“Cool,” I said.
They both snorted and laughed. We were cleaned up and ready to go. Not one of us brought up Bubba, but since I wasn’t the only one who looked at my phone, I knew they were just as aware of it as I was.
Jake checked the front door, and then we all headed out the back and waited for her as she locked up. I don’t know which of us saw him first, though it would have been hard to miss him. Bubba stood next to his bike, which he’d parked right next to Jake’s SUV.
Poor bastard. He looked awkward as hell holding his helmet, and the silence stretched out uncomfortably.
C’mon, man…I was practically willing him to get it together.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, then twisted to open his saddle bag. “Had to stop to pick this up.”
‘This’ was a plastic bag wrapped item. We’d reached him by then, and he held it out to me. Peeling the plastic back, I started to laugh. “Seriously?”
“Hey, you’re the weirdo who likes that game.”
It was an old school castle game. The thing had the singularly most annoying narrator known to man, and yes, I’d freaking loved this game. My copy died forever ago on a computer that went belly up. This was a classic repackaging.
“Thanks,” I told him, and he clasped hand before giving me a nod.
“No problem. Ordered it a few weeks back, wasn’t sure it would come in in time, but it was there. Just had to wait for the store to open.”
“Let me just go put this in my car,” I said. “You made it in time. We’re just heading out.”
“Hey, glad we didn’t leave you behind,” Jake told him. “You can ride shotgun.”
That wasn’t going to help him get closer to Frankie, but she’d drifted back a little, and the smile she had on was nothing like she’d had inside. That clinched it for me. Jake was right.
Frankie wasn’t up for this today. Bubba had created this distance, so he could suffer with it for a while. But she also needed to know he wasn’t running away.
At least if he had decided. He said he had, said he wanted to try.
Here was hoping he did.
Frankie rode in the back, sandwiched between me and Archie. I wasn’t complaining. She was holding both of our hands. Jake played music for a while, then turned it down when Archie brought up rides. Bit-by-bit, the conversation dodged out of uncomfortable territory and toward something fun.
Roller coasters.
Frankie hated them.
“But I’ll go,” she offered.
“You don’t have to,” I assured her.
“It’s your birthday.”
“Yeah,” Jake said from the front. “It’s your birthday.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Doesn’t mean she has to torture herself.”
“Who knows,” she said, elbowing me. “Maybe it will be fun.” The impudent note in her voice and the first flash of a real smile had me dropping a kiss on her lips.
“Fine, we’ll try the kiddie coasters, and if you don’t freak out, we can try something else.”
Her indignant denial of freaking out set everyone off laughing—even Bubba. I hadn’t missed the look on his face, and man, I was sorry he was on the outside looking in at the moment, but he made that bed.
We grabbed drive-thru as promised, and Frankie got three of the hash browns—her favorite—and a breakfast sandwich. I gave her my extra hash browns when she was still hungry.
When we reached the park, we had like five minutes to spare, which was good. We all needed a bathroom break.