After Freddie's dead and buried, he's still there. He's still with them. There's still the Three Musketeers, two boys forced to be too grown up, and the third who'll stay young forever. And they're still three losers fucking each other.
Effy doesn't stop loving Freddie just because he's dead. Cook doesn't expect her to or want her to. Cook knows she still loves him and he still loves her and everything else can wait, because she loves Freddie. She's in love with Freddie.
He thinks maybe he was in love with Freddie too. Sort of. Not in the conventional way, the gay way, like Emily and Naomi, with the desire to fuck each other and all of that romantic shit. Freddie was more than a mate, a best friend, a brother, an ally, an alibi. He was home, he was safety, he was stability, he was love, he was trust. Freddie was fucking everything.
Cook's kinda fucked without him. It's like...like losing an arm. Like he's got no centre of gravity or sense of balance, nothing to rely on or anchor him anymore. Like being told, suddenly, that actually the sky is pink and he's a French duke and everyone's been fucking lying to him his whole fucking miserable life.
There's no Freddie, except there is, and there's a headstone and a grave with fresh flowers and neatly rolled joints. And there's a crazy girl who loves him, and a criminal fucking loser who loves her.
But maybe... Freddie couldn't protect her. He couldn't help her or stop any of this shit from happening. He couldn't keep her together, safe, happy and she was in love with him. So what, exactly, does Cook think he's going to do? What makes him different, capable? He's never been capable of anything other than causing trouble and fucking up.
But this matters. This girl. This girl that he loves, that his best friend loves. This girl that he knew meant something, from the first time he saw her. This girl will always mean something and she will always matter, to him, to them. Freddie might not be able to say it anymore or do anything about it, but that just means that Cook's going to have to fight even fucking harder, for both of them, for Freddie, for all of them, the three losers fucking each other for the rest of their lives.
So Cook is going to try and he is going to fucking fight. He will not let them down. He will not disappoint. He's going to get them through this. He's going to look after Effy, forever, and he hopes, he swears, that one day she'll be happy.