Page 54 of Gravity of Love
Had a shift. Coffee is fresh. Bagels in the warmer. Your jeep is outside. Don’t miss me too much.
X
L
She exhaled a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. Not a declaration of love, but not a blow off. She read it again and saw something she hadn’t caught the first time.
“Jeep’s is outside?”
How did he make that happen? She knew that he ran before his shifts, he’d mentioned it on their hike. Had he run all the way to Yaya’s and then driven it back? That was at least five miles.
“How did he do it, Lu Lu?”
Lucy’s big brown eyes stared up at her as her tail thudded heavily against the comforter. Frankie scratched her behind the ears, and Lucy gave a snuffling sigh of bliss before toppling sideways across the mattress, her paws splayed, belly exposed, and tongue lolling like she was drunk on affection.
Frankie chuckled, untangled herself from the sheets, and padded to the bathroom. The marble tile was warm beneath her toes, the lighting low and spa-like, and hanging on the back ofthe door was a plush towel that didn’t match any of the others—a detail that struck her as sweetly domestic. On the counter, sitting beside a shaving kit and aftershave, she found a new toothbrush in its wrapper. She opened it, started brushing, and, as she did, caught her own reflection in the wide mirror. Her face looked different today. She couldn’t put her finger on it exactly. She leaned forward to try and scrutinize her appearance. The tiny vertical line between her brows nearly vanished, and the soft lavender circles that usually shadowed her eyes were barely visible. She looked, she realized, refreshed and happy.
She rinsed, and when she dried her mouth, she noticed her clothes. They were folded in a neat pile on the shelf of the linen closet. As she retrieved them, she discovered they were warm, as if they’d just come from the dryer. On instinct, she lifted them to her nose and inhaled. They had a clean laundry smell, which had always been one of her favorites. She ran her fingers over the fabric of her sweater, marveling at the chivalry of the gesture. Liam must have gathered, laundered, and folded them without waking her. She knew it was wrong to compare, but in all the years she’d been with Tristan, he’d never done one load of her laundry. He’d never even picked up her dry cleaning.
Frankie got dressed and made the bed. When she finally left the bedroom, Lucy led the charge, barreling ahead with an enormous, well-loved green alligator toy dangling from her jaws. As the ladies turned from the hallway to the great room, Frankie squinted. The space was flooded with the kind of golden light that promised a perfect day pouring in from the wall of glass accordion doors that opened onto the deck, framing the backyard and, beyond that, the endless sweep of Hope Falls valley.
In the daylight the kitchen was even more of a showstopper. The stainless-steel appliances gleamed, reflecting the sun's rays and giving the space a modern and sleek look. The ten-footisland stretched out in the center of the room, its marble countertops sparkling and smooth. The dark navy lower cabinets contrasted perfectly against the white uppers, with bronze bar pulls adding a touch of sophistication to the space. The subway tile backsplash was a classic element, and the white oak floating shelves added a warm and rustic element. And the copper vent above the stove was one the HGTV Queen of Kitchens herself, Alison Victoria, would approve of. It looked like the set of a high-end network cooking show.
Liam’s home was beautiful, but it felt clinical and…impersonal. Lonely. Most people who knew him would think that matched his personality, but that wasn’t him. That wasn’t the man in bed last night.
“Your daddy needed you,” Frankie told the puppy as she grabbed the treat she’d promised her from the canister.
Lucy plopped on the ground and worked on the milk bone as Frankie poured herself a coffee, grabbed a bagel, and settled on a stool, taking in the breathtaking view of the town proper. She held the mug with both hands, savoring the heat, as she took a sip.
In the hushed quiet of the morning, Frankie’s imagination went from zero to a hundred, scenes of a life she hadn’t lived began playing in her mind like a movie.
Liam standing at the stove, spatula in hand, smirking at her over his shoulder as he flipped pancakes. Them sitting and eating breakfast together in the morning, not just after some world-changing night, but every day, weekdays as a ritual, weekends as a slow, lingering treat.
She saw herself snuggled next to him on the couch, feet tangled under a throw blanket, arguing about which movie to watch and inevitably breaking his stony-faced, silent persistence with her pleading eyes and promises of sexual favors.
She pictured holidays. Her and Liam on the floor in front of the tree, the fire roaring, with Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas album playing on repeat as they string popcorn. Lucy barking at the strands as if she could will them to break and fall to her mouth. She pictured a Thanksgiving table filled with the family she’d met only the day before, as well as the twins, Yaya, her mom, and Zee.
She imagined summer barbecues in the backyard, a Slip-N-Slide set up on the grass just like they’d had as kids and Liam’s nieces and nephews running in and out with wet hair and demands for lemonade.
Each scenario was so vivid, so detailed, a slow, private smile—that was equal parts hope and disbelief—spread across her face as she sipped her coffee and watched Lucy flop into a sunbeam and commence a heroic, full-body wriggle, alligator still clamped in her teeth after finishing her treat.
Frankie’s gaze then drifted to the far end of the deck, to the stretch of fence that bordered the neighbor’s yard, and she got a flash, as real as a memory, of a wedding ceremony under a string of bistro lights. She saw herself in a white dress, holding a bouquet of wildflowers, with Liam at her side, unsmiling but soft-eyed.
The next scene was her sitting on the bathroom floor, staring at a positive pregnancy test, her hands shaking, and her heart impossibly full. She saw her and Liam painting a nursery, her trying to put the crib together without looking at the directions, and him coming in, taking it apart, and putting it together the right way. She saw herself sitting on this same kitchen island, hair in a messy bun, shirt covered in formula, cradling a squalling infant while Liam moved through the room making bottles and sandwiches and soothing both of them with a kind of patient, practiced gentleness.
She saw the years roll forward, first steps, scraped knees, school projects, proms, graduations, college drop-offs, and, in a final, impossible flash, the two of them in their eighties, on the porch, holding hands and watching the next generation run wild across the lawn.
The fact that her mind had summoned these visions—snapshots of a life she’d never lived—unprompted both terrified and thrilled her in equal measure. She’d never been afraid of wanting things, as long as the things were in her control to attain. These were not.
But as she finished her coffee and watched Lucy attack her stuffed animal, she realized she didn’t just want this life. She needed it. She needed Liam. She needed the quiet and the chaos, the dog hair and the kids, the mismatched towels and the future that stretched out in front of her like a road she’d finally been allowed to walk. And in her body, that’s how it felt, like it had already happened. She felt like she was experiencing déjà vu of the future.
Out of habit, she grabbed her phone and sent Zee a voice note asking him if that phenomenon had ever happened to him. She pressed send, despite him still being out of the country. Every time he went off-grid, she continued to communicate with him the same way she would if she saw him every day.
It didn’t take a psychologist to figure out that after losing her dad at the age of four suddenly and unexpectantly, and the second most important man in her life at eighteen—for all intents and purposes the same way, one day he was there, the next he was gone—she had serious abandonment issues. So, carrying on as if Zee was just around the corner, a text away, even if he was halfway around the world and unreachable, was how she coped.
Once she finished her delicious coffee and bagels, she cleaned up and grabbed her purse off the counter. Lucy, who hadfallen asleep on the rug in a pool of sunshine, followed her to the door, tail wagging and whining.
Frankie looked into her big brown eyes and then around the house, it seemed so enormous compared to her. She didn’t want to leave her by herself. What if she got scared or just lonely?
