Chapter Nine. Temperance
Maren had to bail on the balloon-filling when baby Leo wanted to nurse, so Temperance took over solo. Her glasses kept sliding down the sweat on her nose. With one hand squeezing the lip of a new balloon over the spigot, and the other on the faucet handle to control the flow of water, she had no hands free to nudge them back in place. Impatiently, she tried to use her shoulder to push them up, but all that did was make them sit lopsided on her face.
Duncan came around the side of the cabin and stood next to her. For a moment, he blocked the sun.
“Whatever you’re doing back here is messing with the water pressure inside of the cabin,” he said.
The faucet squeaked as she turned it off. “Take that up with Maren. She wants balloons for the kids to play with.” An orange balloon swelled in her palm as water swirled into it, tiny bubbles racing up the inside. It was hypnotic.
Duncan lowered his butt to the ground and hooked his arms over his knees. Temperance watched him through lowered lashes. Every bit of him was beautifully proportioned—even the dark hair on his legs was impeccably distributed, as if it had been arranged on his skin by an algorithm.
“Need a hand?” he said.
“Nah. Almost done.” She glanced up and wiggled her nose to lift her glasses back into place.
Duncan leaned in. “I meant, you need another hand.” He hesitated for a moment when she met his eyes, then he put the tips of his fingers on the points of her glasses to readjust them on the bridge of her nose. He scanned her face from her eyes to her lips, then back up.
“You going to tell me you’re looking at my beard again?” he said. “Or are you going to admit you’re looking at my mouth?”
She didn’t take the bait. “So is your beard essentially your entire personality now or what?”
“I have a reason for this beard, you know.”
Lightly, she said, “Cosplaying Aquaman on the weekends? Khal Drogo?”
“My beard is better than Momoa’s. I’m also far more charming.”
“I think you both mistake mischief for charm.” She tied off the orange balloon and lifted the strap of her swimsuit back onto her shoulder. It slid back down as soon as she let it go.
“I have no idea what cosplaying is,” Duncan said.
“Costume play.”
“Is it a sex thing?”
“It’s—ah, performance art,” she said. “You create costumes and dress up like characters from pop culture—”
“Sounds like it could be a sex thing.”
She sighed up at the sky. “Why do you do that? You always do that.”
He tipped his head. “Do what?”
“Make a joke. Or make it about sex. There always has to be this—this friction between us—”
“Friction feels good, Temperance.”
“Friction also makes fire. We could probably burn down the sun.”
Some of his playful mask slipped. “That has a certain poetry to it, don’t you think?”
“Sure, if you’re into planet-ending catastrophes.”
“Does feel kind of selfish of us, when you put it that way.” He squinted out at the lake. “Do you really want to know? Why I do the jokey shit?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her for a long time before he responded again. “I keep it shallow with you, because every time I go deep, you disappear on me.” His brows drew tight.
Whatever she’d expected him to say—it hadn’t been that. Truthfully, she’d expected another quip or innuendo. She swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat.
Duncan’s chuckle was a little dark. “You asked.”
They were quiet for a while.
Tentatively, he brushed a fingertip over a quarter-shaped bruise on her bare shin.
Temperance glanced down. “That’s nothing. I bumped it when I was moving stuff out of Frankie’s and my apartment.”
Duncan grazed his thumb over a dime-sized bruise on her forearm.
“Edge of a sink at the hospital.”
He touched another—a long streak of pale purple on her upper thigh.
“Edge of a countertop at the clinic.”
Duncan drew his hand back and looped his arms over his knees. “You need to be put into a bubble.”
“I’m fine, and I will continue to be fine.” She tied off a pink balloon and plopped it into the bucket on top of the others. Condensation made them glisten like gems.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said, quietly. “I saw you and Frankie go into the cabin, and you were walking like you were in pain—”
“Your dock bit me in the butt, Duncan.” She laughed.
Duncan cleared his throat and pointed to the bucket of bigger balloons she’d filled earlier with Maren. “That looks like a private stash of ammunition.”
Thankful for the redirection, Temperance scooted sideways to block his view of the bigger bucket. The move gave her an instant wedgie. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He wasn’t wrong, though. Maren had planned to make room in the cabin fridge to chill the bigger balloons for a surprise attack on Nate and his brothers later that afternoon.
Duncan gave her a comical side-eye. “You put something unwholesome in those?”
“What, like hydrochloric acid?” She tossed another filled balloon into the bucket.
“I was thinking red food dye, but you go on being diabolical, Teacup.”
“I considered glitter, but Rowan would give me shit about polluting the environment with microplastics.”
He chuckled. “She’s offered twenty bucks to the kid who brings her the most balloon pieces after the game is over.”
“Ah, yes. An economics lesson and an ecology lesson all in one.” Temperance rolled another balloon onto the end of the spigot, and it suddenly seemed very condom-adjacent. There was no way she could unsee it.
Duncan reached past her to lift one of the bigger balloons. He smelled like sun-warmed skin. “The way you overfilled these big ones, they’ll hurt like a bastard when they hit.” He bobbled the balloon in his hand, testing the heft of it.
Temperance pitched her voice high and sweet. “Will they?” They both watched the balloon on the tap swell into her palm. She kept her eyes down. “It’s physics. An under-filled balloon might just bounce off the target. Wasted ammo.”
Duncan’s laugh was dark. “Only you would science a water-balloon fight.”
“Science is surprisingly versatile in its applications.”
“Your strategy is risky, though.” He slowly traced the condensation on the surface of the balloon in his hand. Then he rubbed the wetness between his finger and thumb. “Fill them too full, and they could bust prematurely.”
Temperance met his eyes. “Mm, that’s something you know a lot about, isn’t it?”
His attention tracked downward to her breasts for an instant. She’d have missed it if she hadn’t been looking right at his face. He made a low noise in his throat. “That’s always been your fault.”
Jets of water suddenly shot out around the rim of the balloon, speckling Temperance’s glasses, spraying Duncan in the chest. She sputtered and flailed with the overflowing latex while Duncan reached forward for the valve. He twisted it the wrong way. A blast of water shot the balloon off the end of the tap and ricocheted up from the ground to soak them both. Dirt instantly became mud. Temperance held out her hands and screeched; Duncan shouted in surprise, reaching again with both hands to twist the creaky damned thing off.
For a moment, they sat there in stunned silence.
Water dripped placidly from the tap, from the end of her nose, from the tips of his hair. Tiny droplets glistened in his beard. He used the back of his wrist to swipe them away.
Then they started to laugh, and the afternoon seemed to pause. In the huge pines, the birds hushed, and there was a lull in the crackly music from the cabin. Even the sounds of wet revelry from the lake quieted. Like the world had stopped to listen.
She was close enough to him to see the tiny chip in the outer edge of his front tooth. It was a casualty of their first kiss. They’d been seventeen. She’d leaned in, he’d leaned out, thinking she was messing with him. Teasing, like they’d always done. When he’d realized that she was earnest, he overcorrected with a bit too much enthusiasm and came in hot.
Temperance had swallowed that little fragment of his tooth that day. Sometimes she imagined that it had lodged permanently inside her, like a grain of sand in an oyster.
Breathless, she said, “You did that on purpose.”
Duncan stood, blocking the sun again. “Ah, Temperance.” With a quick jerk of his chin, he whipped damp hair off his forehead and looked down. “When I’m trying to get you wet… you’ll know it.”
It might have been the smirk before he turned around, or the fact that she sat in muddy grass in a gross gas-station swimsuit while he had the audacity to look so aggressively gorgeous and unruffled as he walked away. Maybe she was lashing out at being stuck between her parents and him. On one side, their inescapable expectations, and on the other, her own inescapable feelings for him.
Does this have anything to do with Duncan Brady?
She wanted to scream and laugh at the same time. It would always be about Duncan Brady.
Temperance shot to her feet and hurled one of the big balloons at him with as much force as she could muster. It connected between his shoulders with a soul-satisfying smack, splashing water up his neck and down his back.
“Now who’s wet?” she taunted.
He froze. Without turning, he put his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky. Rolled his neck, rolled his shoulders.
She picked up four more balloons and cradled them against her chest. One was filled so full it burst in her hand when she wound up another throw. Water raced down her wrist, her inner arm, her armpit. She hissed a breath through her teeth at the cold and shook it off.
Duncan exploded into motion. He pivoted toward her, startlingly nimble for his size.
Temperance whirled away with a whooping scream. She broke for the grassy clearing where cars and trucks were haphazardly parked like toddler toys. A balloon exploded across the backs of her thighs as she ran. Behind her, Duncan’s big, booming laugh. The sound of it raced straight up her spine.
Another balloon sailed past her head, splashing against the trunk of a tree.
Laughing and bubbling over with silly, uncomplicated joy, Temperance spun around to fling another balloon.
He’d picked up the whole bucket.
He slowed to a walk, and didn’t bother to dodge what she threw. One of her balloons soaked his chest, and the other connected just above the waistband of his trunks. She ducked around the back of Duncan’s truck.
A green balloon sailed over her head and exploded against the window of Maren and Nate’s minivan.
Temperance popped up and held out a hand. “Wait, wait.”
Duncan rounded the truck, bobbling a red balloon in his hand. He wore the kind of smile she hadn’t seen on him in a long time. Playful and unmistakably sensual, his top lip curled a little higher on one side. “Shouldn’t start something you’re unprepared to finish, Teacup.”
She was down to one balloon. Breathing hard, she said, “White flag.”
“Oh, really?” Sunbeams streaked through the leaves above them, dappling his face with shine and shadow. He crowded her backward until she was against the passenger’s-side door of his truck. “We playing flags again?”
Temperance swallowed hard. “I don’t know.”
There was a subtle shift in his features. The tiny muscles around his eyes tightened, two faint creases appeared between his brows. A little exhale flared his nose, and his mouth worked silently, like he was trying on words before speaking them.
He let the bucket hit the ground, and a few balloons wobbled out and rolled away.
Duncan’s chest rose and fell a little faster, and his features darkened. The red balloon exploded in his fist. The water was warm from the heat of his palm, soaking her thighs. “I can’t figure out how to act around you.”
Temperance shrank back against the truck. It was hot against her bare skin. “You don’t have to act any way—”
“I don’t know what the rules are anymore.” His words were clipped.
“There aren’t any rules.”
“No?” His breath stirred the tiny hairs around her face. “I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me since September, Temperance.”
“We’re talking right now,” she said.
“We’re not actually saying anything.”
“What are we supposed to say?”
His brows did a subtle pinch and lift. “I can think of a few things.”
The tip of his tongue swept the inner edge of his lower lip. He’d always done that when he was getting ready to kiss her, and she knew the exact trajectory he’d take. How he’d drop in easy at first, and fit his bottom lip flush with hers. Then he’d press in hard to spread her mouth wide against his. He always liked to keep his eyes open for the first few moments, to watch her react when his tongue made its first slow, purposeful slide across hers.
Her heart beat wild and loose. They never forgot how to kiss each other, even when they went months without doing it. The give and take, the push and pull, the way he’d lift her with a single flex of his forearm under her ass—
“Can I fix this?” Duncan looped a finger under the swimsuit strap where it had fallen down her shoulder again.
“Not sure what you could do without a needle and thread—” When she tilted her head down to watch his hand, his knuckles brushed the underside of her jaw. She looked up and away, over his shoulder. “And, ah, some spare elastic—”
He used the very tips of his fingers, careful to minimize how much of her skin he touched. Water from the burst balloon trickled off his fingers and down her arm. In two quick movements, he looped the loose material of the strap over itself and secured it in a tidy knot that stuck up from her shoulder like a little antenna. It was simple and functional and perfect. Temperance was a little embarrassed she hadn’t thought of it herself.
“Thank you.”
Quietly, he said, “I fix things.”
Temperance looked up. Duncan’s eyes were soft and hazy. He was close enough that the front of his trunks brushed her bare legs.
She knew him. The boy beneath the beard and the tattoos and the angst. The man whose cracked edges matched hers because they’d been broken by the same thing.
They’d always been as different as two people could be, but in the way a lock contrasted to the shape of its key. They’d fit because of their differences, not in spite of them.
She knew he couldn’t bring himself to eat Oreo cookies because it was the last treat they’d given his childhood dog the morning they had to say goodbye. She knew the sensual bass of his rumbly morning voice, and she knew how the curve of her calf fit just so in the notch at his hip when she hiked her leg over him in her sleep. She knew his skin smelled like home to her, more than anywhere she’d ever actually lived.
Temperance was honey in hot tea—every bit of her softened and flowed toward him. This was the Duncan she’d fallen in love with all those years ago. This quiet vulnerability and keen emotional intelligence that most people missed because they were too distracted by the impressive breadth of his shoulders or the sexy slung-sideways smile he threw on like a shield.
They both climbed inside the moment and wore it like armor, safe from who they were outside it.
“Someone will see us,” she whispered.
Duncan braced his hands against the truck alongside her shoulders. “Maybe they should.”
Maybe they should.
A red mini truck rambled loudly down the gravel access road. Temperance and Duncan both turned to look. The vehicle was absurdly cute and obviously old, with one of those flat-fronted faces and circular headlights that made it look like it was straight out of a Miyazaki film.
It belonged to Camilla Bristow from Westfall.
Duncan cleared his throat and took a step backward.
Gossip and county roads were like neurons connecting each little valley town. Everyone knew which community festivals to go to for the food, which to go to for the nineties cover bands, and which were best to avoid entirely unless you wanted to flirt with gastroenteritis and a good chance of getting pickpocketed. They knew that Zinnia MacQuoid in Fort Hill would be happy to foster that litter of kittens you found under the shed in your backyard. It was a fact that Mambo’s Deli in Chapel Ford had the best cheesesteak outside of Philadelphia, but if you wanted a hard roll hoagie, you went to Hogger’s in Linden and hoped they hadn’t sold out for the day. You knew the current status of high school football rivalries and high school marching band rivalries, and you knew the latter was even more savage than the former.
It also meant knowing when—and with whom—the boy you loved moved on with astonishing speed after you ended.
Aside from recognizing her unmistakable little truck, Temperance knew three things about Camilla Bristow—that everyone called her Millie for short, that she was assertively, undeniably likable, and that Duncan had been hooking up with her on and off since the month after they fell apart more than a decade ago. She was fair-haired and blue-eyed like Temperance, but where Temperance’s blond was silvery, Millie’s was an intense sunset-through-bourbon, and her eyes were an animated ultramarine instead of Temperance’s crystalline cool.
Millie parked the truck and got out, waving. Duncan hung his head for the briefest moment, then he looked up to pin Temperance with heavy-lidded black eyes. His voice was low. “We’re not done yet.”
Then he jogged away to meet Millie. She gave him a megawatt grin and hugged him around the neck, and they disappeared into the cabin.
Temperance slumped against the truck and looked down at the white balloon in her hand. Millie Bristow was charming and sweet and uncomplicated. Everything about her was big and bright in all the ways Temperance wasn’t. She felt drab and withered, standing there alone in her hideous bargain-bin swimsuit.
All that melty heat in her blood winked out.