Turned out, she was right. My room was now my favorite place in the house. I could let the sunlight in if I opened the blackout curtains that covered the French doors leading out on to the patio, or I could keep them closed, making the room dark enough to turn on my fairy lights. Whenever they were on, my room was like a comfortable cave filled with only the things that made me feel relaxed.
Since I moved back, I was overstimulated a lot, and my room was my space to unwind. Let go. Uncurl my fists and close my eyes.
I was feeling better than I ever had, thanks to my own determination, and those good feelings manifested into my friendship with Frankie.
As I continued to wait for her, I started unpacking the grocery bags and got to work, singing along out loud as I did it.
The kitchen was my second favorite room in the house. With white marble countertops, dark wood cabinets and flooring, the space was bright, thanks to the many wide windows throughout the open floor plan. Frankie and I spent a lot of time seated at the island, talking and drinking wine, making dinner, or having coffee in the mornings.
One of the things I’d done to help myself was explain to Frankie how music typically helped me work through things or even just helped me zone out when I needed to. Getting high and putting on headphones? Nothing beat it.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when Frankie was quick to jump on board, coming up with the brilliant idea to take it a step further, but I was. She was so invested in helping me, it warmed my heart, thawed out a broken piece.
Franks wanted to get to know and fall in love with the artists I listened to, so we created a master playlist and added new songs to it whenever we found them. So now, unless we were watching TV or hanging out in our separate rooms, we had our current seasonally themed playlist on shuffle, playing through whatever Bluetooth speaker was around.
She didn’t know everything about where I was mentally, but I was pretty sure she was giving me space on purpose, waiting for me to come to her. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be comfortable enough to tell her about my near suicide attempt, or the fact that TheColt, a hip-hop artist we both loved, saved my life. She knew I loved him, that I fell asleep listening to his music every night, but that was it and that was fine with me.
She didn’t question it.
And I didn’t question her, even though I had a few reasons to.
As soon as we started using the playlist, I learned that Frankie had an edge of darkness in her too. My being back had unlocked something inside of her, as if my honesty triggered hers, and every day, she was harder, stronger, bolder than she was the day before. Growing up, I knew she resented her parents for focusing on their careers rather than her, but it was something that became more obvious as the years passed. They had a fuck ton of money, the big house in Orange County like my parents had, plenty of years full of photographed family vacations, but I always figured me moving in helped Frankie to not feel so alone. But…apparently not. One night last week, I discovered that she was ignoring phone calls from her parents, avoiding them all together, and whenever I asked, she brushed me off.
Fine by me. It was her right.
Somehow, our conversation during girls’ night had shifted our friendship into a territory I wasn’t expecting it to go, but couldn’t be more grateful for. All of a sudden, at the start of summer, we were two angry girls who covered their feelings with sarcasm and flirting, keeping everyone but each other at a distance, not willing to risk our trust with anyone else.
With friends, we were funny and sassy, loud, and attached at the hip. But when we were home, just the two of us, we’d tell the truth and not fake our feelings.
It wasn’t until after that first girls’ night that I learned about what Frankie’s life was really like. As an influencer, she was expected to be kind when people were vicious. If her makeup wasn’t perfect and she went live on Instagram, people would comment with assumptions about why.
“She must be sick, poor girl.”
“See, without the makeup, she’s fucking ugly.”
“Damn, can’t even do her own makeup when she can’t afford to hire someone to do it for her.”
She couldn’t win, not when there were people in the world who got off on being assholes to strangers. When followers forgot that she was a person too—a person with genuine feelings who read every comment, every tweet, and came face to face with every negative thing said about her…daily, Frankie was forced to wake up every morning expecting to be criticized for something, anything, or for no reason at all.
At first, I questioned her, wondering why she would deal with all that when she could just delete her social media all together? Her response was, “I’d rather show my face every day and let people see what I’m willing to show them, than have them go looking for lies in places they don’t exist. Otherwise, someone will just make them up.”
From there on out, I did whatever I could to support her, to be her backbone, and it felt nice to have a purpose, able to help in some way.
“I swear to fuck, this bitch is asking for it.” Speak of the devil. Frankie’s voice got louder and louder the closer she got to the kitchen. When she made it in, she stopped on the other side of the island and slammed her phone down on the granite, glaring in my direction. “RayLynn just announced her new partnership with the same fucking company I signed on with last week. She did it again! Last time she did this was when that athletic company sent me a pair of their leggings and I did the unboxing before actually trying them on.” She cringed, asking, “Remember that?”
I chuckled, pausing my task for a moment to give her my attention. I leaned down on my elbows. “Yeah, you hated them, didn’t you?”
“Mhm.” She nodded, her smile fading. “But I didn’t know what to say to my followers because the leggings sucked monkey balls when I tried them on. Sooooo, I just avoided the internet all together. Well, in those two days I was missing, RayLynn posted a screenshot of the tracking notification from the same fucking company, saying her box shipped to her. Which means she contacted them after I posted it.”
Admittedly a little confused, I asked, “Why does that matter, Franks? I see cast-offs from The Bachelor franchise repping the same brands all the time. Same with most reality TV stars.”
I knew very little about RayLynn’s career, but at some point, Frankie had told me she was on a new show MTV had just come out with. Some competition dating show where the end goal is to find your perfect match.
She rolled her big blue eyes. “Yes, duh, because they’re from the same show or whatever the case may be. I’m independent, I don’t have a backing. And RayLynn didn’t get picked up by the same agent as the rest of the actors on her show, so she had to hire her own agent. Now we’re both free game for a lot of these companies, and by doing this—signing herself up to rep the same company as me—she’s making it look like we’re still friends, and we’re fucking not.”
Hold on. I pinned her with a hard stare. “Is that why she’s doing it? So she gains a fucking following from your fans, hoping people don’t hate her anymore?”
“Yes, Phoenix,” she sighed, waving an exasperated hand in my direction. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
I’m an asshole. I winced. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t put two and two together. Start from the beginning.”