Chapter Six. Temperance
Frankie and Temperance sat at the end of the dock, swirling their feet in clear cool water the color of sweet tea.
The air was pollen-hazy and heady with the musky scent of lake mud and sweet white clover. A glass of lemonade streamed condensation down Frankie’s wrist, and her cropped hair was pulled into a glossy black nub. Sweaty tendrils clung to her neck. Temperance applied SPF 50 to the tops of her thighs for the fourth time that afternoon, dashing the leftover bit across her forehead and nose. Still, she could feel her skin turning pink.
Out in the deeper part of the water, Maren launched a waterlogged football to a crowd of people who shoved, splashed, and dunked each other to get it. Duncan caught the ball one-handed and fell backward. He disappeared for a few seconds and shot to the surface in shallower water, dark and sleek as a seal. Water beaded on skin slick with sunscreen, making the tattoos on his arms look freshly painted on. A wide cuff of an Irish county tartan around one biceps, an elaborate honeysuckle vine around the other. Blackbirds in flight, a flourish of red poppies, a bearded man with a long, curving pipe. Columns of muscle alongside his spine bunched and flexed as he fired the ball back to the group, and the thin fabric of his trunks hugged the high curves of an ass that was exceptional in the literal sense of the word.
When Nate broadsided Harry to get the ball, Duncan tipped back his head and laughed.
She’d always loved the way he laughed. Full-throated, uninhibited, loud. Sometimes his nose crinkled and his eyes squeezed shut, and the dimple on his upper cheek would appear. Sometimes he laughed until he cried.
Duncan Brady knew how to do joy.
With both hands, he pushed his hair back, squeezing water down his neck. He turned to look right at her. His big smile faltered, downshifting into a look so loaded it made the little hairs on the back of her neck lift. The force of his gaze felt like a physical shove—a compression in her chest, a tilt in her belly.
He turned and swam away with powerful pulls of his arms through the water.
Duncan Brady knew how to do pain, too.
Frankie bent to scoop water onto her legs. “I saw that.”
Temperance made a vague sound in her throat and tipped ice into her mouth from her Nelson’s forty-ounce Whistle Wetter travel mug. It had a cartoon groundhog on the side, giving a smiling thumbs-up. The damned thing was bigger than her entire head, and she’d had to pay eighteen dollars for it. She’d initially grabbed a Styrofoam cup at the gas station’s soda machine, but Rowan’s look of disappointment had flayed her alive. So she’d grabbed the reusable one, feeling personally responsible for the planet’s polystyrene problem.
“You two have been playing eye-tag all day,” Frankie said.
Temperance set the mug down and leaned forward, rubbing her temples.
“He can’t keep his eyes off you, but he’s shockingly good at making it seem incidental. Seriously. He deserves an Academy Award.” She dropped her voice low and dug a knuckle into the side of Temperance’s thigh. “Oh. Here we go—watch.”
Duncan retrieved the ball again, pivoting sideways in the water.
“In three, two, one—” Frankie whispered.
As if on cue, Duncan scanned the shore, starting a little north of the cabin. Eventually, his eyes landed on Temperance, lingering for a few beats longer than they did on anything—or anyone—else.
Her heart pulsed like sonar, firing an aching ping into the deepest places inside her.
“God.” Frankie did a melodramatic full-body shudder. “The secondhand angst is giving me a contact buzz.”
Out in the lake, Rowan swam their way.
“Behave,” Temperance whispered.
“No promises.”
Rowan boosted herself onto the dock, raining cool water down on Temperance’s legs. “What did I miss?” she said, squeezing her thick ginger braid. “Who are we talking about?”
Temperance looked at Frankie with pleading eyes. Frankie sighed.
“That’s really working for me.” Glittering droplets of lake water fell from Frankie’s toes when she pointed them in Mal’s direction. “I actively dislike him, but I also want him to back me up against the nearest wall.”
Rowan laughed. When Temperance and Frankie didn’t, she blinked, lowered her voice, and leaned in. “Wait. Seriously? He’s at least ten years older than you.”
“I don’t get it either, but their age difference is the least of the reasons why I’m confused,” Temperance said.
“You two have no imagination,” Frankie said. “Look at him.”
Malcolm Brady managed to be dark and broody even while sun-saturated and lounging in a massive avocado floatie that said HAPPILY AVO AFTER along the side. A black hat sat over his face, but his forearms alone made a compelling case for Frankie’s argument. They were roped with lean muscle and a few prominent veins ran elbow to wrist. Big hands. Long fingers.
Okay, fine. He was legitimately hot—in a sullen, whipcord kind of way.
Abruptly, he lifted his head and tipped the hat off his face with a thumb to stare right back at them. Heavy brows crowded together in a scowl, and a swoop of black hair fell forward into his eyes.
“Put your tongue away, Frances,” Temperance muttered into her giant plastic mug.
Mal let the hat fall back in place.
Rowan aggressively chewed a thumbnail. “I’m marrying his brother in a few weeks.”
“I know,” said Frankie.
“And it’s very likely Mal will be here when you come to visit me.”
“Now that you mention it, he has been here a lot more lately, hasn’t he?” Frankie pressed a fingertip to her plush bottom lip. “Golly, I wonder why.”
“You’re the only person in this world who can use the word golly unironically and get away with it.” To Rowan, Temperance said, “Did you know she has a nickname for him?”
“Oh god,” Rowan groaned.
“Malcolm Baddie.”
Frankie shrugged a bare shoulder. “I think it’s perfect.”
“I think Scowlcolm is a missed opportunity,” Temperance said.
Rowan leaned in again. “Listen to me, Frances. Have you ever hooked up with someone whose family you have to play it cool around? Polite conversation gets impossible after you’ve seen all the different versions of their adult son’s o-face.”
“Oh, really?” Frankie swiveled to face Temperance. “That sounds tough. I can’t imagine. Can you imagine, T.J.?”
Temperance tipped a few pieces of ice into Frankie’s lap. “Oops—”
Frankie screeched and laughed. Once again, Mal lifted the hat from his face, just enough that Temperance saw a raised eyebrow and glinting black eyes.
Frankie regained her composure fast and leaned back on her hands. The movement boosted her breasts forward, and a streak of sweat traced down the center of her belly. Mal’s glower darkened, and he laid his hat over his lap instead of returning it to his head.
“Boner alert,” Rowan said under her breath, and the three women snort-laughed like piglets.
Temperance almost felt bad for him.
“It seems to have worked out fine for you, Rosebud,” Frankie said. “Just think, if you hadn’t followed your heart and taken the chance—”
“It wasn’t my heart calling the shots at first, Frank.” Rowan lay back on a towel and covered her eyes with her forearm.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Rowan said, “I didn’t know I was going to fall in love with Harry when we started sleeping together.”
“I did.” Frankie raised her hand. “Just for the record.”
“We know,” Temperance and Rowan said in unison.
“Smugness isn’t cute on you,” Temperance said.
“Everything’s cute on me.” Frankie adjusted the strap of her bikini top. “Malcolm Brady would be cute on me.”
“Dear god,” Rowan said. “I already have concomitant embarrassment—”
“Stop,” Temperance said. “Did you just use the word concomitant in casual conversation?”
“There is nothing casual about this conversation,” Rowan breathed.
“This sounds a lot like when T.J. told you not to hook up with Harry, and you did anyway,” said Frankie.
“Listen.” Temperance held up a finger and slurred around a mouthful of ice, “I didn’t tell her not to—”
Well. She definitely had. She’d warned Rowan and Harry away from each other after she’d noticed their instantaneous chemistry the night they’d met, and back then, Temperance had told herself it was out of a desire to protect them both from inevitable heartache. “Opposites attract” was a thing that only ever worked in romance books and rom-coms, and two people didn’t get more opposite than Harry Brady and Rowan McKinnon. But there’d been a shameful, self-serving side to it, too. Temperance hadn’t wanted yet another invisible string permanently tying her to Duncan Brady.
“You strongly recommended,” Frankie said.
Rowan sat up on her elbows. “That was different, anyway.”
“How so?”
“Malcolm is a cyborg. He probably plugs in at night instead of sleeping. He’s also ten years older than you. Harry is—” Rowan’s voice went soft and melty. “Well, he’s Harry.”
Frankie laughed and patted her on the leg. “Oh, how quickly the president of the Marriage Repudiation Club has fallen.”
“I’m good at romance now,” Rowan said.
Temperance stopped mid-crunch on a mouthful of ice and gave her a long look.
Frankie grimaced. “Wow.”
A flush blotched Rowan’s neck and cheekbones. “What? I am, damn it.”
Frankie snorted. “Says the woman who thought Me Before You was a porn flick.”
“Says the woman who reminds everyone at Christmas that mistletoe is a poisonous parasite,” Temperance added.
“Says the woman who insists Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the best Austen adaptation,” said Frankie.
Temperance sniffed. “Obviously not. The 2005 version. No contest.”
Frankie exhaled a sound of outrage. “Colin Firth would like a word—”
Temperance raised her voice to talk over Frankie. “Matthew Macfadyen is the superior Darcy; I won’t be taking questions at this time.”
“T.J., I swear to god I will push you off this dock—” Frankie bent down and scooped a handful of water at Temperance’s face.
“Okay, okay,” Rowan cut in. “I get it. Hilarious. Obviously, I’ve changed.” She looked dreamily into the lake, where Harry leapt to catch the football. He missed by a mile, sinking backward under the water with arms flailing.
“He’s a good one.” Temperance smiled.
Frankie made a happy sound of agreement. Then she said, “Did you know my phone autocorrects Colin Firth to Colin Girth?”
“I think that’s beautiful,” said Rowan.
Temperance laughed. “You’re typing Colin Firth’s name into your phone frequently enough that you’ve noticed?”
They all laughed. For a while, they sat quietly and looked out over the lake. Fuzzy cottonwood seeds floated over the water like summer snow.
After a while, Rowan asked, “You have a date for the wedding?”
“I asked Bodhi, but it’s too close to the end of the term for him.”
“Aww, Tastykake,” Frankie said.
Bodhi Rao was a neurosurgery fellow at Stanford now, and she hadn’t seen him in several years. During residency, they’d had a near-perfect friends-with-benefits arrangement—he was sexy and funny and generous in bed, and had zero expectations once they were off the mattress. They’d come to each other’s rescue a few times over the years—her as his date to a few family weddings, him as her date to a handful of work functions. Years ago, after a glimpse of his torso in a shirtless selfie he’d sent, Rowan and Frankie had begun calling him “Tastykake.” Because he was an absolute snack.
Temperance didn’t have any other prospects. Her last date had been a few months ago, dinner at an overrated bistro in Philadelphia where one of the courses had been a truly gruesome thing called culinary foam. The guy was a software engineer named Tyler who looked exactly like you’d expect a guy named Tyler to look—and he was shockingly as much of a ten in person as he’d been in his profile photo. But he’d quoted Internet memes at least six times during their dinner conversation, and at the end of the meal he’d wrapped his napkin around his pointer finger, dipped it in his water glass, and used the wet cloth to wipe his mouth. Temperance had swung her eyes around the room to look for a hidden camera crew, convinced she was on a prank show.
The culinary foam had been a precise metaphor for how unsettling and unsatisfying the whole experience was.
“Speaking of the wedding,” Rowan said. “How’s it going with you and Duncan?”
Temperance almost aspirated the chunk of ice in her mouth. “Hnngh?”
“Harry told me you two decorated most of the greenhouse for his proposal. It just occurred to me that I never notice you two doing anything together. I’m just glad you’re able to be friends.”
Again, Frankie dug her knuckle into the side of Temperance’s thigh.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Temperance rammed her knee into Frankie’s.
Out on the lake, Maren and Nate’s kids swam at Duncan from both directions, and he rapid-fire lifted them and tossed them backward in the water, squealing and flailing. Long ago, she could have written this entire day as a scene in a screenplay. The gauzy golden air, sweet with clover and Coppertone and campfire. The laughter. The family.
Alice and Grey were living renderings of what her children with Duncan might have looked like. They had the dusky Brady complexion and dark wavy hair, but Grey’s mouth and the shape of his eyebrows were distinctly Maren’s, and Alice had her nose. Baby Leo sat on a quilt with Gia in the shade near the cabin. He had the glacial Madigan-blue eyes, just like Temperance’s own.
She hadn’t let her imagination carry her to that place in years, but in that moment, her mind took her there without consent or warning. It was an emotional riptide, and she didn’t even have a chance to take a breath.
“For peace. For the wedding.” Rowan dipped her head to meet Temperance’s eyes. “It would mean a lot to Harry,” she coaxed.
Checkmate.
Duncan Brady was the embodiment of full-throttle joy. She knew just how it felt to be on the receiving end of that big way he loved and laughed and cared. She knew what it felt like to lose it, too.
Friends.
Temperance squeezed Rowan’s hand and met her eyes. “Okay, honey. I’ll try.”