Page 87 of Here We Go Again

Remy and Joe exchange another secret glance. “Well, I was thinking it could just be Joseph and me. I want to take him out on a date.”

She slumps back in her chair. “Is that safe? Do you think you could get him in and out of your truck by yourself? And we need to be careful. He shouldn’t be in the direct heat for too—”

“Rosemary, I’m not an invalid child in a Victorian novel! Please don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

“Sorry, Joe, but I want to make sure you’ll be okay.”

“He’ll be okay,” Remy says, and he looks at Joe likeheis the miracle. “I can take care of him.”

LOGAN

“Maybe we should go on a date too.”

Rosemary is standing by the front window, watching Remy and Joe pull out of the driveway in the truck like an anxious parent. “Hmmm?” she says, fiddling with the bracelet on her wrist.

Logan swallows down some of her pride. The worddatefeels strange in her mouth, and she can’t remember the last time she asked a woman out on an earnest, honest-to-God date. College? Shit… high school? But this isn’t just some woman. It’s Rosemary Hale, and she’s freshly showered with her clean hair back in its signature braid and another crisp summer dress clinging to all those subtle curves, and there is no reason for Logan to pretend she doesn’t care.

“Rosemary,” she repeats. “Will you go on a date with me?”

She turns away from the window, and her sunburned cheeks have deepened with an adorable blush. “A date? You want to take me on a date?”

“Yes. I really do.”

Before he left for the art museum, Remy helped Logan pick up the Gay Mobile. Now, with Odie in the back seat, Logan drives them out to Biloxi Beach, where they put their toes in the Gulf of Mexico. They drink nonalcoholic piña coladas served inside a pineapple with a flamingo-pink umbrella garnish while Odie chases birds, and they lay out on a blanket they found at Remy’s, at least until the heat becomes unbearable. And on the beach, they talk, the way they used to.

Logan asks about Yale and Columbia and the private school, and Rosemary tells her she doesn’t know who she is if she’s not a teacher anymore.

“Then maybe this is the chance to find out,” Logan offers. “It seems like as long as you’ve been teaching, you haven’t been able to have a life outside of it.”

Logan tells Rosemary about the girls in college who broke her heart, and the girls who came after, the ones Logan never let get too close.

Rosemary has first-date horror stories that make Logan laugh, and first-date tragedies that make Logan want to cry. Mostly, she wants to punch every queer woman who didn’t appreciate Rosemary. She wants to punch herself, too.

Sweaty and sun-kissed by late afternoon, they get dinner somewhere that serves half-priced oysters on Tuesdays and allows Odie toeat with them on a patio. They keep talking: about the dreams they let go and the adventures they never had; about Rosemary’s dad and Logan’s mom; about their past together and their years apart.

After dinner, they drive out on a dirt road until they find a place where they can park the Gay Mobile to watch the sun set over the bayou. Logan hoists Rosemary up so they can sit on the hood, side-by-side with their backs to a dirty windshield.

Rosemary takes out her phone with her free hand and cues up Spotify. “Steal My Heart Away” by Van Morrison.

“Apt,” Logan whispers.

“I thought so too.” Rosemary reaches out and takes Logan’s hand, winds their fingers together slowly and thoughtfully. Rosemary’s hand is small and smooth, but it somehow fits perfectly in her large, rough one.

She can’t believe this moment exists.

Holding hands. Listening to Van. Watching everything go orange and hazy.

Van croons about the heather on the hill, and Logan closes her eyes and inhales the scent of vanilla and peppermint that is Rosemary. Her pink polished toes in her wedge sandals and dripping live oaks reflected on the glassy bayou, the sky a creamsicle dream. Sun and sweat and Odie lying in the dirt like nothing could ever bother him.

A symphony of frogs and birds, and the beautiful bayou, and her voice asking, “Do you want to dance with me?”

She waltzes Rosemary around in the dirt, dips and twirls her, until Rosemary’s laughing like a rabid hyena. Then Rosemary stands on her tiptoes to hook her hands around Logan’s neck, because they really shouldn’t fit together, and they sway long after the song stops playing, long after the sunset is over. Swaying in the headlights like a country song.

This moment. Logan didn’t know she could have moments like this.

Chapter Twenty-Six

ROSEMARY