Plan B

Chapter Twenty-two

Frankie was sitting up in bed and appeared to be unflustered by Brookie’s rapid entrance.

“Hello,” he said, waving.  “Something chasing you?”

Brookie slumped against the door and took a deep breath before replying.

“Frankie… don’t be angry—”

“What, that you’ve only brought me toast?  Hey, it’s only food I’m gonna hurl again.  No need to freak out.”

Brookie winced.  Yet again, Frankie was in an obnoxiously cheerful mood, and it made him want to hit him.

“No, the media,” he muttered, pushing himself away from the door.  “Selena told somebody who blabbed.”

“I know.”  Frankie grinned cheekily.  “She texted me this morning.”

“What?”  Brookie put the toast on the bed before he could drop it.  “What did she say?”

Frankie took a piece of toast and bit into it while he rooted under his pillow for his phone.

“Here,” he said around a large mouthful.  “I replied, too.”

“Oh, God, you didn’t.”

The situation was even worse than Brookie could have imagined.  With undeniable trepidation, he took the phone and looked at the conversation that the screen was displaying.

Thank you for your handy advice about logic, Selena had written.  I didn’t tell the media.  Unfortunately, a friend of mine did, and, as I said before, I’m not going to lie to protect him.  And I wouldn’t go near his room with a barge pole.  I’d be too disgusted by what I found in it.  I pity his company’s job trying to patch this scandal up.

It was, by anybody’s standards, a pretty nasty text.  Not to mention obvious that Selena had told her friend precisely so that the friend could tell the media.  The mention of the logic that Frankie had suggested was clearly to make sure that he didn’t release any recordings of their phone conversation, as Frankie had only laid that condition upon Selena going to the press.  Grimacing, Brookie barely dared scroll down to see what kind of excoriating reply Frankie had written.  If it was anything like Selena’s text, it was going to make his eyes burn.

To his surprise, it was extremely short.

Congratulations! :D  Now even Brookie knows you’re a total b*tch!

Brookie was unable to help a snort of laughter.

“Frankie!  What is this?”

Frankie shrugged cheerfully, shovelling down a second piece of toast.  “Male equivalent of Queen B mode?”

“‘B’ as in ‘bee’ or ‘b’ as ‘b*tch’?” Brookie asked.

A mischievous grin spread over Frankie’s face.  “‘B’ as in both.”

Shaking his head, Brookie passed the phone back.  “If the reincarnation exists, you’re going to come back as Regina from Mean Girls with a Burn Book so big that it’ll take a million years to read.”

Frankie demolished his sixth piece of toast with another extremely cheerful shrug.  “I think I’d much rather come back as a duck-billed platypus or a chameleon.  Both of them would suit me better than a human.”

Frowning, Brookie took three slices of toast before Frankie could inhale the rest of the plate.  For somebody who had been claiming to have a temperature at some godforsaken hour of the morning, Frankie was looking, acting and sounding remarkably healthy.