Page 23 of The Ex Effect (Meet Cute in Minnesota #1)

Frankie. Came. Back. Relief flushed through me, superseding the anger I felt when she stormed off.

Dear God, please let this mean she’ll stay, and I can pull off this wedding.

I dropped the plastic candy cane onto the bench and tried to maintain at least a partially neutral face.

She didn’t need to see that I was damn near soaring that I wasn’t alone with coyotes or bears or that the demons wouldn’t snatch me on the way to the car.

“I’m really sorry about what happened earlier,” Frankie said as she stepped into the barn. She shoved her hands in her pockets and kicked at a loose pallet piece. “I let my emotions get the best of me and I shouldn’t have left the way I did. Super uncool of me, and totally unfair.”

And now, Frankie apologized ? Holy hell, it was a Christmas tree farm miracle.

Sure, Frankie used to apologize all the time—sorry for being late, sorry for forgetting something, sorry for bolting off to practice.

But I don’t ever remember her apologizing like this, with maturity and genuine remorse.

Maybe it was time to shake the picture of the teen Frankie from my mind, and start to understand this new, adult Frankie.

The golden evening sun broke through the door, highlighting Frankie like a halo. I’m not sure if it was from the way she looked in that light, or maybe the physical and emotional exhaustion of the day, but I wanted to leap into those chiseled arms.

“I’m sorry, too.” I inched a few steps closer, twisting my hands.

All the pressure of these last few years weighed on me.

If I wanted to have a healthy working relationship with Frankie, now might be the time to come clean.

I could tell Frankie about the dreams I had for my business and the nightmares that plagued me about my business plummeting.

The pressure to always have a smile, that my business was my everything , and knowing this was my very last chance of making it work made me want to shrivel up in the fetal position.

Or…maybe I could just say “welcome back.”

Yes, that was a better plan.

“I have something in the truck, but if you don’t come now, it’ll be destroyed.” Frankie stepped back and waved toward the vehicle.

Intriguing . I like it. I arched a brow and followed her to the truck. When Frankie bent over to grab it, I definitely didn’t peek at her perfectly firm ass in the jeans and instead stood back like a proper lady.

“Mint chocolate chip?” I asked after she handed me a cup of dripping ice cream. “My favorite.” I had reached my sugar limit for the day, but sugar was like sex. Once I had a little, all I wanted was more.

The sweetened coolness slid down my throat. On the lawn, I scooted up until my back rested against a hundred-year-old oak tree with the width of an entire soccer team. An abnormally quiet and reserved Frankie sat next to me, taking small bites of the dessert.

“How did you remember what kind of ice cream I liked?” I asked, taking another scoop. I had absolutely no idea what Frankie’s favorite was, but that wasn’t something people normally remember about an ex, right ?

Frankie shrugged and swirled her spoon. A long moment passed before she glanced up at me through the shadow of the tree. “I remember a lot of things.”

Well, shit. So did I. Heaviness filled the space between us, and I focused on the melting dessert in my hand, and not all the things that needed to be said.

Where would I even begin? A lifetime had passed since Frankie and I knew each other.

And for everything I thought I knew about her, there were probably a million things I didn’t.

She’d lived in New York City her entire adult life, had interviewed at one of the most highly respected lifestyle companies in the country, and drove a damn motorcycle.

Who knew what other things had changed besides her name?

“Look, how I left wasn’t cool,” Frankie said.

“I told you I’m here to help, and I am. I’m all in.

” Several pauses passed as she twisted the band on her watch.

“But for real, I’m not sure what set you off.

Maybe I said something more insensitive than what I realized?

If we’re going to work together, we have to communicate.

Just say something if I upset you. I promise I’ll listen, but you cannot let things fester and then blow up.

And I’ll do the same, and try to be more conscious of my words, and not stomp off like a baby, okay? It’s not healthy for either of us.”

Wow. Frankie talking about feelings and communication was, frankly, kind of hot. Where was this woman fifteen years ago? Tree bark scratched into my back—not an entirely unpleasant sensation—and I sighed. “You’re right.” Ugh, how I hated those words. “So, where do we even start?”

Frankie dangled the spoon for a moment and grinned. “How about a friendly game of truth or dare?”

I chuckled through my nose. “I’m too tired for dare.

How about just truth, but using the old-school twenty-questions game, rapid-fire-style?

” Did Frankie remember? One night, probably in the seventh or eighth grade, we had a sleepover at my house and watched Mean Girls —which I only remember because Frankie decided she wanted to be Lindsay Lohan for a hot minute and dyed her hair to red—and we stayed up late playing twenty questions.

Over a bowl of buttery popcorn and stuffed in our sleeping bags, I learned more about my best friend during that night than I learned about her since we met in kindergarten.

It was also the moment I realized I loved her more than a friend, although it took me more than a year to confess my feelings.

“Twenty questions? Jesus, that’s a lot. How about we start with one?” Frankie swirled the spoon in her mouth, then added another scoop.

Probably a good point. Twenty questions seemed a little ambitious. “Okay…how about you tell me about how you went from Katey to Frankie.”

“ Damn , nothing like diving into the deep end with that one, huh?” Frankie said, leaning back into the tree. She licked the corner of her lip and took a deep breath. “There’s a lot to that, way more than what we have time for today. And, if you really want to know, I’ll tell you some day.”

“I really do want to know,” I said, pausing on scooping up more ice cream. But more than the name, I wanted to know where this new calmness came from. Was the maturity age related or something bigger?

“Let’s just for now say that I needed to shed my past, my parents, everything about who I was in Spring Harbors, and find out who I was on my own in New York.

What I loved, what I wanted to do, the type of person I wanted to be.

” Frankie peeked at me through her long lashes. “And I started with changing my name.”

Ouch . She didn’t need to say much more. Shedding her past absolutely included me. We were each other’s everything, for years. No doubt I was an anchor holding her back in the life she didn’t want anymore. I exhaled through my nose and tried as hard as possible to not take the words personally .

“Your turn.” Frankie set the bowl on the side of her leg and crossed her arms. “When I knew you, you were always a perfectionist. But, with this wedding, it seems…extra. Like this level of intensity that, if I can be totally honest, is probably not healthy.”

I wanted to glare or say something snappy about the perfectionist comment, but I couldn’t.

Frankie was right, and she told me to call her out if she said anything insensitive.

But this wasn’t insensitive, it was the truth.

I’ve been this way since I could remember, but also who wouldn’t want to be a perfectionist?

Why would anyone live a life where they were not putting their best foot forward?

That concept never made sense to me. Frankie was like that growing up.

Unless she was on the field, she just didn’t care.

Half-assed homework assignments, missing classes, wanting to make out in her bedroom instead of study.

That part I obviously didn’t mind, but the point still stood.

“Opening a wedding planning business was my dream for years.” I licked the spoon, then scooped it back into the ice cream.

“I wanted people to think of their wedding first, then me second. I thought there’d be nothing more amazing than creating a fantasy and making their day the most special one of their lives. ”

Frankie pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her forearms across her knees. “I can understand that. Being part of someone’s dream day sounds rewarding.”

“It is. But also…the pressure that comes with this job is intense. Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.

I don’t want the couple to know that, though, so on top I’m like cool and calm, a duck flowing above the water.

But beneath I’m frantically paddling, you know?

” All right, too much honesty. Reel it in.

“If anything’s off, anything I do that messes with this day, it can affect the couple for life.

I mean, they’ll get over it, I assume, but knowing that I might be the one that taints their dream day…

it’s just a lot.” So much for reeling it in .

Several moments passed where I wasn’t sure if Frankie would say anything at all.

Honestly, I probably deserved it. The universe officially revoked my cool-as-a-cucumber badge for how I lashed out at her earlier.

Frankie was out here, busting her ass, for an incredibly meager salary and I highly doubted it was because she’d receive the same job satisfaction as me executing this thing.

“I don’t really know anything about you now. Not really anyway,” Frankie said as she shifted against the tree. “It’s like you’re stunted in my mind as a seventeen-year-old, but there’s a lot about you that seems different.”