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Just below that, she sent a selfie with Pete, his face frozen mid-growl as she smiled widely at her phone. My thumb stroked gently over her beautiful features and I drank it all in. Her heart-shaped face, full lips, the distinctive nose—her gift from the Greek gods, she jokingly called it, and seductive dark eyes. Eyes that I stared into this morning in the shower, when I pinned her against the tile and slid my full length into her wet, willing body. She’d twined her legs around my waist and took all of me, crying out her pleasure as the gentle thrusts turned into a hard, slippery rutting that shattered us both.
She always took every piece of me, even the rough parts. The parts that not even I liked very much sometimes. And as I sat in the plane on the runway in Minneapolis, when I didn’t feel like a very good person, but the pain swamping me was too much to deal with, it was…a relief. To know that one person didn’t feel let down by my rash actions, and would wait for me to take a deep breath and think.
Frankie knew my flight details before I left and had to have known that I was back in Minneapolis, but even through the flurry of calls and texts from everyone else, she remained silent.
A run,I thought blearily as I walked through my garage door and into my quiet kitchen. I need to clear my head.
My late wife Amanda and I ran together a lot, and when Marcie came along, we loaded her into her stroller—a gift from Amanda’s parents because we were so young, and so broke—and took her with us. And after Amanda died ten years ago, I just ran even more to escape my pain and loss.
I never talked to anyone about what I felt.
I just ran.
Today, the punishing strikes of my feet against the pavement felt as comforting and routine as ever, but my brain still bubbled with rage and hurt and painful questions.
Why am I so angry?
Can I fix this with Marcie?
Am I a hypocrite and asshole for being involved with Frankie?
I was sure the chaos inside of me was going to eat me alive.
I stumbled back into the house an hour later, slick with sweat and legs burning as I flopped onto the couch and grabbed my phone from the coffee table. I hadn’t taken it with me, the slap of my shoes and my breaths the only sounds I’d wanted to hear.
The phone only rang once before Frankie picked up, her voice soft and laced with worry, even though she tried to sound normal.
“There you are,” she said lightly. In the background, Pete mewed, and despite my jagged, disjointed feelings, I smiled at the tiny sound of her regular life. The life I desperately wanted to be part of, but wasn’t sure I deserved to have.
I swiped my sweaty hair back from my face and rubbed at my damp beard. “Went for a run to try and juice some of this anger out of me.”
“And did it work?”
Sighing, I stood again and headed for the stairs. “Kind of. I sort of wonder if I’m not okay for other reasons.”
She took a deep breath, and I could picture her curled up on her couch, chewing on her thumbnail with her eyebrows furrowed. Frankie’s worried face, I called it. I always thought it was fucking adorable.
“Well,” Frankie finally said. “I think I could’ve told you that. You can be…a little weird about some things.”
I walked into my dark bedroom, sidestepping my abandoned suitcase and heading for the bathroom. “Oh, you noticed?”
“You don’t…” she trailed off, like she was searching for the right words to describe it. “You don’t like it when things don’t fit perfectly together or can’t be predicted or controlled. I think that’s why you were so uncomfortable with the idea of us at first. And I think you’re still getting used to it. And this thing with Denton and Marcie, that’s something that’s completely out of your control. Yes, I know you were blind-sided, but you can’t live Marcie’s life, or anyone else’s for that matter, for them, and you need to learn to be okay with that.”
I toed off my running shoes, but instead of turning on the shower to warm it up so I could wash away all the sweat, I leaned against the bathroom vanity. Just to linger a little longer with Frankie and to hear what she had to say. “How do you mean?”
“I—well, I wonder sometimes if your behavior has to do with Amanda. If you’re desperate to control all the things that you can, including Marcie’s life, because you couldn’t control what happened to your wife,” she said softly, intuitively. “And when you can’t manage every possible outcome, you just…you short-circuit.”
I closed my eyes and hung my head, not at all surprised that Frankie already knew me so well, because that’s exactly how I reacted.
“And Clive,” Frankie continued, her voice turning even gentler. “Maybe it’s time to get some help for that. Because you deserve better than to live with feelings that completely overwhelm you. Feelings that make you . . . lash out and hurt the people who love you when certain things are out of your realm of control.”
The people who love me, I thought, faint wonder piercing through the fog in my brain. “Does that include you?” I asked hoarsely.
“Oh, Clive.” Frankie sounded near tears. “Of course it does. I’ve loved you for years. That’s why I kept coming back, even when you say or do stupid shit, because I know that despite it all, you’re a good, honorable man with a huge heart.”
I looked down at the tile floor, my throat tight as I realized it was time for me to admit my own truth. “I love you, too, Frankie. I realized it that night at Screech Owl and it scared the shit out of me.”
It still did, if I was being honest with myself. Opening up and being vulnerable wasn’t something I’d done since Amanda died because I knew how devastating it was to lose someone who held your heart. The possibility of experiencing that kind of pain again wasn’t a risk I’d been willing to take a second time . . . until now.
