Page 20 of Here We Go Again

“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 whereyouwould willingly spend five days trapped withme?”

“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’tsleeping… 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 reallysawme. 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 sinceyouhit 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?”