On a few free afternoons they’d even bundled up for the brisk winter weather and taken a stroll along the harbour waterfront, traveling the same path Frankie took on her runs during the warmer months.
Their lives somehow slotted together so seamlessly without either of them paying much mind and Cam, with his focus so perfectly tuned into his captaincy and his budding romance with Mackenzie, had started checking in on Jules less insistently. He had stopped pushing her to go out on the town and meet someone, stopped bugging her to find a new hobby, and Frankie had filled the space he’d given her.
Frankie had become part of her daily routine and soon, like it was the most natural thing in the world, Jules realized that Frankie had become her best friend.
“He really said that to you?” Jules asked as she scooped pasta into a bowl for each of them.
They were always in Frankie’s apartment, something Jules never questioned, and she’d spent so much time there that she knew her way around the kitchen so well it was as if it were her own.
“I guess his mother never taught him how to respectfully speak to a woman,” Frankie said.
“Men are the worst.” Jules shook her head in disgust and turned to the fridge to get them both a drink.
When she’d arrived earlier and began prepping their meal, it had been a surprise to find half a shelf in Frankie’s fridge lined with cans of Diet Coke. Frankie didn’t drink much of it and she glanced over her shoulder to look at Frankie from where she was perched on a stool at the kitchen island with her computer open in front of her. She was scribbling down notes in preparation for the next Harbour game and completely unaware of how a few cans of pop made Jules feel.
Frankie had stocked the fridge just for her and Jules forced herself to swallow down whatever that might mean. She smiled as Frankie’s brows furrowed in concentration and she clicked her pen, so lost in her own thoughts and completely unbothered by Jules admiring her so openly.
“To call you a dyke as he skates by your bench is disgusting,” Jules said, grabbing a can of Diet Coke for herself and a can of sparkling water for Frankie. She tucked the cans under arm and carried two plates of pasta to the coffee table in front of the couch.
“I mean…he’s not wrong,” Frankie laughed, closing her laptop and pushing it to the side. She slipped off the stool and stretched her arms over her head, revealing a strip of creamy peach skin. Jules couldn’t keep her eyes from dropping to the bare skin between the waist of her sweatpants and the bottom hem of the shirt she wore. “But it doesn’t mean I want someone shouting it at me like a slur when I’m at work.”
“Exactly,” Jules agreed, reluctantly looking away from the visible distraction of a toned abdomen. “And it really bothers me how some of them treat you.” She was exasperated and the worst part about it all was that she couldn’t do anything to make it better for Frankie. “You don’t deserve it. It’s not fair.” Jules took a seat on the couch and shook her head.
“Hey,” Frankie said, fixing her soft gaze on Jules. She crossed the room and dropped down onto the couch, slipping her hand onto Jules’ thigh. Jules let her eyes fall to where Frankie’s strong fingers unknowingly made her skin tingle beneath the touch and her breath caught slightly in her throat. She looked back up to find dark green eyes studying her. “It’s okay, really. I appreciate your concern, though. It means a lot to me. I don't think anyone has ever been so worried about the way I’m treated as you are.”
“I just…” Jules blinked, losing herself in the depths of green eyes she’d come to know so well. “I think you deserve better, that’s all.”
“We all deserve better,” Frankie said, her voice lowering to a near whisper. Those same green eyes dipped down to Jules' mouth and Frankie licked her lips as she parted them, like she was about to say more, todomore, but Jules blinked again and a second later, Frankie was slipping the hand off her leg and reaching for her plate.
“Yeah, we…uh…” Jules coughed, clearing her throat, hoping the effect Frankie had on her wasn’t painfully obvious. “We definitely do.”
There were so many moments just like that one, so many times Frankie surprised her by what she said and how she said it, by the little things she did that showed Jules she listened, that she cared.
From something as trivial as Frankie stocking her fridge with cans of something she didn’t even drink to changing the hand soap in the washroom from a cheap floral unknown brand to one designed specifically for sensitive skin all because Jules mentioned in passing one day that some soap left her hands dry and gave her a rash.
In the culmination of the small things, the unspoken wants and needs, that's when she knew she wasn't alone in her feelings.
But still, they didn’t talk about it. The depth of their relationship, the silent ways in which they were changing for one another, the quiet ways they said so much without saying anything at all. They acknowledged nothing because they were toeing a delicate line and it would be so easy for their beautiful friendship, the most important one Jules had ever been lucky enough to have, to change for the wrong reasons. But Juleswantedit, she wanted Frankie, and she couldn't keep trying to convince herself that she didn't.
Before she knew it, Valentine’s Day was right around the corner and she’d agreed to travel for the team’s away game. Cam said he missed seeing her in the stands during away games and given the game was in California, the chance to soak up some sunshine and get away from the snow was pretty damn enticing.
“I’m going to ask Mackenzie to be my girlfriend,” he said as they lounged in Jules’ bedroom two days before the trip.
Puck drop in Los Angeles was on February 13th and the team had been given a gift in the form of a day off in California after the game before they would head on to Dallas. It meant they’d get to spend Valentine’s Day in the golden state.
“Really?” Jules looked up from the social media scrolling she’d been doing on her phone. If anyone were to look at her search history, it would be filled with clips of Frankie behind the bench at Harbour games as she interacted with fans, signing posters and jersey’s, playing rock paper scissors to win friendship bracelets or candy.
Cam gazed out the window with a look of pure adoration on his face and Jules smiled at the sight of it. He looked pensive in a soft kind of way and she wouldn’t deny how nice it was to see.
“It’s been long enough I think, right?” He turned back to her and propped his head up on his elbow against her pillows. “You’re a girl, what would you want?”
“Oh wow, thanks. Yes, I am a girl. So nice to be dulled down to that.”
“Shut up, you know what I mean. I can’t really talk to anyone else about this…so can we be serious, please?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard those words come out of your mouth.”
She was toying with him but she knew he was right. When it came to relationships and dating, Cam had always turned to Jules in the place of their parents for advice or a heart to heart, and neither of them had questioned it. Being his sister, Jules could never stop herself from teasing him just as she had when they were kids regardless of the situation they found themselves in.
