I crawled beneath the covers of my bed, not bothering to unpack my bags. They would be waiting for me when I woke up…if I woke up within the next century. Maybe I would sleep for so long that I’d become some weird urban legend and tourist attraction. There would be blog posts about me telling the story of how I fell asleep and never woke up. Some people would debate whether I was real or just an elaborate hoax. There would be documentaries made about me and everyone would speculate about what had caused me to fall into such a deep sleep.
That was the plan, anyway. Not realistic, but a girl could wish. If I never woke up, I would never have to deal with the fallout of falling in love with my best friend. If I never woke up, I wouldn’t ever have to face a life without Lucas in it. If I never woke up I could forever live in the dreamland where Lucas and I lived happily ever after.
I turned the air-conditioning up—or down, whichever one meant colder—and pulled the covers over my head, burrowing down into the darkness. I was surrounded with the comforting and familiar scents of home with nothing to remind me of the sparkling cerulean sea and the smiling face of the most beautiful man I’d ever had the privilege to know. I was happy for him. I was…or I would be as soon as this indigestion got better and my eyes stopped weeping.
“Frankie?”
I groaned and squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself back to sleep. I was supposed to sleep for a hundred years and I was pretty sure it had only been a couple of hours since I surrendered to the dark nothingness of sleep.
“Frankie, honey?”
I groaned again as Mom sat on the edge of my bed and tugged the covers down, exposing my head.
“What are you doing here, Frankie?” Mom asked.
“Sleeping,” I mumbled.
I heard her huff and imagined her rolling her eyes. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“Because I needed to sleep,” I replied, stubbornly refusing to open my eyes and acknowledge that I was no longer sleeping.
“Why did you leave Kalopsia?” Mom asked, her tone still soft but with an undercurrent of demand I knew would only get stronger the longer I tried to avoid answering her questions.
I huffed and opened my eyes, which was harder than it should have been. They were crusted over with gunk from all the…allergies.
“It was time to come home,” I said.
“No, you still had a week or more before you were due home,” Mom countered, narrowing her eyes as she examined my face.
I sighed and pushed up onto my elbows. “No, it really was time to come home,” I said. “Three’s a crowd and all that.”
“What?”
I groaned and collapsed back on the pillows. “Clarissa turned up.”
“And Lucas sent you home?”
“No,” I whispered.
“You ran away?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I ran away,” I replied slowly.
“No? So you sat down and had an adult conversation with Lucas and Clarissa before you left?”
“Um…not exactly…”
“Frankie,” Mom groaned. “You ran away. You didn’t even fight for him, did you?”
“Fight for him? We’re just friends, Mom. The engagement wasn’t real.”
“Wasn’t it?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “You’re telling me you didn’t fall in love with him and wish it was real?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said, kicking the covers off and trying to get out of bed.
Mom sighed. “Okay. Okay, I get it. You’re hurt and sad and it’s still too painful to talk about, but Frankie, don’t lie to yourself.” She nailed me with a direct stare and I swallowed. “Do not lie to yourself about how you are feeling. You’re allowed to be sad and you’re allowed to be angry. You need to give yourself permission to feel those things, okay? And when you’re ready to talk, I’m here for you.”
I threw myself into my mother’s arms and buried my face in her neck.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
She squeezed me tight and then let me go, wiping tears from my cheeks and smiling at me sadly. “Are you hungry? Dad bought home Thai.”
My stomach rumbled and although I wanted to hide away in my room, having dinner with my mom and dad and doing something normal seemed like an excellent idea.
“Will there be enough for me?” I asked as Mom stood and I shuffled out of bed.
“You know what your father is like, he always orders too much.”
I smiled, and it didn’t hurt. It was nice to smile about something simple like my dad having eyes bigger than his belly. It felt good to be back to normal and not have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. I could go downstairs to dinner wearing my sweats and old t-shirt and I didn’t have to worry about embarrassing anyone. I didn’t even have to brush my hair or do my makeup. I could just be me. Plain old me. No airs and graces. No fancy designer clothes or uncomfortable shoes or bobby pins sticking into my scalp.
Mom took my hand, and we went downstairs together and I could finally take my first full breath since I’d stepped out onto the terrace and saw Lucas and Clarissa with their arms wrapped around each other. I hadn’t expected Lucas to end up with me—as much as I may have daydreamed about it—but seeing him with Clarissa was my worst nightmare. Why couldn’t he have chosen Sophia, or even Elena, for that matter? Why did it have to be Clarissa? My nemesis. Okay, not my actual nemesis, she just felt like my nemesis.
“So did you take lots of photos?” Mom asked.
“Oh Mom, Kalopsia is so beautiful and the water! Seriously, I’ve never seen water that color before in my life. Let me just grab my phone.”
I ran back upstairs and grabbed my phone. I’d turned it off on my flight from the island and hadn’t turned it back on since. I let it boot up as I skipped back down the stairs and then came to a complete stop when I saw all the notifications populating the screen.
Lucas.
Lucas had been trying to call me for the last two days and not just call me. There were hundreds of text messages—and not just from Lucas. Meredith—Meredith—had texted me, so had Sophia and even Elena. There were a couple from Dorian as well and I felt…sad. All these friends I’d made, and I’d just left without saying goodbye to any of them. Yeah, I’d been hurt, but I should have at least explained things to Meredith and Jamie. Me running away was an admission of guilt. I should have at least had the guts to tell them the truth.
“Honey?” Mom called from the dining room. “Are you coming?”
I sighed and swiped away from all the messages and missed calls. I would deal with them all tomorrow. Right now I would have dinner with my family and pretend I hadn’t just blown up my entire life because my heart was broken.
“Coming,” I said as I opened my photo app and headed for the dining room.
Lucas
I lifted the glass to my lips and sipped. Not raïda. There were too many memories tied up in the spirit. Not whiskey either. Whiskey had started this thing. I’d been drinking whiskey when I proposed to Frankie, so yeah, I was staying away from whiskey too.
I was drinking gin.
I couldn’t say I’d ever been a fan of the clear, juniper infused alcohol, but I needed something that didn’t remind me of Frankie and gin was it. I’d briefly considered tequila, but then I was reminded of the time Frankie had gotten completely wasted in college on tequila shots. So no tequila either.