“What does it say if a man who claimed he never wanted kids and just wanted to focus on his career and that he loved that I had my own career to focus on is divorced forless than a monthand he’s engaged to someone else. And she’s pregnant – like,far enough along to announce it to the worldkind of pregnant – and apparently he’s leaving his job so they can be full-timeinfluencers.”
“Shane is going to . . . be a TikToker?” Bianca interrupts in disbelief. That guy was more married to his sales job than he was to Frankie. He practically lived for it.
Frankie lets out a raw, humorless laugh. “Shane and Samantha are chronicling their pregnancy journey together and you haven’t seen the posts. It’s all about how miserable he was before he met her and how he didn’t know how to love until she came into his life . . . I just . . . How did I get it so fucking wrong? And don’t tell me you told me so, B, I know you were right and I was wrong. Completely fucking wrong.”
“It’s not your fault he’s a liar and a cheat.”
“You didn’t see the videos, Bianca. He talks about how his life before,ourlife before, is what he thought he wanted until he found something better. He looks so happy and I . . . I can’t remember if he ever looked that way with me. You know what the most ironic part of it all is? I wanted that life. I wanted to get married and maybe have a baby or two, and he didn’t want it, so I didn’t let myself want it anymore and then . . . Fuck, that’s so fucked up. How did I ever let it get to this point? What is wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you. You . . . you were in love.” Bianca doesn’t know what to say though, doesn’t know how to help her friend because she’s . . . she’s never felt like that before, doesn’t even know where to begin to make it better.
Xavier clears his throat. “Do you still want me to . . .”
“Please, God, please, whatever you’ve got.”
“I think different people can make you want different things. I think what you want can change.”
“So he met her and what he wanted changed?”
“Maybe.” Straightening his shoulders, his eyes firmly on Frankie, though Bianca thinks maybe his gaze flicked to her for a split second, “I . . . don’t know what it was for him, but what I can tell you is that before Bianca, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to marry anyone. I didn’t understand the point, I didn’t even want to understand it – but she changed all that.”
Bianca’s stomach twists at the lie and she reaches out to squeeze his hand and stop him, but all he does is take it and lift it to his mouth in a soft kiss. Frankie doesn’t need this, she needs . . . something real, not that Bianca has any idea what to say to her either. But it seems like it’s working, so she just keeps her mouth shut and tries not to think about how much she’s going to miss the touch of his lips to her skin.
“Ugh, no, please don’t be sweet and in love right now. I don’t think I can take it.”
He laughs and Frankie does too, thankfully, as Bianca draws her hand away. “What I’m saying is his change of heart, or whatever it is, has nothing to do with you, it’s abouthim. Maybe whatever her name is was the catalyst, but he had to choose a different life and he did.”
“The douchebag,” Bianca mutters.
“Yeah,” Xavier says, “a douchebag, but he’s moving on with his life and – here’s the most important thing – you can too. You should too. You deserve to be happy, happier than the dick who put you through all this bullshit. Happier than whatever filtered, sanitized half-life that he and this new woman plan on living. You’re way better off.”
Okay, that’s better. That’s useful. Frankie’s the kind of woman who can take a plan and run with it. Hell, she fought her way to the top echelon of the Dodgers’ front office – a workplace basically dominated by men, in an industry that’s actively hostile to women – before she was thirty. She can handle this.
“Is it bad that right now none of that makes me feel better? I know it’s true. I know you’re right. I know that I’m better off without him, but right now I just . . . I’m just so fucking sad and I hate it.”
“You have every right to feel that way. Your life isn’t what you thought it was going to be, and even though it’s the right thing in the long-term, you’re allowed to be upset that it didn’t work out.”
“Fuck, you’re better than my therapist.”
“I . . . might have some experience with that,” Xavier says with a rueful grin.
“Therapy?”
“Oh yeah, on and off since I was a kid, but mostly on.”
“Is that why you seem so well adjusted?”
“Do I?” Xavier laughs. “I don’t know about that, but I’m sure they’d all be thrilled to hear it.”
“I think . . . I think we need a drink.”
“Or ten,” Frankie agrees. “But I can’t. I have to go to work. My job is literally the only thing I have now and apparently I’m too single-minded and focused on it to have anything else in my life.”
“First, we are not quoting the douchebag ever again,” Bianca says and Frankie laughs a little. Good, that’s good. “And second, it’s not the only thing,” Bianca says, resting her head on her taller friend’s shoulder. “You have me.”
“Thank God for that.”
“And this gorgeous house.”
