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“You could have just asked me,” Frank reminded me.
“I know, I just didn’t want to bother you. You seem to have a lot on your mind lately, always on the phone. Is there something going on that I should know about? Or maybe that you want to tell me about? I feel like there is a lot that I don’t know.”
“And you think that you need to know how my friend died? That is somehow going to tell you what you want to know?” he asked incredulously. He was right, of course; I didn’t want to know how his friend died for a normal reason. I wanted to know because I felt like I wasn’t getting all the information that I needed. I didn’t know how his friend dying was tied into what happened with the truck hitting us, but I felt like there was a connection. I needed to know what it was for and if it was going to happen again. If Frank would just tell me the truth, I would be able to think clearly. I was so worried about what was being kept from me that I couldn’t think clearly. It was something I was becoming obsessed over.
“You need to let this go, Amber.”
I scoffed and asked him what would happen if I couldn’t. He just kind of looked at me and I worried that this was going to ruin us, whatever “us” was. I didn’t know what to think of Frank. He had come into my life out of nowhere, as I had come into his when I wrote to him randomly a long time ago. It was strange how it all came to be, and I was questioning it now. I wanted to know what the deal was with him. I needed to know what his secrets were, because he obviously was holding back from me and it was no longer okay to let him have his secrets, not when they had almost gotten me killed.
“If you can’t let this go, how are we supposed to move forward?”
I didn’t want to hear that. I wasn’t worried about any of it. I was focused on finding out the truth, nothing else was going to do. “Move forward? I didn’t even know you were coming or that I was going to move forward anywhere. Then, suddenly, you’re here, and I am getting in wrecks and going to funerals. Something is obviously not right. Can you not feel it?”
Frank looked at me like I had lost my mind. I guess it might have come out a little hapless, but the thoughts were still the same. He had shown up out of nowhere, something I didn’t regret obviously, but he had come out of nowhere and turned my life upside down. That was before the funeral of his friend and his family, and it was before the wreck that felt more and more like something done on purpose. All of that was paired with a secret. It bothered me, all of it. I was not going to be treated like I was just some silly girl that was blowing it out of proportion.
“I think that maybe I have been keeping you up too late at night, because you are not thinking clearly. It happens when you don’t get enough sleep,” he started. I glowered at him. Was he seriously trying to blame it all on the fact that I hadn’t had enough sleep? Really? Why didn’t he next blame it on hormones and my time of the month!?
“It has nothing to do with not getting enough sleep, Frank. It has to do with you lying to me and I want to know the truth. I don’t know what is going on with you, but I know a lie when I hear it, and you’ve been giving me doozies. I figure that everyone has secrets they don’t want to tell, and I didn’t want you to tell them to me. I can respect your secrets, but not when they almost kill me. You are staying here, and I need to know who I am living with. I need to know why someone caused us to wreck on purpose.”
I was breathing hard, gasping for breath really, and he still had the appearance like he was dealing with a crazy person. He made me start to feel like a crazy person, but I knew I wasn’t. I knew that something off was going on and though he wasn’t going to tell me about it, it wasn’t just imagined in my head.
“I don’t want to argue with you…” Frank started, but I interrupted him and told him that if he didn’t want to argue, then he should just tell me the truth. That went about as well as could be expected. I tried my best to make myself calm down, but I couldn’t. I was sick of being told that it was all in my head. It wasn’t.
“I have told you the truth, but I don’t want to fight. Maybe I should leave for a while and give you time to cool off. I don’t like this.”
“Maybe you should just leave more permanent like. I don’t want to be lied to, Frank, so if you aren’t going to tell me what is going on, I guess I’m just going to have to drop it. I can’t if you are here.”
I thought he would say something like he was sorry and then tell me whatever it was that he was holding back. He would see how serious I was about it all and then we could get back to a time that made sense. This is how I worked it out in my head, but that wasn’t at all what happened.
Instead, Frank agreed with my sentiment and said that he was going to go. I didn’t want to hear that, I wanted him to stay, but I had thrown down the ultimatum. I couldn’t go back on it now. I couldn’t go on wondering what was happening. Now, I had to watch him grab his few belongings and leave. He kissed me before he left, hard on the lips and made my knees grow weak with it all. I wanted him to stay, almost begged him to, but instead I watched him walk away, one of the hardest things I’d ever had to deal with.
It took almost everything in me not to go after him. He left, instead of telling me the truth. Wasn’t that enough of an answer for me? I needed to listen to what Frank was telling me. He didn’t want to be together, and I was going to have to get that through my head, even if I didn’t want to.
* * *
Ashley poppedup above my head, my eyes squinting in the bright light. “What are you doing?”
I sat up on the couch and shrugged. Ashley had a key to my place. I didn’t usually have a problem with that, but today I did. It was annoying to wake up to her. I had a hangover, and I was emotionally exhausted, crying over Frank. The last thing I needed was someone in my face. I just wanted to be left alone.
“What are you doing here?” I countered, not so nicely either.
Ashley didn’t seem to care at all, my tone meant nothing to her. She just looked at me with a blank face. I didn’t get the answer I was looking for. Instead she said that she had asked first, so I had to answer her.
“I am sleeping, Ashley, that’s what I was doing. Since you woke me up, I figured that was a given that I wouldn’t have to tell you,” I said. She just shook her head, once again like I was silly, and I really tried hard to calm myself down. I couldn’t believe that she was here. I’d missed a few days of work and I’d gotten into a funk, but that didn’t mean anything. She couldn’t just come in here…
“You need to go to work. You need to get up. I am here to help, and you can get all the attitude you want with me, Amber, but I will just ignore it. I am not leaving until you are up, showered, and dressed. Then, you are going to tell me what is going on. I have a feeling it is going to have something to do with that guy that just popped up out of the blue. You have a lot of answers to give, Amber.”
She was right, I had kept a lot from her and since it was all over and Frank was gone, I wanted her to know it all, so that she could feel the same way that I did about it. Then she would understand why it hurt so much. That’s what I had to figure anyway.
So, for the next hour, I poured it all out. I showed her some of the letters like the first one, holding the more intimate ones to myself. I wanted her to see and know Frank like I did. I didn’t know if I was trying to justify my feelings toward him or what it was, but I did feel better when Ashley agreed that he sounded like a great guy. If she only knew half of it, though I didn’t tell her the parts about Frank that kept me begging for more.
“I mean, you know that it’s the most romantic thing I have ever heard, right?”
I sighed and agreed. “Yeah, until you consider that someone tried to run us over. Then it gets complicated and goes from romantic to deadly.”
12
Frank
