Chapter 10 #2
But this wasn’t a first date where she was about to scare Shay off with way too much personal information, and Shay wasn’t someone she was trying to impress or hang onto by being economical with the amount of crazy in her life. They’d been honest from the beginning. Why would she lie now?
“Rosie? You really don’t have to censor anything. We’re just two friends getting to know each other better; you’re not preparing me for nightmare in-laws.”
Rosie laughed to disguise the sting Shay didn’t know she’d caused. Her mom had always been a source of shame in her intimate relationships. “I don’t think there’s any way to prepare someone for my mom. I’ve introduced three women to her, and they hated her within five minutes of them meeting.”
“Three random women?”
Rosie frowned. “Of course not. They were vaguely serious. Or that’s what I thought. I’m hanging on to the idea that Mom was the deciding factor in them fleeing, otherwise I have to consider than it might have been me.” She wrinkled her nose. “And I don’t want to go there.”
“Nor should you… You’ve had three serious relationships?” Shay smirked. “That’s three more than me.”
“You’ve never been serious about anyone? I thought you might’ve gotten burned a couple of times before deciding you were a lifelong bachelorette.”
Shay shook her head. “Nope. It’s far less complicated than that. With my family, I just don’t have the time or the emotional bandwidth for that kind of relationship.”
Rosie rotated her glass by the stem, contemplating whether she truly wanted to know the answer to the question on her lips.
She quickly decided she didn’t want to know how many women Shay had been with, though she suspected there was no bedpost in the world big enough for the number of notches Shay could probably etch.
“We’ve somehow managed to digress again. I was trying to convince you that you didn’t need to censor yourself.”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “I already have a best friend with an insanely good memory. I’m not sure I can cope with another one.
” The way Shay looked at her made it clear she wasn’t about to give up.
“She’s always been that way. So much so that I don’t know who my real father is.
” She focused beyond Shay into the depths of the bar, unable to maintain eye contact.
“Three candidates covered that period.” And she hadn’t met a single one of them because they were long gone by the time Rosie entered the world.
Funny how her mom had no shortage of lovers, but none stuck around or came back.
Maybe she was more like her mom than she wanted to admit.
“Has she done anything like this before?”
Rosie didn’t answer immediately. She was busy processing the complete lack of judgment in Shay’s expression and words.
Eventually, she nodded. “She disappeared on me a lot when I was a kid. She’d be gone for days, and I’d take myself to school, fix my meals, put myself to bed.
” She swallowed hard. She hadn’t talked about this stuff since she’d shared it with Lori a long time ago, and her therapist well before that.
These were things she hadn’t even told the serious partners.
“And she’s gone dark on me a few times since I’ve been an adult.
I didn’t hear from her at all between 2020 and 2022.
She had me thinking that she’d died of COVID.
And then there was five months in 2017…” She shook her head, acknowledging the old realization that her mom was just repeating her usual patterns and that Rosie shouldn’t waste her emotional energy worrying about her.
“So it’s likely she’ll reappear.”
“You’re probably right,” Rosie said. “She’s used health issues before, so this is nothing new.
I just suppose that, regardless of what she’s put me through, I can’t fully close the door on her, on our relationship.
For my own piece of mind, I want to know that I did everything I could every time there’s a drama, because one day, it’ll be real. ”
Shay blew out a breath and nodded slowly. “I know that feeling.”
“You do?”
“Kind of, though it’s nowhere near as difficult as you have it with your mom,” Shay said after she’d taken a long drink of wine that emptied her glass. “I’ll get another round.”
Rosie watched Shay walk to the bar and saw the numerous women follow her progress too.
She didn’t blame them, and she also had no right to be jealous since she had no claim on Shay.
And they could look all they wanted; Shay was coming home with her, at least for tonight.
The butch bartender nearly fell over herself in her hurry to serve Shay before her colleague.
When Shay left the bar with her drinks, she literally fanned herself with a bar towel, and Rosie didn’t stifle her amusement.
“What’re you laughing at?” Shay placed the glasses on the table and retook her seat.
Rosie gestured toward the bartender, who was still staring unabashed. “You made quite an impression on her, and I think she’s misreading the nature of our situationship.”
Shay looked over her shoulder briefly. “Maybe she thinks she’d made a nice butch sandwich.”
They hadn’t talked about their preferences. Oh, no. That couldn’t be where Shay’s thought process was heading. She had to cut that off before it got any steam. “Not with this slice of bread,” Rosie said. “She does nothing for me at all. I like my women…exactly like you, actually.”
Shay laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not interested either. You’re very much my perfect woman.”
“That’s one thing I’ve never been call—”
Shay leaned across the table and kissed Rosie with an intensity that made Rosie melt onto her chair.
When Shay finally released her, she looked across at butchy bartender, winked, and mouthed, “Sorry,” without meaning it even a little.
The woman shrugged and focused on the next customer. No sandwich for you.
“You’re perfect,” Shay said as she sank back onto her seat. “Now you’ve been called it twice in one night.”
Rosie grinned. “I can die a happy woman. Cheers.” She raised her glass, and Shay clinked hers to it. They drank, and Rosie waited for Shay to pick up the conversation where she’d left it.
“My dad is a very complicated man,” Shay said after a short period of silence. “He calls me to come over and fix everything. Sometimes things are broken, sometimes there’s nothing wrong with them at all.”
Rosie tried to keep the disbelieving frown from forming.
She was complaining because her father wanted to spend time with her?
Rosie had spent years of her childhood imagining what it’d be like to have a dad, to be his little girl, but she’d never had that chance.
She cherished the time she got with Lori’s father, Hank, but she’d missed out on so much already, it was impossible to make that up.
“Then he dismisses me like I’m an inconvenience.” Shay sipped her wine. “I don’t know what he wants from me.”
That made more sense. “Have you always had that kind of relationship?”
Shay shook her head and looked rueful, and the same sadness Rosie had spotted earlier reappeared.
“No. Everything changed after my momma died.”
Whoa. Rosie wasn’t expecting that at all. “I’m sorry, Shay. Was that recently?”
“A little under six years ago,” she whispered and rubbed her palm with her thumb before receding into silence.
Rosie placed her hand over Shay’s but didn’t say anything.
If she’d learned anything from all her years as a therapist, it was simply to hold those silences and never try to fill them.
She glanced around and observed other people while she waited for Shay to either continue or shut the conversation down and move on.
She figured it would be the latter, though her suppressed therapist wanted to dig deeper.
That surprised her. After nearly seven months away from it, she thought she’d fully lost interest in the intricacies of the human condition.
“It’s still really hard,” Shay said quietly.
The tears that edged her eyes made Shay’s dark brown eyes even more beautiful, which Rosie had thought impossible.
And the vulnerability that came with them clutched at Rosie’s heart, almost causing her to shed her own tears in empathy.
She kept her therapist-hat questions to herself and stayed silent.
“I think he blames me for Momma’s death. I left for the Army right after I graduated, and I didn’t get home as much as she would’ve liked.” Shay’s voice cracked slightly, and she took a long drink. “Would you mind if we didn’t talk about it anymore? I didn’t know it would be this difficult.”
“Of course,” Rosie said and removed her hand. “I’ve got to say that I’m surprised you’re being so open. I didn’t really think we’d be going that deep.”
Shay raised her eyebrow. “Because simple should mean shallow?” she asked.
Her playfulness returned with impressive ease, and Rosie couldn’t help being a little sad that their moment of deeper, intimate, personal connection had ended so abruptly. “That’s been my experience.”
Shay pushed away from the table and held out her hand. “Let’s go back to your place, and I’ll show you just how deep I can go.”
Rosie stood, and Shay pulled her into an urgent kiss full of passion and promise, of need and sexual oblivion. “That’s an offer I’ll never refuse.”