Let's Be Frank (14 page)

Before she can zing me I say, “Well, my skim milk’s sweating. I’d better get moving.”

“Sounds like something you might want to get checked out, Nathaniel.”

I chuckle. “Hm… No comment.”

We both head for the checkout. Casually, she remarks, “I heard you’re not joining us up at the cabin weekend after next.”

I freeze. “Oh. Yeah. That.” Quickly, I make the impulsive decision to say, “Actually, I’m in.”

“Really? The last I’d heard from Frankie, you had to work.”

Okay… hard truth time: I lied and said I had to work at Urgent Care that weekend, to avoid coming right out and saying, “I’d rather spend my Saturday cleaning behind my fridge than freezing my soaking-wet ass off on snowmobiles at Betty’s parents’ cabin with you and a bunch of people you’ve known since elementary school.” It was a white lie to spare Frankie’s feelings—and to make me seem like less of a dick than I am.

Contrary to what Frankie thinks, I’m not pathologically honest. “Working at Urgent Care on the weekend” has been one of my go-to excuses for years. That’s not going to change now. There have also been a few times I’ve told her those jeans didn’t make her butt look big (back pocket size matters). And, since I’m laying it all out there, I do prefer having sex to not having sex. It’s not my fault if she’s naïve enough to believe my statements of indifference.

Now, I swallow and half-smile at Betty when I say, “I switched with someone, so… I’m all set.”

She pauses, studying my face, before saying, “Hm. That’s… unexpectedly convenient.”

I ignore her implication and make a big show of finding an open self-checkout station. “I haven’t had a chance to tell Frankie yet.” I loop my canvas bags over the holders in the bagging area. “She fell asleep almost as soon as I got her home from the airport.”

Betty situates herself at the station next to mine and begins scanning her items, flashing her driver’s license to the attendant when her jugs… of wine… set off an ID alert.

After the attendant goes back to her podium, I ask, “So this is something a group of you does every year, snowmobiling?”

“Well,
they
do. I supply the cabin in the woods by the lake. I’m not a big fan of riding around on deadly machines in the cold,” she says while scanning and bagging. “I read by the fire while everyone else is out freezing off their fingers and toes. Sometimes I cook for everyone, if I’m in the mood. I make a mean meatless lasagna.”

“Comfort food.”

“Yeah. I use Portabella mushrooms in place of the meat. It’s amazing.”

My stomach growls at the thought of it. I love meat, but Portabella mushrooms are one of my weaknesses. I grill them like steaks in the summertime.

“Sounds great.”

“Yeah, I guess I’ll do it this time, too.”

“Looking forward to it.” I swipe my debit card, key in my pin, take my receipt, and lift my canvas bags from the bagging area. “Well… have a good night.”

Concentrating on weighing and keying in her fruit, she nods in response, her tongue poking from the corner of her mouth. “You, too. See you next Saturday.”

“That, you will.”

Chapter Ten

It’s probably unbelievable that I’ve lived in Wisconsin my whole life, and I’ve never been on a snowmobile before today. I’ve never worn those snowshoes that look like tennis racquets, either, so stop stereotyping. But maybe it’s not all that surprising. I’m sure by now it’s clear I’m not the rugged outdoorsy type.

I’ve always been apprehensive of snowmobiles and four-wheelers and jet skis and all those other adventure machines my brother and most of our friends spent the majority of their teens and twenties riding, depending on the season. If I’m not going to drive a car to get somewhere, I’d rather my own muscles provide the power. I like walking, running, and cycling. On smooth pavement. I’m not a fan of abrasions, cuts, fractures… or death. Not that my brother or my friends are, either, but while it seemed like a fairly big warning to me that at least one person we knew died every year on the back of a recreational vehicle, Nick saw it differently. “Survival of the fittest. The dumb die.”

Somehow, I don’t think the valedictorian of our high school was too dumb to ride a three-wheeler. Nevertheless, he’s six feet under in the cemetery I drive by every day on my way to work.

My point is, I’m smart enough to quit while I’m ahead. And by “ahead,” I mean still alive after being dumped three times by a laughing Frankie. So when everyone else is bundling up for Round Two after thawing out by the fire for a couple of hours in the custom-built log cabin Betty’s mom and step-dad call home when they feel like “roughing it” (a.k.a., “living without wi-fi”), I cheerfully announce, “I’ll stay here and help Betty with dinner.”

Frankie frowns. “Are you mad at me?” she asks in front of everyone.

They all wait expectantly for my answer. I look around at the four faces I’ve known for about five hours, most of that time fearing for my life or envisioning catastrophic, life-changing injuries, and chuckle nervously. “Uh… no…”

“I won’t dump you this time. It was just a joke.”

“It’s fine—”

“She was only hazing you, Dude. The new guy always gets dumped,” Dan (Ben? Manuel?) says, pulling on his gloves with his teeth.

“I’m not mad,” I insist again, this time with less of a smile. “I’m still cold, though. And you know… it’s… it’s not my thing, that’s all. But you go ahead.”

“And ride alone?” Frankie asks with a pout. “Great. That’ll be a blast.”

“I’ll ride with you, Frankie,” Tina (I think) volunteers. She turns to Dan/Ben/Manuel. “You don’t mind, right, Babe? Then you can go as fast as you want without me getting scared and yelling in your ear.”

He smirks. “I like when you scream in my ear.”

“It would be easier if you’d come with us,” Frankie points out. “We’re not staying out as long this time.”

Betty pokes her head through the doorway from the living room to the entryway, where we’re grouped, discussing what a party pooper I am.

“What’s going on? It’s getting dark.”

“Nate doesn’t want to go with us,” Warren (or some other old-guy name he probably hates his parents for giving him) tattles.

“So? Last time I checked, even numbers weren’t a requirement for idiocy.” She shoos everyone out with two hands. “Now, go!”

With a final doleful look over her shoulder that I assume is supposed to make me cave, Frankie leaves with her friends.

I shoot her an apologetic smile and call, “Have fun!” before Betty closes the door in my face.

“Bunch of immature assholes,” she mutters, striding back to the kitchen, where she sticks her head in the fridge and pulls out ingredients.

I follow and stand on the other side of the breakfast bar as she places the food in a precise line on the counter, arranging and rearranging each item in an order that obviously matters.

“Can I help with anything?” I ask. “I might as well make myself useful.”

“You can help me by staying out of the way,” she answers shortly, splashing more wine into a large, nearly-empty glass. “I have a system.”

I purse my lips. “Okay, then.”

She looks up from her ingredient shuffling. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be a bitch. It’s just… I’m used to doing things alone.”

I raise my hands in front of my chest. “I get it. No need to apologize.”

She spins toward the refrigerator, opens it, and comes out with a bottle of beer, which she thrusts at me after twisting off the cap. “Here. You can sit over there by the fire with this and… relax. I’m sure you’ve earned it.”

“What do you mean? I’m having a good time so far.”

Tilting her chin down, she looks at me through her lashes while I take the beer from her. “Right.” She returns to her cooking. “Even if you weren’t lying through your teeth, you run your ass off all week at work with sick kids, so you deserve a quiet, relaxing weekend.”

I open my mouth to object to her canonization of me, but she cuts me off. “Really. Sit. You’re throwing off my routine.” She tosses back the majority of her glass of wine and pours herself another.

I back away. “Fine. I’ll read. Or something.”

After retrieving my e-reader from my bag in the bedroom I’m sharing with Frankie, I choose a cushy leather chair big enough for two people and settle into it. Setting my beer on a coaster on the end table next to the chair, I open the device and tap it to life. As it pulls up the titles stored on it, I call toward the kitchen, “If you change your mind, let me know. I can dice an onion like nobody’s business.”

She laughs. “So I’ve heard. Frankie told me you made quite the romantic belated Valentine’s Day dinner for her.”

“She told you about that, huh?”

“Bragged, more like it.”

I grin. “Oh. Well. I like to cook. And I had to make it up to her somehow for being such a lame boyfriend lately.”

After some busy clanging with pots and glass casserole dishes, Betty asks, “What are you talking about? All she does is rave about you. Haven’t heard her this excited about a guy in… well… a long time.”

“You probably shouldn’t be telling me all this.”

The clip-clop of a rocking knife on a chopping board keeps time as she replies sardonically, “Yeah. It’ll give you a big ego.”

That’s not what I meant, but I drop it. The more I think about it, the less I want to talk about that night, anyway. It’s not that it went badly; on the contrary, it was apparently a major success… according to Frankie. I just walked away from it more confused than ever.

I wanted it to be special; I wanted to delight Frankie. Mission accomplished. Too well, maybe. During dessert, between seductive sucks on her spoon, she stared into space and laid out our entire life together. Yeah. It was weird. And a little scary. I pushed away my plate and listened, hoping she was too enthralled with her own fantasy to pay much attention to my facial contortions as I tried to maintain a neutral expression.

“I’ll stay home and take care of the kids. That will give me a chance to write. When they’re babies, I’ll work during nap times and in the evening, when you’re home. And when they’re in school, I’ll have all day to write, but I’ll also be available to volunteer at school and car pool and do all the things my mom certainly never bothered doing.”

I “uh-huh”-ed and “yeah”-ed and “okay”-ed in the right places while reassuring myself,
This is way in the future, all hypothetical. This isn’t a contract negotiation. This is Frankie’s fantasy. She’s dreaming out loud. And isn’t it cute that she feels comfortable enough to do that in front of me? Yeah. It is. She’s gorgeous. And we’ll have beautiful children. That’s what I want, anyway, right?

I even saw those children while she continued to lay out how many books a year she’d write and publish and where we’d go on family vacations with her royalties. I saw myself holding those babies for the first time. I saw them toddling across my living room. I saw them wading in the surf during one of those royalty-funded vacations. I saw them hunched over homework at the very dining table where I was sitting. And I ignored the fact that I didn’t see Frankie with me in any of those visions.

My heartbeat slowed, a genuine smile returned to my face, and I reached around the dishes and across the table to clasp her hand in mine. “Plenty of time for all that,” I told both her and myself.

She squeezed my fingers, laughed, and blushed. “Yeah. Of course. Sorry. I… I get carried away sometimes.”

“Me, too,” I admitted. I’m sure it will be more and more true as time passes, too. Surely.

“So, whatcha readin’?” Betty interrupts my discomfiting memory.

I blink down at my e-reader. “Uh, nothing. I just finished the latest Jennifer Weiner book, and—”

“Oooh! I love her. How was it?”

“Amazing.” I jump from my chair, snagging my beer and carrying it with me to the breakfast bar, where I set down my Kindle and my bottle. Perching on a stool, I lean on my elbows on the counter and add, “It’s going to be hard to find something to follow it. Any ideas?”

She tosses a few names out, but they’re all authors whose entire catalogues I’ve already devoured. “I’m ready for something new. Something
new
new.”

“That shouldn’t be hard. Start browsing. The biggest challenge will be narrowing it down. There’s so much out there now.”

I tap around for a while before murmuring distractedly, “I want to read something written by a man.”

“Sexist!”

I laugh at her mock-outrage and the irony of her accusing a man of being a sexist after he’s waxed rhapsodic about a Jennifer Weiner book. “What I mean is, I want to discover the next Patrick Fox, Matt Dunn, or Nicholas Sparks.”

She wrinkles her nose.

“Yeah, you’re right. Not Sparks. That dude always makes me cry. I’m not in the mood to cry. I want to laugh.”

“Check out the ‘people who bought’ sections on those guys’ pages. That’ll give you a good place to start.”

Fifteen minutes later, she’s sliding a heavy glass pan layered with mouth-watering ingredients into the oven, but I’m no closer to deciding on a book. “Too many choices!” I groan. “I need another beer.”