Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
COOP
C oop
The house always looked so expensive. The green grass was a testament to regular watering despite soaring temperatures and city water restrictions.
The cut of it precise, not inching over onto the drive by even a millimeter.
The flowers always looked in bloom. Nothing wilted.
Nothing out of place. No debris dared to clutter the drive.
The damn fountain was on, the trickle of water almost soothing despite the waves of heat rising up around it.
It was an oasis that suggested tranquility and refinement.
I used to feel out of place here. The first time Archie invited us over, I didn’t want to touch anything .
Mom would kill me if I broke something. Archie had more money than all of our families put together. Hell, more than most of our class.
I had no idea when that stopped mattering. When Archie just became Archie and his house a house. Today, however, it served as a huge reminder of the difference between all of us. Of what he could do for her. What he had and I hadn’t felt this alien in a long time.
I hated it.
The front door opened before we even reached it.
I’d ridden over with Jake while Bubba followed us.
I wasn’t even sure whose idea it was to come.
I thought maybe Bubba said it first, in the locker room after practice, towel slung over his shoulder, chin streaked with sweat. "We should talk to him. Tonight."
We all knew who him was.
Jake didn’t say anything at first. Just kept stuffing gear into his bag with that short, jerky aggression that usually meant someone was going to bleed soon.
Preferably Archie. Preferably not himself.
The only reason I’d been there was Frankie hadn’t come back to school so I’d hung out at football practice to get a ride after.
Jeremy opened the door. Jeremy, who was butler, chef, driver, and house manager for the Standishes.
Jeremy, who was always there even when Archie’s parents weren’t.
I liked Jeremy. More than I could say for Archie’s standoffish mother.
His dad was… Well, maybe I was biased against dads at the moment so I just left it alone.
“Good evening Mr. Bubba, Mr. Coop, Mr. Jake—we’ve been expecting you.
Mr. Archie is upstairs in the game room and the pizzas have arrived.
” The last he delivered with a kind of wry amusement.
Jeremy might work for the Standishes, but I swore he took more of a decisive hand with what Archie did and didn’t get to do, despite how much freedom Archie had.
Bubba gave him a quick nod as he strode in. “Thanks, Jeremy.” Bad mood still firmly in place, Jake stalked after Bubba and I sighed.
“Is Frankie here?” I didn’t even know I was going to ask the question before it came out. Bubba and Jake stopped on the stairs so abruptly no way they didn’t hear me.
“No, Mr. Coop, she is not here.” The level of kindness in his voice removed any judgment he might have offered.
“Thanks,” I repeated and headed up after the guys who’d moved as soon as Jeremy said she wasn’t here.
As much as I should hurry to follow them, I wasn’t looking forward to this fight.
But they were waiting for me, impatience swirling in the air around them like we were bracing for war. Ah, united front.
United for what? Well, I guessed we were about to find out.
One knock and Bubba pushed open the door. Archie sat on the couch, TV on but muted, one leg draped lazily over the other like he’d been expecting us. His face was the picture of calm.
“What’s up, gentlemen?” he said, voice too casual, too cool. Like we were just stopping by for sodas and Madden.
Jake moved first, stalking past Bubba like a storm and didn’t even pretend he wasn’t pissed. “You ditched school with her?”
Archie’s smirk didn’t falter. “Define ‘ditch.’ We left. Took a drive. Had lunch. I didn’t hide it.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed. “No, you just didn’t mention it. Again.”
Archie raised his brows. “Frankie needed a break. I offered one.”
Jake’s voice sharpened. “You offered yourself.”
My gut twisted. It had been doing that a lot lately. Ever since she started pulling away. Summer had sucked. I thought we’d begun to make some progress, but Archie swept her away before we could have lunch. She went with him and I hadn’t stopped her.
Maybe we were all pushing her.
Bubba shut the door behind us. Locked it.
Archie clocked that. “What, am I about to be jumped?”
“No,” Bubba said evenly. “But we’re gonna say what needs to be said, and nobody’s walking out until it’s done.”
Jake snorted, the anger crackling around him too much like heat lightning. It would only take one spark. “Oh, how noble of you. Now suddenly you want peace?”
“No,” Bubba snapped back. His patience with Jake’s temper also seemed to be on the verge of breaking. “I want clarity. For Frankie. For us. For this mess.”
I hadn’t spoken yet. Didn’t trust myself to. My stomach had been in knots since the second I saw her and Archie sail out of school for wherever-the-hell.
Archie leaned forward, fingers steepled like he was in some mafia movie. “So? Ask your questions. Let’s all lay our cards out, shall we?”
“You’ve been playing dirty,” Jake said flatly. “Undercutting everyone while pretending to be harmless.”
Archie stared at him a beat then shrugged. “You make it sound like I’m some Bond villain. I’ve been honest about her from the first day I met her. I like her. I want to spend time with her.”
“Behind everyone’s backs.”
“One,” Archie said coolly raising a single finger. “I asked her out right in front of Coop, that’s hardly behind anyone’s backs. Two, she didn’t ask for a chaperone. Three, we don’t owe you a calendar invite.”
“She owed me honesty,” Jake snapped.
Excuse me? She owed honesty. To who?
“Funny,” Archie said, tone flipping to cold before I could interject my own response, “I don’t remember you asking permission when you spent the night.”
Silence.
I closed my eyes. That one landed hard.
Jake’s fists clenched. “That wasn’t the same.”
“Oh no?” Archie’s voice was silk and knives. “You think your brand of secret is more acceptable? That if you’re quiet and brooding enough, no one will notice you’re breaking the same rules as the rest of us?”
“Enough,” Bubba said. Low. Firm. “You two are just slinging mud at each other and pretending it’s for her benefit.”
“She’s not okay,” I said. My voice cut through everything. Even surprised me.
They both looked at me.
“She’s not okay,” I repeated, quieter now. “This—this isn’t helping.”
Archie’s smirk faded. Jake’s jaw twitched.
As much as we needed to have this out, I wanted to be at home. No, fuck that, I wanted to be at Frankie’s. I wanted to finish the conversation we should have had at lunch. For now, though, I looked at the floor, then up at Bubba. “Say what you were going to say.”
Bubba nodded once. “We keep listening to her words, trying to decode what she’s telling each of us. But we’re missing the bigger picture.”
Not quite rolling his eyes, Jake crossed his arms. “That would be?”
“It’s not about what she’s saying. It’s about what she isn’t .”
That hit me square in the chest. Not because I hadn’t heard those silences. I’d damn near drowned in the one over the summer.
“She’s smiling when she’s tired. She’s laughing when she’s scared. She’s saying she’s fine, but she’s not . She ran from us all summer. That might be on us.”
Bubba raised a hand to stop any protests.
“She has a new boyfriend.” He chewed over those words like they left a bitter taste behind. “She has a boyfriend that she met and started dating while none of us were around. She’s made it clear she plans to keep him.”
I wasn’t alone in grimacing.
“Has her mother been home at all this week?” He turned to me now and I sighed.
“No.” Not that I’d seen. We’d all made excuses for Maddy over the years. But she had been gone more than she was around. Especially since Frankie started driving.
“That’s what I thought.” Bubba folded his arms. It gave him an air of restrained violence. “We fucked up somewhere. Whatever else she thinks or believes, we are the reason for it.”
“Rachel Manning didn’t help,” Jake spit out.
“She wouldn’t have said anything if it wasn’t true.” I couldn’t believe I was defending her. I didn’t owe Manning a damn thing, except what had she done but told Frankie the truth?
“Why was it her business to tell her anything?” Jake demanded.
“Because she saw something we didn’t,” I answered. She’d seen Frankie was unhappy.
How the fuck had I missed it?
Archie’s voice was quieter now. “You think we’re making it worse?”
“I think we’re not helping,” Bubba said. “I think every time one of us corners her, challenges her, confesses something—she shuts down more.”
“She’s unraveling,” I murmured. “And we’re tugging the threads.”
No one spoke for a long time.
Jake finally dropped onto the armrest, face buried in his hands. “I thought—if I just told her how I felt…”
“I thought I’d get there first,” Archie muttered.
“I thought it wouldn’t matter,” I admitted. “Because we’ve always been there. Always been together. That… we always would be.”
Accepted that she didn’t want to date anyone so I was content to just be her friend. But now?
“She’s not a prize,” Bubba said. “And we’re not opponents.”
“Maybe.” Archie leaned back, scrubbing his hands down his face.
“Maybe?” I snorted. “No maybes about it. Jake makes moves and stays the night. Archie usurps her away from a lunch date with me and just takes off.” Yeah, that still stung. “It feels pretty damn competitive.”
Jake glared at Archie, but it lacked the earlier heat. Maybe because Archie wasn’t even looking at him.
“Guys…” Bubba said with a sigh. “If we really start fighting over her…”
“We already have.” Call me, Mr. Sunshine, but we were fighting over her. That was what brought us here with Jake on a tear and Bubba ready to throw down. Hell, even Archie had been ready for the invasion. “All of you know it.”
The last thing I wanted to be was the reasonable one. I almost wouldn’t mind punching Archie in his smug face. Almost.
Except as irritated as I was, Archie wasn’t who I was mad at.
“We’ve known each other for years.” For a brief moment, I studied Jake. “Elementary school.” Then I flicked a glance at Bubba. “Junior High.” Finally, I shifted to look at Archie. “High school.”
Guilt. Anger. Worry. The room reeked of it.
“We’ve been friends for most of that time. Frankie was never a sore spot because we were all so sure none of us would be the one.”
“Speak for yourself,” Archie muttered, but I ignored him.
“We didn’t have to fight over her cause we could have our cake and still hang out with her.
We all knew where we stood—or at least where we thought we stood.
We all agreed she needed to be protected from everyone else if she didn’t want to date, no one got to pressure her.
No one got to talk about her either. Her mother’s a bitch, so we did our best to make sure school wasn’t. ”
Bubba leaned his head back and sighed. The weight of it punched through the room.
“Now,” I continued. “Everything changes because we know she wants to date. I’m not stepping out.” I spared each of them a long look. “Don’t even think that I’m backing off.”
“I already asked her to not just date one guy,” Bubba admitted and I almost laughed as Jake stared at him.
“I told her today was a date,” Archie said, spreading his hands in a hey, it’s me gesture. “Just to make sure she didn’t miss it.”
That was three of us. We all looked at Jake. He’d been pissed at her. Really pissed. I still had no idea what the hell that was about, but it was something. That bothered me way more than I cared to admit.
“You’re all assuming she’s gonna drop Frenchy.”
I shrugged. “Not assuming a damn thing. He’s here until Christmas. Then he leaves.”
“Oh, yeah,” Archie said and you could hear the smile. “Still too long, but definitely a brighter side.”
“Like I said before, I asked her to not limit herself to one guy. Since she is dating Frenchy and she went out with Arch today, maybe she is taking the advice.”
“Excellent.” Archie definitely brightened up. Ass.
Probably one of the reasons I liked him. He always came up swinging.
“So, what you’re saying is we all try to date her?” Jake didn’t sound so certain.
“What I am saying is that I plan to make it very clear to her how interested I am. That no one, not Frenchy, not any of you, is going to push me away. I want a chance, I’ll fucking grovel if I have to in order to get the chance. If you don’t want one—” Now I shrugged. “Then it’s your loss.”
“Fuck you, Coop.” Jake scowled.
“No thanks, you’re definitely not my type.”
The ballooning tension in the room popped. Archie and Bubba both laughed, but I met Jake’s glare easily even as he struggled to maintain his temper.
He lost and finally cracked a smile of his own.
“We’re idiots,” Archie admitted, still chuckling.
“Big ones,” Bubba said, not unkindly.
Jake looked up. “So what now?”
Just like that, we were all on the same side again. Would it last? I didn’t have an answer. I looked at the guys and thought about Frankie holding herself together with stubborn pride and sheer exhaustion.
Frankie, who backed us on every damn thing we wanted to do even when that involved dating other girls. Her comment about Laura still rang in my head.
Fuck. I needed to break up with Laura.
Again.
“We back off,” I said, then raised a hand when all of them gaped at me. “Not leave her alone. Not abandon her. But we stop trying to tell her what to do. We let her breathe. Let her choose , without all of us breathing down her neck.”
“And if she chooses none of us?” Jake asked, his voice rough.
“Then we let her.” Sure, it sounded simple. Except… “Even if she doesn’t pick me, I’m still her friend. I’m always going to be her friend. But I won’t assume anything unless she tells me to my face.”
Period.
They didn’t argue. Not anymore.
“Well,” Archie said. “Jeremy ordered pizzas. We should map out the rules for this so we avoid pissing each other off.”
“Much,” Jake said dryly. Yeah, he might not be mad anymore but he was still irked.
“Much,” Archie said almost agreeably. “Sometimes it’s fun to poke the bear.”
I rolled my eyes but left them to snipe. One of these days, that bear might just punch Archie.