Page 77 of Here We Go Again

Rosemary coughs and reaches for her coffee. Logan squeezes her knee. The pressure of her fingers makes Rosemary feel safe, and she’s struck by an old impulse. She wishes she could undo the last eighteen years, stitch her and Logan back together, until they become one person with two heartbeats like they were as girls.

“What if he doesn’t remember me?”

“You were together for fifteen years,” Logan says plainly.

“And everyone who has ever met you remembers you, Joe.”

“But… but what if he’s married?”

Rosemary keeps her voice gentle. “Then you’ll be so happy for him and you can say your final goodbye knowing he lived a full life.”

“And then, when we’re alone again, we’ll reassure you that you’re so much prettier than his ugly-ass husband,” Logan adds.

Joe is unconvinced. “You don’t know his husband is ugly-ass.”

“I don’t know his husbandexists.”

Joe stares down at his shrimp po’boy, his expression one of absolute agony. “I don’t want Remy to know about the diapers.”

“The good news is you don’t have to lead with that.”

“Gay men aren’t supposed to get old,” Joe mutters.

Under the table, Rosemary puts her hand over Logan’s, lets their fingers loosely thread. “Then how lucky is it that both you and Remy did?”

Joe exhales dramatically. “Fine,” he relents. “Onward to Ocean Springs.”

LOGAN

She fucked up.

As a rule, she’s usually fucking up something most of the time. But on the Logan Maletis fuckery scale, this is an eleven. Out of ten. This is kissing-your-best-friend-at-a-pool-party level of fucked.

This is having sex with Rosemary Hale in a hotel bathtub fuckboy behavior.

Logan grips the steering wheel and tries to come to terms with the fuckedupness she’s created.

She’s had sex with people she shouldn’t have in the past. Monogamous married women who were still in the closet; a few of her friends’ ex-girlfriends; once, the parent of a student. Logan doesn’t feel any shame about those hookups, though. As long as sexis between two consenting adults and all boundaries are respected, Logan doesn’t let shame anywhere near her sex life, even if the sex is reckless or impulsive or borderline self-destructive. She likes sex, and she isn’t ashamed of that.

But sex with Rosemary is a whole new level of bad behavior. It was Rosemary’s first time. And there werefeelingsinvolved. And now Logancares.

She closes her eyes and tries not to think about Rosemary writhing in the water, about her hesitance and the way she eventually unfurled. About her blush and her willingness and the way shefeltin Logan’s arms.

Sex with Rosemary hadn’t felt like fuckery. It felt like having the bud of a prickly pear flower without the barbs. All beauty, no pain.

“Are your eyes closed?” Rosemary screeches. Logan’s eyes fly open in time to see Rosemary grab the wheel and yank it toward her, pulling the Gay Mobile out of the neighboring lane. “You can’t close your eyes! You’re driving!”

“Shit! Sorry! Sorry!” Reality slams into her right before they slam into a semitruck. She takes back the wheel and forces herself to focus on the road, on Van Morrison singing “Crazy Love,” on Odie barking frantically from the back.

This—this is why sex with Rosemary Hale is fuckity fucked, no matter how good it felt in the moment. Because Logan is going to hurt her. She will close her eyes when it matters and sideswipe a semitruck. Metaphorically speaking.

Logan can’t be trusted with someone else’s feelings.

The rest of the way to Ocean Springs, Joe practices what he’s going to say to the long-lost love of his life, and Rosemary and Logan take turns helping. They’re on the freeway that cuts right through the middle of Louisiana. The landscape changes from brown fields and sagebrush to thick, green swamp along the side of the freeway. Giantlive oaks dripping with Spanish moss, magnolias and fan-pines and kudzu, everything drooping like a Dalí painting. Rosemary is the one who teaches her the names for all these new trees, her polished finger pointing out the front window excitedly.

They stop again in Baton Rouge to switch drivers and end up getting lunch at a place called Coffee Call. It’s in a strip mall, but the café has clean white walls with blue accents, and they apparently have the best beignets in town. They serve their powdered sugar out of a huge trash can, which is all Logan has ever wanted in life.

“Po’boys for breakfast, beignets for lunch… I think we did this backward,” Rosemary says with powdered sugar all over her face.