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the night is young, so are we
let’s just get to know each other slow and easily
“It’s been a long time,”
“Yeah,” A sigh. “It has.”
Frank barely moves a muscle when Nancy crosses the room to sit beside him on his old wooden bed, listening to the frame sigh underneath her weight. She doesn’t touch him; she remains still as his eyes wander across the floorboards, memorizing the scuffs and scrapes.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” She says, barely audible, but just loud enough to make him squeeze his eyes shut, feeling the weight of the world crashing down on his shoulders from one measly sentence. Truth is, he shouldn’t be upset. Shouldn’t feel guilty for leaving his childhood home, his father’s business, his friends, his family, all of it only for a girl that has explicitly been off the market for about five years now.
But he does, and it’s eating away at him until his heart feels raw and decayed, so instead of saying anything else, he stands erect, keeping his gaze on the other side of the room, the floor, his now-empty dresser…
Anywhere but where she’s sitting.
“Frank, talk to me,” She’s saying, her voice sounding like words on a chalkboard now than a soft lullaby-like it used to before everything changed. Before she watched someone else get down on one knee and proclaim false prophecies about love and eternity.
Before she said yes.
“About what?” His voice sounds harsh and strong but he hardly cares at this point, shoving his hands deep into his pockets after tracing the details of his old desk, recalling all the nights he’d spent there, distracted from his case notes because he was too busy talking to a girl that was, ironically, too busy to even care about what he was feeling.
“About… this,”
“I don’t really… know what you expect,” He keeps his voice light. Poised. Far from anything he’s feeling, honestly, but right now is not the time to become vulnerable. “We’re not seventeen anymore.”
“I know, but The Network—”
“It’s not like I’m just ditching out and leaving everything to my brother,” He snaps. “I’m considered a liaison agent. I can come back whenever. Hell, I’m the CEO’s son. I can do whatever I want.”
“I just think that you’re doing this for the wrong reasons.”
That strikes a nerve. “I could probably say the same thing to you.” He looks out the window to avoid looking at her, watching the slow blanket of clouds fold over the melancholy sky.
She doesn’t say anything for a long while, which, granted, would’ve upset him in the past, but the silence comforts him now. Hearing her voice makes this all the more difficult. She shouldn’t have come here in the first place. She should’ve just stayed in River Heights with her father and her dog and her stupid fiancé.
“I understand that you’re angry.”
“Angry?” He says, half-sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “Oh, why yes, I’m furious.”
“I wish you wouldn’t act like this was just a normal life change.
“It is,”
“It is not,” She says, and he can hear her stand, the floorboards creaking underneath her tiny physique. Still, he remains turned towards the window. The once fluorescent colors of the afternoon are not melting into an ugly shade of gray.
“Normal people go to college,” He says, softer this time. “People our age go to college. I’m a year behind. I’ll be fine.”
“I hate to tell you, but neither of us is normal. My mother was a spy for god’s sake and—and your father runs a crime agency for teenagers.”
“Maybe I need a little normalcy in my life,” His jaw clenches.
“I don’t think—”
He whirls around, watching her step back in surprise, her eyes widening at his sudden aggression. He can feel anger bubbling in his veins. “You don’t know what I need in my life, Nancy,” He breathes. “You haven’t been around. You’ve been gallivanting all around the world solving mysteries and being everyone’s favorite person.”
“Funny,” She says flatly, her lips pursed into a flat line on her face. “You sound just like Ned when you say that.”
He tosses his hands in the air in defeat, the floorboards moaning underneath the shift in his weight. “Funny,” He mocks her, turning his back once more, propping one arm against the windowsill. “You’re still marrying him.”
“We’ve been together for four years,” She practically spits at him. “What was I supposed to do, just say no?”
“Yeah, actually, when you don’t actually love someone like that, you’re supposed to say no,”
“How the hell would you know if I don’t love Ned?” She says, her voice becoming louder now, more shrill, just like it always did when she got mad.
“Look at my call log and tell me who’s called me more times at three in the goddamn morning,”
“Oh, so now you’re pissed at me because I called you for relationship advice? Is that what this is about?” He hears her hands fall down to her sides. “Excuse me for misunderstanding you when you told me you’d be here for me no matter what.”
He turns to face her again. The veins on his forehead have begun to pop out and his jaw is still fixed in place. He shakes his head at her. “I have been here for you,” He says through clenched teeth. “The point is that you’re supposed to be here for me, right now, when I need it the most.”
“I’m not just going to let you walk out on your entire life, your own brother, just so you can go get a business degree in another state.” Her face falls.
“I’ve been living in a fucking daydream way too long,” He walks towards the door, bumping her slightly with his shoulder. “It’s time for me to just grow up.”
“Oh, and growing up just means abandoning your family? Is that what it means to be a ‘man’, Frank?” He can see her eyes well with tears, but he keeps his face neutral, instead zeroing in on the spot on the wall directly behind her. “I can’t believe you’re being so selfish,”
There’s anger nipping at his tongue, and his nostrils flare out as he sighs deeply, taking his gaze from the wall to her face, watching a tear roll down her round face. “Selfish?” He repeats. “You—you think I’m being selfish?”
“Yeah,” She drags a thumb across her face. “I do,”
He makes a noise that slightly resembles a laugh, pulling his hands out of his pockets to run them through his thick hair, falling into a pace around his bedroom. “Selfish,” He repeats again with a shake of his head. “I can’t even believe you’d say that to me.”
“It’s called being honest,” She says, and though she’s fighting hard to sound strong, her voice is wavering from the tears. “That’s what friends are supposed to be. Honest.”
“Well, to be honest with you—” He stops again, wheeling around to face her, feeling himself start to shake. “—I think you’re making a huge fucking mistake marrying him. And I think you know that, and you’re just too selfish to admit it.”
Her mouth falls open. “What in the hell does Ned have to do with any of this?”
“You’re afraid of being alone,” He says, his voice jumping up an octave. Two more tears wiggle their way down her face. “You’ve always had him by your side and the thought of not having that precious security blanket makes your stomach hurt so instead of just swallowing your own fucking pride you have to say yes to him.”
“I am not afraid of being alone,” She manages, the waves of tears coming faster now, dripping off the bottom of her lip.
“You are,” He says, his fists suddenly clenched so tight that he can feel his knuckles turn white. “You just can’t admit it.”
“You don’t—know the—the first thing about me,” She chokes out, pulling the back of her hand over her face, smearing what little makeup she was wearing. “You—you are s-such an asshole,”
“Yeah, go ahead, cry,” He says, waving a hand at her. “I don’t care. I’ve spent my whole life caring and now I don’t. You’re so caught up in your own life that you don’t even see how much this is killing everyone around you.”
“A-and this is the first time I’m hearing this?” She stammers.
“Yeah, because everyone is scared of you,” He can feel his left arm shaking tremendously, but tries not to notice. “And I was too before I realized you’re full of shit. You’re settling for a guy you don’t even love just so you won’t have to end up alone.”
“I’m—I’m—”
“You don’t love him,” Frank spits. “You never did.”
She takes a moment to collect herself, wiping the sticky tears from her face and closing her eyes to regain her own sense of self. Once calm again, she reopens them, pursing her lips together tight. She reaches up and pushes him—which catches Frank off guard, to say the least—and he knocks into the bedside table, the lamp tipping over to the ground with a loud crack.
“You can’t sit here and tell me that I’m the one that’s full of shit when you’re the one running away from all your problems because you’re too much of a coward to face them yourself.”
Frank manages another laugh, this time clamping both hands to the side of his face. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
She crosses her arms tightly against her chest. “You don’t want to deal with the consequences of staying so you just want to run away. Just like that.”
“Yeah, you would know, I suppose,” He snaps. “You’re good at running away when things get dicey.”
That warrants a slap in the face, and Frank’s cheek grows numb after a moment. With his eyes closed tight, he relishes in the pain, trying to determine if this is the last time she’ll ever touch him, and simultaneously deciding if he really cares anyway. In a year, she’ll be married to someone else and he’ll be halfway across the country.
“Are you finished?” He says, his voice low.
“You might be able to push everyone else away, but you can’t do that to me.” She says, and her face softens a little. “You can’t make me disappear.”
She doesn’t know how bad he’s aching for her, the sting of her hand still present on his face, and he bites the inside of his cheek to keep from giving himself away. “I just can’t be around you anymore,” He gazes down at the floorboards, testing himself on the intricate details he’d memorized earlier. “Not… not while you’re with him.”
“That’s why you’re leaving?”
“No, that’s why I can’t stay.”
“Same thing,”
He looks up at her again, and her eyes have reddened and become puffy, but the dim lighting from the window makes her skin glow with a weird purple haze from the moonlight, and he’s becoming drunk on just the sight of her.
“It’s not the same thing,” He mumbles. “Going to college is simply a means to an end.”
“But you don’t want to be there.”
“That’s not true,” He sits down on the oak bed again. “I like school.”
“That might be true, but…” She joins him on the bed, keeping her legs a short distance away from his, her bare thighs rubbing against the old mattress. “… you love The Network more. You love everything about being an agent. You know that.”
“Joe likes it more than I do.” A beat. “He’s always been the more exciting one between the two of us.”
“Okay, well that’s definitely a lie.”
He fidgets with his long fingers, picking at the dead skin lying around his cuticles. “I guess.”
“Why does my engagement make you so upset?”
The question takes him off guard and, for a second, he has no answer. No real answer he wants to give her, anyway, given the circumstances. “I just… I just think that it’s a little soon.”
“You’re going to give me the same speech my dad gave me.”
“You… you mean he didn’t ask your dad before proposing?” He’s a little taken aback, really, to think that her boyfriend of nearly five years wouldn’t have the decency to at least ask her father for the blessing of their marriage. Even though this was deep into the twenty-first century, Frank considered himself quite old school. Regardless of their history, he’d ask Carson before—
Well, he’d ask his girlfriend’s father before proposing. That he knows for sure.
“I mean, no,” She sighs. “I don’t really know. The whole thing happened so fast. We were at dinner with my father and Hannah, and the next thing I knew he was pulling out a tiny little box and getting down on one knee.”
The very thought makes his stomach lurch, and he resists the urge to gag, thinking about how fucking smug Ned probably looked down there, beaming up at Nancy, picturing their perfect little life together, thinking her love for him was unwavering.
“Oh.”
“I don’t even think he told Bess and George,” Her gaze falls to her lap. “Or anyone, for that matter.”
“And… you’re okay with all of this? Honestly?”
“Despite what you seem to think about me, I do care about him.”
“I sense there’s a but coming.”
“I… well, no, not necessarily,” She lifts her head, not quite meeting his eye. In fact, it appears she’s avoiding it, her eyes instead wandering around the length of Frank’s bedroom. “I don’t know what I want. He’s a good man.”
Right. “I never said he wasn’t.”
“It just seems like you have this… internal problem with him.”
He sighs. It seems like it’s the fifteenth time he’s sighed in her presence since she got here, and he’s not sure he has much air left in his lungs. “I wouldn’t really say it’s a problem.” He grips his knees, leaning forward to stretch out his arms. “Just a bit of hesitance.”
“Hesitance?”
“I don’t think he… understands you.”
“He doesn’t.” She says rather matter-of-factly, and Frank sits back up erect, finally meeting her gaze. He isn’t sure he’s ever seen a more beautiful color than that of her irises, and before he can manage to look away, she scoots closer to him on the bed. “But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love me any less.”
“I know that,” Frank clears his throat. “I’m just… I don’t know. Thinking aloud, if you will.”
“I think it’s sweet that you care so much about me.”
His throat feels tight and he can feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight. Her legs are uncomfortably close to his, and the way she’s positioned herself on his bed has made the material slip up further up her thighs.
“I mean, of course I care.” There’s thousands of words flying through his head, but he tries to contain himself for the sake of this conversation. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She falls silent again, this time making him grow more nervous by the second, until suddenly she draws close to him, her chin tucked slightly into his left arm. She looks behind him, her gaze falling back onto his desk. “I remember when we used to FaceTime when you were sitting there.”
Frank lets himself laugh. “You used to distract me from my case files. I’m surprised The Network still wants me as an agent.”
She presses her forehead harder against his arm. “I really, really, really don’t want you to leave.”
“I have to do this.”
“But you don’t. You know that.”
He runs a shaky hand through his hair again, surprised there are not tuffs of it falling out by how stressed he is during this moment, and watches her gaze fall from his desk to the floor again, all the while keeping her head on his arm, inches away from one of his broad shoulders.
“Nancy, I can’t just—”
“Does this mean you’re not coming to the wedding?”
He takes a deep breath, trying to fetch the words to form a sentence that would make her happy, knowing that there weren’t enough words in the human language to express to her how he feels right now, how he would feel then, watching her walk down the aisle in a silver dress, marrying someone that didn’t love her as much as he did.
“I—I don’t know, I might have exams or something going on that weekend.”
She pauses. “It’s going to be in the summer. You won’t have classes.”
“Well, yeah, but I—”
“Frank, I won’t be able to do this without you.” She lifts her head, keeping herself close, their face separated by only inches of space. “You have to promise me you’ll be there.”
“You’re asking way too much of me right now.” He says, unable to break her gaze, her big blue eyes summoning out some sort of truth that he doesn’t have.
“I need you to be there.”
“Nancy… I—I can’t promise you that right now.”
Her bottom lip trembles and he can tell she’s getting ready to cry again. Without thinking, his palm meets her face, gently caressing the side of it, and she leans into his hand, her eyes closing softly with his touch.
“Frank,” She whispers. “I really need to tell you something.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything.” He says back, longing for the space between them to become smaller, resisting the temptation to draw himself nearer to her. “I understand.”
“N-no, you really don’t—”
She’s crying again, the blue orbs on her face becoming clouded with tears, wetting his palm. He takes his other hand to her other cheek, framing her small face with his touch, letting her collapse her weight into him.
“P-please—”
“Shh,” He says to her, cradling her head safely in his hands, making sure his head is positioned above hers, using his thumb to push away fallen tears. She cries harder now, her whole face becoming damper by the second, and he pulls up the sleeves from his sweatshirt to dry her skin. “It’s alright. It’s going to be okay. I’m still going to be a call away. You can come visit. I’m sure you’d love campus. It’s like a thousand years old. There has to be some kind of secret society for you to exploit.”
He thinks it’ll get her to laugh, but she doesn’t; she takes one of her tiny hands and wraps it around the circumference of his wrist.
“It’s a-always been you.”
He tries to find words, but realizes the search is useless. He stays quiet, attentive, hanging on her every word like it’s the elixir of life, like they’re the only thing keeping him alive. His hands do not waver away from her face.
“Frank, you s-should know that—that—that—.”
“Shh,” He says again, keeping his voice low. “Just relax.”
“—that it’s always, always b-been you, f-from day one.”
“You’re upset, just try to relax. I’m sorry,” He rubs his thumb over her forehead, pushing down the little wrinkles that have arisen there. “I didn’t mean those things that I said earlier. I know you love Ned. I’m sorry.”
“N-no, you w-were right—”
“Shh, shh, come on, breathe.”
She takes a few little inhales, trying hard to focus on her breathing, her chest moving up and down shakily. When she regains herself once more, she finds his eyes again. “Please don’t go.”
He always thought the only three words from her that would get him to do anything would be ‘I love you’, but now he’s falling apart at the seams, watching her bottom lip twitch, her big eyes blinking rapidly.
“Frank, please don’t do this. Don’t go. I need you.”
“You’re going to be fine,” He’s saying, but even he doesn’t believe it. She’s suddenly so fragile, like this tiny little bird, broken right in his own hands, and he’s the one destroying her. “It’s—it’s going to be okay, I promise.”
Her grip on his wrist tightens. “Frank,” She says sharply. “You can’t fucking do this to me.”
“Nancy, I can’t just—”
“Yes, yes you can!” She exclaims, squeezing his wrist so hard that he actually thinks she might break it, wiggling his left hand from her face to free himself from her grasp. “Frank, god damn it, don’t you see how hard this is for me? I know it’s selfish to ask you to stay, but I’m going to ask you anyway. Please. You can’t go.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Life isn’t simple.”
“I’ve already got so much invested in this—”
“And I’ve got so much invested in you, don’t you understand!”
“That’s not fair,” He says, feeling his face grow hot. “You’re engaged. You can’t play that card when you’re about to marry someone else.”
“Why is it so wrong to want you in my life?”
“It’s not wrong, I’m just telling you I can’t just drop everything now. Paperwork has already been signed, tuition has been paid for, I already got my orientation packet—”
“Frank!” She exclaims, one of her tiny hands pushing up to meet the bottom of his chin. She pulls his head down slightly, once again meeting his eyes, their faces inches apart. “Fuck, I love you, do you not understand that?”
He blinks. “You’re getting married,” He whispers.
“To a great guy—” She says, pushing her trembling lips out towards him, minimizing the space to mere centimeters. “—that I don’t deserve.”
“You…” He trails off, suddenly lost in the intricacies of her face. “… deserve the world.”
“Ned would willingly give me the world. The stars. The moon. Probably the entire galaxy, if I asked him.” Her eyelashes are long. He never noticed that before now. Granted, he’s never been quite this close to her until now. “I don’t want the world.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Just you.”
It takes Frank by surprise when he can feel the soft texture of her lips on his, her hands slipping behind his neck to pull him closer. His right hand, still locked on her cheek, doesn’t move; he works his fingers through her hair, his fingers getting lost in her long strawberry-blonde tendrils as he gently massages her scalp. Her lips move rhythmically against his own, her tongue finally finding its way through the gates of his teeth and dancing around his mouth whilst his own tongue shyly does the same. He can feel her nails digging into the back of his neck, pulling his head down harder against her own, listening to the sweet little noises she’s making with every repositioning of her lips.
Without hesitation, he moves towards her, angling himself over her tiny physique as she lays with her back on his mattress, all the while working his mouth against hers, feeling her soft hair slip through his fingers, wondering to himself why in the fucking hell he waited so long to do this in the first place.
He pulls away first—albeit longingly—and remains quiet, submersed in the moment she’s made for them, gently guiding his mouth to the space along her jawline, nibbling it at first before pressing the extent of his mouth against it, her tiny exhales just enough to keep him going.
She’s giggling now underneath his kisses, the sound quickly filling up the room. He cares little about the rest of his family downstairs, quickly repositioning himself so to push the material of her shirt upward and kiss most of her stomach, working his way in small circles around her bellybutton. He smiles against her skin, drunk on the warmth radiating from her being, so entangled in love that he feels like he’s been seeing the world upside-down and she’s the only one that could possibly turn it right-side up.
She squirms underneath him, and he finally relents himself, shifting his weight back up to kiss her on the nose.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” He says after a long while.
“You never expected to kiss an engaged woman?”
“Hardly,” He says with a bit of a self-depreciative laugh. “I never thought in a million years I’d be able to kiss you.”
Her arms wrap around his broad figure again, her hands landing somewhere on his shoulder blades. “I think you’re too hard on yourself.”
“What clued you in? The fact that my last name is ‘Hardy’?”
She laughs, tipping her beautiful head back, smiling up at him for a moment before adding, “Get up. I need to do something.”
Obediently, he moves himself up and off her, regaining his balance—which is, for some reason, ridiculously hard to do right now—against the doorframe of his room. She pulls down the fabric of her shirt and stands as well, only she digs out her cell phone buried in her back pocket and pulls open the door next to him.
“Where—where are you going?”
“I have to go call Ned—,” She says, and his eyes widen slightly. “—to tell him that I’m staying a little longer to help you unpack all your things. And that we need to have a talk when I get home.” Then, she disappears into the hallway.
we don’t have to talk our clothes off
to have a good time, oh no
we can dance and party all night
and drink some cherry wine