“Hard work is what the pays the bills.” Quoting her to her may not have been the best idea based on her grimace.
It was weird, some kids said they couldn’t stand their parents—like Archie. He and his parents were strangers. Then there were people like Bubba who won the lottery with the cool, supportive parents. Coop and Jake didn’t do too shabby, because they seemed to have good parents who were supportive. My mom was supportive for some parts, though she usually tried to get me to aim lower rather than root me on. I didn’t hate her, but we didn’t always speak the same language.
Sometimes, we felt more like roommates than parent and child. You know, I just don’t feel like unpacking that emotional baggage. I should just store it in the closet until I sat down with a therapist some mythical day in the future.
Unlikely, but it could happen.
For now, I got my laundry put away, grabbed a quick shower and got changed. Work wasn’t so bad. We had a post-church lunch rush that tapered to a steady, but manageable trickle. Bubba showed up without the guys around the middle of my shift.
He grabbed a seat at the counter and, when I swung by to get his order, I told him, “I’m kind of busy.” Granted, of the four of them, Bubba had been the most reasonable, but he wasn’t blameless in the scenario.
“It’s fine, I can wait.” The smile he offered looked hopeful, and I tapped the counter. I got his soda to him before I checked on my other tables, but it was semi-quiet by the time his burger was ready. After I served him, I grabbed the silverware bucket and napkins and started rolling the silverware there at the counter so I could talk to him. Usually, they didn’t like it when we did it there, but if it was quiet—kind of like it was now—nobody complained.
“Hey,” Bubba said, studying me. “Still mad at me?”
“Disappointed if I say yes?”
“Maybe?” He tilted his head. Someone as big as Bubba shouldn’t be able to pull off cute or endearing, yet he could manage both. “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened at the apartment yesterday. We were total jackasses.”
“You were,” I agreed. “But it wasn’t just about the apartment.” Because Coop hadn’t gotten that.
“Yeah, I kind of got the feeling…and I didn’t know you liked Kent…” He wiped his hands on a napkin. “I feel like I should apologize. I mean the guy was a jerk. I’m the one who overheard what he said, and I told Jake and Arch about it.”
“I never said I liked Kent.” In fact, I really couldn’t stand Kent. “The point wasn’t him—it was everyone.”
“Okay, you said that. But, Frankie, don’t get me wrong here, I want to make this right. You don’t flirt.” He shifted on the stool, leaning a little closer. “The truth is, I know guys who’ve been hung up on you—you never seemed to care. You shut guys down all the time. You utterly destroy them and keep right on moving.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” It was hard to shut anyone down if they didn’t express their interest.
“I’m talking about the fact that, since I met you, you’ve never had time to flirt or date. You never had time for guys. You’ve been razor focused. School. All the way.”
“I hang out with you guys,” I argued, still rolling the silverware. I’d gotten nearly all of it, and so far we’d been lucky. The tables were still mostly finishing their drinks or doing homework and no one else had come in. “I make time for you.”
“You did—before this summer,” he pointed out. “You did for school stuff. For studying. Frankie, if you weren’t tutoring me, I wouldn’t see you that much between your schedule and mine.”
Did he really believe that? “We’re friends.”
He made a face. “Yeah, we are.” Then he stuffed a french fry in his mouth, and I got the last of the silverware wrapped. “Look…maybe we didn’t handle it the right way—maybeIdidn’t. I want to do better and fix this. I don’t want to not see you.”
“I don’t want tonotsee you, either, Bubba. But I want to do what everyone else gets to do. I want to get asked out, I want to go on dates, I want to have stories to tell and experiences and maybe they’ll all suck. Maybe I’ll be like Archie and find out that what I think they’re like and what they’re really like isn’t the same thing. But I want to have that chance.”
He studied me, a tiny frown tightening his brows. “So, you want us to back off?”
“I want you to be my friends.”
Another frown.
“If you can’t do that then, yeah… I want you to back off.” As much as it pained me to say it. I didn’t want to lose the guys, but at the same time… they didn’t get to dictate everything. It wasn’t fair.
“Okay… Frankie?”
“Yeah?”
“Will you go to homecoming with me?”
I stared at him. Was he making fun of me?
“What?”