Chapter 18 #2
“He’s getting married and she’s pregnant.”
“Who? What?” But she already knows the answer before Frankie responds.
“Shane and the girl he was fucking before we split. They’re engaged and she’s pregnant.”
“I’m just gonna . . .” Xavier trails off, waving back over his shoulder with his thumb to the front door. “I can wait in the car.”
“No,” Frankie cuts him off. “You should stay because I need . . . I need a man’s opinion. Bianca will just tell me that it’s all his fault and I . . .”
“It is all his fault.”
Frankie manages to crack a smile. “See?”
Xavier sits down next to Bianca and his knee knocks against hers in solidarity. “I can weigh in, but I don’t know you that well and I don’t know him at all. I don’t know how much help I can be.”
“What does it say if a man who claimed he never wanted kids and just wanted to focus on his career and that he loved that I had my own career to focus on is divorced for less than a month and he’s engaged to someone else.
And she’s pregnant – like, far enough along to announce it to the world kind of pregnant – and apparently he’s leaving his job so they can be full-time influencers . ”
“Shane is going to . . . be a TikToker?” Bianca interrupts in disbelief. That guy was more married to his sales job than he was to Frankie. He practically lived for it.
Frankie lets out a raw, humorless laugh.
“Shane and Samantha are chronicling their pregnancy journey together and you haven’t seen the posts.
It’s all about how miserable he was before he met her and how he didn’t know how to love until she came into his life .
. . I just . . . How did I get it so fucking wrong?
And don’t tell me you told me so, B, I know you were right and I was wrong. Completely fucking wrong.”
“It’s not your fault he’s a liar and a cheat.”
“You didn’t see the videos, Bianca. He talks about how his life before, our life before, is what he thought he wanted until he found something better.
He looks so happy and I . . . I can’t remember if he ever looked that way with me.
You know what the most ironic part of it all is?
I wanted that life. I wanted to get married and maybe have a baby or two, and he didn’t want it, so I didn’t let myself want it anymore and then .
. . Fuck, that’s so fucked up. How did I ever let it get to this point? What is wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. You . . . you were in love.” Bianca doesn’t know what to say though, doesn’t know how to help her friend because she’s . . . she’s never felt like that before, doesn’t even know where to begin to make it better.
Xavier clears his throat. “Do you still want me to . . .”
“Please, God, please, whatever you’ve got.”
“I think different people can make you want different things. I think what you want can change.”
“So he met her and what he wanted changed?”
“Maybe.” Straightening his shoulders, his eyes firmly on Frankie, though Bianca thinks maybe his gaze flicked to her for a split second, “I . . . don’t know what it was for him, but what I can tell you is that before Bianca, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to marry anyone.
I didn’t understand the point, I didn’t even want to understand it – but she changed all that. ”
Bianca’s stomach twists at the lie and she reaches out to squeeze his hand and stop him, but all he does is take it and lift it to his mouth in a soft kiss.
Frankie doesn’t need this, she needs . .
. something real, not that Bianca has any idea what to say to her either.
But it seems like it’s working, so she just keeps her mouth shut and tries not to think about how much she’s going to miss the touch of his lips to her skin.
“Ugh, no, please don’t be sweet and in love right now. I don’t think I can take it.”
He laughs and Frankie does too, thankfully, as Bianca draws her hand away. “What I’m saying is his change of heart, or whatever it is, has nothing to do with you, it’s about him . Maybe whatever her name is was the catalyst, but he had to choose a different life and he did.”
“The douchebag,” Bianca mutters.
“Yeah,” Xavier says, “a douchebag, but he’s moving on with his life and – here’s the most important thing – you can too.
You should too. You deserve to be happy, happier than the dick who put you through all this bullshit.
Happier than whatever filtered, sanitized half-life that he and this new woman plan on living. You’re way better off.”
Okay, that’s better. That’s useful. Frankie’s the kind of woman who can take a plan and run with it.
Hell, she fought her way to the top echelon of the Dodgers’ front office – a workplace basically dominated by men, in an industry that’s actively hostile to women – before she was thirty. She can handle this.
“Is it bad that right now none of that makes me feel better? I know it’s true. I know you’re right. I know that I’m better off without him, but right now I just . . . I’m just so fucking sad and I hate it.”
“You have every right to feel that way. Your life isn’t what you thought it was going to be, and even though it’s the right thing in the long-term, you’re allowed to be upset that it didn’t work out.”
“Fuck, you’re better than my therapist.”
“I . . . might have some experience with that,” Xavier says with a rueful grin.
“Therapy?”
“Oh yeah, on and off since I was a kid, but mostly on.”
“Is that why you seem so well adjusted?”
“Do I?” Xavier laughs. “I don’t know about that, but I’m sure they’d all be thrilled to hear it.”
“I think . . . I think we need a drink.”
“Or ten,” Frankie agrees. “But I can’t. I have to go to work. My job is literally the only thing I have now and apparently I’m too single-minded and focused on it to have anything else in my life.”
“First, we are not quoting the douchebag ever again,” Bianca says and Frankie laughs a little. Good, that’s good. “And second, it’s not the only thing,” Bianca says, resting her head on her taller friend’s shoulder. “You have me.”
“Thank God for that.”
“And this gorgeous house.”
Frankie snorts. “Not for much longer. I’m going to list it next week, unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“Unless you guys want it?” she asks, looking back and forth between them, her eyes soft and warm.
“Us?” Bianca says, swallowing back the denial that she and Xavier won’t be buying anything together.
“I’m buying out the douchebag and I just need to cover his half of the mortgage. I’d love it if something good came from this entire mess.”
“Frankie, I can’t . . .”
“Bianca, you can. You’ve always loved this house. I half think I bought it because you were in New York at the time and it reminded me of you. Shane always hated it, thought it was too small.”
“It’s too much money.”
Even with the money her parents gave her, there’s no way she could afford a house in this neighborhood, let alone one as nice as Frankie’s.
“Look at it as an early wedding present and every present for the rest of our lives. You know how terrible I am at gifts. This way you’re really doing me the favor.”
“I . . .”
“Think about all the colors you’ll be able to paint the walls, and the Spanish tile you’ll be able to put up for a kitchen backsplash and . . .”
“I . . . We . . . we’ll think about it.”
The drive to Dodger Stadium is a short one and made even easier when you can follow the team’s head of analytics into the reserved parking lot and in through the personnel entrance.
She’s sat up in this suite before, back when Frankie first got her promotion. It’s all the same as she remembers, painted Dodger blue, the walls lined with chafing dishes filled with complimentary food, and tables piled with bottles of anything and everything to drink.
“That fucking dick.”
“What?”
“Avery. I’m going to murder him.”
“Your catcher?”
“He’s going off game plan.”
“What?”
“We send a report down from analytics before every series and he’s supposed to be following it and he’s not .”
The Dodgers get out of the inning, the opposing batter swinging and missing on a pitch that darts down and away from him. The teams clear the field and the home team is headed up to bat, Avery leading off.
“Whatever he’s doing, it seems to be working,” Bianca says as she looks up at the scoreboard, where the Mets haven’t been able to push across even one run in three innings. And while the Dodgers haven’t either, they’ve threatened every time at bat.
“It’ll work now , but give these guys another time through the lineup and Herrera’ll be toast and we’ll have to use guys in the bullpen we didn’t want to use today.”
Bianca shrugs. “I don’t know what any of that means, but it sounds bad.”
“It is bad and he’s gonna hear about it after the game.”
“I thought Charlie Avery was like . . . really good?”
Her question is punctuated by the announcer calling out to the crowd, “Now batting, number eight, Charlie Avery!” The fans lose their minds for the team’s best player.
Frankie huffs out a frustrated breath. “He is or at least he was . Too fucking good for his own good. Thinks he knows better than everyone else.”
“He’s cute.”
“Yeah, he knows that too, but his knees are finally giving out and we’ve got a kid down in the minors who’s ready. Avery knows his days are numbered and he seems determined to drive me fucking crazy for every last one of them.”
Crack!
The stadium lets out a collective gasp, which explodes into cheers when the ball travels high and far and over the outfield fence. A home run.
“Woohoo! Yeah!” Xavier bellows from his seat, a brand-new Dodger hat on his head as he raises a fist in celebration.
“We’ll make an LA boy out of him yet,” Frankie teases.
Bianca shakes her head and pastes on a rueful smile and Frankie knows her well enough to stop with that.
The Dodgers eke out the win. Herrera did end up being toast by the second time through the Mets’ lineup and a long line of relief pitchers had to close out the game, just as Frankie predicted.