Chapter Text
Mel is not jealous. At least, she doesn’t think she is.
Jealousy feels sharp. Possessive. Loud.
It feels … unearned.
This is quieter than that. Worse, maybe.
“Langdon’s ridiculous, honestly.”
Mel looks up automatically at the sound of his name, which, unfortunately, is enough to catch her attention now.
Two ortho surgeons are standing near the coffee machine by the stairs, one shaking her head while pouring creamer into a paper cup.
“I’m serious,” the other says. “How does rehab make someone hotter? That should not be possible.”
The first one laughs. “It’s the sad eyes. Women eat that shit up.”
Mel looks down quickly before either of them notices her standing there. Her stomach twists anyway, because they’re not wrong.
She knows, objectively, Frank is beautiful in this unfair, almost unconscious way. The kind that doesn’t seem intentional, apparently. Like he has no idea what he looks like, leaning over trauma bay beds with his sleeves rolled up, hair falling into his eyes, voice low and steady while patients stare at him like he personally invented comfort.
“…I mean, he could pull literally anyone now,” somebody says behind the corner. “Half the hospital would say yes immediately.”
More laughter.
Mel presses her phone tighter between her fingers.
She should move along, not hover outside stairwell hallways looking miserable as she feels.
Because the terrible part is that they’re probably right– Frank could have someone brighter than her. Easier. Someone polished and socially effortless and confident in ways she has never managed to be.
Instead, he somehow chooses to spend his time with somebody who still rehearses phone calls mentally before making them, who misses jokes sometimes because she’s too busy catching the tone of it, who fell in love with a married man and still feels horrible enough about it to feel sick occasionally.
“Hey.”
Mel startles hard enough that her phone nearly slips from her hands.
Frank is standing at the end of the hallway holding two paper cups.
“Jesus,” he says softly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
The sight of him right now seems to confirm her train of thought.
Dark blue scrubs. Tired eyes. Hair falling slightly into his forehead. Warmth already written across his expression just because he’s looking at her.
Like seeing her is something good.
“There you are,” he says quietly, stepping closer. “I thought you disappeared.”
Mel’s throat tightens unexpectedly.
She might not get a lot of things, but one of the things that baffles her the most is how no one sees him like this. How they can’t look past the guy rushing through trauma and break rooms, and recognize this side of him.
The man who brings her snacks during long shifts because she usually forgets to eat, who touches the small of her back lightly when squeezing past her in crowded rooms, who still looks faintly surprised every single time she reaches for his hand first when they are alone.
She doesn’t fully understand why.
“You okay?” he asks gently.
“Yeah,” she says.
It comes out thinner than she intended.
Frank studies her face for a second longer.
Then his expression shifts subtly, not convinced.
He moves closer anyway, offering her some tea.
Her tea.
Extra sugar because she only drinks it that way when she’s stressed.
“Long night so far?” he asks.
There’s such genuine softness in the question that her chest twists painfully again. It’s not usual for them to both be scheduled for the night shift, and the change in rhythm is what’s probably getting to her.
More unfamiliar people around, different routines.
People who keep talking about him like he’s some charming, beautiful disaster from far away.
“It’s almost over,” she offers as an answer.
He leans closer, and she can see in his eyes that he probably wants to do the same thing that she’s aching to do. Hold his hand, hug him, exist closer together.
No one knows they are seeing each other, and Mel is in no rush to change that, but would trade the secrecy right now if only to get some confirmation that he is here, steady, real. Not what someone else might say about him.
—-
The overnight shift has entered that strange, fragile stretch between exhaustion and sunrise where everybody in the department starts moving slightly slower.
Frank is halfway through discharging a patient with uncomplicated diverticulitis when the patient’s wife starts staring at him a little too intently.
He notices immediately.
Years in emergency medicine have made Frank good at recognizing the difference between confused, angry, frightened, and familiar.
This is familiar.
Frank keeps his expression calm anyway while explaining antibiotics and return precautions.
“No solid food for a couple of days,” he says, handing over the paperwork. “And if the pain gets worse, fever spikes, vomiting, anything like that, you come straight back in.”
The husband nods tiredly from the bed.
But his wife is still looking at Frank.
“Dr. Langdon, right?”
Frank looks up automatically from the discharge paperwork.
“Unfortunately,” he says lightly.
The joke lands well enough that the husband snorts softly.
The woman smiles too, though it arrives a second late.
“Oh,” she says quickly afterward. “You probably don’t remember me. My sister used to work upstairs in oncology.”
“Yeah, Mrs. Greyson,” he says, with a practiced smile. Professional. Easy. “I hope your sister is enjoying retirement.”
“She is.” The woman hesitates briefly. “And… I’m glad you’re doing well, too.”
It doesn’t land as cruel or even judgmental. Still, Frank feels his mouth go dry.
He nods once anyway.
“Appreciate that.”
A tiny silence follows.
Then she winces slightly. “I’m sorry, that sounded strange.”
“No,” Frank says immediately, rescuing her before she can spiral further. “You’re alright.”
The husband clears his throat awkwardly from the bed.
“Anyway,” he mutters, “thanks for not letting me die from my own terrible dietary choices.”
Frank smiles faintly.
“Happy to enable personal growth.”
That finally gets a real laugh out of both of them.
A few minutes later, Frank steps back into the hallway carrying the empty chart.
And immediately feels his shoulders drop.
The interaction hadn’t gone badly. Nobody had judged him, nobody had been cruel.
Nobody had exercised their right to ask for another doctor.
Still, something uncomfortable lingers beneath his skin afterward.
Awareness.
Like his life has quietly become a thing people discuss in elevators and break rooms now.
A cautionary tale with good hair and prescription caveats.
Frank exhales slowly and drags a hand over his face.
Then he sees Mel standing near the nurses’ station across the department, talking quietly with Javadi over lab timing.
She laughs suddenly at something.
The sound reaches him even through the noise of monitors and phones.
Frank feels his entire body soften before he can stop it.
And almost immediately, another thought follows close behind:
Oh.
People are going to notice this, too, eventually.
The realization lands somewhere ugly beneath his sternum.
Not because he’s ashamed of it, of them— God, never that.
Because Frank suddenly cannot stand the idea of people looking at Mel and seeing collateral damage before they see her.
—-
It’s only 9 a.m. and Mel’s standing near the medication room waiting for the printer to stop jamming for the third time that shift, exhaustion already buzzing low behind her eyes.
“…I’m just saying,” Lena says, “kid’s a lucky bastard.”
A huff answers her.
“Depends who you ask,” Dana says. “Abby probably has a different opinion.”
Mel stills before she can stop herself. She isn’t trying to eavesdrop, but she is frozen in place.
“I still can’t believe he fucked it up with her,” a male voice says. “What a gorgeous woman.”
“And smart.”
Someone snorts. “Those two together used to make me feel poor.”
The printer whirs loudly for a second before choking on the paper again.
Mel presses her lips together.
Abby is beautiful.
Not in the vague abstract way people describe strangers.
Actually beautiful.
Mel knows because she’s seen the evidence of it in flashes.
Old photos in Frank’s drawers, Christmas cards of when Penny was a baby, Abby smiling into the camera, Frank younger beside her, happier in a way that now feels painful to witness retroactively.
Like looking at a house before the fire.
Mel stares at the blinking printer light without seeing it.
“Honestly,” one of the OR nurses says, lowering her voice slightly in the way people do when they absolutely still want to be heard, “I heard she basically held his life together toward the end.”
Mel’s stomach twists painfully. That might have been true as well.
And she had still fallen in love with him anyway.
She remembers those early months too clearly now, when he had come back from rehab.
The way she had started noticing when his wedding ring disappeared during procedures, the guilt that followed every flicker of relief when he forgot to put it back on after, the horrible awareness of wanting someone she wasn’t supposed to want.
At the time, she hadn’t known the marriage was already breaking apart quietly behind closed doors. No one had known that, so Mel couldn’t really blame them for speculating.
“Okay, enough of this now,” Dana says, clapping her hands.
Mel’s palms are damp, and she scrubs them against her sleeves and darts toward south 2, leaving the printer abandoned.
—-
Of all the people Frank thought he could fool, of course Cassie McKay isn’t one of them.
He just hadn’t expected her to catch on so quickly.
Frank is leaning against the counter, pretending to review labs while very obviously staring at his phone.
McKay watches him for a full ten seconds while Frank very deliberately avoids meeting her eyes.
“You look weird,” she says.
Frank doesn’t glance up.
“That’s an incredibly vague statement.”
“Weirdly calm.”
That finally gets his attention.
Frank frowns slightly. “What does that mean?”
McKay shrugs, reaching for her water bottle.
“You used to pace more.”
Frank snorts softly.
“Excellent. Glad my psychological deterioration’s becoming measurable.”
She ignores that completely.
“You sleeping better?”
The question catches him off guard, mostly because the answer is: kind of.
His sleep schedule is not great and certainly not consistent, but better enough that he’s noticed it too.
Frank doesn’t answer. He looks back down at the chart in his hands instead.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because,” McKay says slowly, “you look… different.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He takes a sip of his Red Bull and ducks his head a little.
McKay narrows her eyes suddenly.
“Oh my God…”
She inches slightly closer.
Frank frowns at her immediately.
“What?”
“There’s a woman involved.”
“There is not.”
“You just smiled at your phone.”
“Why must that immediately mean there’s a woman?” he asks, crossing his arms.
“Langdon.”
Frank rubs a tired hand over his jaw, already regretting engaging.
The truth is, he’s been staring at the text thread with Mel for almost ten minutes now.
There isn’t even a new message from her. She has the day off and is probably resting at home. He’s just re-reading old ones.
A blurry picture of the world’s saddest vending machine sandwich from his last night shift. A complaint from her about Princess hiding all the good pens again. A screenshot of Urban Dictionary after he asked her to explain something a twenty-one-year-old patient had said.
The conversation itself isn’t particularly meaningful.
But it’s her. And for some deeply humiliating reason, every notification from Mel still sends that same warm, startled feeling through his chest.
Which is insane.
He is thirty-six years old, not sixteen.
Although honestly, this feels significantly worse than sixteen ever did. Now he actually understands how much there is to lose.
Cassie is still watching him.
“Shit, Langdon,” she says finally. “You’re dating someone.”
“We are not—”
“You are.”
“We’re just…”
He stops.
Because genuinely, he doesn’t know what they’re calling this yet.
Frank looks back down at the phone in his hand.
And somewhere beneath the disbelief and tenderness and quiet terror of it all, is one impossible thought he still hasn’t fully adjusted to— Mel chose him.
How or why are questions he’s absolutely not prepared to dissect with McKay standing three feet away from him.
She watches the expression cross his face and immediately softens.
“Oh,” she says quietly.
Frank looks up warily.
“That tone feels threatening.”
“I’m serious.” She leans against the counter beside him. “You seem… happy.”
After surviving detox, rehab, divorce paperwork, custody schedules, and public humiliation, somehow, this is the thing that makes him feel exposed.
Frank clears his throat roughly.
“It’s not serious.”
McKay gives him a look that very clearly says “bullshit.”
Then, more gently: “Just be careful, okay?”
Frank stills slightly.
“The first couple of years can get messy,” she says carefully. “Relationships feel… bigger than they are sometimes.”
Frank nods once automatically.
He knows she’s right.
“You don’t have to tell me your business,” she adds. “I’m just saying — don’t build your sobriety around another person.”
Frank finds it hard to swallow against the knot in his throat.
Mel doesn’t feel like sobriety. Sobriety is an active choice he has to make every day, one that still hums quietly in the back of his mind, no matter how stable things seem.
Being around Mel feels more like a consequence of that choice, not a reason. Or an excuse.
McKay nudges his shoulder lightly.
“But if it’s good for you, don’t sabotage it either. You deserve nice things too, you know.”
Frank laughs softly at that and stretches his arms overhead because he genuinely has no idea what to do with that sentence.
If he even believes it.
Before he can answer, a trauma alert echoes through the ED.
The moment breaks instantly.
McKay pushes off the counter.
“Think about what I said.”
Frank nods automatically.
But as he follows her toward Trauma 1, another thought has already begun needling uneasily.
If this is how people see him — if they rightfully get wary when he starts looking happy — then there’s a chance some of that judgment eventually bleeds onto Mel too.
What if people start looking at her differently because she chose him?
—-
Mrs. Donnelly is halfway through complaining about hospital pudding when Frank freezes beside the bed.
“Mrs. Donnelly,” he says slowly, “how much canned soup are you eating a week?”
The older woman blinks up at him innocently.
“Excuse me?”
“Your sodium is horrifying.”
Mel bites down on a smile.
Mrs. Donnelly scoffs. “I’m eighty-two years old, honey, not a prisoner.”
“You’re seventy-six.”
“Well, this hospital has aged me.”
Frank exhales softly through his nose, already sounding tired in a way that feels practiced.
“Are you taking the Lasix consistently?”
“Yes.”
“Mm-hm.”
“I am!”
“You’re lying directly to my face while attached to telemetry.”
Mel ducks her head slightly, pretending to focus on adjusting one of the heart monitors.
“Frank Langdon,” the woman says, squinting up at him from the hospital bed. “You still make that face when you think people are lying to you.”
Mel bites down hard on a smile across from him.
“You are abusing your patient rights,” he mutters.
Mrs. Donnelly points at him weakly. “See? Smart mouth.”
“He was such a serious little thing,” she tells Mel immediately, delighted. “Honestly, you could’ve set your watch by him. Altar boy. Honor roll. Always apologizing for things that weren’t his fault.”
Frank groans quietly under his breath.
“Oh, don’t start.”
Mel laughs softly before she can stop herself.
Frank shoots her a betrayed look.
“Don’t encourage her.”
Then Mrs. Donnelly says, “How’s Abby?”
The room shifts quietly. Frank doesn’t look at Mel.
“She’s good,” he says after a beat too long.
Not technically a lie. Just not the whole truth.
“And the kids?”
“They’re good too.”
Mrs. Donnelly smiles warmly.
“Such a beautiful family.”
Mel looks down at the gauze in her hands.
Beside her, Frank clears his throat lightly.
“So,” he says carefully, “how long has the nausea been happening?”
“Oh, stop trying to change the subject.” Mrs. Donnelly waves him off before looking at Mel conspiratorially. “His mom was always bragging about her smart son, going to college and becoming a doctor, marrying a successful lawyer.”
Mel presses her lips together and nods, like this is information that’s just small talk. She tries for a smile, but she’s sure she’s just inching towards looking stunned.
Frank shifts beside her, visibly uncomfortable now.
“Mrs. Donnelly—”
“No, really,” she continues cheerfully. “His mom wasn’t wrong, that girl adores him. Smart too. Gorgeous. Lord, the two of them together…” She sighs dreamily. “Like a magazine spread.”
Frank closes his eyes briefly.
Mel suddenly becomes very aware of her wrinkled scrubs, the orange juice stain near her sleeve, the fact that they are sitting in a hospital room at two in the afternoon, listening to someone describe in the present tense the life Frank used to have.
“…and those babies,” Mrs. Donnelly continues. “God. I can see Abby wanting a big family.”
Something tightens painfully in Mel’s chest.
Because there it is again. That awful feeling.
That she’s standing beside the outline of a life that had once fit him perfectly. And sometimes, when he smiles at her softly across empty hallways or texts her silly little comments about the new ED bet, Mel still has the nagging thought that maybe this version of his life is somehow smaller than the one he lost.
A knock interrupts the room before she can spiral further.
“General surgery,” Dr. Garcia says, stepping inside with an iPad tucked against her chest.
Mrs. Donnelly narrows her eyes immediately.
Then gasps.
“Oh my God. Yolanda Garcia.”
Dr. Garcia stops dead. Frank physically recoils into the chair.
Mrs. Donnelly beams. “I knew it! Look at you two.”
Dr. Garcia and Frank exchange a long-suffering look.
“They used to sit together at church,” Mrs. Donnelly tells Mel. “Both of them looking miserable.”
Mrs. Donnelly looks excitedly at them. “And look! Doctors!”
“How’s your mom, sweetie?” She asks Dr. Garcia, who clutches the iPad with a bit more force.
“She’s doing fine, thank you,” she says, in a placating tone Mel has never heard from her.
“Lovely!” Mrs. Donnelly beams. “Look at you two, so grown up.”
Frank’s leg bounces quickly beside Mel, and she wants to put her hand on his knee and let it rest there.
“And Frank settled down so beautifully.” Mrs Donnelly sighs again. “Now we just need to find Yolanda a nice man.”
Dr. Garcia stares at the wall. Frank looks one sentence away from committing a felony.
The old lady turns suddenly toward Mel.
“What about you, honey? Married?”
Mel startles slightly.
“Oh. No.”
“You should,” Mrs. Donnelly says immediately. “It’s important having somebody.”
Something about the sentence lodges sharply beneath Mel’s ribs.
Beside her, Frank’s jaw tightens.
“Okay,” he says abruptly, too cheerful to sound natural. “Let’s maybe focus on the gallbladder before we start arranging marriages in the emergency department.”
Mrs. Donnelly waves him off. “You always got snippy when embarrassed.”
Dr. Garcia snorts loudly, and Frank glares at her.
She grins back instantly.
It still feels odd watching them interact this way, and Mel still doesn’t fully understand how their dynamic works.
A few weeks ago, eating cupcakes on his couch, Mel had finally worn him down enough to show her an old picture of the two of them at fourteen: Frank painfully skinny in an oversized Christmas sweater, Dr. Garcia standing beside him holding a wrapped present with the expression of someone already exhausted by life.
Mel had laughed for a full minute.
“So everybody in the hospital knows you’ve known each other since you were teens?” she had asked.
Frank, sprawled sideways against the couch cushions beside her, had shrugged.
“Some people know.”
“And the others?”
“Think we’re committing too hard to a workplace bit.”
“That’s insane.”
“Mm. Yoli thinks it’s funny not correcting people.”
Mrs. Donnelly now points at him triumphantly. “These two used to walk around town like tiny exhausted forty-year-olds.”
Frank mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like “Jesus Christ.”
“They were the smartest kids in Old Forge,” Mrs. Donnelly continues fondly. “But lonely.”
Mel sees the way Frank’s mouth stills faintly at the corners, how he suddenly becomes very interested in adjusting the blood pressure cuff. And Dr. Garcia bounces a little on the heels of her feet, her gaze fixed on some point above the heart monitor.
“They cleaned up nice, though,” Mrs. Donnelly says. “They were such strange little creatures.”
Frank rubs a hand briefly over his jaw.
“Mrs. Donnelly, are you having abdominal pain after meals or not?”
“Oh hush, I’m reminiscing.”
She leans over Mel again.“You know, every mother in town wanted their daughter marrying Frank Langdon.”
“Mrs. Donnelly,” Frank says warningly.
“No, I’m serious! Mothers were practically forming a union.”
Dr. Garcia snorts from beside the bed.
Frank nods at her. “You are not helping.”
“She’s right,” she says. “You had terrifying old church ladies obsessed with you.”
“I was sixteen.”
“But of course,” Mrs. Donnelly continues, waving a hand dramatically, “some beautiful girl from Connecticut had to steal him away before the rest of Old Forge had a chance.”
There’s a tiny pause. Clearly Mrs. Donnelly doesn’t register it as awkward. Mel feels it anyway.
Frank looks down at the chart immediately.
Even Dr. Garcia visibly winces.
“God, people lost their minds over that wedding.” Mrs. Donnelly laughs softly. “The Langdon boy marrying some rich girl.”
“Mrs. Donnelly,” Frank says carefully, “how bad is the pain right now on a scale of one to ten?”
“Don’t interrupt me, sweetheart,” she hushes him.
Dr. Garcia makes a visible effort not to react. Frank glares at her anyway. She rolls her eyes without looking up.
Mel watches the exchange quietly.
The ease between them. The shared history. The exhaustion.
Two people who clearly know each other well enough to turn irritation into its own strange form of affection.
And suddenly, Mel has the horrible thought that maybe Abby used to fit into this dynamic naturally too.
She probably knew all these stories already. She could stand beside Frank in conversations without feeling like she’d accidentally wandered into someone else’s memories.
Then Frank glances toward Mel.
The second he does, his expression shifts. Concern flickers in his eyes, too immediate.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
Soft enough that Mrs. Donnelly keeps rambling right over it.
Mel forces a smile.
“Yes,” she says.
Frank doesn’t look convinced.
“Excuse me,” Mel says a moment later. “I’m just gonna…”
She gestures toward the door.
Frank turns toward her instantly.
“You want me to—”
“No,” she says too quickly. Then, softer: “I’m okay.”
Another lie neither of them believes.
Outside the room, the hallway feels too bright.
Mel walks past the nurses’ station automatically before stopping near the ambulance bay doors.
Cold air hits her face the second she steps outside.
For a moment, she just stands there breathing.
Inside, somebody talks loudly down the corridor.
Mel wraps her arms tighter around herself.
She tries not to focus too much on the things Mrs. Donnelly had said, but what keeps coming back is the certainty in her voice when she talked about Frank’s life.
His old life.
One that had shape. Direction. Meaning.
Mel takes a deep breath, then exhales it in two short huffs.
She hates that she’s doing the same thing everybody else still seems to do, judging Frank by the version of him he used to project.
When she’d first met him, he had seemed so sure of himself. Always moving, always pointing things out, somehow still finding the time to look directly into her eyes like he actually saw her.
That was what had stayed with her during those ten months he’d been away.
The focus of his gaze when he talked to her.
Mel usually darted her eyes around whenever she had to talk to more than two people at once, and sometimes, when she got overwhelmed enough, it was hard to focus on even one.
But with Frank, it had always felt easier somehow. Like she could focus on the crease between his brows or the edge of his smirk and not feel quite so scattered.
And then, after he came back, she started noticing the smaller things too.
The way he sometimes glances down when somebody talks over him. The quick flick of his eyes sideways whenever doubt catches up to him for a second.
And suddenly, wanting him stopped feeling entirely selfish.
It made her want to reassure him too, the same way he always seemed to reassure her.
So Mel knows there are versions of Frank that belong to different people.
The one Mrs. Donnelly remembers. The one Dr. Garcia grew up with.
The one Abby built an entire life beside.
But still, Mel isn’t entirely sure what she is in comparison to that. How their late nights eating pizza or shared conversations in the parking lot might fit into the life everyone expected him to live. Not the one that had collapsed, but the one he was originally supposed to have.
—-
His invitation to come over Friday night feels strangely significant anyway.
Not because Mel hasn’t been there before. Frank has made a habit of asking. It’s just that lately, both of them being off at the same time long enough to spend an evening together feels nearly impossible.
Back when Mel had been actively trying not to fall in love with him, they’d somehow always ended up together anyway: same shifts, same trauma rooms, same terrible vending machine lunch at three in the afternoon.
Now that they’ve actually started seeing each other, the universe seems determined to keep them moving past each other in hallways instead.
So when Frank leans against the nurses’ station Wednesday afternoon and says, casual enough to almost hide the hopefulness underneath, “You off Friday too?”, Mel actually blinks at him.
“…Maybe.”
Frank narrows his eyes immediately.
She looks over her shoulder to make sure no one is paying attention to them.
“I am.”
“Okay, good.” He presses a hand dramatically against his chest. “I thought we’d have to communicate exclusively through text messages and waves across the parking lot forever.”
Mel looks down at the chart in her hands, mostly to avoid smiling too visibly.
“You wanna come over?” he asks. “It’s Friday, so I was thinking pizza. Maybe let you force me to watch a movie with some famous kid I won’t be able to place.”
Mel wants to say yes immediately.
Instead, she hears herself saying, “Oh. I actually think I’m having dinner with Becca.”
Frank’s expression shifts so quickly that most people probably wouldn’t notice it.
Then he nods easily.
“Okay,” he says. “Go be a good sister.”
The warmth in his voice makes guilt twist unexpectedly low in her stomach.
“You could still come by after,” he adds a second later, softer. “If you want.”
Mel’s throat tightens slightly.
“Maybe,” she says.
Frank smiles faintly, but then clears his throat as Princess sits down in front of them, and he goes back to Trauma 2.
—-
Three days later, Becca cancels thirty-seven minutes before dinner.
Mel stares down at the text while sitting in her car outside the restaurant.
“sorry. something came up w adam tonight :/ raincheck?”
For a second, Mel just sits there.
Then she types out “Sure. No worries :)”
The lie comes automatically now, something Mel would have sworn would never seem natural for her.
By the time she reaches Frank’s apartment, it’s raining lightly.
She rings on the main door and then spends the ride in the elevator feeling emotional and fragile, not entirely sure she wants to be perceived by another human being tonight.
She knocks anyway, and Frank opens the door before she can overthink herself into leaving.
His hair is damp from a shower, curling slightly at the edges, gray t-shirt soft with wear.
“Oh,” he says quietly.
The concern on his face arrives so fast it almost hurts.
Mel forces a smile.
“Hi.”
He studies her for exactly half a second before stepping aside silently to let her in.
The apartment smells like pizza already.
“I got half with mushrooms,” Frank says casually, closing the door behind her. “Because you always give me yours anyway.”
Mel stills slightly.
It shouldn’t surprise her how easily he says it. She’s seen him be extremely perceptive to people around him — it’s one of the reasons he is such a great doctor. But it still catches her off guard when that attention to detail is turned to her. This is a stupid thing he knows about her, and yet he’s making her feel like she already belongs inside his routines enough to anticipate it.
It’s terrifying how much she loves that. And even more so, how sudden panic follows immediately after.
“Becca canceled?” Frank asks gently.
Mel blinks back toward him.
“Yeah.”
Frank nods once, already seeming to know the answer from the look on her face alone.
“She okay?”
“I think so.” Mel shrugs out of her jacket slowly. “Adam got tickets to something.”
Frank reaches out automatically then, fingers brushing briefly against her elbow as he passes her on the way toward the kitchen.
The touch is absent-minded. Natural.
Like his body already assumes closeness with her before his brain catches up.
“You hungry?” he asks.
Mel watches him move around the kitchen easily: pulling plates down, opening cabinets, leaving them open, grabbing napkins, closing drawers.
He makes sense in this space, as much as he does in the ED, and even though it’s been little over a month, Mel is getting used to seeing him navigate these rooms with the same determination he does at work.
Hurt keeps bubbling in the pit of her stomach because suddenly all she can think about is Mrs. Donnelly saying, “Such a beautiful family.”
Frank glances over his shoulder.
“You okay?”
There it is again. That immediate noticing.
Mel nods too fast. “Just tired.”
Frank doesn’t look convinced, but he lets it go.
They sit on the couch with the pizza and sodas balanced on the coffee table between them.
Mel has started realizing the dining table had probably been a special occasion exception the first time she came over. Frank rarely stays still long enough for proper sit-down meals if he can help it.
She grabs her ginger ale to focus on something other than him sitting next to her, close and warm.
“I think Becca’s drifting away from me a little,” she admits.
Frank looks over immediately.
The focus of his attention settles over her so completely it still catches her off guard.
“How come?”
Mel picks at the corner of a napkin.
“I don’t know.” A small shrug. “I think maybe we’re just… different people now.”
Frank stays silent. Giving her room instead of rushing to fix it.
Mel stares down at the soda can in her hands.
“She used to tell me everything first,” she says quietly. “And now I find out things days later accidentally.”
Frank’s expression softens.
“That sucks, Mel.”
He doesn’t offer fake reassurance or tell her she’s exaggerating things. It makes it easy not to lose track of what she’s saying.
“I know it’s normal,” she says. “People grow up and change and whatever, I just…” She exhales softly. “I miss her.”
Frank nods.
“You’re allowed to miss people before they’re fully gone,” he says.
Mel looks up slowly.
Frank shrugs slightly like he doesn’t realize he’s just said something quietly devastating.
Or maybe he does.
It’s hard to tell with him sometimes.
Rain taps softly against the windows. The movie they’d started twenty minutes ago plays mostly ignored in the background now, some actor talking quietly while Frank reaches for another slice of pizza without looking away from her.
Mel watches his hand brush automatically toward the side table first.
Searching.
Then pause halfway there.
Frank frowns slightly.
“What?” she asks.
“You moved the parmesan.”
“Oh.” Mel reaches over automatically, grabbing it from beside her knee. “Sorry.”
Frank takes it with a soft “thanks” before shaking some onto his pizza.
The interaction lasts maybe four seconds.
Still, something about it makes her chest feel heavy.
Like she’s walked into the middle of a routine without realizing one had already formed around her.
Her soda is already in his fridge.
There’s a blanket draped over the arm of the couch because she’s always cold in his apartment.
Frank had ordered mushrooms on half the pizza without asking first.
The movie keeps playing quietly.
Mel stares down at the plate balanced on her knee.
Across from her, Frank says something teasing about her terrible movie opinions, resting his hand on the couch beside her leg.
He does it easily, no second thoughts. She loves seeing him let go of the occasional self-doubt that seems to follow him around at the hospital, and at least his hands are not shaking like the first time she came over.
But now it’s her who is unsettled. Because she doesn’t know how to function in the space he seems to be creating for her.
—-
Mel drops her keys onto her living room table and immediately notices she still has Frank’s phone charger tangled in the strap of her bag.
Right — she had borrowed it last week during a double shift and forgotten to give it back.
Or Frank had forgotten to ask.
She’s not sure which feels more dangerous.
Her phone buzzes before she can figure out what to feel about it.
“You make it home alive?” He texts.
Mel stares at the screen for a second before typing: “yes.”
Three dots appear almost immediately.
“Good.
Roads looked awful”
Then:
“Also you left your sweater here”
It’s humid and hot amidst the rain, but still, it’s weird enough she hasn’t noticed she forgot it.
Frank’s apartment has apparently accumulated enough of her things now that leaving one behind doesn’t even register immediately.
For a second, completely involuntarily, she can picture him probably cleaning up the apartment right now: folding blankets, stacking plates in the sink, half-watching the end of the movie without her there.
The image feels intimate.
Like she’s picturing something she shouldn’t already know so well.
Mel sits heavily at the edge of her bed.
And suddenly, completely involuntarily, she remembers Perlah saying “your eyes twinkle when he is around,” two years or so ago, while Mel pretended very hard not to stare across the ED.
Mel had nearly dropped the bottle of antiseptic in her hands.
“What?”
Perlah finally looked at her then, visibly amused.
“Oh, honey.”
“That is not true.”
“Sure.”
Mel had frowned down at the suture kit in front of her. “I barely even know him.”
Perlah sighed softly. “Mm-hm.”
At the time, Mel had dismissed it immediately.
Mostly because Frank had still been married then.
Because whatever she felt had still seemed containable somehow. Easier to manage quietly when imagining he could never possibly want her back.
Now the memory makes heat creep abruptly up her neck.
Because maybe it had been obvious longer than she realized.
Her phone lights up again.
“your movie opinions are still terrible btw”
She laughs softly despite herself.
The sound echoes through the quiet apartment, and Mel finds herself wrestling with the realization that leaving his side gets harder every time.
Even knowing this still isn’t something she’s guaranteed, she doesn’t know how to stop choosing him anymore.
—-
When Yolanda shows up, Tanner is already halfway through a meltdown because Frank cut his grilled cheese into squares instead of triangles.
“Is not the same,” Tanner says mournfully from the kitchen table.
Frank sighs heavily while flipping another sandwich.
“It literally tastes identical.”
“That’s not true.”
Frank inhales deeply as the doorbell rings.
“Oh, thank God,” Frank says immediately as he lets her in. “The tiny dictator has started another labor strike.”
From the doorway, Yolanda drops her overnight bag onto the floor.
Tanner lights up instantly.
“Aunt Yoli!”
Frank barely has time to move before Tanner launches himself directly into Yolanda’s legs, hard enough that she stumbles backward laughing.
“Jesus— okay. Wow. You’re getting stronger.”
“I’m gonna be a hockey player.”
“As long as it’s not football,” she says, rubbing his head.
Penny appears more quietly from the living room, clutching a stuffed penguin almost the size of her torso.
Yolanda immediately crouches down and opens one arm.
Penny walks directly into it without hesitation.
Officially, she’s come over to “hang out with the kids.” Unofficially, Frank knows she’s checking on him.
(Not in an obvious way. Yoli’s never obvious about things that matter.)
Still, she shows up with dessert, three Pixar sticker books, and the particular look in her eyes that usually means she thinks Frank’s mental state requires supervision.
Frank nods at the kitchen.
“You’re late.”
Yolanda drops dramatically into one of the stools with Penny still balanced on her hip.
“I had a life before you began psychologically depending on me.”
“Psychologically haunting me, it’s more likely,” Frank says. “I found out you taught Tanner how to fake stomach aches.”
“What on Earth, T?” She beams. “That was confidential.”
Frank closes his eyes briefly.
“Fantastic.”
Penny holds up a crayon-covered paper toward Yolanda proudly.
“Fish.”
Yolanda studies it seriously.
“That is definitely a fish.”
“It’s a shark,” Tanner corrects immediately.
Frank slides a plate onto the table.
“Everything’s a shark this week.”
“Sharks are cool, Daddy,” Tanner says defensively.
“Sharks are serial killers of the ocean,” Yolanda informs him solemnly.
Tanner considers this deeply while eating fries.
“That’s awesome.”
Frank snorts softly.
The apartment feels loud tonight— he wouldn’t have it any other way.
The TV hums quietly with Bluey episodes in the background while Penny slowly migrates into Yolanda’s lap and Tanner narrates increasingly inaccurate shark facts at full volume.
Frank moves around the kitchen automatically, passing out juice boxes and wiping ketchup off counters and catching Tanner before he nearly falls backward off his chair trying to demonstrate “Cosby hockey reflexes.”
Tanner stares mournfully at the square-cut grilled cheese on his plate like Frank has personally betrayed him.
Across the table, Yolanda narrows her eyes at the sandwich.
Frank already looks tired.
“What now?”
“You cut it wrong,” Yolanda states.
Frank stares at her in disbelief.
“It’s bread.”
“No,” Yolanda says seriously. “It’s trust.”
Tanner nods emphatically.
Frank points the spatula at both of them.
“You’re creating problems on purpose now.”
“Frankie,” Yolanda says gently, “children need stability.”
Frank shakes his head.
“This is why people think I’m losing my mind.”
“Okay,” she says, standing up. “Move aside. Aunt Yoli’s here.”
“You are absolutely not making another sandwich.”
But Yolanda is already pulling bread from the bag.
Tanner follows her with total reverence.
Frank watches her throw the squares onto her own plate instead.
“That was a perfectly good sandwich.”
“And now it’s MY perfectly good sandwich,” she says simply.
Penny abandons her coloring book and toddles toward them immediately.
“Triangle.”
“Yes,” Yolanda agrees solemnly while cutting the new sandwich diagonally with surgical precision. “Because, unlike your father, I care about accuracy.”
Frank nearly completes the next sentence.
“For fu—“
And catches himself halfway through.
“Oh my God,” she says delightedly.
“They are repeating everything.”
From the floor, Penny immediately says, “Everything.”
Frank points at her. “See?”
Yolanda bursts out laughing.
“You spoil them,” Frank says eventually, the four of them sitting down to eat on the couch.
Yolanda looks genuinely offended.
“Obviously.”
“Tanner now thinks sharks are apex predators specifically sent by God to punish the weak.”
“They ARE apex predators.”
“That’s not the issue.”
Penny is half-asleep in Yolanda’s lap, stubbornly clutching three crayons in one hand.
Yolanda smooths her fingers absently through her hair.
“They’re good kids, Frankie.”
Frank glances over automatically.
Tanner catches the juice box before it falls and looks deeply proud of himself. Penny blinks sleepily up at Yolanda like she hung the moon.
Something warm twists low in Frank’s chest.
Yeah.
They are.
Not in the abstract parental way people are supposed to think their kids are special.
Objectively.
The greatest things Frank has ever done in his life are currently sticky with apple juice and watching Bluey in his living room.
Yolanda notices the look on his face immediately.
“Oh no,” she says softly.
Frank narrows his eyes.
“What?”
“You’re doing the sincere thing again.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re about thirty seconds away from saying something emotionally devastating about fatherhood.”
Frank rolls his eyes automatically.
But he swallows against the knot in his throat. He has been trying to live with the love he carries for them since the day they were born, and the fear of fucking it up since the very same moment. He knows it’s like that for most parents. But lately, another different type of horror has joined, the knowledge that he can screw it up in a particular Frank-Langdon-kind-of-way, and that almost renders him useless sometimes.
As if reading his mind, Yolanda looks at him in the eyes and puts a Stitch sticker in his hand, giving him the tiniest smile.
—-
By the time Tanner finally stops asking whether sharks could survive in space, Frank feels emotionally ninety years old.
“They would freeze,” he says from the hallway.
“But what if they had astronaut suits?”
Frank shakes his head briefly.
From the living room floor, Yolanda says: “Now THAT’S science.”
“You are actively making this worse,” Frank tells her.
“I’m fostering curiosity.”
Penny is already asleep against Yolanda’s shoulder by the time Frank carries her into bed.
She curls instinctively into his chest without waking up fully, tiny fingers bunching sleepily into the front of his t-shirt.
Frank feels his heart break into a million pieces.
After convincing Tanner to brush his teeth, locating Penny’s missing stuffed penguin, delivering one emergency glass of water, surviving two bedtime arguments that only Yolanda could settle, and enduring three increasingly dramatic goodnight hugs, the apartment finally goes quiet.
Frank returns to the kitchen to find Yolanda standing barefoot at the sink, eating cold fries directly off a paper towel.
“You’re disgusting,” he says tiredly.
Yolanda takes a sip of Pepsi.
“And yet beloved.”
Frank snorts softly and reaches for the plates stacked beside the sink.
For a moment, they move around each other easily. Frank rinsing glasses, Yolanda drying them.
Bluey is still playing faintly in the other room because neither of them has bothered turning it off yet.
“You seem weird,” Yolanda says when they finally turn the water off.
Frank doesn’t look up.
“You’ve been saying that about me for twenty years.”
“Uh-huh,” she says. “You’ve checked your phone six times in the last ten minutes.”
Frank dries the same plate twice. She watches this happen silently.
“You didn’t have to come over,” he says. “You know, I’ve lost patients before.”
She shrugs.
“Missed the kids.”
Frank nods once, absently picking at the sticker in his hand that still hasn’t peeled away despite the dish detergent.
“I wanted to check how things were,” she adds.
Yolanda leans back against the counter, watching him carefully now.
“When are you seeing Mel again?”
Frank shrugs.
“Our schedules haven’t lined up much.”
Yolanda dries her hands on the kitchen towel, apparently letting it go even if she still looks unconvinced.
“My upstairs neighbor flooded my bathroom again.”
Frank snorts softly.
“That’s the third time this year.”
“She keeps apologizing by leaving baked goods outside my door like we’re in a hostage negotiation.”
“That explains the muffins you brought.”
“Don’t act like an ungrateful brat,” she says, punching his arm.
Frank smiles faintly despite himself.
“Where did you sleep then?” Frank asks. “I figure you don’t have a shortage of beds to crash in, but you’re always welcome to my uncomfortable couch.”
She smirks.
“I managed.”
“That’s never a reassuring sentence.”
Silence stretches for a second too long. The apartment feels strange now without the kids awake.
Too quiet all at once.
“So, seriously,” Yolanda says, like she is continuing a sentence from before. “Everything okay with you and Dr. Kindness?”
Frank keeps his eyes on the sink.
“Yeah, everything’s fine.”
Yolanda narrows her eyes immediately.
“Oh, you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You used the calm voice you put on with annoying patients.”
Frank sighs heavily.
“I hate how long you’ve known me.”
“Yeah, well.” Yolanda opens a cupboard and pulls out two mugs. “That’s your burden to bear.”
Frank shakes his head but starts the coffee maker. He debates having tea, but knows he won’t sleep much tonight either way.
“Frankie.”
He hates it when she says his name softly.
“She’s just been weird lately,” he admits.
Yolanda’s expression sharpens immediately.
“Weird how?”
“She sometimes leaves quicker after shifts now.”
Yolanda says nothing.
“She gets quiet out of nowhere.”
Still nothing.
“And Friday she…” Frank exhales through his nose tiredly. “I don’t know. Things were good, and then suddenly she looked like she wanted to get away from here.”
The words sit heavily in the kitchen between them.
“And now,” he says more quietly, “I think I’m waiting for her to realize this was a mistake.”
Frank’s shoulders tighten almost imperceptibly. Which, unfortunately, is perceptible to Yolanda.
“What?” she asks.
Frank shakes his head once, already regretting saying it.
“She could have literally anybody.”
“Frank.”
“I’m serious.”
“You’re objectively insane.”
Frank huffs softly without much humor in it.
“That’s not really new information.”
Yolanda leans back against the counter slowly.
“You really like this girl.”
Frank rubs a hand across his mouth, looking briefly down at the floor.
“That feels like an insane understatement.”
The honesty slips out accidentally.
Both of them register it at the same time.
Frank closes his eyes briefly.
“Forget I said that.”
“Absolutely not.”
He puts two sugars in Yolanda’s cup and none in his.
“What about Santos?” he asks, pleading for a change in subject.
Yolanda immediately hides her face behind the mug.
“Don’t start.”
“You brought her up last week.”
“Yeah, well. That was a mistake.”
Frank takes another sip slowly.
The thing about Yolanda is that she gets meaner when she cares. Or quieter.
Maybe that’s worse.
“She keeps asking me to stay over,” Yolanda mutters eventually.
“And?”
“And I suddenly get scheduled for surgeries.”
Frank smiles faintly.
“You like her.”
Yolanda immediately looks offended.
“Excuse me? We were having fun psychoanalyzing you.”
“You didn’t deny it, though,” he points out. “You’re getting soft with age, Yoli.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Langdon, are we pretending you’re qualified to comment on emotionally healthy behavior?”
Frank laughs quietly.
“That’s fair.”
Yolanda puts down the cup and gestures to the balcony. Frank grabs the baby monitor that’s set on Penny and Tanner’s room and follows her outside.
The Surgeon General probably would have a word or two to say about two senior residents lighting up a cigarette together. Maybe he would sing a different tune if he were in their shoes.
“And Emery started calling again,” Yolanda says after her fourth drag in silence.
Frank looks over automatically.
“Oh boy.”
“Yeah.” Yolanda rubs a hand over her face. “It’s like she psychically senses when I’m about to move on and suddenly remembers I exist.”
“You gonna call her back?”
“No.”
A beat.
“Probably.”
Frank glances at her.
“What about Santos?”
Yolanda huffs out smoke and stares at him in the same intense way she’s been doing since they were thirteen.
“Don’t.”
Frank laughs again.
“That bad?”
“That complicated.”
Which, coming from Yolanda, usually means dangerous.
No matter his own complicated views on Santos, the truth is Frank asks because he genuinely wants to know.
And because some part of him still hopes Yolanda eventually finds her footing somewhere.
But also because talking about Yolanda feels infinitely easier than talking about himself right now.
“You’re deflecting,” Yolanda notices.
“I’m literally having a conversation with you.”
“What’s going on with Mel?”
Frank concentrates on the bitter taste in his mouth, the dryness of the smoke in his gums.
“Nothing.”
“Frankie.”
The quiet way she says his name makes him look away almost immediately.
“You’re scared,” she says.
Frank lets out a short laugh. “Of Mel?”
“No.” Yolanda sits down on one of the battered chairs in the tiny space. “Of how much you care about her.”
The thing is, before rehab, he knew how to separate parts of himself. Or numb them enough to pretend they were separate.
And now, these last few weeks have felt like walking around waiting for impact.
“I keep thinking eventually she’s gonna wake up one day and remember who I actually am.”
“She already knows.”
Frank looks up.
“She knows about rehab,” Yolanda says carefully. “About the divorce. About all of it.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
Because Frank doesn’t know how to explain that sometimes he still feels like a disaster, temporarily pretending to be a person.
- - - -
Another five minutes inside the cafeteria, and Frank is reasonably sure his head might implode.
Round tables covered in blue-and-gold paper tablecloths fill most of the room while parents and teachers drift around, balancing plastic cups of lemonade and congratulating each other on personally raising the graduating class themselves.
Frank has shaken so many hands in the last hour that his jaw actually hurts from fake smiling.
Every conversation feels exactly the same.
Football. Go Blue Devils. Grades. College applications. Drexel.
“Your mother must be over the moon.”
“First doctor in the family, huh?”
“We always knew you were going places, Frank.”
He had smiled automatically through all of it.
Good at this by now.
Across the room, his father had been talking proudly to Father Delaney while his mother dabbed suspiciously emotional eyes with a napkin every few minutes.
Frank should probably feel happy.
He does feel happy.
At least he thinks he does.
The Drexel envelope feels too important in his hands. Every time he looks at it, his stomach twists.
Like he’s waiting for someone to walk over and tell him there’s been some kind of mistake.
By the time he slips out the side doors into the late afternoon chill, the relief is immediate.
The parking lot behind the school is mostly empty now.
He unlocks his car and climbs inside, turning over the stereo to drown out some of the noise coming from the building.
The passenger door opens a few minutes later without warning.
Yolanda climbs up beside him, holding two cafeteria puddings and a can of Pepsi she absolutely stole.
“You disappeared.”
Frank shrugs.
Yolanda studies him for a second.
“Why do you look like you’re about to throw up?” she asks.
Despite himself, he laughs quietly.
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.”
She hands him one of the puddings anyway.
Frank peels the lid back absently.
“You know,” Yolanda says, nudging his shoulder lightly with hers, “I thought you would hang around getting pats on the back for a bit longer. You should be excited.”
“I am excited.”
“You look like they just drafted you into a war.”
Frank snorts softly.
The cold air stings faintly in his lungs.
Inside the cafeteria, somebody starts clapping loudly at another speech.
Yolanda rolls her eyes toward the ceiling.
“Kill me.”
Frank grins at her, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. Then he notices she’s wearing her backpack.
“You leaving already?”
Yolanda shrugs too casually.
“No reason to stay.”
Frank glances toward the school doors automatically.
No one comes out looking for her.
Something heavy settles low in his chest.
Her parents hadn’t shown up.
Again.
Yolanda notices the look on his face immediately and points her plastic spoon at him threateningly.
“Don’t.”
Frank raises both hands automatically.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You got sad eyes.”
He shakes his head, but doesn’t meet her stare.
“Frankie.” She rolls her eyes. “I swear to God.”
Yolanda looks down at the can of soda in her lap for a second.
“I got a big envelope in the mail today as well,” she says, softly.
Frank blinks.
“What?”
A grin spreads slowly across her face now. Sharp and triumphant. A little disbelieving around the edges.
“I got into Michigan.”
For a second, Frank just stares at her.
Then the words burst out of him.
“Fucking hell, Yo-Yo. You’re incredible.”
He leans over and hugs her tightly.
Yolanda slips into uncomfortable laughter immediately.
“Oh wow. Okay. That reaction feels emotionally loaded.”
“Yoli.” Frank grabs her shoulders automatically. “Holy shit.”
She’s still laughing.
“I know.”
“No, seriously— Michigan?”
“Last time I checked, yes.”
Frank shakes her lightly once before letting go again.
And unlike with himself, the certainty arrives instantly: she’s going to be incredible.
Not maybe. Not if she works hard enough. Not if she doesn’t screw it up somehow.
Certainly.
She laces her fingers in the little medallion she wears around her neck. Her grandmother’s Inmaculada Concepción.
“You’re the first person I told.”
Frank looks at her.
“Well,” she corrects. “Third, technically. I told your parents inside first.”
That startles another laugh out of him.
“That explains why my mom was crying.”
Yolanda smiles warmly now and nods.
“Your dad told me he always knew I was smarter than you.”
Frank grins.
“Asshole. I hope they know in Michigan the type of bullshitter they just accepted.”
Then his smile fades slightly as the reality of it settles in.
Michigan.
Far.
Yolanda watches him clock the distance in real time.
“Oh my God,” she says flatly. “You’re about to get weird.”
“I’m not getting weird.”
“You literally have your emo face on already.”
Frank looks back down at the Drexel folder beside him.
The edges of it are bent now from how tightly he’s been holding it.
Inside the school, somebody claps loudly again.
Everything suddenly feels strange and temporary.
Like standing inside the last five minutes of something before you realize it’s ending.
Yolanda nudges his knee with hers.
“What’s going on in your little pretty boy brain right now?”
Frank stares out across the empty parking lot for a second too long.
“What if I screw it up?”
Yolanda groans immediately.
“I’m serious.”
“Frankie, you’re going to college, not invading Normandy.”
Frank snorts softly. But the tightness under his ribs stays there anyway.
Because every adult in his life has spent years looking at him like he’s becoming something important.
Like all the football games and AP classes and altar serving and tutoring added up to one inevitable conclusion: Frank Langdon is going somewhere.
And suddenly, the idea of disappointing all of them feels less hypothetical than it did yesterday.
Yolanda watches him quietly for a moment.
“You know what your problem is?”
Frank sighs.
“I get to pick just one?”
She punches him in the arm.
“You think if something matters enough, you’re automatically gonna ruin it.”
Frank doesn’t know how to argue with that.
“You don’t have to earn every good thing that happens to you,” she says, switching over to a different radio station.
Frank looks down at the acceptance folder in his lap again. The yellow letters still feel like they belong to somebody else.
Beside him, Yolanda bumps her shoulder lightly against his.
- - - -
Yolanda is looking at him, amused.
“Oh my God, you ARE freaking out about sleeping with her.”
Frank puts out his cigarette with a little bit more force than necessary.
“It’s not—” He exhales harshly. “It’s different now.”
Yolanda’s expression softens slightly.
“Things are already good,” he admits quietly. “I don’t want to ruin the equilibrium.”
Yolanda stares at him in disbelief.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m serious.”
“Frank.” She moves the other chair with her foot, and he sits down.
“Don’t make me compliment you and then throw up, but I don’t think you sleeping with her is going to chase her away. That never seemed to be a department in which you struggled.”
Frank groans immediately.
“Oh my God.”
“I’m just saying, first time I visited you in Drexel, I heard three separate girls discussing your sexual performance like Yelp reviews.”
“Please, mercy kill me.”
“And miss out on tormenting you?”
She actually grins before wincing.
“Unfortunately, the overall consensus was very positive.”
Frank rubs both hands over his face now.
“The grading curve was probably generous,” he offers.
“Oh no.” Yolanda points at him again. “Actually, the reviews improved after sophomore year. Which suggests personal growth.”
Frank throws the lighter directly at her face.
Yolanda catches it one-handed.
“The point,” she says through laughter, “is that Mel is probably not going to flee the country after sleeping with you. Just… don’t cry after. You always looked like a post-nut crier.”
Frank laughs despite himself. A real one this time.
“There it is,” Yolanda says softly.
The truth is, he is terrified of changing one aspect of his and Mel’s dynamic and watching the whole thing disappear.
Yolanda watches the realization move across his face in real time.
“Oh, Frankie.”
Frank pulls out another cigarette. Screw the Surgeon General.
“Don’t call me that.”
“You’re in love love.”
He is not ready to look at that statement too closely, but once it comes out of Yolanda’s mouth, he knows it’s the truth.
She always stated facts, and they materialized. This time she is just naming something that’s clearly there.
“I just…” He looks back toward the dark apartment where the kids are sleeping. “I finally have things in my life I’m scared to lose again.”
Yolanda’s expression changes instantly.
“I can’t lose her as well,” he adds.
The apartment. The kids. The quiet. The peace.
The ordinary happiness of grilled cheese and Bluey and somebody waiting for you to come home.
Things Frank never fully trusted himself to keep after fucking up his life.
Yolanda leans her head against his shoulder lightly.
And for a while, neither of them says anything at all.