The Worst Best Man(110)

“Yeah, but given her current level of misery, if you give her some space, she’s gonna figure it out that she isn’t the innocent party here either.”

“How much space?” Aiden asked. He needed them to spell it out for him. The idea of abandoning his efforts—giving up control—was terrifying, but a tiny spark of hope lit in his chest.

“All the space,” Marco said.

“No texting, no presents, no nothing,” Gio added.

Aiden covered his eyes for a minute trying to wrap his head around the idea of giving up and hoping for the best. It went against everything in his DNA to leave things up to chance.

“I was thinking about paying off her student loans,” he admitted. His small gestures hadn’t gotten her attention. Maybe a bigger one would. She would have at least been compelled to come to his office and scream at him.

“Oh, Christ, no!” Marco said, looking horrified.

“She’d hate that, man,” Gio agreed. “Do not, I repeat, do not go throwing piles of money at Frankie. She’ll just set them on fire.”

“So, I just give up? Leave her alone?”

“You make it look like you’re giving up,” Marco said as if there was a difference.

“If I do this, do you think there’s a chance she could forgive me?”

“Yeah,” Gio said supportively. “I do.”

“A real small one,” Marco piped up. He shrugged when his brother shot him an incredulous look. “What? I don’t want him to get his hopes up if she decides to Frosty the Snow Bitch him permanently.”

“Listen, you gotta think of something else, Aide. Are you prepared to forgive her? She walked out on you instead of having your back—again, if you ever say this to her I will ruin your very nice face also probably your fancy suit—and if you’re going to let that fester, you don’t have a chance.”

The philosophers of Brooklyn were sitting in his office giving him advice and the tiniest sliver of hope.

“I won’t let it fester,” he promised.

“Good.” The brothers nodded.

“You got a nice place here,” Marco said, glancing around.

“What? We’re making small talk now?” Gio demanded.

“I’m just being polite.” Marco kicked Gio’s knee where it rested on the desk.

“Ouch! Fucker!”



Oscar: Was that a body blow I just heard?



“Anyway,” Gio said, looking at the clock on his phone.

Aiden felt himself tense. He didn’t want them to leave. They felt like his only tangible connection to Frankie.

“You wanna go for a drink? Maybe some steak?” Marco asked Aiden.

Aiden nodded as relief coursed through him. They weren’t abandoning him. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”





Chapter Fifty-Nine


“I’m not sure how to tell you this, Frankie,” Raul began for the third time, clearing his throat. Brenda sat next to him at the conference table stemming her tears with a third tissue.

Frankie saw her employee file on the table and had connected the dots within five seconds of walking into the room.

“We lost our grant,” Raul announced. “Two of them, actually. They’re not even being funded anymore, so it wasn’t anything that you did in the grant writing. It wasn’t anything that we did as an organization, it was just… bad luck.”

Her life felt like it had been nothing but bad luck these past few weeks.

“So, what I’m trying to say,” Raul took a deep breath, “is that we’re shutting the office down. We can’t continue to serve the business community without those funds, and we’ve been talking about retiring for a while now.”

Brenda blew her nose noisily.

“And that means that your employment is also terminated.” Raul choked out the words and reached for his coffee, managing to spill most of it.

“Okay, then,” Frankie said, too numb to process anything. It was the trajectory of her life, plummeting straight down. By this time next week, she’d be warming her hands on the open flames in hell if her descent continued. “I’ll just pack up my stuff and go.”

Brenda’s quiet sniffles turned into full blown wails. “We’re so sorry, sweetie! And after everything that you’ve been through…”

Frankie rose and gave each of them a mechanical hug. They had been mentors, second parents, and friends to her. And now they, too, were out of her life.

“Can we take you to lunch or… something?” Raul asked.

She shook her head. “No, thanks.”

“We’ll send you your vacation pay with your last paycheck,” he said, looking glumly at the table.

“Thank you,” Frankie said, pausing inside the door and taking a last look at the room.

Downstairs, she shoved what she could from her desk into an empty paper ream box and stepped out into the mocking sunshine. The end of March was showing signs of the spring to come. But nothing could thaw the ice inside her.

She sat down on the curb in a scrap of sunshine that filtered between the branches of the trees. Was this rock bottom? No job, six weeks shy of finishing her master’s, and she was going to have to decide between rent and tuition. Oh, and speaking of school, this job and her social media workshops had been part of her thesis project. So, graduation this spring was no longer an option.