Page 116 of Here We Go Again

There’s a long stretch of silence before Joe speaks again.

“Watching the two of you grow up was the coolest shit I witnessed in this life.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

ROSEMARY

The next morning Joe’s health declines again. He’s feverish and half-asleep. He can’t speak, except to mumble incoherently in Spanish. He groans in pain and throws off his blankets, then shivers miserably. Three times he attempts to get out of bed. One time, he falls onto the floor and they have to call Nurse Addison to help get him back into bed without hurting him.

They position Joe’s bed so he can stare out the wall of windows whenever he’s awake. Guillermo makes cup after cup of tea. Van Morrison spins into silence on the record player. Someone is always by his side.

On the fourth day of this, Guillermo comes into the living room to give Joe a bath, and Logan finds Rosemary standing on the back porch, staring out at the ocean. “How are you holding up?” Logan asks, leaning against the railing beside her.

Rosemary turns just enough to see the exhausted bags beneath Logan’s eyes, the tightness in her crooked mouth, the tension in her eyebrows. Neither of them is holding up well. “I just got an email from Miller. It looks like they won’t be able to hire me back. I officially don’t have a job for the fall.”

Logan’s hand moves closer, and for one hopeful moment, Rosemary thinks she might reach out for Rosemary’s hand. But she doesn’t. “I’m really sorry, Rosemary. I know what that job meant to you.”

Rosemary turns completely toward her. “What did it mean to me? Because I’m suddenly not so sure.”

“You care so much,” Logan answers instantly. “You care about the future of education and literacy, and you care about your students more than any teacher I’ve ever met.”

“I do,” she agrees. “But do I care about myself?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like you said in Ocean Springs. Teaching is my whole life, and I don’t know how to have a life outside of it. I… I had therapy yesterday, with Erin.”

Logan is quiet as she waits for Rosemary to continue, her gaze fixed on the water. They haven’t had a real conversation in weeks, and Logan hasn’t done anything to regain her trust, but Rosemary still wants to talk to her about this.

“I’m good at teaching, and sometimes, I think I’ve kept doing it because I feel like it’s what I owe the world. Joe saved me, and I feel like I should pay it forward. I mean, how can I walk away from a job where I’m making a difference in the lives of teenagers who need me?”

“You don’t owe anyone anything,” Logan cuts in. “And if you think about teaching that way, you’re just going to burn out.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “That’s what I’m starting to realize.”

When she read the email from Miller, she didn’t feel devastated like she thought she would. Instead, she kept thinking about Joe. About safety and adventure. About what she loses by being in control all the time. She takes four deep breaths. “I think I want to keep the cottage,” she tells Logan.

Logan frowns. “And turn it into an Airbnb?”

“No. I want to keep it and live in it.” She’s not sure when shecame to this realization, but it feels like she’s speaking some deep truth from a hidden place inside herself. “And I think you should live in it with me.”

Logan finally tears her gaze away from the ocean. “Are you serious?”

Rosemary wishes she knew how to be anything other than serious. “I think I want to stay here for a while. Sell my condo, live off my savings and finally write a book like I always dreamed of doing. I could sit at that desk in front of the window looking out at the sea,” she continues, the image crystalizing so beautifully in her mind. “I could write it all on Joe’s old typewriter.”

“You absolutely should, Hale!” Logan says, unable to contain her excitement. “You’re such a good writer, and this new storyneedsto be told.”

Rosemary flinches at the sound of her last name in Logan’s mouth.Haleis just another way Logan keeps Rosemary at a distance, and Rosemary wants to protect herself from this new, incoming hurt.

But it’s like Joe said. She’s going to hurt no matter what, and she doesn’t want to be like Joe and Remy. She doesn’t want to find Logan again in thirty years when it’s already too late. She doesn’t want to leave things unsaid. “And I think you should stay here with me,” she says again.

Logan takes a step back. “You want us to live in this cottage together?Why?”

“Well, for starters, because you hate Vista Summit,” she says coaxingly. “And because I want you here. With me.”

Logan eyes her suspiciously. “Why?” she asks again.

Rosemary takes a deep breath and imagines herself accessing that wellspring of truth she’s kept buried inside her for so long. “Because I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.”