous and ultimately lead to complications like pneumonia. It’s unfortunate my chewed-up food chooses to exit through my nose, but… better out than in. Until I realize I don’t have a napkin to catch it.

Betty jumps from her chair and circles behind me, pounding me on the back. I try to tell her that’s unnecessary (and ineffective), and I’d rather she hand me the towel from next to the sink, but talking is impossible at this point, so I merely cup my hands under my nose and mouth and ride out the coughing, sneezing fit. Eventually, I recover enough to stand and get the towel for myself. At first, I keep my back to her while cleaning up, but since bits of egg are stuck in my nose, a dainty wipe-job ain’t gonna cut it.

I choke out an “Excuse me” and retreat to the nearest bathroom.

“I’m so sorry!” she calls after me (and Reba, who’s decided whatever I’m doing is even more interesting than bacon).

While my humiliation fades with each forceful blow of my nose into tissue after tissue, my rage builds. Having the parents I do, I know all too well that anger is a secondary emotion, needing something to feed it, but I don’t want to explore the hurt and disappointment feeding this particular case of it. I prefer to be angry. “Angry” is a hell of a lot easier than those other things. I throw tissues at the wastebasket, hardly any of them hitting the target, slam the medicine cabinet and bang the heel of my hand against the sink.

Reba doesn’t enjoy Angry Nate, so she quickly turns tail and trots to my bedroom, where I hear her tags jingle as they make contact with the wood floor on her way under the bed. Good. I don’t want her to witness this.

My sinuses de-egged, I return to the kitchen to find Betty sitting at the table with a familiar pair of specs in her hands. I cross the room in three huge strides, snatch the glasses from her, and carry them to the trash can. Stomping on the pedal, I drop the hateful accessories with a flourish before letting the lid fall with a clang.

She looks unimpressed by my gesture, so I follow it up with, “Trust me; it’s not where I’d prefer to put them, but count yourself lucky I’m too polite to follow through with that impulse.”

Now she blushes. “I wouldn’t ask you unless I had no choice.”

“You have no
right
.”

“It’s not for forever,” she says after a long silence, during which she looks as miserable as I feel.

“Yeah, it’s for
never
,” I verify. “I’m not doing it.”

She sighs, puffing out her cheeks. “It’s just one more appearance, at that indie conference in Atlanta I told you about. That’s it. We’ve already committed to doing it, and—”

“
We
haven’t committed to doing anything!”

She stands and walks toward me. I physically recoil, my arms rising to position my hands, palms out, close to my body. I step backwards when she continues her advance.

“Hear me out,” she pleads.

“Don’t ask me to do this,” I beg in return, all former bluster gone. “Please. I… I can’t.”

She stops in front of me. “I know this is awful. I thought Frankie would be ready to reveal herself as Frank by now, but… it hasn’t worked out that way, and if we back out now… Well, among other things, it will be extremely unprofessional. The conference is next weekend, and Frank is one of the headliners. His name’s on all the promotional literature, and everything.”

I snort and groan. This keeps getting better. “Then, the answer’s not just ‘no.’ It’s ‘hell no!’”

With that, I escape the kitchen, unable to be in her presence or the vicinity of the brown-nosing breakfast she cooked, not because she cares about me but because she wanted to butter me up before requesting I do the one thing I won’t—can’t—do for her. Need a kidney? I’m your guy. Blood transfusion? I’ll insert the needle myself. Sperm donation? Sign me up! Lord knows I’m not using it. But this… no.

Of course, walking away doesn’t accomplish anything, because all she has to do is follow me, which she does, into the living room. “It’s only one more appearance.”

“A big one,” I point out.

Her dismissive, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” makes me widen my eyes, so she rushes on, “It’ll be fun! Like old times!”

I feel myself waver on those last three words but force myself to focus and remain strong.
Concentrate on the anger.
“‘Old times’? You mean the times when I was a pathetic fool? Those times? Oh, yeah. I long for those halcyon days!”

She stares me down for a second, and I see her chin wobble, but she grits her teeth, and it stills.

“You knew,” I state simply. My heart races while I wait for her to deny it, while I silently beg her to tell me definitively that she had nothing to do with Frankie’s plot. When she seems incapable of speaking, I ask, “Were you two laughing at me behind my back while I made an ass of myself?”

“No! It wasn’t anything like that.”

It’s difficult to breathe, much less talk, but I manage, “What was it like, then?”

Her eyes flash. “Is that what she told you? That I was in on her stupid, selfish plan?”

I’m torn between not wanting her to know exactly what Frankie told me and giving her all the information she needs to satisfactorily deny her involvement, so I strike a compromise. “She said it was your idea.”

All the color drains from her face, and for a second I’m afraid she’s going to faint. I want to go to her, catch her, but my pride holds me to my current position, across the room from her.

She lowers herself slowly to the couch. Staring at her knees, she says, “I guess that’s accurate.”

Now
I’m
the one in danger of passing out.

Before I dissolve into a puddle in front of the dormant fireplace, she adds, “I said it in jest, though! Way before she ever met you. She was talking about using a male pen name, but she wasn’t sure how she’d find the right guy to pose as her pseudonym, and I joked that it sounded about as impossible as finding the right guy to marry. She snapped her fingers at me and said I was a genius, but she didn’t elaborate. Then, weeks later, she introduced me to you. By the end of that evening, it was clear to me what she was trying to do.”

“So you
did
know. And you didn’t tell me.”

“I thought I could stop her.” She looks up at me now, her eyes full.

“Don’t you dare cry,” I demand, feeling the mucus production going into overdrive in my own sinuses. My mouth twitches downward while I work to control my voice. “Don’t. I don’t want to feel sorry for you.”