5. Francesca
“You’re a terrible friend, chérie.” Antoine kissed both my cheeks and grabbed my hands. He stared at me with his all-seeing eyes and shook his head. “What did I tell you?”
“Sorry.” I smiled shyly, tempting him not to be angry at me. “I got carried away.”
“You need to answer the phone, Frankie.” He pulled me down onto the sofa next to him. “I was worried, you should have called me when you got home.”
I knew that. Antoine and Marie had grilled me hundreds of times about answering my damned phone, but I never did. It wasn’t intentional, after all, they were the only two people I spoke to.
“I know.” My cheeks burned with shame. “I’m all right.” Now. The word almost slipped through my lips.
Antoine eyed me suspiciously, knowing there was much more to the story, but decided not to press me further, at least not right now. At that moment, Marie arrived with Jasmine tea and a few chocolate bonbons I loved.
Reginald’s little head lifted as he sniffed the treats, and he stood to sniff what Marie had brought for us. “I haven’t forgotten you, baby.” She produced a dog treat from her pocket and offered him the small bone. He barked in excitement and twirled around with the bone in his mouth.
A few seconds later, he came to lay by my feet and rested down to eat his treat as we served ourselves tea. Jasmine scent filled my nose, and I inhaled deeply, enjoying the scent of my favorite drink in the world.
“So, now that she’s here,” Antoine began. “Tell her the news.” He clapped his hands eagerly.
“What news?”
“I’m having a party on Friday.”
I looked at my friend suspiciously. Although Marie was not a saint, she and I couldn’t be more different. While I indulged in alcohol, the strongest drink she had during the day was coffee. While I lost myself in drugs, she enjoyed meditation. She was the sun, and I was the moon. Yet we fit somehow. Two completely different peas in a pod.
“A party?”
“No need to sound so suspicious.” Marie set her teacup on the table. “It’s for a good cause.”
“You mean a charity then?” That fit her better.
Her father was Remy Bousset, one of the richest men in France, and from what I knew and had overheard, he was one of the Outfit’s greatest suppliers. Marie had a falling out with her father after he threatened to disown Antoine for being gay. As a fuck you to her father, she spent his money by giving it to charity—as much as she could.
Antoine and Marie exchanged a glance, then they both looked at me. “I have something to tell you, please don’t be mad.”
“Why would I?” The truth was, I also had something to say, except I wasn’t courageous enough to do so.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, and I meant to tell you when it started, but with the move and your father’s threats and...” Marie paused, offering me a tight smile. “I’m seeing someone.” She announced. I was stunned into silence. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it. “As in dating?”
Marie nodded tightly. “It happened the day we moved in, we met at a coffee shop down the street.” She bit her lip and looked at me, waiting for my anger to surface. “Our orders were accidentally switched, and one thing led to another, and now…
“You’re seeing him,” I mused, still working on believing what I’d heard.
Her cheeks pinken, and she nodded. “It was all so fast, I didn’t mean for it to happen like that, I wanted to tell you. “She said again.
“Why didn’t you?” I wasn’t angry, but I was hurt that my best friend had forgotten to tell me something major had happened in her life.
“Well, chérie,” Antoine looked at me. “You’re not exactly at your best right now.” He tapped my hand in the typical Antoine fashion. Spilling whatever was in his head and not caring about it.
He wasn’t wrong though, was he?
“I just wish you’d have told me.” I pointed out, unable to contain my saddened state.
“Tell me about him.” I decided I couldn’t judge my friend for keeping a secret when I was, too.
“He’s perfect, Frankie.” She beamed, and that’s when I knew my friend was a goner. Marie rarely involved herself with men.
Although we were part of the same world, hers was filled with all kinds of freedom mine did not possess. She could date whomever she wanted and not be branded a harlot for doing so. She could choose whom to marry and, if she wished, to divorce later. Marie had the choice to make choices.
Men were something else entirely, she had never involved herself with someone, at least not romantically. For her to be doing so now, meant she was really into this sexy guy she was telling me about.
“Does he have a name?”
“It’s a surprise. I want you to know him and draw your own conclusions.” She smiled brightly, as though she was thinking about him at that moment.
“You’ll come, right?”
I felt Antoine’s eyes on me like he knew something he shouldn’t. I knew eventually he would scold me for using again, and I was waiting for the moment the bomb dropped. “I’ll come,” I said eventually.
Marie sighed and then smiled. She stood to grab her notepad so we could begin the plans for the ‘small’ party she was having. When she left to grab more tea, I reached down to grab Reggie who was begging for some snuggle time. I sat him beside Antoine and me like a barrier.
Slowly my friend turned, his almond-brown eyes finding mine. “I haven’t told her yet.”
I sighed. “I will.”
“How did you leave the party?” he asked. “You should have called, I was worried.”
“I honestly forgot, Antoine.” I scratched Reggie’s ear to keep myself from looking at him.
I loved my friends, dearly. They stuck with me when I needed them the most. After Paolo’s death, all my so-called friends left me. Marie and Antoine had stayed and had followed me all the way to Chicago.
They had seen the true me, the woman behind the mask, the woman who wore one because she no longer knew who lived behind it. The siblings had seen me at my worst, and at my darkest moments.
They had never shown any signs of judgment but telling them I had been arrested for assaulting an officer and drug possession was too far, even for me. It was a new low on my ever-growing list.
Not to mention the one person I had been trying to avoid the entire week. He’d attached himself to my brain like tar. He wouldn’t leave me alone, and the worst part was that my brain seemed to want him there. It grew eager every time Cassio showed up. It reminded me of Reginald whenever I arrived home. It was pathetic. Certainly unacceptable.
“You look sour,” Antoine said calling me back to earth.
Cassio made me like that. All it took was to think about him and my stomach churned, but not always in a bad way. There were…fluttering. Butterflies that took flight when I thought about him. Butterflies I was going to kill with the strongest pesticide I could find. They had no business being there.
“I was just remembering something,” I said. “But don’t worry, everything is fine.” I took my tea and took a deep sip from the warm liquid. I could feel him narrowing his eyes in suspicion, but he didn’t say a word as Marie came back.
“So,” she looked at both of us. “Where do we start?”
Two hours later,we had everything planned for a not so small party. Marie had said only a few friends, but the list had gone up to a hundred people. Apparently, her new boyfriend was one popular hottie.
Seeing her happiness stirred something within me that had been dormant for a while, but it also brought with it another feeling I’d rather not experience. Not when it came to her. Jealousy was a horrible thing and was eating away at my insides and leaving me hollow. I didn’t want to be that way… to feel what I did. Marie deserved everything she wanted in life. This man she was dating, she deserved to be happy with him, to live out what she had always dreamed of.
She was seldom a romantic, pretending not to care about the men who fell at her feet. But I knew the truth, Marie was waiting for the one, the guy who would sweep her off her feet and carry her into a new life of wonders.
The jealousy I was experiencing had nothing to do with men. It was the purity of her happiness, how her smile reached her ears, her pale skin glowed and her brown eyes burned bright like two bowls of molten sugar. I couldn’t recall the last time I looked in the mirror and saw myself that way. At some point, that light that had burned bright at my core, had dimmed and had been put out. Was it during my marriage? Was it before? I couldn’t recall and that was what scared me the most.
Marie was talking to her brother, and I excused myself to use the bathroom, Reggie trailing behind me like the good boy he was. Once the door closed, I leaned against it taking deep breaths, trying to calm this wave of anxiety that had hit me out of nowhere, blindsiding me completely. These moments were growing more frequent as the days passed.
I had tried visiting a doctor once, one specifically chosen by Paolo. After all, he didn’t want his wife’s dirty laundry exposed for anyone to hear. The doctor had given me pills that numbed me, took my pain away, and left me in a haze. Back then, they had been my saving grace, everything I had asked for. It was better to live a life in oblivion and pretend everything was fine.
There was a knock on the door that startled me. “Frankie, you okay?” came Marie’s voice.
I stared at the ceiling and sighed.
“Yeah, just getting out.”
I flushed the toilet and took my time washing my hands. When I opened the door, my best friend was planted on the other side, both hands on her hips.
She knew. Damn it, Antoine.
Marie didn’t say a word, but none were needed, the way she was looking at me spoke volumes. I bypassed her and headed toward the living room to find that her brother was gone. So, he’d dropped the bomb, shit hit the fan, and I had to deal with it.
Marie followed me into the room, took a seat on the couch, and crossed her legs. I did the same, ready for the interrogation to begin. Instead of waiting, I blurted out the truth.
“I used.”
“I know, Antoine told me, said you were bat shit crazy.” She didn’t sound sad or judgmental, but I could see that damned pity in her eyes. I hated that worst of all. “What happened? You were doing so well, Frankie.”
Yeah. Then life happened. “I needed some reprieve.”
Marie nodded as if she understood but she didn’t; she couldn’t begin to understand what it meant to need an escape from your life. To run away if only for a fleeting moment. To be someone else.
“I’m glad you left your apartment, but you should have taken baby steps.”
I fisted my hands and dug my nails into the palms of my hands. Fighting with Marie right now was the last thing I wanted. “It was once.”
She arched her brows slightly and gave me that knowing look that said she knew it wasn’t just once. “Remember what we talked about, when you feel the need to use, call me.”
But if I had called Marie, she would have told me not to use, and that was the last thing I needed that night. Taking baby steps hadn’t worked out. “Doesn’t really matter,” I said in contempt. “It was the last stash I had and now it’s gone. Can we move on from this subject?”
Marie opened her mouth ready to argue back but nodded. “As you wish.”
Twisting my hair and bringing it forward, I kept my gaze on my dog who rested at my feet. I wasn’t ready to meet Marie’s gaze yet and it bothered me that we were back to this. Her always worrying, always suspicious that I was doing something wrong, or possibly dangerous. Marie was going to have a heart attack if she knew I had been arrested. That’s why I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“I’m trying, Marie,” I confessed as I looked at the palm of my hands, more specifically at the indents from my nails. “I really am.”
She stood up and came to sit beside me and wrapped her arm around me bringing me in for a side hug. I rested my head on her shoulder and inhaled her patchouli perfume. It was so her, so comforting.
“I’m sorry if this is going to sound terrible,” she began, “but I am glad Paolo is dead.”
I swallowed hard and kept quiet.
“He was horrible to you.”
“He wasn’t the only one to blame.” I didn’t know why I was defending him, but it was the truth. Paolo hadn’t broken me entirely, there had been cracks in my armor before I even married him.
“I know, your father is an ass, too.”
I couldn’t help myself, I chuckled. Ass was a nice way to put it.
“I should probably tell you something.” I sat up straighter and patted my clothes, all to keep from looking at her. Marie sat patiently waiting for whatever I had to say. I worked the words in my head searching for the best way to tell her. “My father has found me another husband.”
“W-what!” Her eyes widened. “Can he do that?”
I nodded. Donato could do anything he pleased and there was no one who could stop him.
“But you told me a widow has a year to mourn her husband’s passing.”
I shrugged. “Outfit laws work differently for my father; he bends them to his will when he pleases.”
Marie didn’t speak for a long while, then said, “Do you know him?”
“No, but it doesn’t really matter, the deal is done.”
“Frankie.” She reached for my hand. “What can we do?”
My heart broke at her use of the word ‘we.’ She was my friend through thick and thin. “Wait,” I said in defeat.
“Don’t.” She shook me. “You can’t give up like that.”
There was nothing to be done. Donato had already chosen my next husband, and once again, I had no choice in the matter. It was all a transaction between the buyer and seller. I was the product… cattle.
“We’ll figure a way out of this. There must be a way out of it,” she said with determination.
I could see the wheel in her head spinning as she tried to figure out a way to free me from yet another arranged marriage. We both knew it was futile because there was no way out, yet I didn’t have the heart or the courage right then to tell her that.
I nodded, lacking her conviction for positive thinking.
“Promise me you won’t give up.’ She squeezed my hand.
“I’ll try.”
“Francesca,” she scolded me. “You’re going to be happy and free by the end of this year. Mark my words. Trust me on this, I know what I’m saying.”
I chuckled. Not to be a pessimist or anything, but I had experienced happiness and it had ended in heartbreak, the kind that had me searching for those broken pieces years after the damage was done.
Happiness was perhaps a stretch, but freedom… I wanted that above all else. To be able to wake up in the mornings and not have to worry about doing or saying the right things all the time. To be free to choose what clothes to wear and who to be. Freedom to laugh, to shout, to cry, and to remain silent when I damned well pleased.
Most importantly, it was freedom from this act, this character I was playing and didn’t know how to stop. An actress was what I had become, and I didn’t know how to let go of her.
“We’ll figure this out,” Marie said again, this time softer.
“Yeah,” I agreed but didn’t dare get my hopes up.