After the contentious custody battle, Frank & Mary go on with their lives as usual. But it isn't until an eventful night at Ferg's that Frank starts to wonder if maybe his life might be missing something. Now that his niece has a normal life, maybe...
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True to his word, Joey didn't have to jump out of any windows that Saturday morning when she left Frank's house, but she still wanted to make a quick a stealthy exit. Frank had been raising Mary for a lot longer than she had been raising Sam so she trusted his parental instincts and wanted to do her best not to be seen as she left his house.
Unfortunately, her best efforts were not good enough. Joey's steady pace had been interrupted when she heard Mary's happy voice singing out, "GoooOOD Morning, Joey!" from a few houses away.
Joey stopped dead in her tracks and slowly turned around, sucking in her bottom lip. Mary was outside with Roberta blowing bubbles and had a wonderful unobstructed view of her exiting Frank's house.
Shit! She'd been caught.
Normally, seeing Mary put a huge smile of Joey's face, but that morning was not one of those times. Joey gave Roberta a look that shouted, "Come on! You had ONE job." and was only met with a cold challenging stare from her mother's friend.
Roberta was obviously not Joey's biggest fan, but it was not the time nor the place to figure out what her problem was. But it stung that her mother's best friend was cross with her for some reason.
Before Joey knew it, Mary had closed the distance between them and was complimenting her on her dress and asked if she and Sam wanted to go to the beach with her and Frank later that afternoon.
Joey would have sold her soul to have gotten out of that situation or, at the very least, to have had a different change of clothes on. She couldn't believe that she was standing there wearing her tall "fuck me heels" in front of Mary, before lunch no less.
Joey smiled and agreed to the beach date and tried to play it cool, but when Mary smirked and commented that she may have to get changed first, Joey just wanted to die.
Just breathe, Joey told herself as she walked across the street. Just breathe.
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Later that afternoon, Frank was already set up at their usual spot on the beach and had been trying to read his book while Mary played with Fred at his feet. But after he found himself reading the same paragraph three times, he gave up and fished his phone out of his pocket to see if he had missed a text from Joey.
He knew that he should relax, but Joey and Sam should have been there by then. He hoped that there hadn't been some kind of mix up and that they hadn't gone to a different beach. He was trying to silence the voices in his head that were trying to convince him that last night hadn't been what he'd thought it had. He tried to remind himself that, a few hours ago, he'd been closer to Joey than he'd been with another human being in a long time. There was no way that she would run for the hills and stand him up. He just had to breathe and trust that what they had was real and could survive longer than their one night together.
