Or mistress suite in this case.
“So?” Archie asked as though he couldn’t read the answer on her face, and Frankie laughed as she tackled him onto the bed. I wasn’t the first one to grab a pillow, but I had my shoes off and joined in on the pillow fight that sent the cats racing downstairs and away from the madness.
Later that night, breathless and spent, Frankie stared up at me with shining eyes. We’d welcomed her home with just Archie and I, since Coop and Jake got her on the plane, and the surprise and delight in her expression had made the concession more than worth it.
Besides, Archie wasn’t so bad, as long as we discussed it ahead of time. He even had a few inventive ideas of his own.
“I swear,” Frankie admitted, panting, “you two are determined to break my vagina.”
Not true, but it was still funny.
“You know, babe,” Archie mused from where he’d dropped next to us. “You make that sound like a challenge.”
“She does,” I agreed, and we both grinned at her groan. “Would you like us to take it as a challenge, Angel?”
Because we could do that again. It wouldn’t take that long to recover, but only if she wasn’t too sore.
We had all the time in the world to get it right.
Jake
Even after seeing the pictures and the virtual tour and all the discussions with the guys, the brownstone was a hell of a lot more than I expected. Even better, we had all the space in the world. Yes, we had our own bedrooms, but the likelihood that we’d use them that often was slim. The space was more so we could retreat on our own if we needed it or with her if we wanted it.
Her room, even on date nights, had the biggest bed, and if everyone wanted to crash there, it was fine. Yes, we’d still have to rotate who got to sleep with her right next to them, but we’d figure it out.
The garden in the back wasn’t that great, but there was a table and chairs and sunshine. Jeremy had already replanted the flower boxes, and while we had neighbors, we had privacy walls too. There was a place up on the roof if we wanted to go up there with more garden boxes, and Bubba and I decided we’d add a grill if there were no laws against it.
Honestly, the first week in New York, they barely let her out of bed and I didn’t blame them. I didn’t even complain that my rotation on date night got delayed by a week, because I had her to myself for a whole month. Beyond that, I joined the guys for their daily run and so did Frankie. She also spent a lot of time with her cats, and I couldn’t blame her.
We mapped some routes to school and went to pick up textbooks. Even having read all about NYU, it was like when we got to Harvard. It was huge. And I wasn’t gonna lie, there was some excitement over the idea of diving into my first engineering classes.
Dad even asked me about them the next time we sat down to play. The game console had been a good idea. Call of Duty let us bond and take our frustrations out on each other. Coop said it was healthy, I just said it was fun.
What cracked me up was when Bubba got his dad playing too and the four of us went after each other.
We made appointments to get Frankie’s navel pierced, a job that required all four of us to be present, and I kept an eye on the guy who was going to do it. He tried to talk her into a hood piercing, and that conversation lasted all of five minutes before he shut the fuck up and laughed at me glaring at him.
Pretty sure his laughter died about the time the other guys joined me in glaring, and then it was Frankie who laughed at our possessive asses. While we were there, I settled on the dragon pattern with one of the artists and set up my first appointment to come back. It would take a few, and Frankie planned to come with me for all of them.
Classes started mid-August, so we didn’t have that much time left before we had to dive into a new schedule. Frankie had promised to visit her grandparents in the Hamptons, so she and Archie left early on a Friday morning. They were going to be up there for the weekend, or at least until Sunday midday.
“Hey, Coop and I are going to check out a gym a couple of blocks over,” Bubba said from the doorway. “You have time before you and your dad play?”
I checked my watch. A gym was a good idea. Even with running in the park, when the winter weather hit, we needed a place to train for more than just cardio. I also needed to find a place to work on Frankie’s boxing. I’d promised her that I wouldn’t let that slide.
“Yeah, I’m down. Are we supposed to be getting Rachel at the airport this weekend? Or is it next?”
She’d extended her trip an extra couple of weeks, then flew home to Texas before finishing her move to the Big Apple. She had space in a residence hall in Greenwich Village.
“Next week,” Coop said. “Frankie verified it before she made plans to see her grandparents because she promised Rachel we would help her move in.”
“No,” Bubba corrected. “She promised her that she would help her move in.”
“Same thing,” I said at the same time as Coop and grabbed my wallet and keys before putting my shoes.
Bubba laughed. “Yeah, I know. Besides, the residences are furnished, I’m pretty sure.”
“If they
