A/N: I'm excited! I have wonderfully priced sparkling grape juice, good music...what more can a girl ask for? 8D By the way, I have to write this scene now before it drives me nuts! By the way, I know earlier on, I spelled Giovanni's car as 'Alpha' when it is actually 'Alfa'. From now on, it is written as 'Alfa'.

RaiN: Ha ha, yeah, I'll probably post it as a one-shot, seeing as I want to keep it to a 'T' rating...but yes, I'm with you on that! I heard my favorite song on the radio today and I was all happy. Glad I got your mind in the gutter lol! Giovanni was nice, but he was really thick! He didn't seem to grasp the whole "She's Just Not That Into You" concept. Sheila is indeed a bitch, and I can't wait to write how she might come between Izzy and Frankie...

Spin me around, all around
Oh feels like a lifetime
I've been waiting
One domino goes down then they all hit the ground
Ain't no deliberating
It all happens for a reason, right?
Guess there's no need to fight it, right?
'Cause one thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another

Ke$ha — Chain Reaction (This song inspired my other story 'Chain Reaction')

"My truck won't be ready until this evening!" Isabella cheered from her desk as she spun her chair in a circle. "And all I had to do was play damsel in distress."

"How so?" Frankie asked, looking up at her.

"Well, he said it wasn't going to be ready for a couple of days," she explained. "But I explained to him that I really needed my truck back because of all the errands I had to use on it. Since those errands also include Chachi, I had to throw him in there. Giovanni said he would have my truck ready by this evening."

"Hey, I guess blue eyes really do have their perks," he joked. She smiled to herself before she shook her head.

"You kidding? It's hard to get men to do what I want when they can't see me," she bantered back with a wink. "I can be quite charming and alluring when I want to be."

"Oh really?" he said. He turned to face her. "Prove it."

Isabella smirked. "With pleasure," she replied. After a moment, she tossed her pencil across the room and stood up. "Oh shoot! I dropped my pencil! Would you mind helping me look?" She looked up at him from her eyelashes and leaned a bit onto her hands. "I could really use some help."

For a moment, his eyes were wide. "For a second, I actually deliberated getting up," he said with an exhale. She chuckled.

"Please?" she asked, making her voice soft. She knew he knew she was bullshitting him, but it was fun to make him squirm. When he finally handed her her pencil, she cracked a wide smile. "See? Easy. My mother did teach me more than just manners."

In the end, Frankie had decided to tag along for the ride to pick up Isabella's truck. Jane had asked to come along as well, since she had nowhere to be afterwards.

"Moral support," Jane spoke up. "Trust me, you suck at saying no to people."

"I know, right?" Isabella agreed with a chuckle. "I mean, I get men under my spell, it's a curse."

"It's not that hard to get Giovanni interested in a girl," Frankie pointed out. "Seriously, he'd bang anything that walks with a wiggle."

"Walks with a wiggle?" Jane repeated. "You hang around Frost too much." Isabella snorted as they pulled into the garage.

"Well, we're here," she announced and pulled the seat forward. Frankie slid out and stretched his legs.

"I get to drive the truck," he said. She spun around to face him.

"The hell you are!" she retorted. "Nobody is allowed to drive my truck but me."

Frankie shook his head and walked with them into the garage.

"Hey yo, Frankie!" Giovanni's Bostonian accent rang out from the other side of the garage. When his eyes rested on Isabella and Jane, they glittered. "You girls look hot."

"Thanks," Isabella replied. "Where's my truck? I've missed the damn heap."

"It's no longer a heap," Giovanni told her. He gestured to the truck with the hood opened. "You're gonna love what I did to it."

A wide smile broke out on Isabella's face as girlish giddiness took her over. "I can't wait."

When Giovanni slammed down the hood, Isabella's excitement immediately vanished to horror. Because, instead of the truck's sleek black color, it had blue flames writhing from the hood and along the sides of it.

"My truck," she whimpered. The poor truck had plastic spinners on the wheels and the lift had been removed. "Where is my lift?"

"Hey, I did that for you, Blue Eyes," he informed her with a wink. "I figured it'd be easier for you to get in and out."

"I loved my lift," she whispered. Her eyes turned up to Frankie. "All I wanted fixed was the antifreeze line, water pump, thermostat, and brake pads."

"Giovanni, you didn't..." Jane stated, her eyes wide. Isabella's little whimpers continued as she looked at her truck.

"Hey, you don't have to thank me, Blue Eyes," Giovanni said with a wink. More unease in Frankie's belly as the other man used his nickname for Isabella. It was clear that the petite detective in question was a wreck.

"And if I don't like it?" she finally mustered out. "I mean, I could take it to another shop to fix the paint job. But could you put the lift back on?"

"Yeah, but it'll take me some time," Giovanni replied. "I'm off for dinner." The man didn't get the concept of "She's Just Not That Into You."

"I think you two should tell the truth," Jane spoke up. "How long did you think you could keep us all in the dark?"

Isabella tilted her head in confusion. "About what?"

"Your relationship," Jane replied slowly, drawing out each syllable. Immediately, Frankie caught his sister's drift. She was giving Isabella an out.

"Yes," Frankie said, stepping over to her. He slung his arm around Isabella's shoulders and pulled her a little closer. Her hand came onto his shoulder and a smile appeared on her face.

"Wait, you two are together?" Giovanni asked, clearly disappointed. "How long?"

"Four months," Isabella said at the same time Frankie had said six. The numbers were clearly the first ones to pop in their heads. "Gosh, it's been four but it feels like six."

It was time to sell the 'relationship' big time. Impromptu improvisation hadn't been one of her biggest strong-suits in high school, something she hadn't had to do in a while.

"We fought this morning," Frankie suddenly blurted. That would explain the awkwardness. Isabella patted her 'boyfriend's' shoulder with a smile.

"Yes, we certainly did," she agreed. "Niza ahorrar," she added in Spanish. [Nice save]

"What's that mean?" Giovanni asked. He still wasn't getting it.

"It means I love you in Italian," Isabella replied slowly. Of course, she had been speaking in Spanish, not her father's native tongue. She prayed like hell that Giovanni didn't know a lick of Italian.

"Then, you two should make up," Jane suggested. Isabella glared at the taller woman over her shoulder.

"Let's not do that here," she said pointedly. "We'll celebrate later on." She was feeling a bit awkward standing so intimately close to her partner, and his breath tickling her neck wasn't doing her any favors.

Her toes curled inside her black flats and she stared down at the floor.

"I can have your truck ready by next week," Giovanni said. A smile lit up her face as she met his dark eyes. "I'm really sorry I didn't ask you about adding that stuff."

"Hey, you thought it would make me happy," she assured him. "It's the thought that counts."

"Do you even know how to speak Italian?" Frankie asked her. "You spoke Spanish."

"I hoped you had caught onto that," she replied. "I speak Italian fluently, my father taught me when I was very young." Another tidbit he now knew about her. Come to think of it...he didn't even know her birthday.

They were alone as they walked towards the precinct. The early October air was chilly as they walked side-by-side.

"I've known you for a year and I feel like I don't know a damn thing about you," he admitted. The streetlights illuminated her face as he carefully read each emotion. Surprise and fear were the dominant emotions sketched onto her face.

"I don't talk about my family much because I'm not that close to them," she explained. "Because of what's happened in my past, I don't talk about it." With that, she merely shut her mouth. "The only person who knows is Flack, because he was there with me."

"I know about Diego," he said. She shook her head.

"It goes deeper than that," she dismissed. When she finally took a deep breath, she paused on the sidewalk. He turned to face her. "You wanna know, you can't breathe a word of it to anyone."

"Have I ever?" he pointed out. She chuckled and sighed again, her breath shaky.

"I was physically, emotionally, mentally, and verbally abused by my stepfather growing up," she said simply. "My mom married him when I was six, after she had gotten pregnant with my two younger siblings. Mitchell loved them, they were his. Evan, Levi, and I weren't, so he rejected us. It started out as emotional neglect, he would push us away if we did something. It got so bad that my brother Levi moved in with his and my dad and it was just me and Evan at home. I was about eleven or twelve when Mitch got physical, and anyone who stuck up for each other were the ones who suffered. And it got so bad that I had to start wearing foundation to school and lie about how I got the cuts and bruises. Evan had moved in with her dad by that time, so she had escaped from it."

The news shook him to the core as he looked at her. It explained some scars he had seen and her seemingly endless tolerance for pain.

"Basically, I wasn't worth anything. At eight years old, I couldn't look people in the eye anymore and I honestly believed I was the worst person in the world, because Mitch was a racist. When I was thirteen, CPS was called on my mom after I had come to school limping and my eye had swollen shut and I was placed with the Flacks for about a year. By then, Evan's dad had heard so much that he decided to take me in and away from my mom, since my dad couldn't. When I was fifteen, he became my legal guardian and tried to adopt me, but my mother wouldn't give up her rights to him."

"You know he was wrong," Frankie finally said. The fact that someone could be filled with such arrogant hate had fueled his horror into anger. Especially raise his hand against an innocent child.

"It took me a long time to believe that," she said. He saw a tear glistening on her cheek and she wiped it away quickly. It explained her almost-blind trust in Flack. He really had seen her through it all. "I don't trust people because of it. I still have each and every scar that Mitch ever put on me."

"Where is he now?" Frankie asked. She sighed, the cloud of air fogging in the still night.

"Sing Sing," she replied. "For domestic violence and assault on an officer." He had gone after her after she had graduated from the academy, clearly. Her body went rigid when he gripped her into a tight embrace.

"That shouldn't have happened to you," he informed her. She chuckled and her arms wrapped around his waist to return the embrace.

"I've come to terms with that long ago," she whispered.