Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
COOP
I’d been hitting refresh on her messages like it was a damn religion. Nothing. Not even a seen check. That was when I understood just how damn bad it was—when her silence really became its own answer.
The internet was on fire with Sharon’s little “exposé.” The Boys Gone Bad summer tour. Nothing cute about it. Just raw, dirty, and far too exposed. I was front and center, bare-chested and stupid-grinning, with girls I barely remembered wrapped around me like we were in a bad music video.
Even worse—because that one video. The one that made me want to crawl out of my skin.
You think you can bury things, that the past was a private landfill—your messes, your lies, your stupid scoreboard games. But then Sharon—what a bitch—just lit it all up with gasoline and a match. I wasn’t just a dumpster fire, I was an EPA disaster ad for toxic waste.
And Frankie.
God, Frankie.
We’d finally kissed. And it hadn’t been some sloppy, half-drunk thing—it was quiet and honest and real. A kiss that left my chest torn out because even I hadn’t realized just how much I’d been starved for her.
Then, poof. One viral video later, I was radioactive.
I’d been trying to find her for days. She wasn’t answering calls, texts, DMs—nothing.
The guys had no fucking clue, maybe they were trying to talk to her too.
I didn’t know, I was ignoring them at the moment.
Ignoring them, not talking to my mom because she was so painfully disappointed it hurt and then there was Trina.
My pain in the ass little sister wanted nothing to do with me.
I was a bad PR nightmare for her and any future social life she might have.
So that left me exactly one person to talk to and they really were the last person I expected to find myself reaching out to, but there I was, calling Dad. He paid for the rideshare to bring me to his apartment, a place I generally avoided like the plague.
It always smelled like dirty dishes, sweat, and bad calls. He answered the door in that half-smile way he did, like he was still surprised I existed every single time whether there were plans or not.
“Hey, Coop,” he said, waving me in.
We sat at the kitchen island. He pulled a beer out for himself, didn’t offer me one—excellent plan—but hey, he had soda so he gave me a can of Coke and that worked.
When he asked what was up and why I called, I told him. Not everything, but most of it. The worst of it. I didn’t really give a fuck what he thought about me at this point. So, how would I possibly disappoint him? That said, he listened without interruption, then drained his beer when I finished.
Silent, he rose, discarded the bottle then got himself another before he sat back down and stared at me.
“You have to own it.”
That hit harder than I expected. Because coming from him? The guy who probably slept with Frankie's mom and detonated our whole family because no way in hell could Mom forgive him or Maddy? She never blamed Frankie, but yeah, Maddy was a bitch and Dad was an idiot. Still.
Still, that was his advice.
As gut sick as that made me, I had a hard time identifying where he was wrong.
“When you don’t,” he continued, “you end up where I am. With kids who would prefer you were a ghost and want nothing to do with you, and marriage in the shitter.”
He wasn’t trying to be poetic. My dad didn’t do poetic.
But that line burned, because he was right.
I’d spent the last few weeks struggling with Frankie dating someone else, choosing someone else, and trying to pretend the summer didn’t matter if I pretended it never happened.
Whether I liked it or not, the person in those videos was me. It was all of us.
Just the worst versions of us.
So, I sat there and asked how, and he said, “I don’t know. You let who needs to yell at you, yell. You don’t pretend like it didn’t matter. You say you’re sorry, you say you’ll do your best to never do it again. You listen.”
“That’s it?” Somehow that seemed way too easy.
“No, then you let them decide what they’re going to do and accept that you aren’t going to win this one. In fact… you may lose everything you wanted.”
My stomach sank.
I could lose Frankie.
For real this time.
“I really wish you had better advice,” I admitted.
Dad actually smiled, almost crookedly. “Me too. I wish I had been a better example too.”
I ended up staying there for a couple of hours, watched some tv with him and it was probably the most reasonable interaction we’d had in over a year. When I went home, I didn’t have any better answers and didn’t feel in any better place, but maybe I had something of a plan.
Yeah. I could still lie to myself. The rideshare got me back to our apartments faster than I expected.
I checked my phone a half-dozen times. Still no response.
Right now, I wasn’t sure whether I should be glad for that because I didn’t know what I’d say to her at this point.
I needed to see her to talk to her, even if I had nothing I could say because doing nothing felt like I was just dying inch by inch.
And then I saw it. Her car. The black gold, dark gray Toyota sedan she was so proud of. I couldn’t blame her, she was paying off her mom for the car, but it was hers. I swear, my pulse hit warp speed. I didn’t even think. I just ran.
By the time I got to her door, I was out of breath. My knuckles hit wood before I could second-guess it.
The door opened—and I swear, the universe has a sick sense of humor.
Rachel.
Rachel, with her perpetual scowl and that “you’re human garbage” face she reserved just for me. Her expression was as welcoming as a traffic accident.
“What do you want?” she said.
I wanted Frankie.
I wanted to explain.
I wanted to go back to the beginning of summer and make better goddamn choices.
“Is Frankie here?” I asked.
She folded her arms, blocking the doorway like she was a bouncer. “Why? So you can humiliate her again?”
And there it was—that old, sharp hate-hate energy between us. Rachel had been the one who told Frankie about being untouchable.
“Rachel, please,” I said. And I must’ve sounded desperate, because her expression flickered for half a second. Then she sighed and stepped aside.
Frankie was standing in the kitchen. She looked… wrecked. Not angry—worse. Hurt in that quiet, exhausted way people get when they’ve cried too much and run out of tears. Her hair was damp, hanging past her shoulders and seemed dark, or maybe it was the room.
I swear the room tilted. Because I did that. All of it. The videos, the list, the look in her eyes that made me wish I could unzip myself and walk out of my own body.
“Frankie,” I said, my voice rough. “I—I didn’t—”
She looked at me then, and it felt like getting punched. It was like getting hit with a montage of every mistake I’d ever made. There was no welcome in her green eyes, no soft smile on her lips that was just waiting for the punchline. She was staring at me like she had no idea who I was anymore.
“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Just don’t.”
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Somewhere behind me, Rachel was muttering something under her breath, but all I could hear was the blood in my ears.
I wanted to say I was sorry. That I’d been an idiot. That the guy in those clips wasn’t who I was anymore. But how do you make someone believe that when the proof says otherwise?
So I just stood there.
Breathing. Breaking a little.
And realizing that maybe owning it means you don’t get to fix it. You just stand there, in the wreckage, and let her see what’s left.
“I just—” I swallowed, my throat dry as chalk. “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”
The question came out raw, unplanned. I sounded pathetic. Desperate. Which, fine, I was. Frankie just stared at me, her fingers tightening around the edge of the counter. The silence stretched so long I thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer.
Then she did.
“How much of it was true?”
That landed like a hammer to the ribs.
I could’ve lied. I thought about it for half a second. I could’ve said none of it, that Sharon edited everything to hell, that it was all fake, old, meaningless. But owning it—that was what my dad said, right? You have to own it.
So I stood there with the truth like a mouthful of glass.
“Most of it,” I said finally. “At least…the stuff in the videos. I don’t even know what Sharon added or twisted, but yeah, that happened.”
Frankie’s chin trembled. She didn’t look at me, just focused on some invisible point on the counter, like if she stared hard enough, she could disappear into it.
“I’m not trying to make excuses,” I added quickly. “I know it looks bad because it is bad. I just—” I exhaled, shaky. “I wasn’t thinking. I was stupid. I was so goddamn stupid.”
Behind me, Rachel made a small sound. Could’ve been disgust. Could’ve been satisfaction. I didn’t turn around to check.
I wanted to tell her to leave, to stop standing there like judge and jury, but I didn’t. Because if Frankie needed her there, if Rachel’s presence was the only thing holding Frankie together right now, then I’d take it. I’d take all of it. Every ounce of her disgust, every glare. I’d earned worse.
Frankie finally looked up. “What about the scores?” The words were soft, but they sliced through me. “The points. The lists. The—whatever it was you all did.”
My brain scrambled, looking for an explanation that didn’t make me sound like the asshole I was. But there wasn’t one.
“I don’t know,” I said. As hopelessly pathetic as that was, it was also true. “We were idiots. It started as a joke—just some dumb, bragging rights kind of thing—and then it wasn’t a joke anymore. We got caught up in it. I got caught up in it.”
“Caught up,” Rachel muttered. “Nice euphemism for ‘thoughtless jerk.’”
I didn’t look at her. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “That too.”
Frankie’s eyes glistened, and I felt the floor tilt again. She wasn’t yelling. I almost wished she would. At least anger would’ve been something I could hold onto. This…this quiet ache in her voice? It was worse.
“Was I on it?” she asked.
Her voice cracked halfway through the sentence.
“No,” I said, easier with that answer than any of the others. “You were never on it. You would never have been on it. “ Honesty might be the only currency I had left.
“Why not?”
“Because you matter…” Fuck. I closed my eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. “Those other girls just—didn’t.”
I didn’t think this could get worse and somehow, it just had. I heard what I said, heard the truth in it, and I couldn’t take it back. Laura. Sharon. Maria. Patty. None of them had mattered. I liked Laura fine, but none of them had been Frankie.
None of them.
She blinked slowly, like she didn’t know what to do with that.
The room went quiet again. Rachel’s sigh cut through it like a blade, and for a second I thought she might tell me to leave. Maybe she should’ve.
But Frankie said, “Why’d you even need something like that? The scores. The competition. What were you proving?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew. Maybe I thought if I had the numbers, the attention, it’d matter more, maybe. It’d make something happen. Before you ask, I have no idea what.”
It sounded small when I said it. Smaller than I’d expected.
Frankie didn’t respond. She just looked tired. Bone-deep tired. Like she’d been carrying too much for too long and this—me—was the last damn thing she could take.
“I know sorry doesn’t fix it,” I said, because the silence was unbearable. “But I am. More than I’ve ever been sorry for anything.”
Her eyes finally met mine. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw something—pain, maybe. Then she blinked and it was gone.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “You should be.”
That was it. No yelling. No closure. Just those three words and the hollow thud of my heart trying to keep up.
I nodded. “Okay.”
Because what else was there to say? Owning it didn’t mean getting forgiven. Owning it meant standing there and realizing you’d built the wreckage you were buried under—and that maybe, the best you could do, was not dig anyone else into it with you.
Frankie didn’t say anything else. She just stood there for a second, arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to hold all the broken pieces in. Then she turned, slow and quiet, and walked down the short hall toward her bedroom.
The door clicked shut behind her.
That sound—it wasn’t loud, but it echoed. Rachel exhaled, low and sharp. I could feel her eyes on me, the judgment radiating like a heat lamp. Still, I couldn’t even muster anger anymore. I just felt hollowed out.
When she moved toward the door, I followed automatically. My legs felt mechanical, like they’d forgotten how to move on their own. She opened the door wide, and the hot air hit me like another slap.
I hesitated in the doorway. My throat was tight. “Can you—” I started, then stopped. Tried again. “Just…look after her, yeah?”
Rachel’s brows shot up, incredulous. “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing?”
Before I could even nod, the door slammed in my face. For a long second, I just stood there, staring at it. Then I turned, and slowly walked away, her silence trailing after me like a dark shadow.
Owning it sucked.
But maybe that was the point.