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I grinned. “Well, lucky for you, we still have that option.”
“I’m glad your birthday was before,” she admitted, and I paused mid-bite.
“Selfishly, me too. But I’d have been okay if this was how I spent my birthday with you.” I’d had a damn good time on my birthday, before, during, and after the trip to Six Flags.
She nudged her sunglasses up and then pushed them higher so they rested on her hair and she could meet my gaze. I loved her eyes. They were the perfect shade of green. I’d never found anything that matched them, not a shirt, not a blade of grass, nothing. They were her eyes. Hell, I’d even looked at emeralds in a catalog once.
Nope. Not her shade at all.
“I somehow think truth or dare wouldn’t have been on the table.”
My cock swelled at the reminder. Fuck. “Then we would have played it later,” I told her. “You forget, I’m really patient.”
“You’ve also not given me a real good morning kiss since before.”
Frowning, I said, “Your lip was split, and you’re hurting. I’m not going to grind into you like I can’t control myself until you’re feeling better.”
“That’s fair,” she admitted, then grimaced. When she turned her attention to her food, I bumped her knee with mine.
“Talk to me.”
“I talked to Jake a little about it yesterday.”
He’d mentioned it. No details, just that she’d worried she’d done something wrong. “Okay, is there something you want to talk to me about?”
“No, I think my pity party is firmly full with the table for one I have set.”
“Pfft, you won’t be at a table for one if I can ever help it. At least two, better if it’s three, and to be on the safe side, we should always get one for five.”
Sooner or later, Bubba would fix this thing with him and Frankie. The flowers were a great start. So was being there for her every damn day. I’d told him not being a boyfriend might actually be a blessing right now. It was hard to walk that line between what I’d do as her best friend and what I wanted to do because she was Frankie.
I wanted to protect her.
She needed me to kick her in the ass.
These things weren’t mutually exclusive, but I’d much rather do the former than the latter. At least until I was sure she was okay.
So, maybe it was time for Bubba to be pushy.
The corner of her mouth kicked up. “I don’t know if I want to talk about it or not. But Denitra gave me numbers for some counselors.”
“Okay.” I offered her another bite of chicken and kept it low-key while she chewed the bite. Denitra had given her quite a bit of literature. And had called to talk to her a couple of times.
The nurse was awesome.
“And I know Ian’s dad does counseling, but I don’t…”
“Yeah, no.” I jumped right in there at her hesitation. “Whatever counselor or psychologist you end up seeing, they have to be someone you don’t have a personal connection with. It’s important that they are as unbiased and apart from the rest of your life as you can make them.”
She studied me for a moment. “I figured. The idea of talking to Ian’s dad would just be weird.”
“Agreed.”
“So is the idea of talking to Diane at school.”
“Fair.” The guys were talking to her for their anger management, not that either of them had filled in me or Archie. I didn’t think they’d talked to Frankie about it either.
“Besides, she’s also working with Ian and Jake, so that would just add to the weird factor.”
