ONE: Vanilla on My Hands

26: Who Owns That Many Scarves, Anyway?

He hoped that continuing with cleaning would help, but it really didn't. Even when he got to the bathroom and filled up a bucket with water to clean the floor, he really couldn't stop the pain or the tears that were now pouring down his face, every small noise that left him while he sobbed was echoing in the small room. He couldn't stop because every part of him told him to keep going. The bathroom floor was clean, but to Frank it was dirty and it had to be dirty because if it wasn't, then he had nothing to do other than realize that he was still so very broken. He felt like scrubbing the floor was the best thing for him, after finding a brush to do it with, but it wasn't helping him. It was something for him to do, but his heart still ached and his tears still dissolved into the soapy water on the floor. Frank missed Ryan, that was a given, but he didn't want to believe that he was that weak.

Frank hadn't realized that he was no longer alone in the house after some time. Jamia had come home, finding her place spotless beyond belief. She knew that she had left the place tidy, but even she could tell that Frank had been cleaning. The smell of bleach burned her nose from the moment she had opened the front door. She stepped into the living room to find that the sofa was closer to the TV than she usually had it, her bookshelf had been rearranged and the sugar spill she had forgotten to clean up was now gone from the kitchen. She followed the sounds that drew her upstairs, the grunts and sobs and the faint 'swishing' that sounded like a scrub-brush. She pushed the bathroom door open and found Frank on his knees, furiously scrubbing her bathroom floor while he cried his eyes out.

"What are you doing?" Frank heard instantly, stopping mid-scrub to look up and see Jamia looking down at him with a mildly panicked confusion. He didn't even shield how he looked, his red, swollen eyes and tear-stained face on display, his fingers looked pruned and raw, his fingernails had been chewed off and his hair was damp- Sweat or water, she didn't know.

"Wh-What does it l-look like I'm do-doing," Frank answered brokenly, turning his attention back to the floor, carrying on from where he left off, scrubbing harder than he had been, to stop the tears despite knowing that there was no way they were stopping anytime soon. He was full-flow now; ugly crying, snot coming out of his nose, his whole face probably wetter than the floor, "I'm- I'm cleaning."

"You're crying," Jamia stated the obvious, coming into the bathroom before trying to get down onto the floor with him. She gripped onto the side of the bath and knelt down in front of Frank, who was avoiding eye contact with her. She was suddenly grateful for prenatal yoga, in the back of her mind, but she focused more on the fact that he swore that the floor was dirty. It had to be cleaned and he had to finish this or he would feel like he had failed. She grew worried, "Frank, look at me."

"I'm busy." He told her, not even looking up when his words came out like a desperate plea for it all to stop. He was on a carnival ride without brakes and no one seemed to be hearing his screams, too busy having fun around him to notice how he was absolutely terrified.

"Frank, what is going on?" Jamia pushed, trying to reach out a hand to still him, but he refused to be stopped. She could not stop him, or the pain he felt in his chest would be real.

"No-Nothing is going o-on w-w-with me," He insisted, going into denial about how he was actually crying whilst cleaning, "I ju-just w-wanted to clean. Your h-h-house was dirty."

"No, it wasn't. I cleaned this morning before I went out."

"W-Well, I w-wanted to clean."

"Frank, just stop for one second," Jamia insisted, seeing how he looked so broken and hurt, but he was a stubborn bastard and even Jamia knew that. She watched him scrub the same tile on her floor intensely. He wasn't usually one for cleaning to the point of practically removing the pattern from the floor. The man had barely cried since the first week of moving in, he had closed up when it came to anything about his break up, so Jamia felt like she knew what had pushed Frank to his breaking point. She edged forward, "Frank, please."

He refused to stop, ignoring Jamia, he plunged the brush back into the bucket he had by his side, pulling it back out before he continued to clean the same spot again, sniffing hard, his eyes screwing shut for a second as a small sob left him. He gritted his teeth, feeling his fingers blistered under the tight hold on the bristled besom.

"Frank, just give- Hey!" Jamia gasped when Frank batted her hand away from him roughly. She had only wanted to take the brush away from him. get him to stop for a second so they could talk, but he had refused point-blank, pushing her away before he carried on "Frank, give me the brush-"

"No."

"Frank, just stop for one fucking second," Jamia spoke sternly, finally getting a hand on his own, "Frank, listen to me-"

"No!" He snapped, trying to free himself from Jamia's grip, but she had a hold of him, stopping him, the bristles on the brush being pushed down and bent against the floor as they fought over it, "I ne-..ed to clean. The fl-floor is dirty."

"The floor is fine," Jamia reassured him, trying to take the brush before he pulled back. Her grip slipped and Frank was finally free of her. Unfortunately, he forgot how close he had the bucket to him, hitting it with his elbow, causing it to tip and the contents of it spilling out onto the floor, "Fuck, Frank, for fuck sake..."


"Wh-Why did you st-stop me?" Frank shot his question out, finally looking back at Jamia with pain in his eyes. Her heart broke to see her friend like this, he was hurting so much. Even if the floor had been dirty at one point, it was now as the water spread across the tiles, soaking into Frank's jeans as he remained kneeling on the bathroom floor, "L-Look what you d-d-did. The floor is dirty a-again."

"It's not dirty," Jamia reassured him again, finally having his undivided attention. She watched his eyes fill with tears and she tried to fight her own reaction, "Frank, please... What is going on with you? What's happened?"

"I just w-wanted to clean," Frank told her, "C-Can I not just do something nice for you? Clean your fucking house... Nez, I just wanted to... I can't fucking... Oh, God..." Frank broke down, the weight of everything in his head became too much. Every thought he had been trying to ignore while he cleaned became too much. Every memory that made him realize that he might actually have missed Ryan came flooding back. He hated feeling like this, he didn't want to miss Ryan. He wanted to hate him for the way he had treated him over the past six years, but Frank could never 'hate'. That was too strong of an emotion for him. No matter what, he knew that he would never fully hate Ryan.

"Baby..." Jamia spoke softly, watching Frank dissolve on the bathroom floor, his pained sobs echoed in the tiled room as his hands came up to cover his face, He kneeled on the sodden floor, not even caring that his jeans had soaked up most of the water that he had been using, his knees ached and throbbed, his feet were numb under his weight. Jamia moved forward carefully, "Hey, shh... Frank, what's wrong?"

Frank didn't answer. The force of his emotional outburst was too strong for him to even consider answering. His throat felt tight from crying, like he was choking while the tears fell and his whole face contorted with pain behind his hands.

"I d-don't know," He finally answered, revealing his face, only to look up at the ceiling, "Nez, I do-don't fuck-fucking know what's going on with me. I th-thought I was fine... I've been feeling fine all w-week and then it just, it came over me and I needed s-something to stop me from thinking."

"Thinking about what?" Jamia asked, trying to get into Frank's head. Frank refused to admit it to himself, he refused to think about it any further because he had given in for a split second and the pain that made the tears spill over again, a choked sobbing forcing its way out of his throat, he squeezed his eyes shut.

"Frank, please talk to me," Jamia spoke, resting a hand on Frank's thigh to comfort him, "You're scaring me."

"Why do I miss him?" Frank finally let the question out, a weight lifting from him, but also at the same it pressed down harder. It hurt so much to finally admit what had pushed him to clean so aggressively in the first place. The sad truth that Frank had not wanted to admit, "Why, after everything he did to me, and how he made me feel, do I still miss him?"

"I'm sorry." She whispered as she wrapped an arm around Frank to comfort him. He had shattered more after finally admitting what was bothering him. Shaking against her, Jamia tried her best to hold it together just so she could be there for him.

Frank wiped his constantly-blocked, and runny, nose on the back of his wrist, "I wish I wasn't talking about him but, hey, it looks like I am. The asshole that took three-quarters of his dick and shoved it into his personality."

"Sweetie, it's okay to miss him," Jamia told Frank, watching him cry and sniffle. He had cried in front of her, but nothing like the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking crying that made you want to wrap your arms around him and tell him that everything was going to be okay. The crying she had walked in on a few minutes prior. "You spent six years with him; it's completely normal for you to feel this way. He was your life for so long... You removed him from your life and you're struggling, I take it?"

Frank nodded weakly, already understanding why he had cleaned like he was possessed. The sad realization that he was only doing it because he missed the way that Ryan would nag him to clean and keep the house in order, and literally everything else about him that he had hated two weeks ago. He shouldn't have missed him because Frank was done with him, but he couldn't stop his heart from aching, feeling like it was splitting in half in his chest.

"I just w-wish that I didn't feel like this," Frank admitted, resting his head on Jamia's shoulder while she held him, "I mean, it's been t-two weeks since I left him. I thought that I would have felt stuff like this right after the break-up. Why is it affecting me now? Why do I all of a sudden miss him?"

"Because you're human," Jamia sighed, wishing that she had a better answer to give to him, "I was the same after Jimmy left me. After what he did, I still missed the bastard like crazy."

"I don't w-want to feel th-this," Frank admitted, keeping his eyes closed in an attempt to calm down, also trying his best to ignore how he felt completely pathetic. He sucked in a shaky breath, "I j-just want it to st-stop."

"It will," Jamia sniffed, fighting back the tears that were already threatening to fall thanks to her pregnancy hormones, "Please trust me, Poptart, it'll get better. It'll get easier, you've just gotta get through all of this first. Yeah, you're going to remember parts about your relationship that you probably enjoyed and that's going to make you miss him. Yeah, you might think that if you get back with him then everything will be different and that is why you miss him, but it's not. Frank, whatever you wanted Ryan to be, clearly he wasn't. This sucks, I'm not going to sugarcoat because I would never bullshit you, but breakups suck."

"Two weeks after a breakup?"

"It's different for everyone," Jamia sighed, "Some people can move on in a week, others, it can take months before they feel like they have moved passed what happened to them."

"I don't want to be like this in an-another month's time," Frank admitted, putting his arm around Jamia now, grateful that she had found him, "I don't w-want to miss him. I just want to go back to normal... Whatever that is. I don't know with my-myself anymore."

"Trust me, sweetie," Jamia sniffed again, sitting on the bathroom floor with Frank, ignoring how her tights were starting to soak up some of the water, she began to cry, too. No control over why it started, and what she was crying over, she sniffed and grabbed a tissue from her pocket to wipe her nose, "It will get easier."

Frank looked at her with a puzzled frown, noticing the tears, "Hey, what's up? Hey, Nez, shh, why are you crying?"

"I don't kno-ow," Jamia wailed out, her already heightened emotions spiking more, making the whole moment of crying so much more, "I can't co-control it at the moment, st-stupid hormones. You cry, I cry-"

"Don't make me cry more," Frank pointed a finger at her, knowing full well that he was the kind of guy who was usually quite comfortable with his emotions; he wasn't afraid to cry if he needed to and, right now, it wasn't even a need. It was more of a natural reaction. Best friend cries, he cries too, "You know I can't stop when you start."

"I'm s-sorry," Jamia whimpered out, feeling Frank wrap his arms around her. Now his turn to comfort her even though he really needed her so much right now. She was there for him and of course Frank was always going to be there for her.

Frank felt arms on him, holding him, almost pulling him as he snapped out of his daydream. For a second he had forgotten where he was, almost like he had left his own body, but he came back into reality with a bump. He had been sobbing, his crying unabashedly for God knows how long.