7. Frankie
Frankie
As time provided distance from that horrible day, Frankie watched his boyfriend slowly turn into a ghost.
Diego seemed to float between rooms, barely making any sound at all.
At first, Obie had joked maybe they should put a bell on him, so he didn’t scare the customers by just appearing at their sides, but after a full week of this, he wasn’t joking anymore.
Frankie hadn’t thought it was his place to tell their friends what had happened, but as the days passed and Diego became more and more withdrawn, Frankie got a little desperate.
He called in reinforcements in the form of a night of pizza, beer, baking, and video games with Obie and Seth.
Diego said all the right things and quirked up the corner of his mouth at all the right times, but he wasn’t really there.
The second their friends left, Diego disappeared into their bedroom, and by the time Frankie cleaned up the coffee table and put the dishwasher up, he found Diego curled up under the blankets facing away from Frankie’s side of the bed.
Frankie had offered to sleep in his old bedroom several times after Diego declined sex, cuddling, and even holding hands.
Diego said he would never kick Frankie out of their bed just because he wasn’t in the mood for physical touch, but as days turned into weeks, he wasn’t sure how he could justify continuing to take up space in their bed when he clearly wasn’t wanted.
Frankie tried talking about it. He tried not talking about it.
He tried talking about anything and everything and Diego would respond, but they made absolutely no conversational headway on anything important.
At one point, Frankie even gently suggested therapy.
Diego agreed that it sounded like a good idea, but never brought it up again.
Some of their regular customers began to notice, so Frankie and Obie began to come up with managerial tasks for Diego to do in the backroom where he could feel useful but not be forced to socialize, which seemed to be the very last thing Diego wanted to do.
He barely seemed to want to talk to Frankie, let alone dozens of strangers each day.
Their customers were quite loyal, so their patronage didn’t drop off, but the profit reports indicated they weren’t bringing in any new customers. It was as if people could tell there was a depressed air about the place, and it made the cozy space feel almost oppressive.
Frankie kept in touch with Sofia, who was absolutely devastated.
She thought she had ruined everything for Diego.
Frankie assured her multiple times it wasn’t her fault since Diego had been planning to tell his family but had apparently changed his mind last minute.
Frankie just as easily could have slipped up.
She talked to Diego a bit, wishing him a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but their conversations were short and mostly one sided.
Unfortunately, Frankie’s parents came out for Christmas again, and he had to keep up the charade that he and Diego were just business partners and while it nearly broke him to do so, Diego showed so little emotion throughout the entire holiday Frankie couldn’t tell if he was hurt or grateful for the ruse.
Frankie wasn’t mad at Diego for trying to hide their relationship; he was just…
sad. Sad for Diego and a little sad for himself, and sad for all the people who came to their cafe looking gloomy and downtrodden around the holidays because they clearly hadn’t had the warmest, happiest of holidays with their families.
Frankie wished there was something he could do for the community, writ large.
The idea to host a queer found-family holiday party struck Frankie, but by then the holidays had passed and he was left sadder than before.
It all came to a head one night in late January when Diego just got up and left in the middle of closing the cafe. He walked out of the backroom and then out of the cafe.
Obie, who had been getting ready to go himself, offered to chase after him, but Frankie shook his head and asked if Obie would mind terribly staying for just a little while to see if Diego would come back.
After an hour and a half and a lot of cookies, Diego hadn’t returned. Frankie sent Obie home to be with Seth.
Frankie slept fitfully on the couch and eventually woke up to the sound of the front door opening. Diego had red rimmed eyes and his face looked gaunt, but that was barely anything new from the past month and a half.
“D, are you okay?” Frankie asked frantically trying to rub sleep from his eyes.
“I’m fine. I just went somewhere for a little while. You should be in bed, Franklin.”
Frankie hadn’t heard his full name in weeks, and he wondered if this was a good sign or a very bad one.
“I wanted to wait up to make sure you got home okay.”
Diego gave him a wan smile, held out his hand, and led Frankie into the bedroom.
They got ready for bed quickly. Diego hadn’t worn his packer since that fateful trip home so he slipped out of his jeans and into baggy sweats, a t-shirt, and a hoodie, and crawled into bed.
He lay on his back, and when Frankie climbed into bed, careful to leave several inches between their bodies, Diego held out his arm for Frankie to curl up against his side.
Frankie was fairly sure this was a very bad thing, but he was so touch starved at this point he didn’t care. He pressed himself tightly against Diego’s side and before he could work up the courage to ask what was happening, Diego began to snore softly.
Frankie struggled to stay awake, wanting to savor every moment of closeness that he hadn’t been permitted in weeks, but eventually sleep won out.
He was awakened several hours later when Diego crawled out from underneath him.
Frankie rolled over to watch him make his way towards the dresser where he slipped on his shoes and turned towards the bedroom door. As Frankie watched his boyfriend getting ready to leave, something inside him snapped.
“Are you leaving me?” he whispered.
Diego jumped in surprise and whipped around to face him. “Frankie!”
Frankie usually enjoyed the way Diego switched back and forth between calling him Frankie and Franklin.
It had started while he was living in Europe.
Diego seemed to prefer using Franklin for their softer moments, and reverted to Frankie when they were with friends, when he was joking around, being casual, or apparently when he was caught sneaking out of their bedroom in the middle of the night.
“Holy hell you scared the shit out of me. No, I was just—”
“Sneaking out of bed at three in the morning? Are you going wherever you went earlier tonight? Can you at least tell me where you went?”
Diego studied him in the dark room, and as Frankie’s eyes adjusted, he could see Diego’s shoulders were practically next to his ears.
“No, I’m not. I just couldn’t sleep, and I needed to clear my head and… think through some things.”
Frankie sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees. “And you can’t do that around me?”
Diego’s shoulders slumped and he let out a soft sigh. “Frankie, it’s not like that. I just wanted to go somewhere quiet to think, and—”
“I can be quiet,” Frankie interrupted, panic beginning to rise in his chest. He’d always been a chatterbox. His parents had made fun of him for it growing up. Was his tendency to fill the silence going to drive away the only man he’d ever loved?
“I know you can, querido . As I said, it’s not like that. It’s not about you,” Diego tried to say but Frankie could barely hear him. The panic was like a tornado, drowning out everything else except Diego standing there in his sneakers.
“Please, D,” Frankie whispered. His voice broke almost painfully over his nickname.
“Please don’t… don’t leave me. I promise I can be quiet and let you think and process and heal and whatever else you need to do.
You can do all of that next to me and I won’t bother you at all, I swear.
I can give you more space if you need it, I can…
sleep in my old room, or stay down in the cafe longer, but…
please. Don’t leave.” Tears were running down his cheeks; he didn’t even try to stop them.
He’d watched Diego withdraw far into himself day after day, and he’d begun to worry he was going to lose Diego into his own head, but not that he was going to lose Diego out into the world.
Diego let out a broken noise and came to kneel next to the bed right in front of Frankie.
“Franklin, I’m not leaving. I just couldn’t sleep, and I was going to go make some tea and maybe sit on the couch for a while.”
Frankie blinked at him, finally hearing him through all the noise in his head. “You… put on your shoes.”
“My feet were cold, and these were right here,” Diego said softly, reaching up to brush a few tears off of Frankie’s cheek.
Well, damn.
“Fuck I… I’m sorry,” Frankie hung his head, and as Diego remained silent Frankie slowly curled in on himself, dropping his head into his hands.
It was too early—or late?— for this. He had worked so hard to keep a wall up around Diego this past month to prevent him from seeing how much Frankie was suffering.
After all his careful work, seeing Diego put his shoes on in the middle of the night seemed to have broken straight through his wall. Frankie began to sob.
“Oh god, Frankie,” Diego choked out and he scrambled up onto the bed, kicking his shoes off and wrapping his arms and legs around Frankie.
“I’m… sorry…” Frankie cried, doing his best to make himself as small as possible.
Diego followed his movements, tightening his limbs, and burying his face in Frankie’s hair.