Three Cheers for Sweethearts [Frerard AU]

PART IV: Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5 – OLD SCARS/FUTURE HEARTS

Friday came.

No Frank.

Ray was suddenly noticing how long he'd been gone, too.

"It's been two weeks. That's a ridiculously long time to be suspended just for breaking some rule, don't you think?"

"Yeah. I miss him." It was out of my mouth before I could stop it.

"I bet he misses you, too," he smirked.

"Shut up," I said.

Monday came.

It was our final exam week. Since it was so close to the end of the school year, I started to wonder how Frank would possibly make up all the work he was missing.

Paradoxically, exam week was when my prayers were answered.

We had only two periods that day, first and second. Each exam would take two hours, not including a half-hour of review time beforehand. We also got an hour between the tests for lunch. I headed into Chemistry for the review session, watching the door until the bell rang, like usual. This time, Frank did walk in, and it startled me enough to make me drop my pencil. It rolled slowly off the desk and clattered to the ground. I went scrambling across the floor to catch it before it rolled too far.

I nudged Ray when I stood up. "Look who's back!"

"Frank!" he called loudly, "Come study with us!"

"Do you even have to take the exam? You missed so many days," I said as casually as I could while he pulled up a chair across from us. I couldn't seem too excited to see him.

"Yeah, they're making me take it. I now have this and six other exams to stress over, plus two-and-a-half weeks' worth of homework and classwork."

"That makes literally no sense," I said. "Sorry about that."

"Not your fault. Anyways, I kind of wish they'd just suspended me the extra week."

"Seriously. Look at that timing," Ray laughed. "It's as if part of the punishment was putting you back into everything at the worst possible time."

We spent the rest of our half-hour review period trying to explain to Frank the things he missed, but we hardly understood it ourselves. When Ratliff called out that it was time to start the test, we exchanged good-luck high fives and spread around the room as instructed. I was so distracted by the thought that Frank was here – actually here – that I didn't even finish all of the questions before the time was up. That was okay; I didn't need perfect grades in every class. There were more important things to worry about.

***

We broke for lunch, and when I got to the lunch table, it was nice to have Frank there again to walk toward. And also terrifying. My heart was doing backflips. Here goes nothing.

"Hi," he said as I sat down.

"Hi. Where's Ray?"

"He doesn't have a second period exam, so he left. Just the three of us, now."

"The rest of us are used to just three," I joked. Frank smiled.

"I guess you are. I didn't expect to be gone so long."

"None of us expected you to be. Why did they decide on two weeks?"

"They didn't tell me. There was a lot more arguing on Friday. Eventually they called my parents, talked to them for hours, and apparently that was their final decision."