Mirepoix (A Recipe Of Love Book 1) (7 page)

Seizing my opening I blurt out my thoughts on Frankie. “I have no idea why she thinks I need friends. She knows I’m focused right now on making a name for myself. She confuses me all around. I had a great time with her, and thought about trying to pursue more with her, but I’m so busy that I can’t spend the time trying to figure her out. She brought me some pulled pork, but then won’t answer my calls when I’m trying to thank her and find out why she didn’t stick around to eat with me. I’ve texted her but she pretty much brushed me off. I can’t figure out why she did it and then pulled back.” I take a deep breath and take a sip from the beer I grabbed to go with our dinner.

“Well that might have something to do with being too busy to even see her, and using someone else to tell her that, which compounded the rejection and embarrassed her.”

“I didn’t refuse to see her. Staci or Traci or whatever her name is just brought the food back to me. She didn’t tell me she was still here or wanted to see me.” I stutter out. I hate the thought of her being hurt, even if it was not done by me.

“Frankie told me when I went over to deliver her order that she stopped by hoping to visit and the ‘judgemental Barbie’, I’m guessing your hostess, told her you said you were too busy to come out and brush her off in person. If she didn’t give you the message, you have an uphill battle on your hands here man as there’s one thing Frankie is loath to do is put herself out there especially if she feels rejected or embarrassed.”

“What do you mean? Frankie does nothing but put herself out there. She’s one of the friendliest and most outgoing people I’ve ever met!”

“Only with her core group of acquaintances. We’re all safe. She grew up with most of us like a big extended family, she knows we won’t judge her and find her lacking. How much do you know about her childhood and her personally
?  I don’t want
to accidentally betray her by giving you info she hasn’t found you worthy of.”

“She told me about her parents and how she was adopted, that Gram and Pap weren’t her biological grandparents if that’s what you mean.” I answer quickly. I’m extremely confused trying to rectify what he’s told me with what I already know. I also glare at Traci/Staci trying to figure out how to deal with her duplicity. It’s bad enough that she lied, but her lie apparently hurt Frankie in some way which is intolerable to me. That thought makes me pause as I’m normally not so over protective over a woman’s emotions, her physical safety yes as that’s the way I was raised. The pain I feel imagining Frankie being upset shows me she’s come to mean more to me than I expected in the short time I’ve known her.

“How much do you know about anxiety? Keep in mind I’m only telling you this so that you can decide now how invested you are in this. Based on the look I just saw on your face I would rather you panic and bail now instead of hurting her in the future by not understanding her and hurting her more. Right now she’s hurt and irritated, if you mess up and hit one of her soft spots in her psyche later I’m the one who will be picking up the pieces.” The baffled look on my face must give away how little I know as he continues without me responding.

“Okay, keep in mind if you ever give her any crap about what I’m about to tell you or imply that she is somehow less than amazing because of it, I have lots of very sharp knives and big pieces of machinery that will make sure there’s no trace of a body.” I permit myself a small shudder at that, while I can fully understand where he’s coming from, the cool calm way he delivers the threat makes me understand the type of man he is.

“Frankie suffers from general anxiety. Anxiety can manifest itself in lots of different ways and have different focal points. For Frankie for some reason it’s mostly social which is a crime with how great she is, the anxiety however makes her feel like people are laughing at her, making fun of her or outright hate her. Within our group she knows if we make fun of her about something we’re joking and that we love her, if a stranger picked on her about the same thing it would destroy her and send her into a spiral of self doubt. She knows that the thoughts are wrong and she can sometimes stop herself and pull herself out on her own, other times she will shut down and lock herself in her workshop completely isolated until she feels strong enough to come out. She literally cannot handle the spotlight you’re chasing because she couldn’t handle being judged by people all the time. So yesterday when your hostess apparently took a good long look and found her lacking, but then passed that judgement off as yours, she set you back further than you were when you were calling her nonstop over the pasta competition. Also just FYI she hates talking on the phone, it makes her nervous and she feels like the other person is judging her, so stop calling and stick to texting.”

“Don’t they have medicine or something that will help her? I don’t like the idea of her being hurt and being on edge all the time.” I’m trying to think of anything I can do to fix this for her, maybe there’s a doctor who she can see her or a new medicine she can try.

“She hates the medicines, she will point out all the side effects they cause, and that we don’t even know some of the long-term ones. She’s seen some of the best doctors on the subject and is actually doing a lot better than she used to. She has studied up on, well frankly everything she can. She doesn’t get anxious about being the victim of a robbery because she has done a ton of research on target selection, self defense training as well as the crazy security system at her building. She lives a happy fulfilling life, she just has a few foibles that we all accept. The one thing we absolutely do is protect her as much as we can. You’re actually lucky it’s me and that I like you.” he chuckles and takes a sip of his beer “Lindsay would just utterly destroy you with no warning. That girl is mean as a snake.”

“Okay, so what do I do?” I put aside thoughts of my future and how to fit her into it. A couple of days ago I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue her and now I need to know if I even can. I’m not sure if I can give her what she needs and keep her safe.

“Look man I like you, I really do. I can tell Frankie does because she actually asked you out on her own, normally the only people she dates we’ve set her up with, and she hasn’t been willing to for years. The fear of rejection is so paralyzing she just can’t do it on her own normally. I’m not sure what makes you special but obviously she saw something in you that made her feel safe enough to risk it or you pissed her off enough she didn’t worry. If you do go after her, you can’t toy with her. She’s not the type of girl you have a half-assed fling with. You’ll have to continuously reassure her about how you feel about her and never waver. If you have a temper, you will have to be careful with it and what you say, with most people if you tell them they’re being a pain in the ass or are too much to deal with they will understand you mean at that moment, she will think you mean it and start thinking
it too.  Now you need to decide before things go any further if you’re just going to be another one of her friends or if you
are going to be her man. I’ll see myself out and have some of the prosciutto delivered Tuesday morning for you. Oh one last thing, Frankie told me she’s going to be home all day tomorrow, just in case you decide to man up.” He smacks me on the shoulder with his giant hand, almost knocking me off the bar stool before strolling casually to the door like he didn’t just drop major bombs on me. I wish I could resent the bastard.

9

“Will you stop fucking touching the volume!” I reach over and slap Lindsay’s hand away from the volume button on my music again, if I want to listen to my music loud enough to burst eardrums it’s my own damn business. I need the music loud to drown out my thoughts and hopefully keep my best friend from talking me into anything crazy. I love her to death but one of these days I’m going to lock her in the curing room so she leaves me alone when I’m pouting. The problem is she thinks pouting is unproductive; me and the 3 batches of soap I made today disagree, I’m very productive dammit.

“No, I won’t leave your volume alone, bitch! I love rock just as much as you do, and I will turn it back up loud enough they can hear it in Jersey, as soon as we talk! Now tell me exactly
what happened!” She crosses her arms over her chest and is glaring at me, I struggle not to laugh.  She’s shorter than I am at 5
’ even, where I’m curvy she is dainty and petite. She keeps her hair cropped short and you never know what color or colors it might be, currently its different shades of reds and oranges mixing together looking like a brilliant fiery sunset. With as angry as she is though all I can think of is an animated cartoon character whose head burst into flames when she gets angry. I know better than to say something though, I think the last guy who told her she looked like an anime character and was cute is still trying to get his testicles to drop back down.

“Nothing happened you spaz. I took Joe the food like I told you, he was too busy to even brush me off himself, instead letting the hostess do it. He’s tried calling multiple times but you know how I feel about talking on the phone. He’s texted me a couple of times but I kept it superficial, I’ve decided he’s not worth the potential pain.” I reply casually as I use the heat gun to seal the cellophane wrapper around the bar I’m currently packaging.

“Ok give me the logic.” After so many years of being friends, and how close we are, we have our own shorthand. She knows me enough to know that I will have logicked out potential outcomes that could come, a kind of emotional cost benefit analysis.

“Do you want it in flowchart form?”

“Don’t tease me Frankie! You know I love a good chart.”

“I think you might have more issues than I do. Smell is at least one of the strongest memories so I can justify it being one of my huge turn on’s, your obsession with organization is just baffling.”

“Yeah, yeah we both have enough issues we should call them subscriptions. Stop stalling and lay out the flow chart or I’ll alphabetize your mica powder again.”

I narrow my eyes at her trying to determine her sincerity. The last time I pissed her off she rearranged my mica powders I use to color my soaps. I like to keep them in order of which colors I use most frequently closest to me. This drives her OCD crazy, and she is constantly trying to alphabetize them. I can see by her face that she’s serious so I get with the logic.

“Ok simple flowchart, somehow subtly let him know I’m interested. We’ll start with he’s not interested, he’s either cruel and hurts my feelings, not likely with how he’s been. The more likely outcome is he gently
lets me down while explaining why we won’t work, which will also hurt my feelings because I’m not first to him.  Now let’s pretend he is interested, we have fun but don’t have that elusive whatever
it is that clicks attraction and affection over to love, I’m still hurt because I will find a way to make it my fault that it didn’t. Another option here is we do find that elusive something, we do love each other, and something happens to destroy that love or kill it, then I will be destroyed. Finally with the least likely, we love each other and somehow manage to make it work. There’s a much higher chance of pain for me whether he’s interested or not.”

I go about stacking the now wrapped bars of soaps in boxes to be shipped out to shops that carry my soap, hoping that focussing on my task will distract me from the pain I feel already just thinking of the negative outcomes. My vision is blurry with tears I’m trying to will back as I keep stacking until the box is filled.

As soon as I finish the box Lindsay slides it out of the way and hops up on the table right in front of me. I can tell by how she grabs my shoulders and is forcing eye contact I’m about to either get lectured or get a guilt trip a nun would be proud of.

“You will stop being negative and thinking the worst. You are gorgeous and talented and all around amazing if he doesn’t realize that and isn’t interested it’s his loss and no reflection on you. Onto if he is interested, you’re discounting a very important factor, okay actually two now that I think about it. There’s the possibility that the happiness you feel will be stronger than the pain you feel before said hypothetical break up, with or without love being a factor.”

“What’s the second important factor, oh wise one?”

“Orgasm potential. The frequency and strength of said orgasms have yet to be determined, but any orgasms not self-induced cannot be discounted.” She has leaned into me as she’s talking so she’s about an inch away from me when she delivers this with a straight face. I give up and start laughing touching my forehead to hers.

“You are correct, orgasms should have been factored into my analysis. I don’t have enough knowledge to try to determine how he would be, however based on his personality, focus and skills with his hands I think he would deliver. Life would be so much easier if we were lesbians.” I give in and lay my head on her shoulder and let her pet my hair. I close my eyes and start to relax for the first time in days. I wish I were stronger or better or whatever so I could just enjoy life as it comes.

“Don’t worry, I’ll always be your hetero life-mate. Now are you done up here and ready to make me food? You’re falling down on your wifely duties of keeping my belly full and happy.” She doesn’t even wait for me to answer just grabs my hand and starts dragging me to the elevator so I answer the only thing I can with the mood she’s in.

“Yes, dear.”

We sat next to each other finishing up the chicken alfredo I whipped up for dinner doing what we normally did, debating really stupid asinine stuff.