Page 37 of The Ex Effect (Meet Cute in Minnesota #1)
TWENTY-FOUR
MORGAN
Oh, how things change in a twenty-four-hour period.
First, I was nearly scratched to death by poultry.
Then Frankie flipped my world upside down by kissing me.
And then I got a major break in the final missing piece for the wedding.
After I threw a wedding-day Hail Mary pass (Frankie would be so proud I know that term) and posted a Facebook message seeking a connection to a DJ who was open for that date, a former classmate DMed me saying he’d been DJing for the last year and was available for the wedding.
A miracle. DJs book up almost as quickly as venues, and I had burned through my entire digital Rolodex last month trying to find one in the state.
I popped bread into the toaster and tugged on my lip, the one that still had the reminiscence of Frankie’s mouth on it from yesterday.
I thought about calling or texting Frankie last night, and I assumed Frankie was weighing the same pros and cons.
Being an adult, and not a starry-eyed teenager, came with a whole different perspective.
We each had lives and careers and homes, and whatever was brewing was not as simple as “let’s just do this!
” Too many consequences were involved, and I needed to take a long moment to think.
Or perhaps, maybe for once in my life I didn’t need to think and plan and organize. We were still working together for the rest of the summer, and as of now, Frankie would be in my life. So, maybe we could continue being friends, and I would bury all of this.
Or maybe…
Morgan:
hey, I know I said we get to take this weekend off…
I held my breath, which was not a smart thing to do as Frankie notoriously never had her phone on her. But before I passed out, the three dots appeared.
Frankie:
Yes, you sure did. The only thing I’m doing this weekend is sitting in Peaches’s fuzzy pink bathrobe and taking a bath in her seashell-decorated pink bathroom with a box of twenty-year-old Calgon bath salts I found in the closet.
Morgan:
Wow. That is an oddly specific agenda for a Saturday night.
Frankie:
I could be talked into something else. Have something in mind?
Yes, I very much had something else in mind. I breathed through the tingles.
Morgan:
Remember Tag Docksen from our class? He’s a DJ, is free for the wedding, and just so happens to be playing a show tonight in a dive bar about five minutes outside of Superior. I wanted to scope him out, and if he doesn’t suck, hire him for the wedding.
Frankie:
Tag? Really? That guy was such a tool.
Frankie was not wrong. Tag was a star hockey player back in high school, and definitely the guy who liked to brag how many “chicks he banged.” Gross.
A rumor floated around senior year of some seriously creepy shit he pulled on our classmate Jenny Smith but was never confirmed.
Tool or not, he was our very last option.
Besides, hopefully he’d matured a bit since high school.
Frankie:
Didn’t he ask you out once?
Morgan:
Hmmm. Don’t remember. I thought I had *lesbian* stamped across my forehead.
Frankie:
Haha. That you did.
Morgan:
Anyway, you interested?
Frankie:
Definitely. I can pick you up at eight.
Not a date, not a date. I replayed that mantra all day, but by the time eight rolled around, I’d loofahed my skin until it shone, brushed my teeth twice, and changed my outfit no less than five times.
I settled on a cute pale green skirt with a light cream knitted sweater, and wedge sandals, and I had to admit it, my legs and ass were killing it in this outfit.
Since working in the barn all summer, I had nearly forgone my typical hair and makeup routine that was my signature. But tonight, I took extra care in applying eyeliner, gloss, and flat ironing my hair that had finally grown out to a respectable length.
Three knocks landed on my door, and my heart skipped a beat. “Come in!”
When Frankie entered the room, I stopped and stared. Frankie’s gaze traveled leisurely from my toes to my head, a thirsty smile tugging at her lips, and damn if that wasn’t the look I was hoping to get. “Wow. You look incredible.”
I felt my cheeks blush. “So do you.”
Frankie grinned. “I’m literally wearing the same thing I do every day.”
I know . The jeans, the snug white shirt, the boots. But after a few months of hard work in the barn, Frankie’s forearms bronzed in the sun, and her rounded shoulders and deeply defined biceps were even more pronounced than when we first met. If that was even possible.
“Hey, yesterday…” I started when Frankie held up her hand.
“I’m still really sorry.” Frankie tapped her thumbs against her upper thigh. “But I’m also not sorry. If that makes sense.”
It made so much sense that I felt a small crack in my heart. I didn’t want to have this conversation now, but I needed the weirdness between us to stop. “I don’t know what will happen. But I want you to know I’m really happy I could spend this summer with you.”
There. I said as much as I could say right now. The rest we’d figure out later.
Frankie’s dimples appeared. “Same. It’s been more than what I could’ve ever asked for.” She held the door open and waved me through. “Ready, my little lady?”
“Ewww.” I locked the door and scrunched my nose. “You didn’t just call me that.”
“Oh, I did.” Frankie hopped down the porch steps and held out her hand to me. “Figured if we were going to be hanging with Tag for the evening, I better get my creeper lingo down.”
I slid into Frankie’s truck and slammed the door. “Come on, maybe he’s not that bad.”
Tag may or may not be bad, but the bar was the divest of the dives.
My God . It smelled like stale beer and old fryer grease, and my wedges stuck to the floor.
The night was still pretty early. The crowd comprised of day drinkers finishing up, a woman behind blotchy plexiglass selling pull tabs, and a bartender yawning and scrolling through his phone.
“This is one of the saddest places I’ve ever seen.” I kept my arms crossed to prevent myself from touching anything. The room was too dark, the neon bar lights too bright, the hops smell too overwhelming.
“It’s not that bad. Kind of the type of place that makes you want to throw down and hustle some dude for pool money, right?” Frankie jutted her head towards the pool tables in the back next to the dart boards. “I think we could take them.”
Sure, easy for her to say. Frankie looked like a badass biker bitch with her cropped hair and motorcycle boots. Not to mention she looked like she could bench-press all the guys in this place. “Not even for a second.”
“I bet they don’t play Britney Spears here, unfortunately for you.” Frankie nudged my elbow.
“Why would I care if they played Britney Spears?” I asked .
Frankie lifted a brow. “Do you seriously not remember? You forced me to learn the choreography to ‘…Baby One More Time.’”
“I did?” I searched back far in my memory bank until…
Oh yeah . Sophomore year, a local radio station was offering a five-hundred-dollar reward for the best Britney lip-syncing contest. I giggled at the memory of an absolutely irate Frankie having to swap out her gym shorts for a plaid skirt, pigtails, and crop-top button-down shirt.
And if memory serves, we did pretty good but failed to earn top spot. “How do you even remember that?”
Frankie glanced down at me. “I remember a lot of things.”
Me too . A playful smile tugged at Frankie’s lips, but I felt anything but playful. All I wanted was to recreate everything from last night, and then some. Screw consequences, broken hearts, and repeating history. I wanted to take Frankie home, ravage-style.
“Hey, can I get you two something?” the bartender asked, flipping a towel over his shoulder.
“No thanks. I’m here to chat with Tag. Is he around?” I scoured the dozen patrons to see if one of them was what I remembered as Tag.
“Oh yeah, he’s in the employee break room.” He flicked his finger toward the kitchen doors. “You guys can just head in there. In the back past the kitchen, take a left.”
Wasn’t there something deeply unsanitary about having two non-employees traipsing through the kitchen? No matter, though. Hopefully I’d be in and out, drop off a contract for the gig, and then hang around for a bit to make sure his DJ equipment worked.
“I’m curious what Tag looks like nowadays,” Frankie asked as we weaved past the tables to the kitchen. “Seems like the type of guy who probably peaked in high school.”
“Shhh. Small town, remember? Whatever shit you talk will get back to him, and I need him to DJ the wedding.” Although Tag was that type of guy. Sort of like the universe giving his peers a parting gift for putting up with his crap for all those years.
Frankie followed me when her phone rang. “Hold up, one sec. It’s Quinn.” Frankie put the phone up to her ear. “Hey, I’m just about to head in somewhere, can I… Wait, what? Okay, slow down, slow down… Are you sure… Quinn, you gotta breathe… Okay, give me a second.”
Oh no. This did not sound good. I searched Frankie’s eyes to see if this was a “somebody died” call or a “my boss is an asshole” call.
Frankie pushed the mouth receiver under her chin. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this. Something happened with Quinn’s work. I’ll be outside. You good?”
Chivalry for the win. “For sure.” I tugged my sweater across my chest. “I’ll come find you when I’m done. Shouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes.”
Frankie lifted the phone back to her mouth. “All right, I’m heading outside so I can hear you better. Start at the beginning…”
As Frankie moved to go outside, I crossed the bar to the kitchen doors and swung them open.
A wave of humidity and a cloud of cooked onions funneled out.
The two cooks glanced up with a totally uninterested look as I went past the prep station overflowing with plates and burger fixings to the employee break room.