Frankie was my shining light, I couldn’t put her out.
My phone vibrated in my hand as the plane began to taxi towards the runway. I clicked into the message without thinking and my heart stopped when I realised who it was from. On my screen was a text message from Frankie. I clicked into it so fast I almost broke the screen. I read through her text ten times with unblinking eyes and when the plane took off into the air and left England, Southwold and Frankie behind me . . . I had a smile on my face.
Text message #1
Frankie: I said goodbye to you again today. I miss you, I miss you and you have only been gone a handful of hours. You’re probably in the air right now on your way back to LA, but I’m keeping my word and texting you, just like I always did, to get things I need to say off my chest. I wish things had turned out differently for us. I wish my mum hadn’t died. I wish I wasn’t so scared for my future. I wish for a lot of things. This fucking sucks but that’s life, right? I’m going to pray for you every single night before I go to sleep. I’ll pray for your health, both physical and mental, and I’m going to pray so hard that you find peace. I want that more than anything for you.
Please, don’t worry about me, okay?
Like you said, I have Michael, I have Joe and Enda and I’m getting a friend in Anna now too. I’m hurting, but I know I’m going to be okay because my mum told me so. I didn’t tell you this earlier but I don’t think this is the end for us, Risk. I can’t tell the future but when we parted earlier, it didn’t feel like a forever goodbye. We always have a way of finding each other in the strangest of times. I just want you to know when your mental health is stable and you’re sober and you find your happiness and peace for you, and you alone, then if you want me still . . . you’ll know where I’ll be.
Southwold isn’t a big town.
Keep chasin’, rock star.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
FRANKIE
Four months later . . .
Clashing waves, the cool, crisp air, idle distant chatting and a blanket of cold, swaying water. This handful of things were my solace when my thoughts were so loud that they made me want to scream. The late July evening was paired with a stunning sunset, which granted me an abundance of peace not even my chaotic mind could spoil. Four months. It had been four long months since I last saw Risk in person outside the back entrance to the kitchen of Mary Well’s. I leaned against the rail of the pier, where I had found myself recently spending more and more time. Weather permitting, I took a stroll along the pier most evenings to unwind from a long, hard working day.
I looked down and smiled when a knock in my tummy caught my attention.
2021 had been a whirlwind of a year for me and it was only the twenty-eighth of July, only half-way through it. Risk Keller, my ex-boyfriend and the love of my life, came barrelling back into my predictable, quiet life and his very presence turned it upside down. Even though our relationship was rekindled rapidly and went downhill just as fast, I’m glad it happened the way it did because everything that occurred during that handful of weeks Risk was in Southwold led me to now.
Pregnant with his baby.
I didn’t find out until I was ten weeks along and Risk had already been in rehab by then so I kept it to myself. May had been giving me updates on him when he got them, which I greatly appreciated. I knew Risk’s stint in rehab had ended just over three weeks ago and every time I thought of why he hadn’t come to find me yet made me feel guilty. Just because Risk completed his ninety-day program didn’t mean he was just able to up and come back to a place, and person, that made him relapse.
If he would come back.
I closed my eyes trying to force away the fear and doubt that crept into my mind whenever I wondered about him coming home. In my first text message to him the night he went back to LA, I told him point blank that if he wanted me, I would be here waiting for him. That offer was still on the table and I knew it would remain on the table for the entirety of my life. Risk was my one, my person, and I believed I was his. I could only pray he returned to Southwold because I wasn’t the only person he would be coming home to, the baby in my belly wanted him home too.