‘Mai’s playing fiddle at Murphy’s. I know you’re in that disgustingly sickly, boning all the time phase, but you guys should come.’
Fin’s brain snagged on the boning bit and he tried desperately not to think aboutboninghisbest friend. But it was in there now, rattling around in his head along with the whimpery noise she’d made in the back of her throat when they’d kissed—twice now—and thoughts of her denim-clad ass.
With cousins like that, a man didn’t need enemies.
Desperately trying to drag his brain out of the boning rut, Fin said, ‘I’m telling Mai you called her violin a fiddle.’
‘Dob away, cousin. She thinks it’s all hot and Irish.’
Not for the first time in his life, Fin thought how perfectly suited Mai and Donny were. To look at, they were an odd couple—a tall, broad ocker, Aussie, blue-collar boy of Irish descent with a short, petite, internationally renowned, classically trained violinist of Korean descent—but they were both a little debauched and totallygoteach other. Their synergy was next level and, for the first time since they were kids and Donny’s gift of the gab had made Penelope Curran laugh, Fin envied his cousin.
‘So,’ Donny prompted. ‘Coming or not?’
‘Sure,’ he said, as he absently watched the boys still signing—badly—and giggling at their attempts.
Mai could spin out an Irish jig on her fiddle that was guaranteed to make every barfly with even the most tenuous connection to the old country shed a tear. She could make her violin soar and bleed and quiver with such heartbreakingly exquisite resonance he would never, as long as he had two working ears, missanyopportunity that came his way to hear her play.
Plus, it beat another night in with Sweeney.
In less than a week, they’d gone fromlet’s lock ourselves away indoors at all coststolet’s get out as much as possible. Sure, they’d done a very good job of being mature about what had happened on the beach, acting like making out on the sand with a bestie of over thirty years was what all the cool kids were doing and therefore meant nothing. But it was far easier to remember its inconsequence when theyweren’twatchingLostside by side on the couch in their pyjamas eating Golden Gaytime ice cream from the tub.
Just then, one of the boys signed a word that, well… was definitely NSFW.
Fin frowned. ‘Ah, Jaxon? Buddy?’ He made the sign for friend as he addressed the beefy kid who, had he been born in any other small town in Australia, would probably be on a rugby pitch right now. ‘I don’t think that means what you think it means.’
Jaxon’s fingers froze in what normally would be the universal sign for okay, but instead of holding it up vertically with a locked wrist, he’d laid it horizontal, his wrist bent, which altered the meaningsignificantly. ‘That’s not the sign for okay. This is.’
Fin signed the word, but Jaxon’s cheeks flushed a bright red and he looked so guilty that Fin realised Jaxon knewexactlywhat he’d been signing. And, when the kid’s gaze shifted sidewards to Donny, Fin also knew where he’d learned it.
He turned to Donny. ‘Please tell me you haven’t been teaching these kids how to sign asshole.’
Donny, also a lousy liar, shook his head. ‘Of course not.’
Fin raised his eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘I may or may not have taught it to the girls, though.’
‘What the fuck, dude?’ Fin wasn’t sure where this sense of responsibility he felt for his kids—his?—had come from but it was definitely there.
‘Some older boy was picking on Tori last week and Nellie got into trouble for calling him agiant poo-poo head.’
Fin supposed it wasn’t appropriate to laugh at this juncture. So he bit it back. But it wasn’t easy as he pictured Nellie fiercely sticking up for her little sister, dredging up the worst insult her six-year-old brain could think of.
‘And because Mai forbid me to show her how to kick a boy in the nuts, I taught her how to sign asshole so she could at least insult him more succinctly. And without anyone knowing.’
Of course, Donny—who’d known how to sign every dirty word in the AUSLAN book by the time he was Nellie’s age—would come up with such a solution. Fin would bet the house that Mai didn’t know about it. ‘That’s very mature.’
‘Hey, he started it.’
Fin sighed. Way to demonstrate the point, cousin. ‘So nowyourdaughters—’
‘Andyour’—Donny poked his chest—‘goddaughters.’
Fin rolled his eyes. Like he’d had anything to do with their day-to-day raising. ‘Have … what? Taught the rest of the team?’
‘Apparently.’
Donny didn’t seem remotely contrite. In fact, he seemed a little bit pleased with himself. And Fin found himself, once again, biting back the laughter.
