Forbidden Things || Cobra Kai

38 It's You and Me

Frankie knocked on the door, staring at the white painted wood because it was all she could do. She waited, listening closely and repeating the words she wanted to say in her head. She'd thought long and hard about what she would say, but it was getting late and she knew she had to have this conversation sooner rather than later. She didn't want to put it off any longer.

She was about to knock again when she heard one distinct knock. That was the signal.

She opened the door and stepped into the doorway, but didn't move any further. "Is it okay if I come in?"

Penelope watched the door, nodding gently. She laid her book aside, giving her full attention to Frankie, but she didn't make a move for her phone. It laid on the bedside table, face down.

Frankie wanted to understand sign language, but she struggled to read it. She tried, but the different signs got mixed up in her head. She didn't even know all of the sign alphabet. It made her feel bad, guilty even. While Penelope was able to pick up on stuff like that fast, Frankie had never been able to. She'd never been the best at learning languages or linguistics.

She didn't particularly like reading, despite her father being a literature teacher. He tried to give her the gift of loving reading, but she couldn't concentrate on the pages very well once he stopped reading to her. She especially hated it when a teacher (not her father since he was never allowed to be her teacher sadly) gave her a reading assignment.

It was why Pen used to read the books to her. They'd work on the assignment or study together, even when they weren't supposed to. When they were in separate classes and were reading different books, Penelope would still take the time to read Frankie's assigned book to her. That was just who she was, Penelope would never let Frankie do those assignments alone. Especially when she struggled to understand them.

Frankie was pretty convinced she only passed her English lit classes because she grew up around all of those lessons. She didn't believe that she really knew them, more so that it was all just jammed in her brain from years of her dad talking about it or when he had to take her to work with him. One of her earliest memories was of her father holding her, aged four, while teaching high school kids about some book she'd long forgotten now.

Those kinds of days hadn't been uncommon for them and were the days she attributed to her base knowledge of literature and literary references. She knew them by heart, not by smarts.

Frankie's heart clenched as her eyes met Penelope's. She crossed the room and took a seat on the end of Pen's bed, looking at the rug. She was trying to remember all the words she'd put together, but it felt as though they had stayed in the hall. She gripped the blanket in her fists.

Penelope stared at her. She waited, leaning back against the headboard, her hands rested on her lap.

With a deep breath, Frankie began to speak. "I'm... sorry. Really. I know I probably overreacted the last time we talked. I'm just... trying to look out for you."

She couldn't look up, unsure of what she might see when she finally did. This had never happened before; she'd never been angry with Penelope a day in her life. They never fought, they never argued; It wasn't like them to give each other the cold shoulder. They were practically connected at the hip, so giving the other space had been difficult.

Frankie didn't want to be angry anymore. She tried to tell herself that she wasn't angry with Penelope, but some part of her was. The overprotective, well meaning part of her still wanted to yell and scream, but she forced that down knowing it wasn't going to fix anything. It wasn't going to make anything better and if she wanted to reach the point where they could really talk to each other again, then she had to hold herself back.