Page 57 of Gravity of Love
“Why wait?” Dr. Sterling put his hand on Frankie’s mom’s leg and squeezed. “We know what we want.”
“And Frankie, I want you to be my maid of honor.” Her mom smiled. “Are you surprised?”
Surprised. That was one word for it.
17
How doI not have a charger?
Liam slammed the glove box as he passed Hope Falls city limits. He’d checked the console, the map pockets, and the door panels for the cable. He didn’t have one anywhere. He vaguely remembered Poppy borrowing it a few weeks ago when they’d gone to the farmer’s market, and he never got it back. This situation was a novel experience for Liam, and he did not like it. Never in his life had his phone died. He’d been so distracted the past few days by Frankie that he hadn’t noticed his phone’s battery was low. When he left the hospital, he’d been in such a hurry to go home, he hadn’t realized his phone was dead until he was pulling out of the parking lot.
The last text he’d received was a photo of her and Lucy with flowers thanking him and promising to show him how much she loved them during round two. He was glad that she loved the flowers. He’d taken a chance going with peonies. She used to pick them for her mom, and his cigar box was covered in her doodles of them.
He loved the photo of her and Lucy. It didn’t surprise him that she couldn’t leave her alone at his house, just like shecouldn’t leave Rascal in the tree, even though she was terrified of heights, specifically of the tree the neighbor cat had been in.
Frankie always put the well-being of animals and of people she loved before herself. Had Tristan ever put her well-being before his? He didn’t know his little brother as an adult, but he highly doubted it. Especially since she’d told him that his indiscretions with Emmanuel hadn’t been a one-off. Liam’s fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard, his knuckles turned white. Sure, Emmanuel was a supermodel, but so the fuck what. Frankie was…Frankie.
How in the hell had Tristan fumbled that? He knew his little brother could fuck-up, but this was monumental, even for him. But if he hadn’t, then he and Frankie would still be engaged. As pissed as Liam was at his brother for hurting her, he was also grateful.
Liam inhaled a deep breath through his nose and exhaled slowly out of his mouth. He was determined to put his brother out of his head and not let him taint the time he had with Frankie. They deserved the space to figure out what they had without the influence of their family. All they had to do was focus on the two of them, he thought as he pulled up to the four-way stop at Main Street and Riverwalk Drive.
On his left, there was a path down to the Riverside Recreation Area. There were families gathered at picnic tables, eating BBQ on this cool fall evening. A couple was taking photos on the wooden bridge that spanned the river that ran through town. To his left was Sue Ann’s Café, the bright striped awning caught his eye as he was pulling from a stop. He hit the brake again when he saw Frankie’s grandfather’s Jeep parked outside. He knew it was his because of the Greek flag bumper sticker. He’d been in the driver’s seat just that morning. Before leaving for his shift, he’d grabbed her keys from her purse, then joggedover to Yaya’s and driven it back so she’d be able to get home when she woke up.
Yaya mentioned she enjoyed eating at Sue Ann’s once or twice a week to take a break from cooking. This must be one of those nights. He pulled up beside the jeep and decided to head in and surprise the ladies. He’d never eaten at the local café, but he’d heard good things, and he was starving.
The bell over the door gave a cheerful jangle as Liam ducked into the café. Inside, the interior was alive with voices, silverware clatter, and the sweet, smoky aroma of something freshly baked. The place looked like someone had shaken every local out of their house and funneled them there.
Old men in battered Carhartt jackets hunched over chessboards by the window, teens in Hope Falls High letterman jackets clustered around the pastry case, couples and families occupied bistro tables filling the dining room, and two large groups filled farm tables that ran along the back of the room. One wall was exposed brick with shelves lined with mismatched mugs and black and white photos of the town from the fifties until today.
The atmosphere thrummed with an electrical energy. It was aCheersvibe, where everyone knew your name, no one was a stranger, and everyone’s business was open season. It should have been sensory overload, but Liam’s attention immediately zeroed in on the round booth in the far corner. Frankie Costas wasn’t just present in this room, she was its epicenter in his mind, illuminated with a spotlight. Her hair was down tonight—long, ginger-gold waves that caught the light like a living, moving bonfire. Everyone else in the room was in black and white, but Frankie, in her fitted vintage Yankees tee and cherry-red lipstick, was a contrast that rendered her in cinematic technicolor.
She was mid-gesture, laughing with Yaya, who was seated beside her, an expressive hand raised as she mimicked waving as if she were on a float. People at surrounding tables—strangers—were openly watching her talk. Liam felt a gravitational pull toward her, even from the entrance. A shiver chased down his spine.
If he was being honest, he’d meant to slip in quietly, approach her table, maybe catch her mid-bite, and say something dry and clever before she noticed him. But he realized, as she turned and her gaze found him, that there was never a universe in which Francesca Costas did not immediately sense his presence.
She had a sixth sense when it came to him from the time she was five years old. Frankie claimed she could always tell when Liam was near, whether he was sneaking up behind her in a game of hide-and-seek or she was raiding the fridge in the main house.
When he would ask how, how did she know that he was there? She would tell him, “It’s like how GiGi knows when a rain’s coming. I feel it.”
Their neighbor Gigi, Georgiana Mayflower, was a film star in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Her costars included James Stewart, Clark Gable, Kirk Douglas, and Marlon Brando. When they were growing up, she was in her mid-nineties and had had two hip replacements. Shealwaysknew twelve to twenty-four hours before it was going to rain. At the time, the twins and Tristan were convinced she was a witch. Now as an adult and physician, Liam knew the drop in barometric pressure caused tissue and fluids in the body to expand, increasing pain and discomfort, which was how Gigi knew.
That didn’t explain how Frankie knew.
After her seventh birthday, she didn’t get the present she was hoping for. Instead of being upset, she decided to raise themoney herself with a lemonade stand. Liam helped her with the stand, and by “help” he built it, and she painted the words “Lemonade Stand” on it. He squeezed the lemons into the glass pitcher, she added ice water and sugar. He’d even raided Mrs. Mayflower’s garden beds for garnish, picking mint sprigs and blueberries. She had a pretty steady line of customers, but Liam knew by the end of the day there was no way her one-dollar-a-glass lemonade was going to fund her ninety-dollar American Girl doll.
Liam waited until she was distracted with a family of five and snuck the money he’d saved doing odd jobs for neighbors into her tin. There was no way she could have known what he’d done unless she had eyes in the back of her head. Despite that, as soon as she finished with her customers, she walked right up to him and demanded to know what he’d done behind her back. He lied and told her nothing. She didn’t believe him and checked her money box, which was the only thing in the back of her stand. When she discovered the three twenties, she handed them back to him, refusing his help.
She had always beenirritatinglyindependent.
Her uncanny radar was in full effect during the annual summer block party when she was nine and he was thirteen. The twins and Tristan were planning an epic water balloon ambush for Liam. Liam would have walked right into it, but Frankie sensed not only that he got off of football practice two hours early, which never happened, but also that he’d taken a shortcut he hadn’t ever taken before or since. He’d never used the path through the wooded area to go home, but somehow she knew that day he had. Honestly, it was more the twins and Tristan that she’d saved in that instance. He would have gotten revenge, and it wouldn’t have been pretty.
When he came into the clearing and saw her standing at the edge of the trees, he asked her, “What are you doing?”
She said, “Waiting for you, to warn you,the boys have two buckets of water balloons.”
“How did you know where I was?” he asked her.
She placed one hand on her stomach and one hand over her chest. “I just felt it.”
