Page 153 of The Worst Best Man

“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 itlooklike 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.”