history, huh?

She did, casually, ask why Frank. Because Becca knew Frank, and he was nice enough. 

Sure. It didn’t actually matter. None of it was real, anyway - a “love spell” on Frank would affect exactly nothing, and Becca would be satisfied, and Mel could go to bed. Sure, fine, let's cast a spell.

There wasn’t much to it - Mel suspected that Becca was making it up as she went. A circle of lit candles (mostly the cheap Yankee Candle knock-offs from the drugstore) and a strip of paper with Frank's name in Mel's handwriting, because it had to be hers, Becca said. Mel sat in the circle and held the paper to one of the flames. It caught fast, curling in on itself, and the smoke came off it gray and acrid-smelling. She jumped up to drop the burning paper into the sink, and opened the window. 

"So what's supposed to happen now," Mel asked. 

Becca pulled the window shut. "Now he's in love with you." She grinned wide, explaining, matter-of-fact: “It’ll be like me and Adam. He'll want to know how your day is going - all the time, every day. He'll remember things you said weeks ago. He'll show up when you need him. He’ll text you all the time, and he’ll send good morning and good night texts, too.”

Mel rolled her eyes. Ridiculous. 

Frank already did text her all the time. He asked about her day and then asked follow-up questions. And some of those things - well, he’d been doing them since the start. He’d been there for her since her first day at PTMC, he’d remembered their inside jokes after months away. That didn’t mean he was in love with her. He didn’t even know her back then.

He was just a good guy. When she left her taxes almost too late, he’d turned up at her house and filed them for her. He got dressed up to go to the ren faire with her because he wanted her to have fun and he knew she wouldn’t do it alone - it was nice of him, but it didn’t mean anything. That’s what friends do.

“Trust me, Mel. He’s going to start doing those things and then you can ask him to be your boyfriend! He’ll definitely say yes.”

***

Frank always had a thing for blondes. It was such a cliché to admit, and of course, he could play it off. A celebrity crush on Margot Robbie was innocent enough, boring to most.

No one knew it actually came from Caitlin Redwine, the lifeguard at the Science Hill Community Pool. She was nineteen when Frank was thirteen, and he was well into his twenties when she stopped being the first person in his mind when he wrapped his hand around his cock, the freckles across her nose and long braid down her back.

He did a double-take at Mel her first day, that same shade of dirty blonde woven tightly together, a little mole below her eye. It was his teenage crush all over again, and when he thought about her midway through his second rehab stint, hand down the front of his boxers after Abby missed visitation again, Frank came within seconds.

A fantasy, he told himself, reaching past his ring for the box of tissues on his nightstand. Nothing more.

***

Abby started wearing her rings again in June, and Frank did the same.

It was odd, cold to the touch and heavy. By August, it started to feel normal again when Frank would wear it more places than around the house and the hospital, when he stopped slipping it on and off in the parking lot, wondering if that morning’s fight was the last straw.

He thought he might never take it off again, but that was before he kissed Mel King, giving into his fantasy outside a 24/7 diner; before her eyes went dark, and she told him that she lived just on the next block; before he followed her up past the front door and into her bedroom, clothes in a pile on the floor.

“Leave it on,” Mel panted against his lips as he started to remove his ring. “You might forget it.”

Frank nodded and kissed her again, pressing her down against the mattress, exploring her soft, slick folds and teasing her entrance before sliding his finger in up to the last knuckle. She whined, hips bucking up against his hand. He slipped in another finger, and her tight cunt clenched around him, the shiny metal of his ring tangled up in her soaked curls.

He can’t stand it: Langdon keeps leaning in and King just smiles at him, probably doesn’t even realize he’s flirting. It’s egregious. 

He should pull Langdon aside. Be careful, he should say, You've got enough on your plate. Don't blow everything up over a woman who sees you as a brother at best. But then Langdon would snap at him, make some snarky comment about his extended sabbatical. Because, as much as he wishes otherwise, people don't really change. Not at their core, even when they try. 

By the time they all go around and say what they’re thankful for, Robby has to take a second to swallow down all the bitterness before he can say he’s grateful to be sleeping in his own bed again without sounding like a psycho.

Langdon says he's grateful for his support system. He says he’s lucky to have his friendships. He's looking at King when he says his life has been “greatly, greatly enriched” these past few months. That he's learning to be a better father. A better man.

No better husband. Robby notices, adds it to the tally. 

It’s ridiculous, and no one else seems bothered, which makes him wonder if this is just the new normal since he’s been gone. This is why he shouldn’t have left, he should have been here to make sure Langdon was staying the course. 

The fucker is just so - relaxed. It’s like he doesn’t care, or like he’s not struggling, which is absurd. When he smiles his face looks completely different, like he’s a whole new person.