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He texted back:
Coming. Dibs on the carriage house.
CHAPTER SIX
Rowan
Buddy Mary’s—or Buddy’s, for short—had been their favorite bar in the city since they were undergrads. It was packed tonight, but Rowan, T.J., and Frankie had managed to arrive early enough to score one of the high-top tables closest to the bar. Pounding house music rumbled the seats of the barstools they sat in, but the dance floor was far enough away it didn’t inhibit conversation.
A lifetime ago, Buddy’s had been one of the places twenty-one-year-old Rowan found salvation. It seemed silly, really, for a college bar to have played such a formative role in her life, but it would forever be the place where sweat, Obsession perfume, and watered-down Amaretto sours baptized her into a new, post–Noah Tully life.
She’d met Noah junior year. During their year-long relationship, he’d dominated her priorities, her consciousness, her entire sense of self. Her GPA tanked—she almost failed biostatistics, and consequently still struggled with stats to this day—and she lost the few casual friendships she’d had then. Noah demanded everything of her, and in her stunted notion of love, she went all in, overcompensating and overcorrecting for the lonely years of her adolescence. She’d recklessly embraced youthful romantic optimism instead of trusting the instincts that had been etchedonto her bones as a child. Wanting so desperately for instinct to be wrong.
When their engagement imploded, it left her in unrecognizable pieces. She’d been in survival mode when she moved in with Temperance and Frankie, sleeping or studying whenever she wasn’t in classes, scarcely emerging from the second bedroom Temperance had vacated so Rowan could have some meager privacy. Originally, her stay with them was intended to be temporary until she could find a place of her own. Instead, the two women infused themselves into her life, relentlessly and unapologetically.
Now here they still were, eight years later.
An array of perfectly fried bar foods covered the table, leaving barely enough room for their drinks. A gin and tonic for Temperance, a red wine for Frankie, and a hoppy craft beer for Rowan.
Rowan moaned around a mouthful of sloppy cheeseburger. “God, it’s as good as I remember.”
“I can’t believe we managed to get you off my couchtwicein the same weekend.” Temperance bit into a fried mozzarella stick and closed her eyes in bliss as the hot, melty cheese stretched between fingers and teeth. Frankie watched with bare lust in her eyes.
“I’m not here for you two,” Rowan muttered. “I’m here for the food.”
“I’m not mad about it. A bar has no business having food this delicious,” Temperance said.
Rowan waved her fingers in front of Frankie’s face. Her eyes were wide and glassy. “Frances. You’re not a model anymore. Eat a cheese stick.”
“Screw modeling.” Frankie blinked fast, like she’d just emerged from a trance. She pressed a hand to her belly. “It’s not that. Fried food makes me so gassy.”
“Liar,” Temperance said. “You’ve never farted in your life.”
Rowan laughed. “Cheesesteak Friday wrecks me, and you don’t see me giving that up. Eat the cheese.”
Genuine anguish drew down Frankie’s mouth. “But if I eat one—I’ll eat ten.”
“There are only five more on the plate, Frank.”
“And there are fivehundredmore back in the kitchen’s freezer. I can’t be trusted around that much cheese.” Frankie’s voice rose. “Why are we having this conversation? How long have you known me?”
“Long enough to know you dumped that hot vegan guy simply because he’d never take you out for fondue.” Temperance licked her fingertips with dainty precision and picked up a deep-fried pickle.
“Dante Deacon. Honestly, I should have married him. He could have been my lifelong totem against cheese overindulgence. I’d never have to be tempted.” Frankie rubbed her forehead.
“Disagree. You’d want it more, because you couldn’t have it,” Temperance said.
Frankie’s grin was sly. “Nowyou’retalking about your freshman-year guy. The one you refuse to talk about.”
Temperance silently lifted a dainty middle finger at Frankie.
Rowan stuck her finger through an onion ring and wiggled it around. “If you’d have married Dante, who would’ve been my co-chair of the Marriage Repudiation Club?”
“I’ll never give up my membership card, Rosebud. Don’t you worry about that.”
“You also broke up with that one guy for pronouncing ‘pictures’ like ‘pitchers,’” Temperance said.
“Ugh, that guy. Harley Patterson,” Frankie said. “I am aphotographer. I couldn’t hear that for the rest of my life.”
