Here We Go Again, page 15
Hale covers her face with both hands and groans. “Please, can we never discuss Joe’s genitalia ever again?”
“It’s the only thing I want to discuss from here to New England.”
Hale peeks at her through her fingers. “You noticed the handkerchief too, right? The one he always carries around? The initials on it? Do you think that maybe Remy is Joe’s one regret?”
“Maybe.” Logan’s throat feels strangely dry, and she cracks open her can of Sprite. In front of them, the sun sinks lower, and the sky explodes. Electric yellow at the horizon, then flames of gold, burnt orange, and bright pink lick the bottoms of the clouds. Everything burns radiantly.
“Do you have any major regrets?” Hale asks, so plainly, it takes Logan a second to arrive at the safest answer.
“Me? Are you kidding? I say at least ten regrettable things a day.”
Hale tucks her legs beneath her and angles her body toward Logan’s on the couch. “I mean, real regrets. Remy-level regrets.”
She swallows another sip of Sprite. “My twenties are basically an orgy of regrets,” she says, because she can’t tell her the truth. That most of her regrets in life are about Rosemary Hale.
Logan regrets kissing her in that garden and giving away that small sliver of her true heart.
She regrets not kissing her sooner.
She regrets being so damn petty when Hale kissed Jake. She regrets not telling her how she really felt. She regrets letting their friendship disintegrate over something as meaningless as a middle school kiss. She regrets that the kiss wasn’t meaningless at all, at least not to her.
She regrets all the things she did in high school to stretch the chasm between them, and all the things she’s done since Hale moved back.
But even with the friendship truce and the newfound closeness between them, Logan can’t say any of these regrets out loud. It might… change things between them on the trip.
Or worse, it might change nothing at all.
“Okay, do you want to know what I regret, for realsies?”
Hale nods solemnly. “For realsies.”
“I regret never leaving Vista Summit.” Logan exhales and lets her confession float in the desert air between them. It sounds silly when she says it out loud, but it feels so heavy inside her all the time.
Hale stares out at the swirling sky, and Logan wonders if they’re both thinking about all the summer sunsets they watched from her front porch. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“I don’t know,” she lies. “A million reasons, but mostly… mostly because of my dad.”
Hale turns so she can look at Logan fully. “Your dad?”
“You know how it was back then. He was wrecked when my mom left, heartbroken. For years after, he missed her. And I’m the only person he has! If I left him, I don’t know… it feels like if I left it would mean… that I’m like her.”
Logan takes another gulp of her soda to stop these humiliating confessions from pouring out. Hale always had this quiet understanding about her that made Logan spill her darkest secrets. “You know, I’ve never actually admitted that to anyone before.”
Hale clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth. “Really?” she asks. “Not even to your therapist? Because it seems like an obvious byproduct of your attachment issues caused by your mother’s abandonment.”
Logan laughs. “Do I seem well-adjusted enough to have a therapist?”
“You should really get a therapist.” Hale chews on her bottom lip.
“Oh, just say it!”
“Say what?”
“Whatever it is you want to say!” Logan throws a Dorito at her.
“I think your dad would be really sad to know that you aren’t living the life you want, to protect him.”
Logan remembers her dad in the kitchen two weeks ago, practically begging her to go on this trip. “I don’t even know what kind of life I want to live,” Logan grumbles.
Hale turns to look out at the sun as it spreads its colors like lava across the sky. “I think that’s my biggest regret,” she says quietly. Logan almost misses it over the sound of her own Dorito crunching. “Not living the life I wanted. I regret that I stopped writing.”
When Hale doesn’t offer any further details, Logan treads carefully. “Why did you stop writing?”
“Writing isn’t exactly a safe, stable career path.”
“But you were so good at it!” she says with a little too much enthusiasm.
Hale used to conjure fantastical stories out of thin air like a magic trick. She’d pick up a pencil and words would pour out of her—stories about adventures and quests and romance. Stories they would sometimes write together, a single pencil they passed back and forth; stories Hale would read aloud by flashlight late at night in excited whispers. It always felt like she was building a secret world just for the two of them.
She shakes her head. “Being good at it doesn’t matter. Plenty of talented fiction writers never get published. And many writers who do get published still have to work a day job. So, I switched my major to education so I would always have a secure day job. And don’t get me wrong”—she holds out a defensive hand and there’s a smudge of chocolate on the pad of her index finger—“I love being a teacher. I love my students, I love creating an inclusive curriculum, and I love that I’m always learning. I don’t regret teaching. But…”
“But teaching requires all of you,” Logan fills in. “And it doesn’t leave much time or energy to write an entire novel.”
Especially not the way Hale approaches teaching. Hale cares too damn much. She strops around in her high heels and argues at staff meetings because she cares. She gets to work before everyone else and carries around papers to grade because she cares so damn much. Some of it is perfectionism, sure, but most of it is just Hale never learning how not to care. And unlike Logan, she never hides it, never fakes indifference or disguises her passions. She’s impossibly brave. Always has been.
“No,” Hale sighs. “It doesn’t.”
Logan thinks it’s probably more than that. Hale always loved the self-contained desks and the bells and the rigidity of school. School was the place where she felt the most confident, the most comfortable with herself. Teaching seems like a perfect way to live in that safe routine bubble for as long as possible.
But writing… writing is chaos. It’s creative and it’s messy and it’s uncertain. All things Hale hates.
“Though I guess now I have nothing but time….” Hale says darkly down to her snack foods.
“What do you mean?”
“I—I got laid off.”
“Wait, you what?”
Hale sits very still beside her as she factually recounts the story: “They’re hoping to rehire me in the fall, but you know Vista Summit has never approved an education levy, so I don’t know where the budget would come from, which means I’m currently unemployed.”
Logan tries to think of an appropriate response, but draws a blank. Hale got laid off. No wonder she showed up at Logan’s house with a giant binder, and no wonder her anxiety has been running amok all trip.
Logan tries to imagine school in the fall: no Hale sulking in the hallways, no Hale to torment at staff meetings, no Hale in the teacher’s lounge or at the photocopier, her car always the last one in the parking lot each afternoon. Hale cut off from the thing she cares about most.
“Technically speaking, you already did it,” Hale says, and Logan has no idea what she’s talking about.
“I already did what?”
The sky burns for another minute before the sun vanishes completely, muting the palate to pretty pastels. The pastels project themselves onto Hale’s pale hair. She looks like a living rainbow. “You already left Vista Summit,” she says. “You left to go on this trip. You’re away from your dad right now.”
Logan snorts dismissively. “Yeah, but I call him every night while you’re in the shower.”
Hale cocks her head to the side like she’s studying an inscrutable work of art in one of the galleries. “You do?”
“Yeah, just to check in and make sure he’s okay.”
Hale’s neck looks like it’s about to snap in half. She stares at Logan, and stares and stares. Then, she straightens and says, “I haven’t called my mom once since we left.”
That doesn’t surprise Logan. She remembers all the nights Hale ate dinner at her house in middle school because her mom was always at work.
Hale shakes her head a few more times. “And you could never be like your mom, by the way.” She says this like it’s a plain, objective statement of fact, an incontrovertible truth. There’s something about the quiet confidence of those words that takes root inside Logan’s heart, like a gentle voice telling her it’s not too late. She’s not dying, and there’s still time to live without regret.
Hale shivers and rubs her hands up and down her bare arms. “It’s cold in the desert when the sun goes down.”
“Here.” Logan reaches for one of the blankets and attempts to drape it over Hale’s exposed shoulders.
“Gross! I don’t want some stranger’s blanket touching my body!” she shrieks in protest, but she still allows Logan to wrap her up like a burrito in a southwest-patterned blanket that smells of weed. Logan wraps herself in it, too. A burrito made for two.
“Live dangerously, Rosemary. You’re on an adventure.”
“Ha!” Hale’s hand bursts out of the blanket burrito so she can point a finger right in Logan’s face. “You called me Rosemary.”
Logan shoves her finger away. “No I didn’t.”
“You did!” She pushes herself up on her tucked legs so she’s even closer to Logan, and they were already so close. Too close. Their bodies facing each other inside their snug burrito. Hale is two inches away, smelling like vanilla and peppermint and vending machine Cheez-Its. Her pale lashes and her pale cheeks, which have pinkened from the sun. Exactly four freckles have appeared beneath her right eye, and Logan’s close enough that she could trace a route between them.
A route to a destination they can never reach.
“I knew you would slip up eventually!” Hale says smugly.
Logan stops staring at those freckles. “I did not slip up.”
“You did. I have proof.”
“Are you recording this conversation?”
Hale looks self-satisfied as she taps a finger to her temple. “The proof is up here. I know what I heard. Rose-mar-y.” She stretches out the three syllables of her own name like a song. “You haven’t called me that in years.”
“Have you been keeping track?”
“Yes.” Hale’s smile shines prettily in the purple dusk. “I’ve missed hearing you say my name.”
Logan swallows. She feels the way she did in Cortez, when the stars looked infinite and her chest felt looser than it had in years.
I’ve missed hearing you say my name. Leave it to Hale to say something so damn earnest.
Hale was always the earnest one when they were kids. While other people’s brains told them to lie out of self-preservation, Hale’s brain didn’t have that protective hardwiring. She usually told the truth, even if it was too honest. So, it makes sense that they’re touching knees and elbows inside a blanket, and Hale says something as ridiculously sweet as I’ve missed hearing you say my name.
Hale probably has no idea how that simple admission makes Logan feel.
Hell, Logan doesn’t know how it makes her feel, except that she feels like her heart is a stupid dandelion puff about to float away in a dozen pieces. And she feels warm (probably from the blanket). And she feels like she’s buzzing (probably from eating candy for dinner). And she feels like… like she could kiss Hale if she wanted to.
She doesn’t want to kiss her, though. Instead, she twists her head so her mouth is directed toward Hale’s left ear, and she says her name again in a quiet voice. Rosemary. She savors each delicious syllable on her tongue, and Hale inhales sharply. They’re so close, and Hale would probably taste like Twix if she kissed her right now.
She thinks, maybe, Hale wants her to.
Hale tilts her head, and all Logan would have to do is lean in a fraction of an inch to take that pretty mouth in hers. One of them is breathing heavily, but Logan can’t tell who. Maybe they’re both breathing heavily, in unison, as Logan leans in and—
“Joe,” Hale says, ducking her head out of what maybe (definitely) would have been a kiss. “We should really go check on Joe.”
Logan yanks her head back, and the blanket loosens around both of their shoulders. Then Hale steps out of the blanket burrito entirely. Her bare skin looks pale and freezing, but she stands there like she can feel nothing at all. “I’m worried he’s going to stubbornly try to sleep in his wheelchair when he realizes he can’t get himself into bed,” she blathers as she picks up their snack wrappers. “Don’t you think we should go?”
“Totally.” Logan clears her throat. “You’re totally right. Let’s go check on Joe.”
A twinge of hurt tugs on her rib cage, but she shakes it off. She’s not hurt. She’s grateful.
Kissing Rosemary Hale would be the worst impulsive decision she’s ever made twice.
Santa Fe, New Mexico to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Chapter Seventeen
LOGAN
Joe looks like death.
When Logan goes into his hotel room a little before seven in the morning, she finds him wide awake, lying completely still in the dark with his arms folded across his chest like a vampire in his coffin. She clicks on the light.
In the four years since his cancer diagnosis, this is the worst he’s ever looked. Seeing him there in corpse-pose sends a spike of dread straight to her gut. He’s dying, a voice intones in the back of her mind. This time, he’s really dying.
She shakes off the voice and the dread. “You dead?” she asks flippantly.
“Only emotionally,” Joe croaks.
She squats on the edge of his mattress and Odie bounces up from his spot at Joe’s feet to enthusiastically lick her face. “Cause of emotional death?”
Joe tilts his head to look up at her. “Impossible to identify a single cause. There’s the humiliation of knowing you girls saw my dick—”
“You know we change your diapers, right?”
“And then there is the deep regret over the way I reacted. The shame over how I spoke to you last night…. Logan, I didn’t mean what I said, please believe me.”
“I do. As a semiprofessional asshole, your little temper tantrum was farm league.”
Joe blinks back unmistakable tears and reaches for his handkerchief. “I’m sorry, Logan.”
He sounds beyond dejected. If she had to guess, she would say Joe didn’t get any sleep last night, that he laid here thinking about Remy St. Patin and the painting and his guilt.
She is pretty sure no one slept last night. Hale audibly tossed and turned for hours until she finally surrendered, pulled out a notebook, and sat at the small hotel desk scribbling something by the glow of her phone.
Logan tried to breathe rhythmically like she was asleep while she was kept awake by her own cocktail of embarrassment, regret, and shame.
She almost kissed Hale last night.
Worse, she had thought Hale wanted to kiss her back.
And isn’t that just a classic Logan move? Things are going well with Hale, so why not self-sabotage by kissing her?
She wishes she could tell Joe about the almost-kiss on the roof. He would call her a fuckboy, and they would laugh about her horrible life choices, and the almost-kiss would become funny instead of vaguely tragic.
But she can’t talk to Joe about Hale, because Hale is currently walking into the room in a sheer, light pink sundress that makes Logan want to scream. Odie leaps off the bed when he sees her and jumps up so his paws are on her shoulders like he’s trying to hug her.
At least Odie appears well rested.
“How are you feeling this morning?” Hale asks, hesitantly approaching the bed.
“I’m feeling very sorry, Rosie dear,” Joe answers. “For myself, but especially about how I acted toward you. I was an asshole.”
“No you weren’t,” Hale tries to reassure him.
“I was. Please forgive me?”
“Of course.”
He breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you, darling. And… And I think you were right. We should get this trip back on track. Take the direct route to Bar Harbor.”
“Joe—” Logan starts, but he silences her with one pitiful look.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, trying to extend the trip and make up for lost time. We should just…” He inhales sharply, then coughs twice into his handkerchief. “We should go straight to Maine.”
Hale glances up from her side of the bed and meets Logan’s gaze. She’s all pale lashes and uncertainty. “If you’re sure that’s what you want, Joe…”
She’s sure Hale is thinking the same things Logan is.
What about Remy St. Patin?
What about the painting? The handkerchief? The one regret?
And do they really want the trip to be over in four days? Does Logan really want to go back to Vista Summit and how things used to be with Hale? Will Hale even stay in Vista Summit if she doesn’t work there anymore?
Logan isn’t sure she can handle Hale driving away again.
“I’m sure,” Joe says. “This is what I want.”
Hale puts a hand on his shoulder. Her nail polish perfectly matches her dress. And her pale lips. And the soft pink of her cheeks.
“Okay, Joe.” Hale squeezes his shoulder. “But do you think we could make one last detour before Maine?”
He opens his mouth to protest, but Hale cuts in.
“Come on, Joe. Trust me.”
* * *
Breaking Bad lied to her.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, isn’t a shithole. She thinks it’s even prettier than Santa Fe. It has a quaint Spanish-influenced Old Town and beautiful tree-lined streets and staggering mountains every direction she looks. Logan is happy they get to see one more wonderful place before they spend the next several days driving on gray freeways.
