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"Actually, I prefer you like this." Jake winked at me.
As I pushed out of the tub, he gave up and handed me the towel. I wrapped it around myself and walked into the bedroom.
"After I talk to Frankie, I would like to speak with you, Matty, and Rex." I slid on a pair of underwear without removing the towel. Yeah, Jake had seen everything, but I was still a little nervous about being naked around him.
He pressed his chest against my back. He was still wet from pulling me out of the tub. His breath was warm against my neck.
"You want to finish what we started?" He nibbled my neck.
Fuck. I was soaked, and I had just put on the underwear. It was my last clean pair.
"I said talk, not that." I spun in his arms to face him.
"Well, both options are on the menu for tonight." He kissed my forehead.
"Good to know." I playfully slapped his chest.
"I gotta get outta here before I throw you on the bed and take you." He released me and turned to walk out of the room. "After you talk to Frankie, we will be there for you."
When I walked into the kitchen, Frankie was already seated at the table, his hands crossed in front of him. Two beer bottles had been drained and left on either side of an uneaten plate of food, a testament to the amount of time he had been waiting.
"Were you waiting for me?" I sat across from him.
"Yeah, and also getting up the courage to go talk to you if you didn't come out of your room." He drained another beer bottle and added it to the other two.
"Why didn't you tell me?" No use in beating around the bush.
"I knew you would be upset." He shrugged.
"Of course I would be. How could Dad move on? And you didn't say anything."
"He cried every night for a year after mom died. Then he became a robot and distanced himself from everyone. You know how unbearable he has been to live with. Losing mom crushed him." Frankie got up and grabbed another beer from the fridge.
"It was hard on all of us. That doesn't mean you move on." I ground my teeth.
I hid in my room for weeks after she passed away. Reading books was my only form of escape. At times, I almost forgot my entire world had fallen apart. That still didn't mean I would ever replace my mother. Yet, somehow, my father had.
"He didn't move on." Frankie raked his hand across his face. "He just found someone that helps him."
"Dad replaced mom." I pushed my fingernails into the meaty part of my palm.
"You don't get it. It's possible for him to still love Mom and fall for another person." He picked at the mac and cheese on his plate.
I slumped into the chair. I knew all about loving more than one person. How could he know I did? There was no way he could know. My chest was heavy and cold, like something wet was pressing down on it. Of course, he knew. I was fooling around with his best friends. The top of my head pulsed in pain as if someone had jabbed me above my ears with a dull hatchet.
At some point over this weekend, he had to have seen us. Why else would he bring up being in love with more than one person? The way he said it was as if he knew. Wait. He said it more as if he personally knew the pain. Not that he knew what I was up to.
"This isn't about Dad," I accused.
"What are you trying to say?" Frankie cut his eyes at me.
"I think you know," I whispered. I wouldn't break Sammy's trust, but that didn't mean I couldn't try to get him to tell me.
"Actually, I don't." He slammed his bottle on the table. "Are you just trying to argue with me? Geez, this is why I didn't want you to come."
"So nice you would have left your little sister at home, alone, on the anniversary of mom's death because I'm a bother!" my voice was shaking as I was yelling.
"Stop being so dramatic." Frankie shook his head. "Sometimes I just want to do my own thing."
