Here We Go Again, page 6
There’s about a 50 percent chance Logan can still be bribed with white chocolate mochas, a 17 percent chance Antonio will chase her away with a broom, and a 92 percent Logan will laugh in her face once she sees the contents of this binder.
Still, she has no choice but to try.
Rosemary shifts the binder under her arm and tries to work up the courage to move. It’s just a short paved walkway through the grass up to the front porch. Ten steps, tops.
She can take these ten steps, past the tire swing suspended on a rope from the thickest branch of the oak tree out front where they used to sit with their knees pressed together, spinning in dizzy circles. Up onto the porch where Logan used to wait every morning until Rosemary walked past, so they could finish the journey to the bus stop at the end of the street together. The porch where they sat outside on warm summer nights just staring at the stars.
The memories crowd her, filling in the spaces between her ribs like a too-heavy meal. It was only three years of friendship, an entire lifetime ago. Why does it feel like she is still grieving that loss?
She inhales four times, takes the ten steps, and rings the doorbell.
Something loud thumps inside, then heavy footsteps, then the door opens violently to reveal Logan, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants low on her hips and a Nike tank top that drapes low beneath her armpits, revealing the sides of her orange sports bra. Her features immediately revert to Rosemary-face. And Rosemary didn’t consider the possibility that Logan could slam the door closed before she even gets the chance to laugh at her.
So, she relies on the only asset she has: the white chocolate mocha. She thrusts it toward Logan, babbling incoherently at the woman who used to keep all of her secrets.
Logan studies the cup, and her nose un-scrunches itself. She reaches for the coffee, taking a long, skeptical drink. “Why are you at my house?” she finally asks.
“I—I was hoping we could talk.” She winces at the hesitation in her voice. She hasn’t felt this nervous in front of Logan since she was eleven, since that first day when they sat next to each other on the bus, and Rosemary was certain that as soon as she opened her mouth, this cool, magnetic girl would get bored and choose someone else to ride next to every morning and afternoon.
“Please, Logan. We need to talk about Joe.”
Logan’s mouth twitches.
“Maybe I could come in—?” Rosemary tries, just as Antonio shouts from inside the house, “Alexa! Play Shania Twain, dammit!”
Alexa chirps, “Playing songs by Shania Twain,” before the song “You’re Still the One” blares through the house. Logan shouts over her shoulder, “Can you turn that down!” and it’s exactly the kind of chaos Rosemary remembers growing up in this house, back when she was invited to Maletis family dinners.
Antonio Maletis appears behind his daughter wearing an indecent feathery robe. “Who’s here?” he asks before he peers around Logan’s shoulder and smiles. “Well, if it isn’t Rosemary Hale!”
Logan mumbles in protest as her dad leans forward to kiss Rosemary on both cheeks. He smells like lavender face cream and honey. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Maletis,” she says politely, as if she didn’t duck behind a display of LaCroix when she saw him in the Safeway the other day.
“Were your ears burning, darling?” Antonio asks. “Because we were just talking about you.”
“All terrible things, I assume,” Rosemary says. Antonio laughs. Logan glowers.
“I’ve missed you, Rosemary,” he says wistfully.
“No, you haven’t,” Logan snaps.
“You look incredible,” Antonio continues, “please tell me your skin-care routine.”
“She feeds off the souls of children.”
“Surely not.” He tsks.
“No, it’s just CeraVe.”
“You know, I just made loukoumades, so if you wanted to come inside and—”
Logan finally edges her dad out of the way, steps onto the porch, and closes the front door behind her. “Fine, Hale. Talk.”
Her mind flashes through all her arguments and talking points, but her mouth somehow supersedes all of her logic, cuts right to the quick of it before Logan can run away. “I think we should drive Joe to Maine.”
There’s a twitch in the corner of Logan’s mouth, but she covers it with a laugh. “Shit biscuits, how hard did I hit you with my car?”
“Is that an admission of fault?”
“Never.” Logan takes a few steps forward and slumps down onto the porch steps. “Hale, we can’t drive him.”
Rosemary carefully sits down a safe distance from her. “If you would just look at my binder—”
“I don’t need to look at your binder to know this is a terrible idea.”
“I don’t have terrible ideas.”
Logan shakes her head, and her frizzy brown curls bob and weave around her face. “You clearly haven’t thought this through.”
“I stayed up all night making a binder, so yes, I have.”
“We’d be in a car together for days. We’d have to stay in hotels together for a week!”
“Five nights.”
“What?”
Rosemary flips to the binder tab labeled Itinerary. “I’ve charted a course that only takes six days, five nights, staying in cities that have good hospitals in case Joe needs medical attention. We stop in Twin Falls, Idaho; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Des Moines, Iowa; Cleveland, Ohio; and then Worcester, Massachusetts before finishing out the last stretch to Bar Harbor.”
“All the most boring cities in the country, then?” Logan snips. “The problem with a road trip is that we’d have to drive back.”
“I’ve considered that.” Rosemary flips to a new tab. “And I’ve come up with several alternative propositions so we wouldn’t have to spend an additional five nights together returning to Vista Summit.”
Logan is quiet for a moment as she takes another drink of her mocha. “I’m still stuck on the part where you would willingly spend five days trapped with me?”
“It’s Joe,” she says with a small shrug.
Logan still looks unmoved, and Rosemary knows she has to give her more if she’s going to convince her of this plan.
She takes a deep breath and swivels her knees toward Logan. “Joe is the reason I became a teacher. I was miserable in high school.”
Logan snorts in disbelief. “Yeah, right. You had perfect grades, got into the perfect college. Everything came so easily to you.”
“Nothing ever comes easily to me,” Rosemary confesses, and the smirk vanishes from Logan’s face. “I had perfect grades because I thought I had to be perfect to be worthy. I obsessed over every assignment, stayed up all night studying, took too many AP classes and forced myself to be the best in all of them. I wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping… sophomore year, my hair started to fall out from the stress. And it felt like none of my teachers cared how sick I was making myself. They all held me up as this model student. Except Joe.”
She only pauses long enough to swallow. If she stops talking for too long, she’ll realize she’s being vulnerable with the person most likely to use it against her. “Joe was the only teacher who really saw me. The only teacher who cared about me as a person, not a test-taking machine. So, I decided to become a teacher because I wanted to be that for someone else. To be the adult who cares. And this trip to Maine is a chance for me to give back to Joe everything he’s given me.”
All of her emotional honesty hangs in the air between them like an awkward perfume. Logan doesn’t say anything, doesn’t visibly react to this confession. She takes another long drink of her mocha and stares out at the weeds in the yard. Then, finally: “Okay, let me see this freakazoid binder of yours.”
With one tug, Logan pulls the binder out of Rosemary’s hands. Rosemary sits there in awkward silence, watching Logan flip through the different subsections, the laminated pages, the Post-it Notes in the margins with Rosemary’s cursive asking questions like, “supine?” and “moving him into the wheelchair?” and “what do we do with the poop?”
“As far as I can tell, there are just two things your binder doesn’t account for,” Logan declares after several minutes.
Rosemary bristles. “The car, I know.” She smooths out her navy shirt like she can smooth out the wrinkles in the plan. “I need to find a vehicle that’s wheelchair accessible and has a large enough back seat so Joe can rest comfortably for long stretches of time, but I’ve researched rental cars, and they’re either too expensive or booked out months in advance.”
Logan closes her eyes and tilts her head back. “I think I have a car.”
“Yours?” Rosemary makes an unflattering sound and tries to hide it with another drink. “We can’t drive your car across the country. And my car is in the shop since you hit it. Besides, both are too small for—”
“I wasn’t talking about my car. One of my ex-girlfriend’s ex-girlfriends has a van she converted for her cuddle business.”
“Her… cuddle business?”
“Don’t be judgmental. She had this mobile cuddle business, kind of like a mobile dog groomer. The back seat folds down into a queen-sized bed, but there are still seat belts and everything. I think I could convince her to sell it to me.”
“She doesn’t need it for… cuddling?”
“No. Professional cuddling didn’t survive the pandemic.”
“I’m shocked.”
“She’s been trying to sell the van since her business went under, but she hasn’t had any takers. I could probably get it for less than a thousand.”
Rosemary nods carefully, afraid to assume what this means. “So… you’ll do it, then? You’ll help me drive him to Maine?”
“I don’t know…”
“What’s holding you back?”
“The second thing.”
“Excuse me?”
“The second thing your binder fails to take into account,” Logan says.
“Which is…?”
Logan turns her head so she is staring directly at Rosemary, those hazel eyes burning. “How the hell are we going to drive to Maine without killing each other?”
LOGAN
They are definitely going to kill each other.
“What is that?” Hale shrieks.
“What?” Logan yawns. It’s six in the morning, and Hale is already worked into a snit. They haven’t even made it out of the driveway.
“That!”
Logan follows her outstretched finger toward the van they’re about to drive across the country. “That’s the car, Hale.”
“That is the car?” Angry spit gathers in the corners of her mouth. “And it didn’t occur to you that driving that across middle America might be a problem?”
Logan studies the van. Sure, it is on the older side, but Robin assured her it’s in good shape, and she’d taken it in to get serviced earlier in the week, per Hale’s insistence.
Plus, she’d purchased five air fresheners to cover up the smell of mold and patchouli.
“What’s wrong with it, exactly?”
Hale strops forward, her heels smacking against the concrete. Apparently, she is going to drive eight hours today in heels. “That is what’s wrong with it.” She slams her hand against the logo painted on the side of the van.
The words The Queer Cuddler are painted in swooping letters over a giant rainbow.
Oh. That.
“That was the name of her business. The Queer Cuddler.”
Hale takes in a sharp breath through her flared nostrils. “Yes, I gathered as much. Why the hell is it still painted on the side of the van?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
Hale does a slow, judgmental strut around the vehicle, shaking her head in a particularly violent fashion when she gets to the back. Which means she probably noticed the “Gayest Ride in Town” bumper sticker.
“Are you starting to understand why I might be upset right now?” Hale hisses.
“I am,” Logan’s dad says from the front porch where he is sipping coffee, ready to see them off. Andrea Hale is beside him in her Smurf scrubs, looking equally bemused.
“Why does it matter if it says a bunch of gay stuff on it?”
“Because we’re driving through Iowa!”
“I’m pretty sure there are gays in Iowa.”
“That’s not the point. It’s a little naïve to think we won’t get any reactions driving this van through ‘Don’t Say Gay’ states.”
“Are you afraid people might think you’re gay by association?”
Logan relishes in the way Hale’s mouth puckers like a cat’s asshole. “That’s not… I’m a… Of course not,” she sputters. “But queer and trans people are hurt for a lot less than this, especially Black and brown queer people. We might have a lot of privilege. We’re white and straight passing—”
“You’re not straight passing, you’re straight,” Logan can’t help but correct.
Hale blinks erratically. “But did you even consider Joe’s safety when you chose this… gay mobile?”
She obviously had not, and she suddenly feels like a total asshole for it. Vista Summit wasn’t the best place to grow up a lesbian in the mid-aughts, but she’s never truly felt unsafe. She’s not sure if Joe can say the same thing.
“We should paint over the logo when we get the chance.” Hale turns back to her mom’s Subaru Forrester and begins unloading her bags from the trunk. Seven. That’s the number of heavy-looking items Hale pulls from the trunk.
Not for the first time in the past week, Logan wonders how the hell she ended up here, agreeing to this ridiculous scheme. But deep down, she knows. It’s because Hale sat on her front porch and let herself be vulnerable. For the first time in years, that perfect veneer slipped a little, and Hale sounded like that earnest, honest girl she’d once loved.
Hearing Hale talk about how Joe changed her life reminded Logan that she wouldn’t be a teacher without him, either.
Before Joe, Logan only had teachers who saw her as a nuisance. The kid who couldn’t sit still, the kid who blurted in class, the kid who lost all her homework. The kid who wasn’t living up to her potential.
Joe saw her. He saw the way her brain worked, and instead of trying to fix it, he celebrated it. He taught her how to harness her passion and creativity, and he believed in her when no other teacher ever had. She became a teacher because she wanted to help a new generation of neurodivergent teens learn to love their brains, too.
If she and Hale had that in common, then maybe they could put aside their differences for a man like Joseph Delgado.
Of course that was before she learned Hale packed seven bags. She reaches for the nearest suitcase and tries to lift it, but it weighs as much as Hale does. “Why did you pack so much?”
“At least one of us has to be prepared!”
“Prepared? You’re wearing heels and a dress!”
Hale clicks her tongue. “I’m sorry, should I be dressed like a middle-aged insurance adjuster on a golf course in Hawaii?”
Logan looks down at her tropical shirt (this one dotted with parrots), her basketball shorts, and her Birkenstocks. She almost laughs at Hale’s attempt at humor. “This feels like a normal road trip outfit.”
Hale gestures to her own slim frame. “So does this.”
“A wool frock?”
Hale tilts her head like a confused bird. Logan wishes she didn’t find the gesture oddly endearing. “This is organic cotton,” Hale corrects with that same earnestness as before. “I got it from ModCloth.”
Hale almost looks self-conscious about the dress as she smooths out imaginary creases in the fabric. “It’s… cute,” Logan tries as she starts hauling Hale’s heavy luggage into the back of the van. Hale glares suspiciously at the compliment.
“Don’t worry, Princess, you just stand there. I’ll take care of all the manual labor.”
“Girls!” her dad raises his voice from the porch. “If you fight with each other like this while driving, you’re both going to end up dead on the side of the road. And I am not going to fly coach to Ohio just so I can identify your bodies. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Hale mutters, looking properly ashamed.
Logan puts on her sunglasses. “We’ve got to get going.”
A prolonged series of goodbyes takes place, in which her dad pulls her in close, squeezes her tight, and whispers, “You deserve an adventure, Chicken.”
She refuses to think about the fact that she’s leaving him, that he’ll be alone. She kisses him on the cheek, adjusts her duffle over her shoulder, and turns to Hale.
“Okay, Captain. What’s the plan?”
Hale hands her a laminated schedule with their driving directions for the day broken down into two-hour shifts, with planned stops for the bathroom and gas.
Rosemary: Vista Summit to Boardman.
Logan: Boardman to La Grande.
Rosemary: La Grande to Ontario.
Logan: Ontario to Twin Falls.
The amount of work and forethought Hale put into this trip in such a short amount of time is impressive. Logan could never wrap her brain around organizing a trip like this.
Logan looks up and sees Hale struggling to boost all measly five feet of herself into the driver’s seat of the van, her heels slipping on the running board, the back of her cotton dress riding up so Logan gets a peek at slender thighs and the hem of her white cotton underwear. Without thinking, Logan steps closer and places a hand on Hale’s back before she falls. The fabric of the dress is smooth against Logan’s skin, and she catches another whiff of vanilla and peppermint. It makes her dizzy.
“Let go of me,” Hale snaps. “I can get into the van by myself.”
Logan pulls her hand away, and Hale slips again before climbing behind the driver’s seat. And oh yeah.
There’s no chance of either of them surviving the next six days.
Vista Summit, Washington to Twin Falls, Idaho
Chapter Seven
LOGAN
A complete inventory of the luggage Rosemary Hale packed for a weeklong road trip: two large, four-wheeled rolling suitcases (rose-colored with plastic sides), presumably stuffed with every article of clothing she owns; one red cooler, filled with a variety of nutritious snacks and cans of LaCroix; a literal picnic basket with nonperishables, including enough gourmet crackers, almonds, and dried figs to make at least six charcuterie boards; a silk pillow; a first aid kit big enough to fit Hale herself; an emergency roadside kit; a wireless printer.
