Page 28 of Gravity of Love
She lifted her hand and placed it on his cheek. Her forefinger traced his eyebrow, then his nose, then his lips. He closed his eyes. His heart was pounding a thousand miles a minute, and his breaths were coming in short pants as he screamed at himself to move, to get out of the passenger side of the car, shut the door, and drive her home.
As that thought was being shouted in his head, she must have leaned forward because the next thing he felt was her lips touching his. He immediately pulled back, knowing that she must think that he was Tristan. They didn’t look alike, per se, but they did have the same coloring.
“Fine, don’t kiss me then, party pooper,” she slurred as her head fell to the side, and within a second, she was snoring softly once again.
The drive to her grandma’s house was short. He knew where she lived because he’d looked up the address after Frankie left the offices the day before to find out how close it was to makesure she’d be safe walking home. When he pulled up in front of the house, he saw, through the front window, that the TV was on and Yaya was sitting in her recliner watching it. Or he thought she was. When he got to the screen door, he realized that, like her granddaughter, she was also fast asleep.
After taking Frankie to the room where some of her things were and making sure she was in the recovery position, he went to the kitchen. He filled a glass of water after turning off not one but two burners that had been left on. He also grabbed a sleeve of crackers and a pain reliever for her impending headache he knew she’d be waking up with. He dropped them off on Frankie’s nightstand, and on his way out of the house, he placed a throw blanket on Yaya, said hi to the cat snuggled on the couch beside her, shut the curtains, and turned the bottom lock from the inside before closing the front door, making sure it was secure before he left.
He didn’t like that Yaya had fallen asleep in her house with her screen door open like that, she’d been totally vulnerable. He was also concerned that two burners had been left on. He’d only met her a few times when he was a kid, but he knew how much she meant to Frankie and to Cora, Frankie’s mom, who had been like a second mom to him. Even if she wasn’t, he didn’t like the idea of any woman on her own at that age, having no protection or lines of defense.
He might not be able to do anything about his Frankie situation, but that—that was something he could fix.
9
Frankie wasa huge proponent of getting a jumpstart on the day, but fitting in a soul-crushing existential crisis while suffering from a debilitating hangover before breakfast was not something she would recommend.
How wasthisher life? In a few weeks she was turning thirty. It was a milestone birthday. The big three-oh. Her career was…nowhere. Thanks to her putting it on hold to support Tristan, and for what? For him to have sex with his clientele.
She was living with her Yaya. Which she would actually put in the blessing-in-disguise column. It was clear that Yaya could no longer live alone without assistance. Frankie had witnessed too many things that Yaya tried to play off as “accidental.” The gas stove being left on. The front door being left wide open. Her forgetting that she didn’t have a robe on when she went out in the front yard.
But the cherry on top of her thirty-life-crisis was that she’d tried to kiss Liam last night, or shehadkissed Liam last night. That part was still a little fuzzy. What she was crystal clear on was that he’d rejected her. The memory of him pulling away in disgust and horror was something that kept playing over andover again. She’d made unwanted sexual advances on Liam. Her ex-fiancé’s brother. A man she’d loved for more than half her life.
That would be bad enough, but she was also fairly certain she’d brought up the showThe Summer I Turned Prettyand told him that it was like a page out of her diary. Which, although true, was utterly humiliating. The show was about two brothers that the lead was in love with, and clearly the older brother was her soulmate. Frankie’s only hope was that Liam wasn’t taking anything she said seriously.
She wasn’t even sure when he’d shown up at JT’s. One second a dickhead named Dan was hitting on her, and the next second Shelby was asking if she knew who Liam was, and he was saying he was going to take her home. Why was he there? When did he get there? How did he know she was there? Had someone called him? Who?
No one even knew that she knew him. She hadn’t told Poppy, because he hadn’t. When Poppy showed up for Girls’ Night, it was clear that after Frankie left the offices the day before, Liam hadn’t said anything about knowing who she was, sowhyhad he gone to the bar?
The copper kettle on the stove let out a high, despairing whistle, causing her head to throb in pain. She quickly removed it from the burner and filled her mug. Yaya was old school and did not believe in coffee makers, much to Frankie’s dismay. She was already on her third cup of Ethiopian dark roast as she slumped back down into the kitchen chair and willed the world around her to stop spinning quite so rapidly.
Her eyes squinted as she gazed out the back screen door and sipped her caffeine remedy. The scene before her was the kind of gold and green that belonged to charity calendars and nature documentaries, but, Hope Falls had always struck her as more sitcom than PBS miniseries. The air wafting through thealuminum mesh screen door was mountain-fresh and smelled faintly of peppermint lip balm, courtesy of Yaya, who sat across the table in a pink apron decorated with olives as she rolled out dough for whatever pastry treat she was preparing to bake to bring to the hospital for her daily afternoon visit to her “gentleman friend,” Mr. Santino.
Frankie set her mug down and closed her eyes as she let the warm liquid slide down her throat.
“A man took you to bed last night,” Yaya stated out of nowhere.
The comment caught her off guard, causing her to suck in air and choke.
She coughed as her eyes flew open. “What?”
“You heard me. Two bright headlights flashed in my window. They were from an SUV. A fancy one Then I see him pick you up and carry you, so I pretend to be asleep.”
“Youpretendedto be asleep?” Frankie clarified.
“Of course!” Her hands flew up, sending white powder fanning through the air like the fountains at the Bellagio.
“Why?!”
“Because I want to see what he was going to do. Totesthim.”
“Testhim?”
“Yes, you have to see what a man does when he thinks no one is looking.” Yaya pointed her forefinger and middle finger in a V shape at her own eyes and then gestured them out, back and forth, several times.
“Yaya, he’s—” Frankie began to tell her it was Liam when she spoke over her.
“No! I tellyou! He was perfect! He put you to bed, laid you on your side so if you got sick you didn’t choke, got you water and crackers from the kitchen and put them by your bed, put a blanket on me, close the curtains so no peepers Toms, andlocked the front door. Perfect!” She did a double chef’s kiss. “Oh, and Garfield love him. Even let him pet head!”
