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“He’s such a fucking nerd,” Penny commented as she sidled up beside Mel, slurping loudly on her $1.99 Sprite.
There were many things about Penny that continued to surprise Mel. How tall she was, for starters - at almost 18 she was 5’10 to Frank’s 6’3, and Mel often felt like Gimli in the presence of Legolas and Gandalf when she was with them, despite not really being that much shorter, all things considered. Another thing that surprised her was how often she reminded Mel of Frank, and how often she also reminded Mel of Abby, her bright and unblinking blue eyes contrasting with her blonde-in-some-lighting and brown-in-other-lighting, waist-length hair. But the most surprising thing was how much she swore, and especially how much she swore when referring to her dad.
(Mel first asked Frank about it a few months ago. His initial response was a snort. “When I was her age, Tanner just turned one,” he said. Then he turned to Mel and smiled. “If letting her swear lowers her desire to, y’know, go out and get pregnant, then I’m all for it.”)
“He is a nerd,” Mel replied, quickly recovering from the shock as she had become accustomed to doing. “He didn’t, um - he never seemed like a nerd, yenno, when I first met him, but then…”
“Then you saw his Spider-man air freshener?” Penny supplied.
“Yes,” Mel replied, smiling. She refused to follow it up with: And his Spider-man underwear.
The two of them turned their attention to Frank, who was standing across the yard and talking to a few men wearing Revolutionary War costumes. Apparently going to Fort Pitt was a Langdon family rite of passage, and Mel was having fun up until the moment that he ditched her to talk to the reenactors for almost half an hour instead. It was hard to be mad at him for it, though. All afternoon he’d been acting like a kid in a candy store; he was so earnestly excited to be there that looking at him for too long made her heart hurt.
Penny took another loud slurp of her drink at the exact same moment Frank threw his head back and laughed at what one of the reenactors said. The other two men gave each other sideways glances, and one of them smiled while the other slipped his phone out of his pocket and took what looked like a quick scroll through his notifications.
“Does he always do this?” Mel asked. “Talk to the - the reenactors, I mean?”
“Yeah,” Penny replied. “I can’t tell you how many times Tanner and I sat on that picnic bench over there, bored out of our minds while Dad grilled them with questions he already knew the answer to.” Then she shrugged. “I mean, to be fair, we haven’t been here for a few years, and a lot’s been going on… maybe he has to refresh himself on all his favourite trivia. That seems like a Dad thing to do.”
“Why does he like it?” Mel tried that question on Frank earlier, when he pressed his face up to the display glass to take a closer look at a random musket, and his only response was, “Because it’s awesome.”
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t the answer Mel had been hoping for, but she wasn’t surprised. “He’s always been into history, though. He went through a huge Everest phase - Mom always joked that if Tanner and I were born later, he would've tried to convince her to name us George and Sandy.”
“After…?”
“George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. The guys who disappeared on Everest in 1924.” With a sudden solemnity, Penny placed a firm hand on Mel’s shoulder and stared deep into her eyes. “Do not ask him about it today, though, or it’ll take him three hours to make us dinner. He’ll bust out the diagrams and shit before you’ve even finished your question.”
Mel nodded. When she glanced across the yard, she saw that Frank was nodding, too. He seemed at home with the reenactors, like they were his friends - and maybe they were, now, after half an hour of conversation, or after all the years he spent dragging the kids here as an excuse to grill them. Still, the way he was standing, the way they were all standing… Mel couldn’t help but think that the image of them together would make more sense if the man beside him was holding a beer can instead of an old-fashioned gun, and the man who had checked his phone a few minutes ago was wearing a baseball cap instead of what was apparently called a tricorn hat.
“Jesus, he’s taking his time, isn’t he?” Penny blew a raspberry and glanced down at her watch. “Alright. I’m gonna take one more loop of the gallery and then drag his ass back over here. You good to go?”
“Oh, yeah,” Mel replied, “I’ve been good for an hour.” It wasn’t exactly a lie - she liked seeing Frank in his element. But she could only look at so many paintings of the same straight-faced generals before she started to get bored.
“You should go tell him, then.” Penny gave Mel enough of a push that she stumbled a few steps forward. “He’ll listen to you more than he will me.”
“But - I don’t want to interrupt -”
“Please interrupt.”
“But he looks so happy, and - oh, you’re walking away now, okay, that’s… sure.”
Penny shot Mel a thumbs up and a smile as she disappeared through the glass doors leading into the museum. Mel turned back to Frank and rolled her shoulders. If Penny gave her permission to interrupt, it would be fine, right? But when he turned around at the sound of her approach and his face brightened, she realized she didn't need Penny's permission at all.
“Mel! Hey.” She couldn’t help but smile as he threw an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against his side. “This is my girlfriend, Mel. It’s, uh - it's her first time coming to the museum.”
“Welcome to Fort Pitt, miss,” one of the men said, the edges of his moustache bouncing up and down as he spoke.
Now that she was seeing them up close, she was starting to understand what drew Frank to these men - they had a very distinct, Robby-like quality, if Robby commanded an army instead of… well, now that she was thinking about it, he sort of did command an army. But he didn’t have as cool of a jacket, and he definitely didn’t wear a tricorn hat. (Although he’d probably look good in one…) She cleared her throat and smiled. “Um, thank you for… for having me.”
“You enjoyed yourself today, I hope?” the second man asked. It sounded like he had a slight British accent.
“Yes, I did,” Mel replied. She could feel Frank’s grip on her shoulder tighten, could feel his bright blue eyes staring down at her. “Everything is really cool, and - really old. I mean - um - old, like, like, historical, not… not bad old. I-it’s, uh… it’s very impressive.”
The men smiled at her and didn't say anything else. She was beginning to realize that part of the reason they reminded her of Robby was because they seemed so tired.
“You guys close soon, right?” Frank asked.
“Ten minutes,” the first man answered - that explained it.
“Right, right.” Frank released Mel to start feeling around his pockets. “Um, would you guys mind if I got a quick photo with you? I just - I always get one when I come here, and my mom’ll be pissed if I don’t get one today. I think she’s making a scrapbook…”
“Of course we don’t mind,” the third man said.
"That's what we're here for!" the second man added cheerily.
The sound of Frank’s patting was growing frantic. The men seemed unbothered, turning their faces to the sun while they waited or, once again, slipping their phone out of their pocket to take a look at the screen. Mel turned to Frank and watched him with a frown before placing a hand on his shoulder. “I think you put your phone in my purse, didn’t you?”
“Oh, right!”
He held a hand out to her, but she waved him off.
“You go, um - you go pose with the guys. If I'm taking the picture for you, then -”
“What?” Frank asked, frowning. “No, Mel, I want you in the picture, too.”
“Oh.” Mel wasn’t sure if it was the 100-degree day that was turning her face red or the idea of her picture going into Mrs. Langdon’s Fort Pitt scrapbook alongside the rest of them, but she stopped searching through her purse and bit her lip. “Are you sure?”
“Of course,” he replied, glancing around. “Where’s Pen? She was just - oh, there she is - PENNY! COME TAKE A PICTURE OF ME AND MEL WITH MY BUDDIES!”
“COMING!”
Within seconds Mel was being dragged into position in between Frank and the three reenactors - the one who kept checking his phone and the one with the bouncing moustache stood to her left, while Frank and the last man stood to her right. The men in costume held up their guns and put on their most serious expressions while Penny counted down, and Mel was so preoccupied with watching them that she didn’t remember until at the last second that she should look at the camera and smile because she was wearing a sweater with strawberries on it and could convince no one that she was about to march into battle even if she tried.
“Awesome.” Frank grinned down at his phone after Penny handed it to him. “Thanks, guys. It’s - it’s been a few years, since I've been here, and this was awesome.”
“Thanks for coming,” said the man with the moustache.
“And feel free to come back anytime!” the man who had been checking his phone added.
“You’re going to regret telling him that!” Penny called over her shoulder as she headed back into the museum, leaving Mel and Frank to rush through their good-byes and follow after her.
A few hours and one impromptu Ted Talk about Mount Everest later, Mel and Frank were lazing together on the couch, her feet in his lap and his phone in her hands so she could pick her favorite of the five pictures Penny took before he sent it to his mom. “One year they had working guns and set up targets around the property,” he explained. “They had costumes, too, for people to wear… that was awesome. I think I have a picture of it somewhere…”
“I like this one,” Mel said, handing the phone back to him.
“Yeah, this is a good one.” He turned his head and kissed her temple as he tapped out a text. “The one I was just talking about is probably my favourite picture, but this is definitely my second favourite.”
She glared at him, and kept glaring until he turned his phone off and glanced over at her.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she replied, still glaring. “I just… I guess I’ve just been feeling somewhat neglected today.”
The second she saw his face fell, she wanted to take it back. “What?” he asked, sitting up from where he was leaning against the couch. “Really?”
“No!”
“I didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” he replied, barrelling through her protest with a frown, “I just - I really love it there.”
“I know you do.” Thank God her feet had been in his lap until a minute ago - it meant it was still easily accessible. As she settled on top of him, she continued, “I was just joking.”
“Alright,” he replied as he rested his hands on her hips. “Good.”
“I mean… maybe I wish that you hadn’t, um, ditched me so you could talk to the reenactors for half an hour, but…”
“Was it half an hour?” he asked. “It felt like five minutes!”
She ran her fingers through the coarse hair at the back of his neck. (He got a haircut a few days ago; now she was concerned it was for their trip to the fort and not for Penny’s band concert tomorrow evening, like she initially thought.) “I was just joking,” she repeated, tucking her forefinger under his chin and pushing his head up a little so his lips were as easily accessible as his lap had been. “And - and maybe it’s, um, weird for me to be telling you this, but… I found the way that you were acting at the museum today to be… very attractive.”
“Really?”
“Mmhmm.” Mel was disappointed when Penny dropped them off at Frank’s and sped off to her friend’s house earlier, but knowing the house was empty aside from them meant she allowed herself to stare at his mouth and didn’t protest when his arms tightened around her waist. “It was very cute… very attractive… I liked seeing you so, you know… excited about things…”
“Well, sweetheart,” he said, his voice low, “I can think about five other things that are exciting to me right now. Do you want to hear them?”
She nodded, anticipation zipping through her as he leaned forward. Unfortunately, just as he went to kiss her, his phone vibrated on the arm of the couch.
“Ignore it?” she asked hopefully.
“Not a chance.” He kissed her cheek as he leaned back enough to grab his phone and read the message. “You know how ma gets when I don’t answer, and I… oh, Jesus Christ.”
Mel turned her head to look at what he was reacting to. She knew he didn’t mind - if he didn’t want her to read something, he turned his phone away from her, and right now, it was facing her, head-on. As she scanned the screen, she first the picture of the two of them that he had sent his mom, and underneath, in response, was the message: So cute! I wonder if Fort Pitt does weddings...? :)