Summary: MC (Charlotte) goes out to breakfast with Kaitlyn and their friend, Frankie, where surprising announcements are made.
Notes: Frankie is my MC from my other series, The Boxer (AU). This is kind of prequel before she goes to New York and that series starts.
A couple of days later, Charlotte was rudely awoken by her blaring cell phone. Zig grunted at the sudden noise as Charlotte groped blindly on her nightstand for her phone. She quickly hit the button on the side to silence the alarm and squinted at her screen.
Breakfast with my favorite sister!
“Is everything okay?” Zig mumbled, rolling over to wrap his arm around her waist. Charlotte sighed and put down her phone.
“Yeah, sorry. Apparently Kaitlyn decided I’m having breakfast with her this morning and programmed an alarm on my phone,” Charlotte said as she put her phone face down on the nightstand.
“But it’s so comfy in here,” he murmured, pulling her tight against him as he kissed her neck.
“Trust me, I’d rather stay here, but if I don’t get up, Kaitlyn is liable to burst in here. And believe me, she is loud when she doesn’t get what she wants.”
“Your sister is always loud,” Zig said, his face buried in her hair, as Charlotte’s phone chirped loudly with an incoming text message.
“You’re not wrong,” she said with a laugh as she reached for her phone.
I know he’s hot, but get the fuck out of bed and come meet me.
As she was reading the text, a second one chimed.
Please call me when you get a chance, I’m off work all day.
It took Charlotte a moment to register who the second text was from. Shit. She’d wanted to respond to Chris’s last text message, but she hadn’t known what to say. Now she was officially ghosting him and she hated it. She sat up, her fingers hovering over the screen, before she finally typed out a message.
I’m about to meet my sister but I could maybe call later.
His reply came immediately.
Sounds good, no rush
Charlotte put down her phone, heart pounding. She had no idea what she was going to say to Chris, but she knew she couldn’t avoid this conversation forever. Or rather, she guessed she could, but she was trying to be less of a shitty person since breaking up with James.
“I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but do I have to go to breakfast?” Zig asked sleepily. Charlotte smiled down at him fondly as he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed a patch of bare skin on her hip.
“Nope,” she said, scooting over so she could lie down beside him again. “You’re driving back to Maine today, you need your rest.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, already starting to drift off again. Charlotte kissed his cheek and he tilted her lips to his, kissing her sleepily.
“Yes, go back to bed. I’ll be back in a bit and then we can spend your last day here however you want.”
“Oh, I know how I want to spend it,” he said with a smirk, eyes still closed, as he let his hand drift down her side to her leg, pulling it over his hip.
“I thought you were tired,” she laughed.
“Oh god, I am,” Zig said, letting his body go slack against the bed. The night before, they’d spent a night out bar hopping and they’d stayed out so late they’d closed the bars. And when they got home … well, Zig had reason to be tired today.
“I’ll see you later,” Charlotte said. “But when I get back, I expect you to have taken these off,” she said, tugging at the ties on her purple pajama pants he wore.
“I promise,” he mumbled.
“Why did you insist on meeting so early?” Charlotte asked when she arrived at the bistro and collapsed into a chair next to her sister.
“8 AM isn’t early if you go to bed at a reasonable hour,” Kaitlyn said, raising an eyebrow at her. “Although, judging by that hickey on your neck, I have a feeling you stayed up a little too late.”
Charlotte shrugged. “Worth it.”
“By the way, Frankie’s meeting us here,” Kaitlyn said as she signaled to the server for a cup of coffee for Charlotte. “She said she had something she wanted to tell us.”
“She finally needs help moving a body?”
“Oh, please,” Kaitlyn scoffed. “Frankie doesn’t need help hiding her bodies.”
As if on cue, Frankie came rushing in and sat down at the table. “Hey, twins, sorry I’m late.”
“She only got here a minute ago,” Kaitlyn said, hiking her thumb at Charlotte.
“Hey, in my defense, I didn’t know we were meeting until my alarm went off this morning,” Charlotte protested, narrowing her eyes at her sister.
“Yeah, I stole your phone last night and programmed an alarm while you were playing pool with Zig,” Kaitlyn said nonchalantly.
“Speaking of,” Frankie said, leaning across the table. “Spill. Immediately.”
“Spill what?” Charlotte asked innocently. “Ow!” she yelped as Frankie kicked her lightly in the shin.
“You know what,” Frankie said. “Last I talked to you, you were still in Maine because James hid you up there.” Charlotte grimaced but didn’t disagree. “And suddenly, you’re back early with this gorgeous man attached to your face and Kaitlyn tells me there’s another one?”
“You should see the other one,” Kaitlyn said as she took a sip of her water. “He looks like he fell out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue.”
Charlotte sighed, knowing there was no way she was going to get out of this. After they ordered their food, Charlotte relayed the whole story to Frankie, starting with her first day in Maine and ending with Zig on her doorstep.
“Oh my god,” Frankie said, enthralled by Charlotte’s story. “So, now what?”
“I … I don’t know,” Charlotte admitted. “Zig offered to transfer somewhere closer to me, but I can’t let him do that, we barely know each other.”
“So?” Kaitlyn asked. “If you know, you know.”
“That’s just it, I don’t know if I do know,” Charlotte countered.
“Look, I’m not going to pressure you one way or the other, but … I mean, Zig came to Boston. And I like Chris a lot, but you haven’t heard anything from him since you left Maine.”
Charlotte squirmed a little in her seat.
“OH MY GOD!” Kaitlyn shouted, drawing the stares of other patrons in the restaurant. Charlotte felt her face flame.
“Jesus, Kaitlyn, we’re sitting right here,” Frankie said.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kaitlyn hissed at Charlotte, lowering her voice to a loud stage whisper that still gave the rest of the bistro a clear audio on their conversation. “When did you hear from him?”
“About a week ago,” Charlotte said. Kaitlyn snatched her phone away before Charlotte could stop her.
“And this morning, apparently,” Kaitlyn said, deftly unlocking her sister’s phone and scrolling through her texts. “You’re going to call him later?”
“I think so. I don’t know,” Charlotte said.
“Doesn’t this say something?” Frankie asked, keeping her voice low in an effort to get the rest of the tables to stop listening to their conversation. “You’ve been spending the last few days here with Zig but you’re not responding to Chris. It sounds like you’ve made a choice.”
“I don’t deserve either of them!” Charlotte exclaimed. “I just spent the last year as James’s mistress; that hardly qualifies me to be a decent girlfriend to anyone.”
“Charlie, I swear to god, you have to stop talking like that or I’m literally going to chuck this glass of water if your goddamn face,” Frankie said. Charlotte recognized that look; Frankie wasn’t kidding. “Relationships are complicated. Shit happens. Just because you made a mistake–”
“For a year,” Charlotte interjected, but Frankie ignored her.
“–doesn’t mean you have to punish yourself for the rest of your life,” she continued. “You, my friend, deserve to be happy.”
Charlotte felt tears prickle at the corners of her eyes but she swallowed hard, pushing away the knot in her throat. She glanced over at Kaitlyn, who had gone oddly quiet.
“Twin, what do you want?” Kaitlyn asked.
“I … I don’t know,” Charlotte said. “And I hate constantly saying that I don’t know, but it’s true.” She paused. “You know, in my book, Ana just chooses to be alone.”
“Yeah, I read it,” Kaitlyn said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “And if I thought you actually wanted to be alone, I’d let this go. But I really don’t think you do. I think you know who you want to be with, but you’re afraid.”
“And what, exactly, am I afraid of?” Charlotte asked, narrowing her eyes at her sister.
“You’re afraid he doesn’t want you back. Which is stupid, because he obviously does.”
“Okay, I’ve had enough,” Charlotte said. “We’re not even here to talk about me. I thought Frankie had some big announcement.”
“Hey, don’t look at me, I’m happy to keep analyzing your life instead,” Frankie said with a grin. Charlotte balled up a napkin and threw it at her, which Frankie caught with a laugh. “Okay, fine, you get a break for a minute. But only a minute,” she warned, holding up a finger.
“Ugh, fine,” Charlotte huffed with an exaggerated sigh, thankful to have the spotlight off of her, no matter how briefly.
“Well, you’re right, I do have news,” Frankie said, sitting up a little in her seat. “So, you guys know that I’ve been trying to find a tattoo shop that will take me on as an apprentice.” Both sisters nodded. “Well … I found one.”
“That’s amazing!” the twins chorused. “Which one?” Charlotte added.
“That’s the thing … it’s in New York.”
Charlotte and Kaitlyn stared at her, dumbfounded.
“WHAT?” Kaitlyn shouted.
“Jesus Christ, Kaitlyn, you have to stop doing that,” Frankie hissed at her as several heads in the restaurant turned towards them again.
“You couldn’t find a shop in Boston?” Charlotte asked, disappointment flooding her chest at the idea of one of her best friends moving away.
“I can, but this one is really special. There’s this one artist I’ve idolized for years, Thomas Hunt, and he’s the one who agreed to take me on.”
“Is he the one that did that really amazing Sid and Nancy tattoo you showed me?” Kaitlyn asked, trying to remember.
“That’s the one,” Frankie said happily, straightening up a little in her chair. “I was up there a few weeks ago visiting a friend and I just went by the shop one day. I don’t know what got into me, but I went into his shop and asked to speak to him.”
“Actually, that sounds exactly like something you would do,” Kaitlyn interrupted, raising a teasing eyebrow. Frankie rolled her eyes, but she smiled.
“Okay, maybe it is. Anyway, he was not thrilled to have me just walk in, but for some reason he agreed to look at my artwork. It felt like he looked at it forever without saying anything, and then he told me he’d be willing to teach me.”
“Frankie, that’s huge!” Charlotte exclaimed. “I mean, I’m really bummed you’re moving, but this sounds incredible,”
“Thanks,” she said, unable to suppress a huge grin. “It really is.”
“We’re happy for you,” Kaitlyn assured her. “We’re just selfish bitches you want to keep you all to ourselves.”
“And, hey, New York isn’t that far away,” Frankie pointed out. “If Zig can drive all the way down from Maine, you guys can certainly come up to New York and vice versa.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes good naturedly. “Just when I think I’m getting a break …”
“I have something I want to talk to you about.”
Charlotte looked over at her sister. Kaitlyn had been uncharacteristically quiet on their subway trip home until that moment. “What is it?”
“Well,” Kaitlyn started, then hesitated. “If you’re not okay with this, then just say the word, it’s fine. You really don’t have to.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you want before answering for me?”
Kaitlyn took a deep breath. “I want to ask Annisa to move in.”
Charlotte stared at her twin, a slow smile creeping across her face. “Really?”
“Okay, stop, don’t get all weird about it,” Kaitlyn said, looking away quickly.
“I’m not getting weird about it,” Charlotte said. “Twin, this is exciting!”
“Really?”
“Don’t you think it’s exciting?”
Kaitlyn smiled a little. “Yeah, I do.”
“What changed? When you visited me earlier this summer, you weren’t into it at all.”
“I don’t know,” Kaitlyn said. “But a couple weeks ago, she stayed over and when I woke up in the morning, I saw her sleeping next to me and I realized that this is what I want. Her and me, every day.”
“Oh my god, twin, you’re going to make me cry,” Charlotte said as happy tears threatened to spill down her face.
“Okay, can we not right now?” Kaitlyn asked as she looked around the subway car. “People are staring.”
“Oh, so now you care if people are staring?”
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