Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
FRANKIE
Morning in Texas wasn’t cool so much as…
less murderous. Autumn here didn’t come with crisp air or red leaves or any of that poetic stuff people pretended happened everywhere.
No. Texas had exactly two foliage settings: alive or dead.
Currently we were in the “brown but not crispy” phase, which was about as festive as we were going to get.
At least I wouldn’t sweat through my shirt walking to my car. Small blessings.
I hit the unlock button, ready to crawl into the driver’s seat and caffeinate my way into basic human function—but then I saw him.
Coop.
He was leaning against the passenger door like he’d been waiting awhile, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched like he was trying to fold himself smaller. The second he saw me, he straightened, that too-bright smile snapping into place like he’d practiced it in the mirror.
It didn’t touch his eyes. Not even close.
“Hey,” he said, soft. The kind of soft that made it impossible to pretend he wasn’t nervous. “Uh… any chance I could hitch a ride?”
My stomach pulled tight. The first time we’d been alone since his confession—his mistakes, his choices, the avalanche of information I’d been trying not to drown in ever since. Everything between us felt brittle, sharp-edged, impossible to navigate without getting cut.
But the uncertainty in his gray-green eyes… it hit me right in the chest. He looked like he was bracing for me to say no. Like he’d already convinced himself I should.
And maybe I should’ve. Maybe ignoring him would’ve been the easier choice.
But I couldn’t. Not with him standing there looking like that.
“Yeah,” I said, before my brain could come up with reasons to hesitate. “It’s fine. Get in.”
Relief flashed across his face so quickly it almost hurt to see. He nodded, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
“When we get to Mathieu’s, I’ll hop in the back,” he said. “Give you space. I don’t want to make it weird.”
“We’re not going to Mathieu’s.”
That made him pause. Really pause. For a second, I could almost see him reaching for the familiar smirk, the teasing comment—but he didn’t. He just looked at me, really looked, all defenses lowered.
“Do you need to talk about it?” he asked.
Not do you want to. Not are you ready. Need. Like he could feel the pressure building under my ribs even when I couldn’t explain it.
I stared at my keys, the metal warm from my palm. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “It’s all just… messy. Like everything in my life tied itself into one giant knot and I can’t find the ends to pull apart.”
Coop nodded once, slow, like that made perfect sense to him. “Okay,” he murmured. “Then we’ll just drive.”
No judgment. No pushing. Just quiet acceptance.
For reasons I couldn’t name, that almost undid me.
I slipped into the driver’s seat, and he climbed into the passenger side. The air inside the car was warm from the sun, but not stifling—Texas autumn doing its one job. When I turned the key, the engine rumbled to life, filling the silence between us.
When I reached to adjust the a/c, he clearly had the same idea. His hand bumped mine—barely—and he pulled away like he’d touched a flame.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“So,” he said, voice low, careful. “Anywhere you want to go?”
“Yeah,” I said, staring through the windshield at the brown-not-dead trees edging the lot. “School.”
He almost smiled at the deadpan comment and so did I, but damn. This awkwardness between us—felt wrong. I didn’t know how to tackle it though.
Because I didn’t have the words yet. Not for what he’d told me. Not for the weird ache in my chest. Not for the way being near him still mattered even when it shouldn’t.
Everything was tangled. Complicated. A knot I didn’t know how to cut.
But driving—with him sitting there trying so hard not to break anything further—felt like the closest thing to trying.
Coop didn’t push. He didn’t even look at me, not directly. Just sat there with his hands folded in his lap, thumbs rubbing together like he was trying to convince them not to shake. The road hummed under the tires, warm air drifting through the cracked window. It should’ve felt peaceful.
It didn’t.
My thoughts were a swarm.
I should tell him.
I shouldn’t tell him.
God, how would I even start if I did?
“Hey, Coop, by the way, my mom and Mr. Standish sat me down and dropped the world’s worst family plot twist in my lap.”
Yeah, that would go over great.
My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The grip felt like it belonged to someone else.
Mom’s face flashed through my mind—tight smile, nervous hands, the way she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Eddie is your father.”
Then Mr. Standish, stiff in that way that said he thought he was being noble but mostly just looked constipated.
“I know this is a lot to take in, Frankie.”
Believe. Like it was some kind of theory. A hypothesis. A casual suggestion over brunch.
I swallowed hard. My stomach twisted like someone wrung it out with both hands.
Then Archie—God—Archie’s reaction was the only thing keeping me from completely unraveling.
"It’s crap," he’d said, straight up, no hesitation. "They’re both messed up, and they’re projecting. You are not my sister."
He backed it with genetic theory and then—because he couldn’t just leave my brain intact—he’d pulled me in and kissed me like he meant it. Like he’d been waiting for the excuse to do it or the excuse to prove something or maybe just waiting for me.
He kissed me solidly enough that I couldn’t pretend the moment didn’t happen. Couldn’t pretend I didn’t melt straight into him. Couldn’t pretend anything at all.
So maybe I didn’t kiss my maybe-brother before.
But that ship? Oh, it had sailed. It had sailed, hit a hurricane, broken into emotional splinters, and was currently sinking with a melodramatic violin quartet playing in the background.
I didn’t want to be his sister.
God, I didn’t.
The thought made my heart thud almost painfully, each beat echoing in my ribs. My stomach twisted again, sharp and nauseating.
The whole time, Mr. Standish—potential father, classic disappointment, world-class critic of Archie—hovered like a specter behind the thought of all this.
I didn’t want that man attached to me by blood. I didn’t need a father. Never had. Sure as hell didn’t want one now. Especially not one who couldn’t see Archie’s worth even on his best days.
The entire mental monologue unfolded in silence, loud enough to drown out everything else. Loud enough to make my ears ring. Loud enough to make my throat tight and hot and awful.
I didn’t even realize how quiet I’d gone until Coop exhaled, shaky and thin, and said softly, “I can feel you hurting. And I hate it.”
My hands froze on the wheel.
His voice wasn’t accusing. It wasn’t prying. It just held this raw sincerity, gentle and rough at the same time, like he was confessing something without meaning to.
I blinked hard, like that would clear the pressure behind my eyes.
“I can feel you hurting too,” I whispered back. The truth tasted strange. Heavy. Familiar. “I didn’t… I didn’t realize how bad it was until right now.”
His breath hitched. He didn’t look at me, but his fingers curled into fists on his jeans.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Guess we’re both kind of wrecked today.”
Wrecked didn’t even begin to cover it.
But hearing him say it—hearing him admit the cracks—made something in my chest loosen, just barely. Not enough to stop the ache. But enough that I didn’t feel completely alone in it.
Somehow, in the mess of secrets I wasn’t ready to tell, in the knots I couldn’t unravel, in the quiet between us…
I didn’t feel like I had to. Not yet. Not alone.
Coop’s words hung between us—quiet, bruised, honest in a way that felt like being handed something fragile and breakable.
The car rolled along the last stretch of street toward the school, tires whispering over the pavement. And because he’d given me that piece of truth—because he’d offered a sliver of himself—I found my voice again.
“Do you need to talk about it?” I asked softly.
He let out a tiny huff of laughter, the kind that wasn’t really a laugh at all. More like air escaping something dented.
“Not sure it would be fair to you,” he muttered, gaze fixed out the window.
“I didn’t ask if it was fair,” I said. “I asked if you needed to talk about it.”
His jaw worked once before he said, “I did try to talk to you. I told you what I did. I took responsibility. But now it feels like who we were—” He stopped, swallowing. “We’re not going to be those friends again.”
The words punched straight through me.
I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t know how to. My heartbeat crawled up into my throat as I pulled into the student lot, the school looming bigger and more monotonous in the daylight.
We eased past a row of trucks and battered sedans until I slid into my usual spot. The engine gave a little cough as I shifted the car into park.
“Do you remember,” I asked quietly, staring through the windshield, “when you got mad that Jake was also going to be my friend?”
Coop blinked, surprised. “Yeah. We were in second grade. You were my friend first.”
There was something almost defensive in his tone, this faint echo of the little boy who’d scowled across a playground because someone else wanted to sit with me at lunch.
I turned the key and the engine cut off, leaving us in a bubble of warm silence.
“Do you remember what I said to you then?” I asked.
Coop scrunched his face, the expression almost comically dramatic. “I’m sure it was something like, yes, Coop, you’re my bestest buddy and no one is as good as you. So, yes, I’ll just be your friend.”
I stared at him.
He cracked, grinning in this crooked, sheepish way that tugged at something deep inside me. My lips twitched despite everything.
“Try again,” I said.
His smile softened—faded, really—into something quieter. More real. He exhaled slowly.
“You told me that you can be friends with more than one person,” he said, voice lower. “And that maybe he could be my friend too so he wouldn’t just be your friend, but our friend. That just being friends with him wouldn’t mean I wasn’t still your friend first.”
A beat passed. The morning heat pressed gently through the windshield. Someone slammed a car door two rows away, but it felt a world off.
“Coop?” I said.
He raised his eyebrows in question, the tiniest thread of worry returning to his eyes.
“You’ve always been my friend,” I said. “You were my first friend. I don’t know how we fix any of this”—my throat tightened, but I kept going—“but nothing can change that.”
The truth of it settled into the air like dust motes catching the sun. One of the heavy stones lodged under my ribs, one I’d been carrying around since his confession, eased just a little. Lightened.
By the way Coop breathed out—slow, shaky, like someone had loosened a knot in his chest—it helped him too.
We stepped out of the car at the same time, doors thudding shut in an uneven echo across the parking lot. The sunlight hit us full-on—Texas autumn, bright and brown and pretending to be cool.
Coop slung his bag over one shoulder, still looking a little unmoored from our conversation. His hair looked even worse out in the open—wild, flattened on one side, and sticking up like a tuft of rebellious wheat on the other.
“You know,” I said, locking the car, “they make combs for a reason.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“You look like you stuck your hand in a light socket.”
Coop stared at me, affronted, then self-consciously patted at his hair. His fingers immediately raked through it again, making it worse. He groaned, and I tried not to grin.
“Oh, real nice,” he said, giving me a once-over. “And you look like Tinkerbell sneezed on you—glitter is everywhere—”
He stopped. Completely froze. His eyes widened.
“Frankie… you dyed your hair?”
I instinctively reached up, fingers brushing the violet underlayer Rachel had braided back yesterday. I smoothed the strands down like I could hide the streaks from the sun—or from him.
“I think I’m going through a rebellious phase,” I said lightly.
Coop stared for one more second, then cracked up—full laughter, bright and startled and real. The kind that pulled one out of me too, even if I tried to fight it.
“Can I go with you?” he asked once he caught his breath. “Into the rebellious phase, I mean.”
I snorted. “I’ll think about it.”
His smile widened, soft at the edges and warm in a way I hadn’t seen in… God, too long.
“That’s not a no,” he said.
And he was right.
It wasn’t.
A breeze slipped across the parking lot, warm and dusty and very Texas. We fell into step without planning to, walking toward the building. And something in the space between us—this awkward, painful, fragile all-thumbs mess—shifted.
The heaviness eased.
The stiffness dissolved.
And our friendship… slid back into place, not whole, not fixed, but familiar. Like stepping into a room we’d lived in our whole lives, only to find someone had moved the furniture. Different. But still ours.
We hadn’t fixed anything.
Not yet.
For the first time in days, maybe weeks, it didn’t feel like the whole world was tilting under our feet. Just… shifting. Maybe even making space for something steadier than the mess between us.