Here We Go Again, page 25
She’s in love with the girl.
Logan finishes the performance with a triumphant knee-slide across the stage, and the room erupts in a standing ovation.
She has to distract herself from the overwhelming surge of feelings. “I… I see why you did drag,” she says to Joe, still staring at Logan onstage where she’s taking an absurd number of bows.
Joe watches her too as he talks. “Growing up, I was relentlessly bullied for being effeminate, a sissy, a wuss, a funny boy as my dad used to say. It wasn’t even because they thought I was gay. I just wasn’t man enough. I was too sensitive, too quiet, interested in the wrong things.”
Onstage, three of the judges are holding up 10s, except Deena Diva, who’s flashing a 7. In response, Logan starts doing a striptease to win her over, naturally. Rosemary’s attention shifts back to Joe. “But when I dressed up as Rita for the first time, I felt like I was taking all those names they called me and claiming them as my own. The femininity that had made me inadequate in the real world made me a showstopper when I performed in drag. I learned to love myself onstage.”
Joe’s shimmery eye shadow catches the light. “I haven’t been to a drag show in over thirty years. Drag shows were supposed to be a place where we were safe. A place where we could escape their hate and love ourselves. But they don’t want us to love ourselves, not even behind closed doors. And that’s hard for me because I love safety.”
“So do I.”
Rita’s fake nails dig into Rosemary’s hand as she squeezes. “I know you do, Rosie. That’s why I’m telling you. Some things are more important than safety.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
LOGAN
She’s in love with the girl?
What the hell was she thinking?
She wasn’t thinking, that was the problem. Two whiskey-sevens with Remy and a Pendleton neat from the bar, and she’d surrendered herself to the bubbly, dizzying joy of being in a queer space. A church basement full of queens young and old. Joe transformed and Rosemary in a leather jacket.
That jacket. She should’ve known better than to dress Rosemary like this. As much as the pencil skirts and the nylons and the heels drive her absolutely wild—and they do, dammit—nothing prepared her for Rosemary in a leather jacket and a white T-shirt and jeans. Rosemary with a fake cigarette dangling from that anxious mouth.
Logan has been hoisted by her own horny petard.
And then she went onstage and sang that song from middle school summers. She confessed the truth.
I would always change the boy to girl in my head.
This is a disaster, and it’s all Remy’s fault.
Remy with his cute-ass house in this cute-ass town they can’t seem to leave. It’s like the land of the Lotus Eaters in The Odyssey: they’ve all drunk the sweet Ocean Springs nectar and they’ve been lured into a sense of complacency. This is a road trip. They shouldn’t stay in any place for too long; they should keep moving at the same pace as Logan’s restless mind.
But instead, they’ve stayed. And it’s been nice.
She’s never had someone she can comfortably relax with as an adult, but on warm afternoons, all she wants to do is sprawl out on the couch with Rosemary, napping and reading while she types away on her laptop. She’s never enjoyed silence with another woman. Her short-lived relationships have always been frenetic, packed with activities and passion and sex, and they’ve always burned out with equal force.
And it’s not that there isn’t passion with Rosemary. But there’s also grocery shopping. There are days they go to Rouses and wander the aisles with a list from Remy for the night’s dinner. There are long conversations where Rosemary asks her questions like she genuinely wants to know the answers, like she wants to know her.
Women never want to get to know her. That’s not the point of her.
Logan is long legs and big boobs, a fun time, always down for a party and a good fuck.
But Rosemary. Rosemary just wants to hold her damn hand and read chapters of her book aloud and look at her like she’s doing right now in this tacky church basement. Her blue eyes shining like sapphires and her expression so open, it makes Logan dizzy.
She finally finishes her exit from the stage and approaches the table where those blue eyes are watching her. “What a rush!” she announces, throwing herself down in a chair. “I legit feel like I just snorted a bunch of coke and fucked over the middle class.”
Her joking comment does nothing to diminish the intensity of Rosemary’s stare. “You were incredible.”
Her face warms, and she pulls her blazer off, throws it over one shoulder. “Did you like it?” she asks, aiming for flippancy again.
But fucking Rosemary. She’s so earnest as she replies, “I loved it, Logan.”
Love. Logan had used that word, hadn’t she? In the song? She’d confessed to loving Rosemary back when they were girls.
And she had. Before she understood what love was—what losing it could truly mean—she let herself love Rosemary Hale.
Back onstage, a young kid death drops as a song comes to a screeching halt, and the room goes wild, giving Logan a reprieve from those eyes. “Give Miguel a hand,” Gladys insists into the microphone, and Rosemary puts her fingers into her mouth and whistles for the kid.
“All righty, folks. Up next, we have a very special one-night only reunion tour for a pair of New York dames.”
Joe stares at the stage in open-mouthed horror, and Logan forgets about Rosemary and the word love entirely. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he mutters under his breath.
“Please welcome back to the stage, Madame La Tush and Rita Morenhoe.”
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Logan reassures him, but they’ve already cued ABBA, and Remy is already moving toward Joe, beckoning him with the crook of his finger. Joe begins rolling himself toward Remy, caught in the enchantment of this siren. Remy helps Joe onto the stage using the ramp, and then Rita is front and center, under the spotlights where she belongs.
The lyrics begin and La Tush and Rita immediately fall into old choreography. They’re singing “Mamma Mia” as a duet, moving their older bodies in their younger synchronicity, except they both make modifications for Joe’s wheelchair. And Joe looks magnificent. Triumphant. Alive.
That’s the true allure of the Ocean Springs lotus flower: it has made them all forget how this road trip is going to end. Here, under these lights, Joe seems like his pre-cancer self, and it’s so easy to believe that he and Remy will have a happy ending.
The crowd is on their feet, clapping and cheering, and there’s something about the instant camaraderie of this moment that overwhelms Logan’s chest. There’s so much love in this church basement, it’s pressing down on every inch of her.
“He’s perfect!” Rosemary shouts into her ear, and Logan turns to see Rosemary is crying openly as Joe dances onstage, loving him fiercely, like she’s forgotten she’s going to lose him.
Logan grabs her by the waist and tugs her close. Their mouths meet even as Rosemary is still saying something about Joe. She catches up quickly, and her hands grip Logan’s suspenders, pulling their bodies flush as they stand. And this kiss—it feels like the unwavering acceptance of a room full of queers, like a good hug and a warm voice in her ear saying, “Welcome. I see you. You’re safe here.”
“Rebel,” Logan says into Rosemary’s ear. “Will you please sing to me?”
Rosemary looks up at her, eyes fierce and free. “I thought you would never ask,” she responds in a confident purr, and Logan feels every protective barrier in her body disintegrate at the feet of this woman.
Joe and Remy are both back at the table before Logan registers the song has ended. “Sing for us, Rebel!” Joe slurs, drunk on happiness and martinis he snuck when Rosemary wasn’t looking.
Without hesitation, Rebel struts his way toward the stage, and Logan screams so loudly, she misses what Rosemary says when she first grabs the microphone.
“I only know one song I can confidently sing by heart,” she tells the room. She leans close to Gladys to give her the title, and then Gladys turns to the laptop to cue it.
“The instrumental version, please,” Rosemary teases into the mic. And Logan witnesses the exact moment that Rosemary fully becomes Rebel: she shakes out her limbs, then straightens into someone taller and prouder, somehow. It’s not her usual rigid posture, but something self-assured and sultry. Logan doesn’t realize the song has started until Rosemary draws the mic to her mouth and growls, “I hate the world today.”
It’s “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks, and Rosemary isn’t lip-syncing. It’s her real voice, and it’s the most beautiful siren song she’s ever heard.
“Elton fucking John,” Joe cries. He latches on to Logan’s arm with his fake nails. “Did you know Rosemary can sing?”
Logan doesn’t take her eyes off Rebel in the spotlight. “I did.”
Sing-alongs with Olivia Newton-John while watching Grease. Singing all of “Bye Bye Bye” when they filmed the backyard music videos. Sleepover nightmares that woke Logan up with missing her mom and Rosemary singing her back to sleep. Like so many things, it’s a talent Rosemary buried when it didn’t fit into her image of who she is.
But Rebel hasn’t buried anything. He sings the first verse with restrained breathiness, then bursts out at the chorus, screaming that he’s a bitch, he’s a lover.
Logan can’t look away. She can’t breathe. Rebel stamps his foot and belts the chorus, and all Logan can think is, I’m so epically fucked.
“So take me as I am,” Rebel sings in that thick, raspy, holy voice. “This might mean you’ll have to be a stronger wo-man.”
And that’s it. Logan is going to jump off the ship into dangerous waters for this brave woman. She’s going to chase this siren song all the way to her demise. She let herself care, and now she cares so much, she’ll never recover, never again be able to hide behind her mask of apathy. But she doesn’t have the faintest idea how to love fiercely or freely.
“Here you go, kiddo,” Joe says, handing her a handkerchief. She’s crying, apparently.
Rebel finishes the song, and Logan is so absorbed, she almost misses the way the audience has flooded the stage for Rebel. Logan wants to run to Rosemary, too, but she waits until the judges all hold up their 10s, waits for her to move through the crowd back to their table, sweaty and beaming and beautiful.
Rosemary is an unguarded heart and eyes of pure fire, and Logan feels like she can’t catch her breath. She reaches for Rosemary’s hand. “Can we get out of here?” she whispers.
Rosemary takes her hand and guides her through the crowd toward the door.
* * *
Logan steps into the cool night desperate for air, but the night isn’t cool at all, isn’t comforting. They’re in Mississippi, where it’s humid as balls and the air always feels too close. Encroaching. Suffocating.
Logan loosens her tie, but it doesn’t help.
Fireworks fill the night sky with explosions of color and sound. Logan is exploding.
“What’s the matter?” Rosemary asks when it’s just the two of them outside the church. “Are you okay?”
“No.” Her lip quivers. She is going to start crying again. “No, I’m not okay.”
Rosemary’s skin shimmers in the moonlight, and another firework lights up the confused expression on her face. “Damn. Was my singing that awful?”
“What? No! You were amazing. You were…” everything. “It’s me. It’s just… me.”
Rosemary steps closer, and Logan wants to meet her halfway. She wants to be comforted and cared for, but she doesn’t know how. Logan falls back away from her.
“Take a deep breath. Whatever you’re feeling right now, it’s okay.” Rosemary’s voice still sounds like a song. “Let yourself feel it. I’m here. You’re not alone.”
“But I always end up alone. In the end.” The sky riots all around them. “We’ve been drinking Remy’s lotus, and you’re a siren, and I am going to drown in you.”
“You’re confusing your Odyssey metaphors.”
“That’s not… that isn’t the point.”
Rosemary takes another step forward. “What is the point?”
Logan takes another step back. “The point is that I… like you. So much.”
Rosemary takes ten more steps forward, keeps moving forward until Logan runs into a crate myrtle bush and can’t step back anymore. “Yes, we’ve already established this. I like you too,” she says, and she reaches up to cup Logan’s face in her hands. “So, so much.”
“But why?” Logan cries. “You like safety, and I’m the opposite of safe. I’m a thousand red flags cobbled together in the shape of a woman. I’m great in small doses, but I’m not the woman people stick around for. I’m the prickly pear, and I’m going to poke you. I won’t want to do it, but my glochids are just trying to protect me.”
Rosemary pulls Logan’s face down, low enough that she can brush a kiss on her forehead. “My prickly pear, you’re safe with me. You can stop working so hard to protect yourself.”
The sweetness of it overwhelms her, and she kisses Rosemary in the dark. “I want to,” she says into Rosemary’s mouth. “I want to be as brave as you. But I don’t know how to do any of this.”
Rosemary kisses her back, and it feels like fire, like there is something burning between their bodies. Rosemary tastes like freedom and kissing her is the river Lethe. It erases her memory of her panic and her fear, her conviction that this will end with her hurting. It makes her forget everything but Rosemary’s sweet words and pretty smile and perfect mouth.
They’re making out in a church parking lot as fireworks decorate the sky above them, and it’s cheesy as hell.
For tonight, she’s going to let herself be cheesy for Rosemary Hale.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
LOGAN
She wakes up to sirens.
As her eyes flicker against Rosemary’s silk pillowcase, she thinks the sirens are in her head. A product of too much alcohol. Flashes of last night’s revels ticker tape across the back of her eyelids.
A leather jacket. A song. Fireworks and singing, She’s in love with the girl.
Alarm bells in her brain scream stop and slow down and protect your goddamn heart, you fool. Still, she reaches out for Rosemary in their shared bed.
But Rosemary isn’t there.
And the sirens—they aren’t inside her head.
Someone cries out. Logan throws herself out of bed, gets tripped up in the sheets as she stumbles into the hallway. Her heart whooshes in her ears, because the crying is coming from Remy’s room at the end of the hall. She walks toward it as if in a nightmare, the hallway growing longer with each step.
It isn’t…
It couldn’t be…
Joe.
He’s laid out on the bed, the blankets all thrown back. When she sees him, she thinks he’s okay. Because his cheeks are bright with color.
But Rosemary is on her knees on the bed beside him, leaning over him, pushing up and down on his chest.
Joe’s cheeks aren’t bright. It’s the last remnants of his drag makeup, not washed completely away.
It’s Remy who’s crying out—“It’s not working!”
“Keep using the bag valve mask!” Rosemary orders, and Remy fastens a plastic suction mask over Joe’s mouth and squeezes the bag with his hand as tears stream down his face. Rosemary interlaces her hands and presses down on Joe’s chest.
Odie is at the foot of the bed, watching the scene, whimpering, like he knows something they don’t.
And Logan is frozen by the bedroom door, watching, thinking no, no, no.
It’s gas. Farts. It’s just gas again.
No no no.
Maybe she’s saying no out loud, because Rosemary turns toward her. Her eyes aren’t ice and they aren’t fire. They’re some third element, hard and faraway and completely in control. “Logan,” Rosemary says. “Go let the paramedics in.”
Logan is still asleep. She must still be sleeping. Rosemary isn’t even dressed. She’s on the bed in a pair of white cotton underwear and one of Logan’s tropical shirts thrown haphazardly over the top, her boobs exposed to Remy and Joe. Awake-Rosemary would never do that. This has to be a dream.
This has to be a nightmare.
“What happened?” Logan hears herself ask.
“H-he… he was gasping for air.” In Remy’s eyes, there is nothing but panic. “And then he just… stopped breathing.”
“The paramedics!” Rosemary shouts. “Show them inside!”
There are paramedics at the front door, a fire truck is parked in the swamp gutter. A gurney. For a body.
“Where is he?” someone asks.
Logan leads them to Remy’s room, clears a path as they go. One paramedic takes the bag valve mask from Remy. Rosemary slides out of the way, closing the tropical shirt over her chest. It’s the shirt with all the cacti on it. They look like prickly pears.
And this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. It’s supposed to be Rosemary who breaks her heart, not Joe. Not right now.
“What happened?” a third paramedic asks. He has a gentle hand on Logan’s shoulder. She gets the impression he’s been asking her this for a while.
“I-I don’t know what happened.”
The paramedic nods, and Odie whines and whines.
“We went to a drag show last night,” she tells him, because she’s not even sure what’s relevant at this point. “He danced and sang. He was alive last night.”
The paramedic nods again. “Why don’t you go get dressed?”
She looks down and realizes she’s naked, too.
“Is he dead?” she asks the paramedic. His hand is still on her shoulder.
* * *
Joe isn’t dead.
It’s still dark outside when Rosemary climbs into the back of the ambulance clutching Joe’s hand.
Remy is crying too hard to drive, so Logan gets behind the wheel of the Gay Mobile and shuts off all tears, all feelings. She puts on her sunglasses, even though there’s no sun, and she drives them both.
