Chapter 12
Rosie typed Taglines on the magic keyboard hooked up to her MacBook, then she stood, taking the keyboard with her, and began to pace her living room.
She paused at the selection of the special edition tools she’d laid out on her dining room table and ran her fingers over the cool steel.
They were so pretty that she actually was tempted to try building something, even if that was just screwing some pieces of wood together.
She continued to pace then stopped to look out the window onto the street below and watched for a few minutes as people went about their business, unaware of her scrutiny.
She drifted back to the night of Shay’s first booty call and the excited anticipation that coursed through her body as she watched Shay get out of her car and wave to her.
Like the tools on Rosie’s table, she was lithe yet powerful.
She rested her keyboard on the windowsill, thinking about how resilient women and queer folk had to be to survive, and how that was compounded for Shay because of her color.
Tools as Strong as You Are. She hit return and headed to the kitchen for a drink, grabbing her cup from her cluttered desk on the way.
Rosie took her time fixing her coffee while she rolled the remit of Unity Tools around her brain.
It would’ve been easier if they’d chosen to focus on just women or the LGBTQ community.
She typed Tools That EmpowHer, erased it, then hit undo.
She’d probably need more than one tagline.
Ugh. Delete. She switched back up to the page entitled Visual Campaign.
Shay had a visual with wide appeal, but would she be best utilized for the focus on all women or specific sexualities?
She scrolled back down to taglines. Precision, Pride, and Power in Every Tool.
That could work for everyone…maybe. She thought about the photoshoot that she wanted.
A mix of candid and professional shots of Shay and the team would work well.
Close-ups of their hands working with the tools, emphasizing their competence and enhanced by the amazing tools, obviously.
She’d need full access to them at work so she could get engaging stories and behind-the-scenes content that showcased the diversity and skill of the whole team.
It was a shame they’d contract someone else to do it, because she’d love to be around Shay for that kind of time, watching her work.
That fantasy of sex on the hood of Shay’s beefy car could become a reality if they worked some overtime after everyone else had gone home.
Getting to see the contact sheets and raw video wouldn’t be the same, but there’d be something sexy and voyeuristic about pouring over them in the privacy of her office. Focus.
She’d need to trawl Insta and TikTok for LGBTQ and women influencers across several generations.
God, this was a huge project. Perhaps she should ask Franklin if she could bring another exec in to work with her.
She tapped the glass of her mouse, considering her options.
She didn’t want to seem overwhelmed… She resolved to wrap her head around the scope of the project and then go to Franklin for someone to work with.
She liked Anji; she’d worked with her on the female urinal device trying to compete with the market leader.
Rosie laughed out loud, remembering her fascination with being able to pee standing up.
Guys didn’t realize how good they had it.
Ooh, maybe they could livestream DIY car maintenance workshops at the garage.
She could imagine all the let’s ride, love, and this is fire gifts raining in for Shay and Gabe.
Solo, RB, and Woody were way more average Joe, but that held its own inherent appeal too.
She moved down to another page and typed, Leverage authentic storytelling to build brand loyalty.
Focus on women and LGBTQ micro-influencers to create organic buzz.
Utilize user-generated content to enhance relatability and trust.
Rosie took a sip of her rocket fuel and thoughts of Shay pushed for her attention.
She’d been trying hard not to think about the intimacy of their conversation at the bar a week ago.
Sharing her vulnerabilities and secrets had been terrifying, but they’d also been building blocks which deepened her connection to Shay.
That raw honesty had brought them closer together.
Shay continued to reiterate her desire to keep things simple, but that night had hinted at the potential to go beyond their physical relationship.
But wasn’t that what building a stronger friendship entailed?
They’d gotten together twice since that night, but Shay hadn’t engineered the conversation to her own family and the loss of her mother.
If anything, they’d talked even less than before, as if Shay had realized she was overstepping the limits of her own boundaries.
She shook her head and took another gulp of coffee.
Right now, she had a marketing plan to create and while Shay was part of that, dwelling on the state of their situationship wasn’t helpful.
She resolved to keep things simple. That’s what Shay wanted, and it had been working well for her too.
Rosie would just force herself to ignore the strong pull for something more.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard as ideas poured out of her, fueled by caffeine and her determination to prove herself not just to Franklin, but also to herself, and to shut Mindy Fletcher up too.
If Rosie left this career, it’d be on her own terms, not in one of Franklin’s regular house-cleaning furies.
Rosie’s phone buzzed and broke her attention.
She glanced at the time and then her word count and smiled when she saw she’d managed nearly three thousand words.
If it was Shay calling, as she hoped it would be, Rosie would be good to take a break by eight or nine.
A bottle of wine and some bedroom time would be the perfect comedown after the exhilaration of creating this strategy.
She found her phone beneath a pile of brochures from other tool manufacturers, all of which unashamedly targeted heterosexual men, with their half-naked photos of long-haired women in plaid shirts tied at the stomach and denim micro-shorts…
She was ashamed to admit that she’d stared at some of those photographs for far too long.
Rosie stuck out her bottom lip when she saw there was no caller ID. She briefly considered ignoring it, but curiosity got the better of her, and she hit accept and speaker. “Hello?”
“Is this Rosie?”
The brusque and impatient male voice was unfamiliar. “Yes. Who’s this?” she asked.
“My name’s Keith. I’ve been sleeping with your mom.”
Rosie’s ensuing snort lodged in the back of her throat, and she coughed violently. That was information she didn’t need spelled out. Ever. Partner. Friend. So many other options he could have—and should have—chosen.
“She’s dead.”
Rosie stared at the phone, and the world went soundless and dark like she’d been submerged in tar. She couldn’t have heard that correctly.
“You still there?” Keith’s abrupt voice pushed through the sticky silence. “She’s dead. Your mom. Did you hear me?”
Rosie pulled the phone closer and leaned down to it. “Mom’s dead?”
“What, are you deaf? Yeah, she’s dead.”
“How?” Autopilot kicked in when she couldn’t properly process his words.
“Heart attack, I guess. We were in Tijuana. She’s at the Hospital del Carmen. You need to come get her and do whatever it is you’re supposed do with dead bodies. I don’t do that stuff.”
“You can’t— Are you serious?” Rosie found her voice in a rush of anger and disbelief.
“Look, I’ve done my part. You’re her daughter. Do yours,” he said and hung up.
Her phone beeped three times before returning to a screensaver of her and Lori in front of the Centennial Wheel on Navy Pier.
Dead.
What was she supposed to do now? Would Lori know?
She dropped her arms to her side and leaned back in her chair, numb.
She knew she was sitting in a chair, but she couldn’t feel the soft cushion beneath her butt or the firm comfort of the ergonomic support.
There was a cold cup of coffee in front of her, but she couldn’t smell its tempting, slightly burned aroma.
In the breeze created by the A/C unit overhead, a lemongrass candle flickered, but she could take no joy from its scent.
What was it her mom had said she was suffering from?
She searched her mind, unable to bring the information to the fore in this dream-like state and wishing she could borrow Lori’s hyperthymesia memory thing.
Chronic kidney failure. And as it progressed, heart failure followed.
That much she remembered from her panicked research.
So this meant her mom hadn’t been lying or scheming; she’d been telling the truth, and Rosie had more or less ignored her.
Maybe that wasn’t exactly right. She couldn’t ignore someone who’d cut off communication from their end.
The world around her seemed to shift back into alignment, and her senses came alive again.
She pressed her hand to her chest, and it pulsed beneath her touch, but she didn’t feel whole.
She didn’t feel right, as if her heart was being tugged downward by an anchor and would drop out onto the ground at any moment.
Maybe this was another scheme. In all probability, her mom was alive and well, hanging out at a beach bar somewhere sipping margaritas and snorting coke.
She just wanted to know that Rosie cared, that she could still pull the mom card, and Rosie would come running.
Her mom simply needed some money and, with her twisted logic, figured that Rosie would be so relieved to find her alive in Tijuana that she wouldn’t be able to refuse her anything.
But what if Keith is telling the truth?
Rosie couldn’t deny that she’d often wondered how her mom would die: a drug overdose; murdered by a jealous lover; shot by a police officer.
These weren’t the thoughts of a normal kid or even an adult, but they’d plagued Rosie her entire life.
Did her eternal question now have an answer?
A simple heart attack. If it was true, her mom would be desperately disappointed.
She’d always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and with a story worthy of a Hollywood movie ending.
She pulled a notepad from beneath the folders scattered on her desk and scribbled down the hospital name Keith had given her, then she opened a second tab and typed Hospital del Carmen.
She half-hoped not to find anything; if the hospital didn’t exist, it was an indication that Keith had lied.
When Google did its thing and brought up more information than she could ever want or need, Rosie’s heart pounded in her ribs and her breathing labored.
The edges of her vision spotted and darkened and began to close in.
She pushed her thumbnail hard into the palm of her other hand until the pain was too intense and her eyes cleared.
She pushed back in her chair and put her head between her knees, angry at herself for falling into old patterns.
She stayed that way for a few moments then straightened up.
Shay. Rosie reached for her phone instinctively but stopped herself.
What was she thinking? She couldn’t burden Shay with her problem.
That wasn’t just stepping over the boundaries into a serious relationship, that was taking a running jump and diving in headfirst. She could already imagine smashing her head into the brick wall Shay had constructed, and she’d be left laying there, bleeding and unattended because things were no longer “simple.” Plus Shay was with her family, which meant she didn’t need anything else to deal with.
Rosie called Lori instead, but it went to voicemail. Of course it did. Lori would be doing something wonderful with Gabe, no doubt.
Call me when you can. Need to talk. It’s Mom.
She hoped the last part would expedite Lori’s response when she saw her text.
Rosie entered the number to the hospital on her phone and hovered her thumb over the green icon.
But she couldn’t do it. Instead, she tabbed to the marketing plan sitting unfinished on her MacBook and closed it, unable to face the project now that everything was overshadowed by more uncertainty.
Or was she just praying it was uncertain?
She’d come to despise and dread her mom’s lying and scheming drama, but right now, she’d prefer that over the very definitive alternative.
Rosie got up and walked over to the bookshelf in the living room.
She pulled out the hardbacks on the top shelf and retrieved the small wooden box hidden behind them.
She dropped onto her couch and clutched the box to her chest. She couldn’t open it.
Not yet. She’d promised herself she’d only crack this box when it was over.
And she didn’t know that yet. Not for sure.
She placed the box on the glass coffee table and dialed the number for the hospital. Time to end the uncertainty.