Chapter 7
As the two stepped out of the studio, they were faced with a sight that caused Poppy to stop up short and Frankie to pull out her phone. A Great Dane and a Chihuahua were strolling down the middle of Main Street.
“Am I actually losing my mind, or is that—”
“Two dogs walking down the middle of the street,” Frankie completed her thought.
“Yeah.” Poppy turned her head towards Frankie.
“It’s Scooby and Scrappy, my friend Nikki and her sister Amy’s dogs. Whenever they are together, they break out and come downtown to go to Two Scoops to get pup cups,” she explained as she texted Nikki to let her know about the canine jailbreak.
“So, this is normal?” Poppy asked as she witnessed locals wave and shout greetings to the dogs by name.
“Hope Falls has a three-eccentrics-per-block minimum,” Frankie explained as she put her phone back in her bag.
“Oh, nice.” Poppy smiled as she pulled the strap of her bag up on her shoulder and they both started heading towards her brother’s new offices. “How long have you lived here?”
“Oh, I, um, I don’t, but I spent every summer and holiday here with my grandparents. I grew up in San Francisco, and then after that, New York. I’ve only been here for about a month.”
Poppy nodded. “Are you here for work? What do you do?”
Good question. What did she do? She wasted six years building Tristan’s firm. and for what?
“I’m in a transitional phase of my career.
I used to be an artist, but I, um, I put that on hold.
” She didn’t want to say why. How cliché was it that she’d wasted her twenties building a man’s business who respected her so little he’d uploaded videos of himself having sex with another person on their shared iCloud account.
Perhaps trying to overcompensation, she shared, “I have a degree in art history from NYU, and that is what I’m going to be pursuing again. ”
“That’s amazing that you are following your passion!” Poppy enthused, miming a chef’s kiss. “It’s inspiring. That’s exactly what I want to do.”
“Oh, you’re an artist, too.” Frankie was already picturing days spent in a little studio she would rent, the two of them having lazy afternoons drinking tea while they discussed the projects they were working on and town gossip, when Poppy burst her jump-to-conclusion bubble.
“No!” Poppy shook her head. “I’m a liability on Pictionary family game nights. It’s so bad that to make it fair, whatever team gets stuck with me is automatically given a two verbal cue handicap.”
“Wow.” Frankie tried to hold it together but ended up laughing. “Sorry, that’s just—”
“No, it is funny. I’m that bad.” Poppy was clearly not offended. “What I meant was I want to follow my passion.”
“Oh, okay. What’s your passion?”
She stopped abruptly and turned to face her. “That’s the problem. I have no clue. But I can tell you it is not taking pictures of people’s insides.”
Frankie had no way to relate to her. She had always loved art. From the time she could hold a crayon, it was how she expressed herself. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“We’ll see.” Poppy did not seem convinced. She leaned back on her heel, twisted her body, grabbed Frankie’s wrist, and pushed open the glass door with the For Lease sign on it. “Come on, you need to meet my brother.”
“Oh, no, I really can’t. I need to take my grandma to—” As much as Frankie appreciated Poppy’s gesture, her life was complicated enough in the man department.
She looked over her shoulder as she dragged her friend inside. “How many blank walls do you see? I’m decorating. This is kismet.”
“You don’t even know what kind of art I do.” She stumbled inside.
“It’s a doctor’s office, not the Louvre.” Poppy dropped her wrist once the door behind them closed.
Frankie’s eyes had to adjust for a second, but then she saw a folding table and two mismatched office chairs arranged in the center of the waiting area, a pile of fabric swatches and paint samples fanned out like a peacock’s tail between them.
There was a single narrow hall in the center with nameplates on the doors, and a faint scent of dust and stale coffee lingered in the air.
Poppy shouted, “Hello, I’m here, and I brought an up-and-coming artist for you to meet. You have to see her stuff!”
Frankie heard footsteps coming down the hallway, accompanied by the clickety-clack of nails.
“I don’t have any—” she started to protest that she has zero art on hand and not even a business card when a deep, familiar voice became the background track for a cinematic slow-mo effect, as a tall, broad figure appeared, backlit by honeyed sunlight streaming in from the wide-open door at the end of the hall.
“Sorry, I was just letting—”
Both stopped speaking the moment they saw each other.
Liam, Frankie’s brain said his name out loud, as if it needed the extra time to process.
He blinked once, his gaze locked on her as if he’d just seen a ghost. She had no clue what her expression was saying, but she did know what she was thinking.
He looked like a walking contradiction—rumpled and composed, mountain man and city slicker, someone who could fix your transmission and ace a final at med school.
It was undeniable—even in civilian clothes—the guy looked like he belonged in a black-and-white photo, leaning against a vintage truck assessing the world with a kind of seductive cynicism.
The old white t-shirt, soft and clinging to his broad shoulders and chest, the blue jeans faded in all the right places, work boots, a battered San Francisco Giants ball cap…
but it was the scruff on his jaw, darker than she remembered, surrounding his perfect lips that sent tingles running up and down her arms in a jolting sensation like she’d stuck a fork in an electric socket.
She could barely contain the tide of feelings surging up from her chest. Shock, mostly. And confusion. And, if she was being honest, a geyser of attraction so fierce it bordered on humiliating.
Frankie was suddenly hyperaware of every square inch of her bare skin, every imperfection.
Her too-skinny arms, insufficient cleavage, and the untoned area between the underband of her sports bra and the waistband of her yoga pants.
Every flaw her skintight clothing revealed.
The zit that had shown up the week after she’d arrived with her period that was still hanging out on her forehead.
Poppy didn’t even seem to notice their awkward interaction.
She was too busy squatting down welcoming the puppy—a chubby, brown-furred, possibly part Ewok—who came barreling out of nowhere and hurled itself into her arms. She giggled through introductions.
“Liam this is Frankie. Frankie, this is my brother Liam.”
“Hi.” Liam greeted her as if she were a stranger.
“Hi,” she replied, following his lead.
Frankie wasn’t sure what was going on. Was this really going to play out like that? Like he didn’t know her? Was that how ashamed he was of their past?
“Frankie’s an amazing artist, and we’re gonna buy her art for the office.”
“She is amazing.” Liam paused, and Frankie’s breath caught. He hadn’t broken their eye contact. “I’ve seen her work.”
Okay, so he’d admit he knew her art, but not her? Why? What was his endgame?
“Oh, cool!” Poppy was delighted as the puppy in her arms wiggled, cried, and covered her face in sloppy kisses. “When did you get a dog?”
“I didn’t. She showed up on my deck last night.”
Hearing Liam’s voice, watching the words come out of his mouth, and seeing him standing in front of her after all these years was so surreal. Even though she’d seen him at the hospital, it hadn’t been like this. This was intense. She couldn’t feel her legs, or her lips, or her hands.
“She’s perfect! Have you named her?”
“I’m not keeping her.”
“You are keeping her,” Poppy said, in the mother who just made a dinner no one wanted to eat.
The puppy bounced off her lap and ran around the waiting area, then started whimpering and pawing at the door.
“She has to pee,” Liam said, never taking his eyes off Frankie. “I was taking her out when—”
“I’ll do it!” Poppy jumped up, scooping the squirming dog with her and carrying her down the hallway to the back door, the way Liam had come.
The door shut loudly, and just like that, they were alone. Frankie and Liam faced each other, the air thick and weird and heavy, like someone had just turned up the atmospheric pressure. She tried to think of something witty, or even boring, to say, but her brain was malfunctioning.
They both blurted, “How are you?” at the same time.
“Good,” Frankie said, then amended, “I mean, okay. You?”
“Okay,” he parroted.
The word hung between them, pointless and inadequate.
“It was…at the hospital…I thought…” He shook his head.
Had he seen her at the hospital? Her heart was thumping like the time she got caught in the science lab with Donnie McNally in seventh grade. They snuck out of the dance and were caught by the security guard.
“What are you doing in Hope Falls?” His question sounded like an accusation.
“What are you doing in Hope Falls?” She heard the defensiveness in her tone, but if anyone had a right to be there, it was her. He didn’t spend every summer and holiday there. His grandparents didn’t live there.
“I’m opening a family practice,” he stated the obvious.
“I’m staying with Yaya.”
They both stood there, the moment stretching out between them. She felt like they were in some kind of fucked-up staring contest or game of chicken, neither of them willing to move or say what needed to be said. Frankie had so many questions, but none of them were safe to ask.
Why did he leave that night?
Did you ever think about me?
Was I a mistake, or just a regret?
Her phone buzzed so violently in her bag it startled her out of the trance she hadn’t realized she’d slipped into. Frankie yanked it out, thumb swiping at the cracked screen, half-expecting some cosmic alert telling her she’d just crossed into alternate reality. Instead, it was Yaya.
Yaya: If you’re not here in ten minutes, I’m driving myself to the hospital.
Frankie knew she wasn’t bluffing. If she wasn’t there, Yaya would absolutely get behind the wheel, and then she’d be seeing Liam for an entirely different reason.
There was no way Yaya would make it the thirty miles to the hospital without a collision that ended with herself or someone else in the emergency room.
“I have to go. Tell Poppy I said…bye. Bye.” She lifted her hand awkwardly, turned, and walked out.
“Frankie.”
She heard him call her name as the door closed, but she didn’t turn around.
She kept walking, with each step her chest tightened, she took shallow breaths, and her legs went numb.
Her brain ran laps around itself. Tears began to fill her eyes as the reality of what had just occurred settled in.
Liam was in Hope Falls. Liam, who had vanished from her life without even a simple goodbye.
What happened between us is ancient history, she reminded herself.
She was a different person now—stronger, smarter, more guarded.
She’d spent years constructing mental and emotional barricades, neatly packing up all the questions she’d never gotten to ask, putting them in a box, and burning the box. But now she had more questions. Liam, her Liam, was Poppy’s brother?
How was that even possible?
One thing she knew for sure: the crush she’d thought she’d gotten over was back.
Oh boy, was it back. All the feelings she’d felt when he’d disappeared from her life, came crashing over her, overwhelming her.
She didn’t know what to do with them. She couldn’t breathe.
She needed oxygen. She needed a decade of therapy…
she was really kicking herself for not using the past ten years more productively.