Here We Go Again, page 22
Logan’s expression jars. “Ouch.”
“What? I’m alleviating you of any misguided guilt over plucking my delicate flower, or whatever. I wanted to have sex with you, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. You’re very good at it.” She can’t believe how detached she sounds right now, but that’s the efficiency of her emotional filing system. As soon as she feels a twinge of heartbreak, her brain shoves it down on instinct. “And now that we got it out of our systems, we can just move on.”
“Good,” Logan says, but it doesn’t seem good. She violently stabs at her brisket like she’s trying to murder it all over again.
“You still seem upset….”
“Astute observation. I wonder if it’s because you just implied that I’m an unfeeling, promiscuous himbo, and that you just used my body for sex?”
“What? That isn’t what I said!” Rosemary finds herself unintentionally raising her voice.
“It’s basically what you just said.”
“You said you felt guilty about having sex with me, and I was only saying what I thought you wanted to hear!”
“The fact that you think that is what I wanted to hear makes me even more furious!”
Rosemary smacks her hands against the table. “How? You’re the one who calls yourself a fuckboy! I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything just because we had sex!”
“Maybe I want to owe you something!” Logan screams back at her. “I don’t feel guilty because we had sex! I feel guilty because I know I’m going to hurt you! But maybe—maybe I want to try not to. Maybe I want to try to be something with you.”
Rosemary snaps her mouth shut as the dust settles in the wake of that statement. Her brain struggles to process what’s happening, like a frozen computer, and she has to give it a second to do a whole system reboot. By the time she’s back online and aware of her surroundings, Logan is staring at her with a miserable expression. “I—” she starts.
“Excuse me?” A blond man has appeared at the edge of their table. He’s wearing a salmon-colored polo shirt and khakis. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m over there trying to have dinner with my family, and y’all are having a very loud, very adult conversation, and I’m wondering—”
“I’m going to need you to back the fuck up, homophobe!” Logan erupts, both hands braced on the picnic table like she’s ready for a fight.
The khakis man intensely furrows his brow. “My family is right over there—” He points one table over, and when Rosemary follows his finger, her gaze lands on a South Asian man with glasses giving her an uncomfortable wave. “That is my husband, sitting with our kids.”
Two toddlers are also staring at her, while a newborn screams in horror from inside a stroller.
“Fuck,” Logan says when she realizes her mistake.
“Your family is very beautiful,” Rosemary chokes out in utter humiliation.
“I don’t care if you’re girlfriends or ex-girlfriends or…” He awkwardly tries to puzzle out their relationship but can’t understand what he’s witnessing. That makes two of us, buddy.
“I just wanted to see if you could perhaps stop shouting the word ‘sex’ quite so loudly?”
“Seems like a fair request,” Logan squeaks.
“We should go.” Rosemary stands up with her tray.
“We’re going,” Logan adds.
The khaki man blusters at them some more.
“Sorry!”
“So, so sorry!”
They take turns apologizing to everyone they pass until they’re standing under the pig sign again. Logan looks at her, horror-stricken, and Rosemary can’t help it. She bursts into laughter, lets it bubble up like a fizzy LaCroix, her whole body shaking with it. Logan stares at her for an awkward heartbeat, and then she starts laughing too. Rosemary has to reach out for Logan’s shoulder to keep herself upright as tears start streaming down her face, and for a few minutes, under the stars and sheds, it feels so easy, so simple, like it used to when they would laugh wildly as girls.
But then Logan puts a hand on Rosemary’s waist, and they both stiffen at the contact, and the fight from before comes rushing back in.
They aren’t girls anymore, and nothing is simple.
Chapter Twenty-Five
LOGAN
The thirty minutes they spend outside the Shed while waiting for their Uber driver are some of the worst moments of Logan’s life.
Rosemary sits on a stump in the parking lot, her head turned away from Logan. And Logan is kicking around gravel with the toes of her Vans like a dejected Dennis the Menace. She can’t believe they got into a fight about having sex and got shamed into leaving barbecue heaven.
She can’t believe she told Rosemary she wants to try. What does that even mean?
Her stomach twists with a feeling she can’t quite place. Dread? Fear? Beef brisket–induced indigestion? The pain only intensifies during the dark drive to Remy’s house.
Remy St. Patin lives in a squat brick house in a neighborhood filled with squat brick houses lit up with harsh streetlamps. The Uber driver pulls up to the house, and the passenger side of the car dips toward the curb. Logan carefully maneuvers herself out of the back seat, and as soon as her feet make it to the ground, her Vans squelch into mud, and her toes get wet through her socks.
“What the fuck is this? A swamp gutter?” she shouts, standing in some kind of irrigation ditch. There are no sidewalks at Remy’s house. It’s just a road, and then swamp. And the swamp is somehow Remy’s front yard?
Mississippi is a wild place.
Rosemary blazes up to the front door where Remy has left them a note and a spare key on a little café table by the door, out in the open for anyone to find. Rosemary reads the note aloud as Logan trudges along with her wet toes.
“ ‘Welcome, Rosemary and Logan! Thank you so much for letting me spend some alone time with your Joe tonight. We’ve gone to bed early, but I’ve made up the guest room for you. I wasn’t sure if you ate dinner, so I put some andouille jambalaya leftovers in the fridge for you. Please help yourselves to anything else you might need. My home is now your home. See you in the morning!”
“Is this man some kind of saint?” Logan snaps.
The outside of the house isn’t much to look at, but the inside is as beautiful as his gallery. The walls are bold colors—vermillion and terra cotta and burnt orange—and they’re covered in artwork. Remy has gorgeous built-ins that are actually stuffed with books, not soulless tchotchkes from Pottery Barn. Plush rugs and eclectic furniture that all perfectly complement the space. Odie is curled up on a mustard couch, but he leaps down as soon as he sees Rosemary so he can come assault her with kisses.
They quietly make their way through the small ranch until they find the guest room, and for fuck’s sake: there’s once again only one bed.
There are also sage-green walls and white linens and a surplus of soft-looking pillows. The room smells like calming lavender, and Remy has left a stack of fresh towels on the edge of the bed with two mints on top, like a fancy hotel, and now Logan is crying. Big, embarrassing-ass tears.
Rosemary closes the door with a muted snick. “Logan, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t fucking know!” she blubbers uselessly.
Rosemary is already by her side, helping her sit down on the bed. Then she reaches for a box of tissues on the dresser and hands them to Logan.
“God, are these Puffs with lotion?” she cries into the soft tissue. “Why is this man so damn perfect?”
“A nose in need deserves Puffs indeed,” Rosemary tries awkwardly.
Logan snorts, and snot flies out of her nose. Thank God for the Puffs.
“What is your deal with Remy?”
Logan wants to be able to put it into words, but her brain feels like eight high-speed trains with no brakes all going in different directions. “He just… you didn’t see him, in the gallery, but he… he was so happy to see Joe.”
Rosemary moves uneasily in front of her. “That seems like a positive thing.”
Logan shakes her head. “He wasn’t bitter at all. He harbored no visible resentment toward Joe for leaving. He wasn’t angry or cynical. He was just… open.”
“Which is… bad?”
“Yes it’s bad! Because I could never be like that.”
Rosemary tentatively sits down next to Logan on the bed and she puts a hand on her thigh. It’s such a small gesture of comfort, but it feels enormous inside Logan’s body. And that’s the problem with her ADHD brain. If she lets it feel one thing, it will feel all the things, all the time. It doesn’t do moderation either. Every emotion is always at eleven, which is why it’s easiest not to feel anything at all.
But she already feels so much for Rosemary. She always has.
“I think you could be like that,” Rosemary says quietly, her hand so soft on Logan’s leg.
Logan blows a giant raspberry.
“Do you think maybe we could try to have a grown-up conversation for once?”
Logan doubts it, but for Rosemary’s sake, she tries. “When my mom left me, and I became so bitter and cynical. I’m so afraid of anyone ever leaving me again, so I always leave first. I walk away from friendships and girlfriends and anything remotely real.”
Rosemary threads her arm through Logan’s and pulls them closer together on the bed. “I know you do,” she whispers. “I was there, remember? I saw what your mom did to you.”
Logan closes her eyes and sees an image of eleven-year-old Rosemary, saving her from the grief and loneliness after her mom left. “I try so hard not to care too much about anything,” she confesses as she opens her eyes again. She looks down at the small woman clinging to her side. “But I’ve never been able to stop caring about you.”
Rosemary props her chin on Logan’s shoulder and glances up at her with so much cautious optimism in those blue eyes. “Never?”
Logan snorts unattractively. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been Prince Zuko–level obsessed with you for the better part of twenty years.”
Rosemary frowns. Logan wants to trace the unhappy lines of her face, brush them away like powdered sugar. “You’ve hated me for almost twenty years.”
“Exactly! I cared about every little thing you did! I couldn’t stop obsessing over you. You were always there, even when you weren’t. You… you’ve always been in my orbit, like the world’s most irritating moon. But I didn’t hate you. Not really.”
Rosemary sits up and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and that sweet gesture is enough to push Logan to keep spilling all her secrets. “I love the way your mouth puckers like a cat butt when you’re thinking really hard, and the way you click your tongue when you’re trying to censor yourself. When we were apart, I missed your stories and the sound of your voice and the way you never made me feel like I was too much. I missed dreaming with you. You’re so passionate, and you care so damn much, and you fight for what matters, and I never should’ve made fun of your binder, because that’s how you show people you love them. And Joe is so lucky to have your love.”
Rosemary’s mouth goes full cat’s asshole, and Logan has spent her entire life wanting to kiss that puckered mouth. “So… you’re saying you… like me?”
Logan laughs at the utter disbelief in her voice. “Yes, Rosemary, I like you. I like you very much.”
Rosemary shakes her head like she can’t quite believe it, and Logan has a horrible thought. “Wait. Do you hate me?”
“I wanted to,” Rosemary confesses. “I tried to. Hating you always seemed so much safer than the alternative.”
This small confession feels like a huge miracle. Logan has been such an ass, and still, Rosemary doesn’t hate her. Still, she finds room in that secretly huge heart to care.
“The sex last night… it felt different for me,” Logan tells her. “Or maybe it wasn’t even about the sex. It was all the non-sex parts. Talking to you and teasing you. Seeing you and letting you see me. When you opened up to me about your romantic history. The intimacy of it, and the way you let yourself love your body in that tub.”
“I might be new to the whole concept,” Rosemary says nervously, “but I thought those things were all part of the sex?”
“They aren’t usually for me,” she says.
“Oh.” Rosemary’s mouth relaxes. Logan still wants to kiss it. “What did you mean earlier, at dinner? About trying?”
Logan’s stomach turns, and she’s not sure if it’s from excitement or in absolute horror over what she’s about to say. “I mean, I like you, and I think you like me. So maybe we should just… try to do this.”
“Do what, exactly?” Her eyelids flutter against her cheek, and Logan can’t believe she ever convinced herself she hated this lovely woman.
“Be in like with each other,” Logan tries. “And just… do things that people who like each other do. I know I’m a fuckboy, and that I have a history of hurting people, but maybe I want to try not to hurt you.”
Rosemary is still and silent, and the stomach flutter is definitely horror.
“I mean, if you’re even interested in something like that. I guess I don’t know if you even want a romantic relationship. Not that this would have to be a relationship, but, um—”
“Logan,” she says quietly. Rosemary reaches up and touches two fingers to Logan’s lips. And then she kisses her again. Their mouths meet, and a thousand feelings roar to life in Logan’s body. Longing and tenderness. Safety and security. Nostalgia. So much fucking hope.
This kiss is pure sweetness, like an adolescent kiss in a garden.
When Rosemary pulls away, Logan feels like she’ll never be able to breathe. Rosemary reaches toward the stack of towels on the edge of the bed and grabs the mints on top. She pops one mint into her mouth and hands the other to Logan. “Eat this,” she orders. “You taste like beef brisket.”
Logan giggles hopelessly. She sort of loves it when Rosemary bosses her around, so she eats her mint, and Rosemary starts kissing her again with the same slow, steady sweetness. These aren’t the kind of kisses Logan is used to. Kisses as foreplay. Perfunctory kisses before the real action, Logan between some gorgeous, anonymous woman’s thighs.
But Rosemary might be the most gorgeous woman she’s ever seen. And she’s kissing Logan for kisses’ sake, kissing her like the kisses matter in and of themselves. As if she wants and needs nothing more than soft mouths and gentle tongues.
And Logan kisses Rosemary like she fucking cares.
ROSEMARY
There is something mildly humiliating about waking up as the baby spoon. She feels little and vulnerable with Logan’s chest against her back, Logan’s arms around her shoulders, Logan’s leg over her legs, like she’s a fragile Russian nesting doll.
She wants to roll away and pretend like she never enjoyed being swaddled by another human. But she can’t.
Because the feeling of Logan’s body this close to hers is too delicious. Logan has enveloped her entirely, and Rosemary wants to melt into her body, form a covalent bond between their atoms until their one entity.
Which is… a lot. Especially for day two of a maybe-relationship.
“Are you awake?” Logan grumbles against the back of her neck.
“No.”
“You are; I can hear you thinking.”
“You cannot.”
“You think very loudly.”
Rosemary huffs and rolls over so they’re face-to-face in the cage of Logan’s limbs. She’s about to say something snarky, but she’s arrested by the sight of Logan’s groggy morning face, so close, so all she says is, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Logan says back.
They lay there for a moment, just staring into each other’s eyes, until she starts to feel embarrassed by all of it. “We should get up and check on—”
“Joe!” Logan shouts as the door to the guest room flies open. Logan pulls the blankets over both of their bodies. “Don’t you knock?”
Joe wheels his way into the bedroom, and the second Rosemary sees his face, she knows coming here was the right choice. Because Joe is smiling the way he used to, before the diagnosis and the chemo and the years of hoping and hurting. Joe looks like his old self. “It’s almost ten o’clock,” he says, “and you know I’m not a patient man.”
Remy stands behind Joe in a billowy linen shirt that’s unbuttoned enough to reveal his chest hair, and even though Rosemary isn’t usually attracted to men, she’s a bit attracted to him. Remy seems to transcend sexuality. Like Taika Waitaki.
“I made brunch,” Remy adds, “But I’m very sorry if we’re interrupting something.”
“You’re not,” Rosemary says quickly.
Beneath the sheets, Logan’s bare foot rubs against Rosemary’s leg and she shivers. “I mean, they could be interrupting something.”
Rosemary turns to find Logan grinning mischievously. Wild hair and tired eyes and a little drool crusted into the corner of her mouth. There are too many feelings inside Rosemary’s chest for her to contain, and the most overwhelming urgent is her need to be touching Logan absolutely everywhere.
“Give us a couple more minutes, actually.”
* * *
Somehow, while they were sleeping in, Remy managed to run to the grocery store, come home again, and prepare a generous brunch spread, replete with homemade biscuits and gravy, country potatoes, scrambled eggs, and shrimp grits (not made from the auto mechanic shrimp, Logan checks). Rosemary has a giant mug of coffee with chicory, and they eat in a conservatory-style room behind the kitchen, with sunlight streaming in through the glass walls and the AC running to keep them cool.
“Gladys called and left a message this morning,” Logan tells everyone as she heaps food onto her plate. “She said the Gay Mobile just needed a new battery, so as soon as we go pick it up, we’re good to get back on the road.”
Joe shoots Remy a nervous look, and Remy reaches out for his hand and clasps it on top of the table. “Remy and I have only just started reconnecting,” Joe hedges. “And we were talking this morning, and we wanted to ask if perhaps we could stay in Ocean Springs one more day. I think we could all use a day out of the van. Odie certainly needs it—” In the backyard behind them, Odie is climbing a beech tree in an attempt to eat a thoroughly unthreatened egret chilling on a branch out of reach.
