Muffin Top

Chapter Twenty-Two

In all his years as a firefighter, Frankie had never called in sick—not once—until the morning after the fight with Lucy. That was days ago. He’d spent the ensuing time binge-watching crap shows on Netflix and picking fights with Finn, hoping to provoke his twin into a little brotherly brawl to get some of his pissed-off energy out.

Unfortunately, it was impossible to get under his twin’s skin. The man was Mr. Even Keel. It was annoying as shit.

“Another day of sitting on your ass?” Finn asked in a tone that perfectly expressed the fact that even if he wasn’t going to get annoyed, he wasn’t going to pussyfoot around the situation.

Yeah, his twin was quieter than he was, but he was no less of a pain in the ass. Frankie just flipped his brother off and kept scrolling through the never-ending list of B-list horror movies.

“You’re lucky you still have that leave time to burn off,” Finn continued, not taking the hint to shut the fuck up.

“Hansen took the extra shifts to pick up the slack for Washington being out,” Frankie said.

“Oh, as long as that’s taken care of,” Finn said as he collapsed onto the couch. He kept his mouth shut for a whole five point three seconds, long enough to do a dramatic sniff of the air around Frankie, and went on, “I guess there’s no reason for you to take a shower.”

Okay, so it had been a day. Or two. Who in the hell was counting and who gave a fuck? “Do you need something? Or can you shut up, because I’m trying to find something to watch.”

Keeping his mouth shut, for once, Finn sat back and propped his feet up on the coffee table next to all the empty Mountain Dew cans.

There were a lot of them. Frankie had gotten a case for Lucy and then had proceeded to drink his way through in record time to get rid of any memory of her. The only thing was that he’d failed to get the empty cans from the coffee table to the recycling bin, and he’d growled—literally—when his twin had tried to do it for him yesterday. Some people might have read something into that. Frankie just chalked it up to him wanting people to leave him the hell alone.

“Are you going to get your ugly mug up and go apologize to Lucy for whatever it is that you fucked up?” Finn asked.

Frankie punched the arrow button on the remote harder. “What makes you think it was me?”

“Because you only sit around and beat yourself up when you do something wrong.”

He glared at his twin, not appreciating the truth of the statement. “Screw you.”

Finn reached over and swiped the remote from Frankie. “Come on in,” he hollered toward the kitchen. “But I’ll warn you, he smells, so stay as far away as possible.”

That’s when Ford walked into the living room, along with their dad. Of all the people in the world Frankie didn’t want to see, those two were at the top of the list. Ford because he was so fucking in love, it was hard to be around him. And his dad? Because that’s the reason why Frankie wasn’t walking around with the same idiot-in-love grin that Ford was. The apple never fell far from the tree.

“What is this, some kind of touchy-feely intervention?” he asked, putting plenty of snarl in the question.

None of the other men in the room flinched. They just looked at him with matching you-big-dumbass expressions. That’s the way they wanted this to go down? Fine. He didn’t give a shit.

Finally, Ford broke the silent pissing contest. “So what’s it going to take to get you to go after her?”

Yeah, because it would be just that easy. “She doesn’t want me.”

Ford crossed his arms over his chest and rolled back on his heels, like he couldn’t decide if he was good cop or bad cop in this interrogation. “From what I’ve heard from Gina, that’s a bunch of shit.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter anyway,” Frankie said, sinking back into the couch and giving into the agony eating away at his gut that made him feel like a man who was suffering from the flu, a hangover, and the mother of all migraines at the same time. “It’s all over.”

Finished.

Done.

Kaput.

“So you’re just giving up?” his dad asked.

Up until that moment, Frankie had been doing his best to pretend his old man wasn’t in the room. He didn’t see any reason to change tactics now, so he ignored the question.

“Son,” Frank Sr. said. “I raised you better than to act like that to someone you care about.”

To act better than that? The words hit him like a lead weight dropped overboard. To act better than that? Years’ worth of denied resentment, of bottled-up anger, boiled over, rushing through him like a back draft. He turned his attention to his dad but forced himself to keep his ass on the couch or else he wasn’t sure what would happen.