Page 15 of Gravity of Love
But that night…everything changed. They’d kissed. And touched. And if he hadn’t stopped, they would have done a lot more. Hewantedmore. And that scared the shit out of him.
Ever since that night, she’d haunted him. Those huge hazel eyes, the sprinkle of freckles scattered over her turned-up nose, and her long, silky strawberry blonde hair. Whenever his mind was quiet, she was there. Her smile. Her eyes. Her laugh. Holding her. Kissing her. Feeling her body quiver as she came apart in his lap.
He’d tried to forget the brief indiscretion they’d shared. He’d done everything in his power to scrub his mind of the memory, apart from a lobotomy. He was embarrassed to admit it, but he’d even attempted hypnosis to erase the night from his recollection, it didn’t work.
For some reason, after stopping by to see Taylor, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Frankie. She was always on his mind, in the background, like a constant hum of white noise that was never silenced. Theonlyconstant in his life, really. But now that volume was turned up to blaring. He couldn’t drown it out. But he had to, because she was engaged to marry his brother.
He sighed as he ran his hands through his hair in frustration and stared through the windshield at his new house. Lauren Harrison, who also happened to be Caleb Harrison,Hot Pastor’scousin, sold him the house and always referred to it as a “home,” as if using four letters could bless the place with warmth or history. It was a five-bedroom, six-bath transitional home, which she explained was a mix between modern and traditional. “Perfect for entertaining,” she’d said, as if a thirty-three-year-old bachelor doctor with his family estranged, no social life to speak of, no pets, and basically no friends would suddenly develop a taste for hosting dinner parties.
He’d bought the house for one reason and one reason only. He hadn’t even seen it before he put in the offer and went undercontract. When he hired Lauren, he told her he didn’t care about price, location, bathrooms, bedrooms, square footage, or lot size. All he wanted was a room with the following specifications: it had to have floor to ceiling windows that faced north, sealed cement floors, at least one brick wall, and be at least five hundred square feet.
She’d asked if she could ask why, he’d told her no. It was personal. It was clear from the look she’d given him she thought the ask was impossible, but a few months later she texted him with a video of the perfect room. He offered ten thousand above the asking price without even stepping foot on the property they closed two weeks later. He moved in months ago, and the place still felt like he was living in a large hotel room. The only time he felt like it was a home was when he went into the sunroom, and that had much more to do with the contents than the room itself.
He climbed out of his SUV and walked up to the front door, typed in the code, and stepped into the cold welcome of an empty house. The alarm system beeped its recognition, then there was total silence. He dropped his keys on the custom walnut table in the hallway, the only new purchase he’d made since moving in. The rest of the furniture was recycled from the condo he owned that was a quarter of the size of this house. He toed off his shoes and lined them up beside his Tom Ford slides and Ferragamo running shoes. He typically got in five to ten miles before each shift. He needed those miles to have a clear head, otherwise, the fast pace and chaotic environment proved to be too much.
Once he lined up his shoes, his next stop was the kitchen. His kitchen featured state-of-the-art stainless-steel appliances, a ten-foot island with a waterfall marble countertop that continued throughout the kitchen, dark navy lower cabinets, white upper cabinets, white subway tile backsplash, white oak floating shelves, and a copper vent hood. The kitchen looked likeit belonged inBetter Homes & Gardens, but when he looked at it, he felt nothing.
He was grateful to have a kitchen, but it didn’t feel like home. It felt empty, just like the rest of the house did. The fridge was a graveyard: half a gallon of oat milk, a single sad lemon, expired Greek yogurt, and five different varieties of craft beer he’d bought out of obligation to support the local microbrewery. He inhaled deeply and reached for the only thing that wouldn’t require a PhD in culinary improvisation, his last Factor ready-to-eat meal: sweet potato grits, sage chicken, honey-roasted carrots, and green beans. He’d signed up for the meal delivery service because he was sick of fast food and never had time to cook. He removed the sleeve, punctured the film, and popped it in the microwave for two minutes.
As he waited, his mind wandered back to Frankie. Someone who was in that room must have used the same shampoo and lotion combination as her. The problem with that theory was, her mom used the same shampoo and lotion as she did andneversmelled like her, and so did several of her friends. Did someone have the same pheromones as her? Was that a thing? There were regular doppelgängers. Were there scent doppelgängers? That wouldn’t explain why he’d sensed her when he was trying to defuse the situation with the code white.
The timer beeped. It was a shrill, impatient sound—snapping him out of his daze, a microcosm of his whole life, really. He felt as if he were sleepwalking through life, while the universe or God or whoever was pulling the strings was continually Cher-slapping him and telling him to snap out of it.
He popped open the door and then shut it with unnecessary force after dumping the tray onto the counter. With a fork and knife, he carved the chicken into ten pieces. His sloppy work caused the grits to spill into the carrots and green beans section. He didn’t care. He stabbed at the mess with a fork, leanedagainst the marble island, and chewed with the mechanical dedication of a man determined to nourish himself with the bare minimum required for survival.
That lasted exactly four bites before he was over it. He had zero appetite. There was just too much on his mind.
He abandoned the quarter-finished meal, wiped his hands on a dishtowel, and went to his study—the only room in the house with any sense of personality. Built-in bookshelves the previous owners put in gave it character, and his old medical journals and books were still in boxes in the corner. The desk, a mid-century relic scavenged from a Reno thrift store, held a single object of sentimental value, a cigar box decorated with Sharpie. Inside were dozens of photos, actual real photographs that had been developed in a one-hour timeframe, most curling at the edges, some with a yellowing tint, and some stuck together by years of humidity and neglect. He hadn’t allowed himself to look at these in years. Not since he heard the news that Tristan and Frankie were engaged. He’d scanned them digitally, to preserve them, then put them away in hopes they would be out of sight out of mind.
Liam dumped the contents onto the desk. The memories spilled out with a swoosh. There were birthdays, graduations, proms, first and last days of school, Fourth of July celebrations, vacations, Christmas dinners, New Year’s Eve parties, and Tristan and the twins’ ill-advised "haunted mansion" sleepover in eighth grade. All celebrated with the Costas.
Frankie was in almost every shot, usually in the middle of the action. Sometimes with her arms slung around her brothers’ necks, sometimes mugging for the camera with a crooked, gap-toothed grin, sometimes getting a piggyback ride or on someone’s shoulders, sometimes caught mid-laugh with her freckled nose crinkled and her eyes closed. Niko and Tristan were in most of the photos. AJ was more elusive—alwayshovering at the edge, half in, half out. He wasn’t a huge fan of being photographed. Liam appeared in slightly more photos than AJ did. But Frankie was the nucleus, the gravitational force that held the whole mess of them together.
He sifted through the photos until he found the one he always came back to. It was her eighteenth birthday and a sunny day in San Francisco, despite it being late fall. She was wearing cutoff jean shorts and a tank top. Liam had let her draw a “tattoo” on his arm of Mighty Mouse. Allowing himself to be her canvas, he remembered the feel of her hands as he sat perfectly still, the sun-warmth radiating off of her, and the way she’d look at him as if he was the only person in the world who mattered.
Those weren’t the only memories he had of that day. He remembered leaving early, only staying for two hours, because he had such a huge course load. He remembered it was the first time he’d been home in years. His school was only an hour away, but, like an asshole, he hadn’t been home in three years because he was so determined to graduate early. That, and he didn’t want to see his dad.
He remembered Frankie’s eighteenth birthday was the last day he saw his mom before she was bedridden. The next time he saw her was three months later, two weeks before she passed away from a glioblastoma stage four tumor in her brain. His mom died from a brain tumor when his dad was the top brain surgeon in the world. How in the fuck was he ever supposed to make sense of that? No one even told him she was ill.
Emotion filled his eyes, and he put the photos back in the box and closed it while simultaneously metaphorically doing the same thing with his memories and feelings, locking them up in a box and taping it shut. He set the cigar box aside and decided its home would be in the sunroom from now on as he reached for his laptop. In a moment of masochism, he opened a browser and typed “Francesca Costas” into the search bar. There were dozensof hits, most of them tagged photos from his asshole brother, his firm’s functions, and charity fundraisers she’d attended with him. Every picture with her on his arm was a woman he didn’t recognize. Her eyes looked vacant. Her smile forced. He scrolled through page after page, hungry for any evidence that the Frankie he remembered hadn’t vanished completely.
Apparently a sucker for punishment, he decided to go full internet stalker and pull up her social media accounts. It was something he’dneverallowed himself to do, because what was the point? But for some reason tonight, he felt compelled to.
Instead of trying her name, he went to his brother’s account and clicked on a photo of them that she was tagged in. It took him to her page and he discovered it was set to public. He began to scroll down her grid, each square a window into a life he knew nothing about. Each photo he clicked on, making it larger on his screen, made it harder for him to breathe. Her copper and gold hair was still long and wavy. He loved seeing the photos where her hair was down and loose. He saw that she’d run marathons and taken yoga, spin, pole, and what looked like a self-defense class. There was a lot of posts of her drinking wine, going to the beach, brunches, farmer’s markets, movies, shopping, skiing, Broadway shows, escape rooms, rage rooms, and more with a guy named Zee, who was easily in seventy percent of her photos.
A few things stood out to him about her page. She barely had any photos of herself and Tristan. With Zee her smile hadn’t changed, but her eyes had. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something missing. Speaking of something missing, there was no art anywhere. Growing up, she’d worked on art every day. She dreamed of owning an art studio where she taught classes out of her home. She thought about it, talked about it, and even made sketches of it. The room had to have floor to ceiling windows that faced north, sealed cement floors,at least one brick wall, and had to be at least five hundred square feet.
He scrolled further, nearly to the bottom, and found a photo that stopped him cold. Frankie in a floral dress at a restaurant, holding hands with a tall man in a crisp navy suit, both beaming at the camera. The caption read, “So lucky to say yes to my best friend. #engaged #yestoforever.”
The man was his brother.
Liam stared at the photo for a long time, so long his vision started to swim as his hands began to shake. He’d known in the abstract that they were engaged. Niko filled him in on the “good news.” But seeing it. Seeing the ring on her finger was a totally different thing.
The ring.
He zoomed in on the photo, and his stomach twisted in knots. It was his mom’s wedding ring. It didn’t bother him that Frankie was wearing it. If anyone deserved to wear it, it was her. His mom loved Frankie. His problem was that Tristan was the one who slipped it on her finger.
“Fuck,” he growled as he slammed the laptop closed and leaned back in the chair, running his hands through his hair.
