“Okay, but pay attention for fuck’s sake.” She gave me a stern look, but ended it with a grin, continuing, “So, when she was filming that show—that I can’t remember the name of—she fucked over her housemates and created a bunch of drama in the house, so when it aired, the viewers hated her. Now she doesn’t have the following that everyone else on the show has, and she’s getting fewer opportunities because of it. Not making as much money, blah blah. Well, when we met, I knew nothing about her. I didn’t watch the show. Had too much going on at the time.” She paused as her head fell straight into her hands. She spoke through her fingers. “When she approached me, I didn’t think twice.”
Wait. “I knew you met her and started hanging out with her, but how come you didn’t tell me she had such a bad reputation from the beginning?” I asked, feeling a little pissed off. Frankie didn’t tell me everything about her life—we both kept a few secrets—but this was about someone who ruined her fucking relationship. How did I not know the whole story?
“Because I didn’t want to look like a moron, P. There were red flags everywhere!” Her voice came out scratchy and raw as she looked up at me, clearly really upset about this. “She played me. We became friends easily, that’s who I was hanging out with before you came back.”
“Fuck, Frankie, seriously?” I asked, sighing. Recently, I’d begun attending networking events with her. She didn’t like going alone, which I now completely understood, and I was happy to experience life through the eyes of LA’s influencer pool.
It had become normal for me, being her plus one, doing my job as the supportive friend she could trust in a fishbowl full of people she couldn’t. I even gained a small following on Instagram myself—nothing like her two point two million, more like a few hundred thousand—but on rare occasions, I would get asked to do photoshoots with her for brands geared toward women in their twenties. Both of us were fortunate enough to make money from our looks, but I was more focused on my job at Death’s Door Ink. I didn’t want to worry about posting on social media every day, at least not until I got my tattooing license and had photos of my artwork to post.
“Yeah, I know.” She rolled her eyes again as she straightened her spine and headed to the fridge. She dug around for a second before pulling out a can of Truly, popping the top and chugging it like soda. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand before starting up again, “And there I was for months, friends with the girl that was secretly fucking my boyfriend behind my back.” Shaking her head, she lifted the can to her mouth and tipped it back, swallowing until it was gone. She slammed the empty can on the counter with a sarcastic smile. “Apparently, that was her MO on the show.”
I considered her words, knowing that when she found out about Jordan cheating on her, she was more upset about being humiliated than losing her boyfriend of six months. She’d been with him before I came back, but apparently, it was never a love match. Still, having sex with someone regularly when you lived your life in the spotlight was hard to keep quiet. It didn’t help that he was also an influencer and their relationship formed out of the pressure they both felt from their fans, when in reality, they were fuck buddies at best. In love or not, they were still exclusive.
I moved around the counter to get her another can, knowing she would want to drink her way through her feelings on this specific topic. “All right, so how does that lead into now?” I dug through the bin of drinks we stored in the fridge until I found the grapefruit flavored kind, her favorite. “Here.”
“Thanks.” She popped the tab and took another huge sip. “So now my followers think we’re besties, and since I refuse to air the story about the whole Jordan debacle, they don’t know shit went south. We aren’t hanging out anymore, but she’s going for the same companies as me to make it look like we’re still in contact.”
“Well, fuck.” I frowned, hating that she was in this position. “What now?”
“I have no fucking idea. Because I can’t come clean. I’m waiting until Lake invites me on the podcast again. When she does, she’ll ask about Jordan and I’ll tell the soft, fake breakup story, and then I won’t have to field questions on an Instagram post. Lake can deal with it in her comments, and I just won’t read them.”
Yeah, but when you don’t answer, they’ll head straight into your DM’s.
I wanted to say it out loud but didn’t. This was her life, and at the end of the day, when it was all said and done, she was doing the best thing for her sanity. Sometimes telling the truth wasn’t an option, not when you wanted to be able to breathe through the humiliation and self-hate that comes with being betrayed. She didn’t need the added stress.
“I’m sorry, Franks,” I said, meaning every word.
I walked over to where she was standing and moved behind her, slipping my arms around her waist and squeezing her small body to my chest. We were the same height, both just above the five-foot-two mark, so it was easy for her to drop her head back on my shoulder as she sighed. I tightened my arms, hating that she was frustrated.
Frankie and I were back to what we were before I left, but somehow even stronger. She was my sister in some ways, my absolute best friend in others, but there were times when we needed affection, attention, and love that was genuine and real. Sometimes, when life kicked you in the teeth, physical touch was the only thing capable of driving away the pain, and we weren’t shy about telling each other when we needed a different kind of support.
I was the sun kissed brunette next her bombshell blonde, and it just worked. Slowly but surely, the old Frankie and Nix where making a comeback. This time though, we were four years older, now legal, voting adults with opinions and more life experience. Freedom was visible, I was starting to hope for it, and the more I did, the brighter the light shone at the end of my tunnel.
“So, what’s the move tonight?” I asked in a quiet tone, my mouth at her ear. It was just past three in the afternoon on a Tuesday, the one day a week that Kenji closed the shop, and I had no plans for the night. “We ordering dinner in?”
Frankie unlocked her phone and looked down at it, saying, “I haven’t heard about anything going on tonight, but it’s been hours since I checked my email. Let me look.” Her mood was sullen and somber in my arms, until all of a sudden, she jerked, whipping around and out of my arms. Her hand flew to her mouth as she sucked in a surprised breath.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, immediately concerned. When she didn’t answer, my heart sped up, so I repeated the question with more urgency. “Franks, what’s wrong?”
“Uh…” she said absently, bringing her phone closer to her face and continuing to read.
I fucking hated when she did this, “Oh my god, just read it out—”
“Shut up for a second,” she snapped, holding up an index finger in my direction. I stared for a full two minutes before she looked up at me with both fear and hesitant excitement swimming in her denim blue eyes. “Okay, I just got an email from Julia about a music video being filmed tonight at a house in the Hills.”
My stomach dropped. Music video.
“Okaaaay?” I drew out, feeling sick with anxious excitement buzzing in my veins. I laughed out a confused question, gripping her shoulders as I asked, “Why do you look so scared, Frankie?”