Beach Reads Box Set

by Madden-Mills, Ilsa

  “What did you just call him?” Freya says.

  Ren smiles at me, ignoring her. “Yes, Francesca.”

  “I did almost the same thing.”

  Ziggy drops her phone on the counter. “You did?”

  “Mhmm.” Extending my hand, I wait for Ren to come within reach. When he does, I wrap my arm around his warm, solid back. “Except I was at Mass, and I figured the baptismal font seemed as good a place as any to take a pee.”

  Willa slaps the counter and laughs. “You didn’t.”

  “Oh, I did.” I slide my hand along Ren’s back and rub gently between his shoulders, meeting his eyes.

  See? You’re not alone. So long as I’m here.

  I wish he could read my mind, could hear what I want him to know.

  And, the funniest thing happens. It’s as if he does just that. Because he leans in, with a soft kiss to that tender place behind my ear, and whispers, “Thank you.”

  No sooner does Ren make for the sliding glass door leading out to their deck, but a tall blonde throws it open and bumps into him. Tugging the door shut behind her, she greets everyone happily. Golden hair cut blunt to her shoulders. Sparkly eyes that dance between green and blue, land and sea.

  She is sunshine incarnate.

  And when she looks up at Ren, I want to summon lightning and smite her.

  He gives her a hug hello and quickly steps back. Standing next to each other, they could not be more perfect looking. A very odd, terrible feeling settles in my stomach.

  That’s the kind of person I used to picture Ren with. An effortless social butterfly—emotionally nimble, expertly gregarious, who passes out smiles like a pageant queen at the parade.

  She even looks like him somehow. Statuesque and tall. Strong features, wide smile, alluring body.

  “Well?” She elbows him in the ribs. “Can I finally meet her?”

  Willa clears her throat. “Since you were my friend first, Rooster, I’d like to do the honors. Rooney, this is Frankie. Ren’s lady love.”

  So this is Rooney, Willa’s best friend from college.

  Rooney walks away from Ren, leans in and gives me a gentle hug. “So good to finally meet you.”

  When she straightens and winks at me, it’s as blindingly unnerving as staring into the sun. But maybe I’m just that unused to people as pathologically cheery as Rooney. She puts Ren’s temperament to shame.

  “You too,” I manage.

  Freya stirs whatever alcohol is in the pitcher. I watch it swirl obediently in the wake of a long wooden spoon. Fruit. Booze.

  Sangria.

  Oh thank God. I need a vat of it. This is so many people in one place, including a woman who in this moment of insecure weakness only reminds me of all the ways I feel inadequate.

  “Get out of here, Ren,” Freya says on a wave, as she takes an experimental taste from the pitcher. “And if you see my husband being sporty outside, tell him I hope he trips.”

  Elin smacks Freya’s butt and mutters something in Swedish.

  “Not touching that one.” Ren waves and slides open the door. “Come out soon, okay?” he says to me.

  I nod. “I will.”

  Very soon, if I have anything to say about it.

  Rooney plops down next to me, reaches for a carrot and swipes it through a bowl of hummus. Crunching, she looks me over. “You are hot.”

  Willa sighs. “Is there no faithfulness, anymore?”

  Rooney blows her a kiss. “You were my first, honey. But you chose Ryder over me. It’s time for me to move on.”

  I stare between them. “You two…were…together?”

  “They don’t speak our language, Frankie,” Ziggy says, swiping through her phone. I think she’s reading. At her own birthday party. Smart girl.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Ziggy glances up. “It’s all one big joke. If you take any of it literally—which is how you and I tend to take everything—it’s very confusing.”

  Rooney smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s a bad habit. I’m an only child who grew up watching a lot of Gilmore Girls with no one to be the Rory to my Lorelai.”

  “But that would make you her mom,” I say confusedly.

  Ziggy lifts a hand. “My point is made.”

  Willa gently pats my arm. “What Rooney means is she likes to talk. A lot. And I do, too. We talk back and forth, mostly about nothing, but it’s all wrapped up in love. Make sense?”

  Not really.

  I never talk unless I have something meaningful to say, and then I have lots to say. Talking for talking’s sake is exhausting.

  Ziggy grins at me as if she just thought the same thing, then goes back to her phone.

  A shadow graces the patio doorway, and in steps the oldest Bergman, Axel. He’s taller than Ren and lean, like he runs marathons. Long, wiry muscles. Ramrod-straight posture. He’s very handsome, if not a little intimidating, with his severe expression. Ryder’s and Ziggy’s grass-green eyes. Tousled chocolate hair like Viggo’s.

  He freezes when he sees all of us. “Why is everyone staring at me?”

  Rooney mutters under her breath, “Because who the hell wouldn’t stare at him?”

  Willa snorts. Axel narrows his eyes at her.

  “No one’s staring, Ax,” Freya says, pouring more wine into the pitcher. “You just walked in. People tend to look at a person when they enter a room.”

  Axel sees me, but his expression doesn’t change. An odd prick at the back of my neck makes me sit straighter.

  “You’re Frankie,” he says. There’s very little inflection in his voice. Because faces confuse me, I rely on tone of voice to intuit subtext. I get nothing from this neutral delivery.

  “I am. You’re Axel.” I offer my hand. “Good to meet you.”

  Striding my way, Axel takes my hand, squeezes it. “You too.” When he notices Rooney, he does a double take. “Your hair’s shorter.”

  She grins. “Yeah. I chopped it. What do you think?”

  He stares at her, wetting his bottom lip with his tongue. “You changed it.”

  Her smile falters. “You don’t like it?”

  “Change makes Ax hive,” Freya says, stirring the sangria. “He nearly disowned me when I got the pixie cut a few years back.”

  Axel stares at Rooney still. “I think…I need to get used to it. In my head you have long hair.”

  “Well, at least I’m in your head,” Rooney tells him. Her smile’s back, and it is formidable.

  Clearing his throat, Ax backs away. “Bathroom,” he says.

  Three long strides, and he’s gone. The kitchen goes unnaturally quiet. And a furious blush stains Rooney’s cheek.

  25

  Frankie

  Playlist: “Mushaboom,” Feist

  Willa leans and watches Axel’s departure until a door beyond my view clicks shut. Snapping back, she lobs a block of cheese at Rooney. It bounces off her forehead. “You are shameless with him.”

  Rooney picks up the cheese and pops it in her mouth. “He’s such a hunk. I can’t help it.”

  Elin grins to herself as she rinses off her hands. Freya sets a glass of sangria in front of me, and I nod in thanks. I don’t really know what to say, so I sip my drink instead.

  “Rooney always goes for the broody types,” Willa says.

  “I used to,” Rooney corrects her. “I’ve sworn off men.”

  Every woman in the room except me erupts in laughter.

  “I have!” she says. “They’re all horrible. Except Ax. He’s different.”

  “He is, is he?” Willa says, wiggling her eyebrows.

  “How long have you, uh…” I clear my throat, trying to be conversational with her. “Sworn off men?”

  “Let me think.” Rooney taps her chin and stares at the ceiling. “Five weeks. It’s been brutal. But I ordered a dildo, which should be here any day, so things are looking up.”

  Willa snorts into her sangria. Elin seems unfazed, and Freya just chuckles under her breath.
Ziggy’s reading and misses it entirely.

  When someone drops that kind of truth in a group setting, they’re on my good side forever. “Cheers to that.” I lift my glass. Rooney clinks her glass to mine, and when she smiles at me, I actually find myself smiling back.

  Conversation takes off without my help after that, though I find my moments to chime in here and there. After not too long, there’s only one glass of sangria in my system, but I’m flushed and relaxed, slightly buzzed, which is when I feel like I have a tiny glimpse of what it’s like to be a socially fluent human. To flow with conversation and enjoy it, instead of following it like a tennis match, trying desperately to keep track of who served and whose turn it is to volley back.

  But I’m also warm, and a little agitated, which I’ve learned by now means I need fresh air and a few moments of quiet. Excusing myself, I step out onto the back deck and nearly collide with Ren’s father.

  “Shit!” I yelp. “I mean, shoot. I mean—”

  His laugh is so like Ren’s that it makes me do a double take. “Frankie. I’m no saint. You can curse around me.” Steadying me, he neatly steps to the side. His hand gestures toward a chair for me to sit in.

  “Oh. Um. Okay.” Awkwardly, I plop into the chair, picking up a placemat off of the outdoor table and fanning myself. “Sorry, again, Dr. B.” It’s what I heard both Willa and Rooney call him, so it seems like the way to go. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  He waves his hand, groaning softly as he drops into a chair across from me. “You mind if I join you? Those beasts I raised down there wore me out.”

  “Be my guest,” I tell him.

  “Thank you.”

  I smile, watching all five of the Bergman brothers volleying a soccer ball, trying to keep it in the air. Viggo chests it, then cracks a shot into the nearby net, before the only brother I don’t recognize and by process of elimination is Oliver, jogs off to scoop it up. My gaze sweeps past the lawn beyond us, sprawling and flat, nestled among blossoms and a grove of trees a way off. Dusk is my favorite time of day, when the sky glows peach and violet, and the air turns cool.

  When I glance back over, I freeze. Dr. B’s pant leg has lifted enough to reveal a titanium rod in place of an ankle. I stare in complete shock.

  On a quiet groan, he massages the muscles right above his knee, staring out into the yard at his sons, a soft smile warming his face. When he glances my way, he pauses. His gaze travels my expression. “He didn’t tell you?”

  I shake my head.

  “My military souvenir,” he says while patting his thigh. “Gets sore after a long day and trying to keep up with them. I’m sorry if it upset—”

  “No,” I blurt.

  My heart’s pounding. Why wouldn’t Ren tell me? All my hemming and hawing about my challenges’ potential pitfalls in a relationship and he never thought it would help for me to know he grew up seeing that kind of love firsthand?

  See? Fulfilling interabled coupledom is possible, the little Lorena on my shoulder gloats. I’m tempted to flick her off her perch, if she weren’t a figment of my imagination and it wouldn’t completely disconcert Ren’s dad.

  “Please don’t apologize,” I finally manage hoarsely, bringing a hand to my throat and rubbing uneasily.

  Dr. B grins at me, and it’s another dead ringer for Ren. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the first person I’ve surprised. I think sometimes my kids forget it’s not normal to everyone else. It’s all they’ve ever known.”

  “How was that? Being in a rigorous profession, married, having kids, with…”

  “With a physical limitation?” He glances out to the field and sighs. “Hard sometimes. Discouraging others. Always healing.”

  “Why? Why ‘healing’?”

  Dr. B drums his fingers on the arms of his chair. “Well…when it happened, Freya was a toddler, Elin was pregnant with Axel. I was devastated. I thought I’d never be able to give my wife and children what they needed. Not as I’d envisioned, at least. I’d never be able to practice medicine again how I’d hoped. I felt like my life was over.

  “But then Axel was born, and I held him, those eyes just like mine staring up at me, and something clicked. I realized he loved me. Already, he loved me, just how I was. I’d made him with his mother, and he was my flesh and blood and not having most of my leg didn’t change that. Finally, I understood my life wasn’t over, only my idea of my life was.

  “That’s when I fully released my old expectations, how I thought my life should be, and instead loved my life for what it was: a gift. A heart beating in my chest. Breath in my lungs. A wife and children who loved me as I was.”

  My eyes blur with tears. I dab my face as they spill down my cheeks. “That’s very…encouraging,” I whisper. “Thank you for telling me.”

  He nods, holding my eyes for a long moment, before our gazes shift together, toward the field again. Dabbing my eyes, I search the grass until I see Ren’s in goal. Right as Oliver takes a penalty shot, he dives, completely missing. All five brothers fall into various postures and volumes of hilarity, and Dr. B laughs, watching them. As if he knows I’m watching him, Ren glances up as he stands and catches my eye. His laugh dies away as our eyes lock. My heart skips inside my chest.

  Suddenly, the door slides open again, and Ziggy bounds out, practically throwing herself at her dad and landing in his lap. He catches her with an oof, before she kisses his cheek and wraps her arms around his neck. I’m relieved to see their easy affection. It means that her parents have stopped keeping so much distance between them and Ziggy, that she feels more comfortable with physical closeness again.

  “Hi, Ziggy Stardust,” he whispers, wrapping his arms around her.

  “Hi, Daddy.” Ziggy glances over at me and repositions herself on his lap, like it isn’t comical someone so grown and long-limbed is draped over her dad. It’s sweet and innocent and entirely Ziggy. She’s still a girl in a lot of ways. Very much how I was as a teen.

  Dr. B rests his cheek on her head and sighs, his eyes crinkling happily. “You know who Ren’s named after?” he asks me.

  I nod. “Kierkegaard.”

  “That’s right. I was reading his Works of Love toward the end of Elin’s pregnancy with him. I’d read aloud to her while she soaked in the tub, after I’d put Freya and Axel to bed. It just fit. The name, his philosophy…”

  “I’m not familiar with Kierkegaard in any detail,” I tell him honestly.

  Dr. B glances up at the fading daylight and smiles. “‘To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.’”

  “The other one, Daddy,” Ziggy say quietly.

  He kisses her forehead. “‘The most common form of despair is not being who you are.’”

  Ziggy smiles. “That’s my favorite.”

  “And my favorite,” Dr. B says, as he shifts Ziggy on his lap, “is—”

  A new voice breaks in. I glance over my shoulder to see Ren smiling down at me, hands in his pockets. “‘To cheat oneself out of love,’” he says, “‘is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation.’”

  My throat’s dry as a desert. I lick my lips and feel myself melting in the heat of his stare. “That’s a good one.”

  Ren nods. “Yes, it is.”

  “Frankie!” a voice yells from below.

  I turn and lean against the deck rail, squinting to find who said it. “Yes?”

  Viggo waves. “Come down here. I need a partner.”

  I glance across the field. They’re setting up…badminton? Oliver and Axel stretch the net with Ryder’s help. I don’t see Freya’s husband, Aiden, anywhere. When I glance up at Ren, I see he’s glaring down at Viggo, his jaw tight.

  As I stand, I shuffle out from between the table and chair and salute Dr. B and Ziggy both. “It was good talking to you. But now, it’s time to go get my ass handed to me at badminton.”

  Dr. B grins and pats Ziggy’s back, his eyes ho
lding mine. “Go on and show ’em how it’s done.”

  Peering up at Ren, I smile. Hands on his hips. A flush in his cheeks. Angry Big Red stance. I thread my arm around his waist and smile up at him.

  Ren frowns as I hold on to him while we walk down the deck stairs to the back lawn. “I told Viggo croquet would be better,” he grumbles.

  “Maybe. But I think I can hold my own in a corner of the net. We’ll divvy up the area, and I’ll stick to mine.” I pat his cheek. “Remember. Give me a chance. Don’t assume I can’t.”

  “I’m trying. I’m…” He sighs. “Can I be honest?”

  “Always. Please.”

  “Okay.” He rakes a hand through his hair and tugs roughly. “I’m worried you’ll get hurt. Not because I think you’re incapable or that badminton is beyond you—truly, I don’t—but look at us—” He gestures to his brothers, all of whom are over six feet and pushing 200 pounds.

  “Well, that’s a fair point. But it’s not a contact sport.”

  “Everything is a contact sport in the Bergman household.”

  I laugh. “It’s okay. I’ll be careful.”

  Ren wraps an arm around my shoulder and kisses my hair. My head rests on his shoulder in a way that I can see behind his back, where Oliver is stealthily creeping toward him. I’ve seen that stance. That’s an I’m-about-to-depants-a-guy stance.

  Shoving myself around Ren so that he’s shielded behind me, I lift my cane and point it at Oliver.

  Ren’s younger brother grins, frozen to the spot. “Foiled by Bellatrix. What’s she gonna do?”

  “I might be Slytherin,” I tell him. “But I’m no Death Eater.”

  Ryder glances between us. “What the hell is this? Did I just fall into a ninth circle of nerd hell?”

  Ren shoves him. “Lay off. She’s protecting me.”

  Oliver grins, feinting to the right. I arc my cane and yell, “Stupefy!”

  He freezes perfectly, mouth agape, mid-crouch.

  “That all you got?” Viggo calls.

  Lifting my cane higher, I touch the tip to Oliver’s chest. “Locomotor Mortis.”

  Trying not to smile, Oliver snaps up, legs locked together, and topples over onto the grass. A burst of applause sounds from the deck, where Ziggy and Dr. B, now Willa, Rooney, and Elin stand.