Chapter 5 Rose #2
Great. One more thing for Pearl to pin on me. Though, not that I’d ever tell him so, I’m grateful I don’t have to drive. My head is feeling better, but I’m not in the mood to navigate traffic.
“Do you want me to stop at the store so you can buy a phone?”
No one is waiting on me. No work, Easton’s busy, my dad knows where I am. The likelihood that my real estate agent has any good news for me is slim. I shake my head. “No, the only person I’d text is Easton, and he’s at practice.”
Logan nods tightly. “So you guys are…” he lets the question hang. After he flipped out last night, I almost laugh.
“You can ask that, but I can’t ask about you and Pearl?”
“For fuck’s sake, Rose, I was just—”
Not wanting to fight, I answer. “Last night, you asked if we were fucking. But Easton’s gay.
So, no. We aren’t.” Not that it would have happened, anyway.
Easton is meant for bigger and better things than the likes of me.
And, as handsome as he is, he’s never been my type—all that athletic energy, his easy-going nature.
I’ve always gone more for the artsy ones. Or… the difficult ones.
Logan’s head whips toward me. “What?”
“He’s gay.” I turn back to the window. I can feel his eyes on me.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Pearl and Easton were together. She has pictures of them at junior prom or whatever.”
“Yeah, when they were teenagers. He didn’t… It took him a while to come out. To himself, then to her. I know she was heartbroken, but he couldn’t exactly stay with her.”
Logan doesn’t say anything else. I watch him process it—his brows furrow, eyes focused far down the road.
We continue to drive in silence. At some point I notice the sky has changed, gone flat and gray, and when I look up, it’s full of darkened clouds.
After everything else, I’d forgotten all about the storm.
It’s barely noon, it should be bright and sunny.
I reach for my phone before remembering I don’t have one anymore.
“Hey, can I check the weather on your phone?”
He nods, unlocks it without looking, and holds it out. I open the weather app. The storm has shifted since yesterday—moved east, slowed down, which must be how he managed to get a flight out this morning. But the projections for tomorrow are ugly.
“Has Pearl said anything about the wedding? This storm looks really bad.”
Logan shakes his head. “She insists everything’s continuing as planned—says they have an indoor backup plan if it hits.”
“You think we’ll be okay?” I ask him.
He glances over—maybe surprised by the worry in my voice—and says confidently, “We’ll be fine.”
I hand his phone back and try to relax. Miles pass before I realize how hungry I am, and Logan agrees to stop since we need to get gas anyway, but we’re on a long stretch of highway and it’s another twenty miles before anything appears.
By the time we pull into the parking lot of a small roadside café, I’m starving and my bladder is screaming.
I’m out of the car first, rushing inside. After peeing, I stand at the bathroom mirror and take stock. My hair is a frizzy disaster, my bruise deepening to yellow around the cut, butterfly bandages still holding. My skin looks sallow, eyes tired. I look exactly as terrible as I feel.
Despite sharing a father, Pearl and I look nothing alike.
She is beautiful—willowy, long-limbed, the kind of effortlessly put-together that I spent most of my adolescence quietly resenting.
Her hair, in particular. That flat, light blonde that lies perfectly straight without any help, the color other women pay serious money to recreate.
She’d never let herself look like this in front of Logan.
They make a better picture, the two of them.
He’s put together, too, even after everything these last few hours. I’m a haggard mess and he looks like the wealthy, educated, put-together doctor he is, like he’s on his way to go boating or some shit.
Huffing, I wash my hands, apply more arnica balm to my bruise, and head out front, finding Logan at the counter. His dark eyes sweep over me. Then he leans in close. I hold my breath for a beat, feeling him so close. And then he sniffs, making a pinched face.
“What?” I ask, rearing back.
He shakes his head. “Nothing. What would you like?” The woman behind the counter is beaming at him, and I want to roll my eyes and tell her his personality isn’t that great.
I scan the menu and order a vegetarian wrap, then notice a turmeric and citrus smoothie.
“That could actually help with my bruise. With the inflammation, I mean. Depending on where they source it.” He gives me an unreadable look.
“I just mean, if it’s been frozen, or grown in poor soil—good turmeric is supposed to be deep orange or yellow.
A lot of what you find in the States is more pale yellow, the quality is—” He doesn’t care. I don’t know why I’m still talking.
“Turmeric isn’t going to do shit for you.”
I’m annoyed by this, and more annoyed when he orders the same smoothie, then pays before I can get my card out.
“Logan—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I am worried about it. I don’t like that you keep just paying for things. I have money,” I hold up my wallet. “I’m not a charity case.”
He groans and rubs his forehead with his fingers. “Can we not argue about this right now?” he asks tightly, taking his card back from the cashier.
I’ll tally what I owe him later—thinking about it now will bring my headache back. I have a little money. Enough to pay him back. Probably. I just don’t want to be in debt to Logan.
Despite having wiped out all my savings and not having a steady paycheck at the moment, I make a little money writing nutrition plans.
Easton also slips me cash to look after the apartment—something I should do anyway, since I live there, but he’s somehow convinced me it’s a favor to him.
I get his mail, keep things tidy. He hates messes, and except for my room, I’m not a bad housekeeper.
My mom was a housekeeper—not that she loved scrubbing toilets.
But she loved a clean home. She never officially moved into Dad’s massive house; she raised me in the small cottage behind the pool house.
But there were times we’d stay in the main house with Dad, and even though he’d drawn the line at her continuing to work for him after he knocked her up, she still cleaned.
She couldn’t help it. It was a point of pride.
My mom used to say, you don’t need to pay for a fancy gym membership if you scrub your own floors.
Pearl used to make fun of her for it, and there were times I felt ashamed. But now, as an adult, I appreciate that she was a housekeeper. My shame wasn’t about my mother. It was about Pearl, trying to make me feel small, and me letting her.
Mom also cooked, and her passion for food as medicine is what got me into herbalism. She grew lemon balm for sleep and digestion, peppermint, lavender, echinacea, and elderberry. She made her own tinctures, and many of her recipes I still use today.
It was my mother who inspired me to go to school to become an herbalist, then a nutritionist, and to open a wellness studio and apothecary.
Despite all the money I poured into it, and how badly it all fell apart before I even broke ground—I don’t regret trying.
She’d have been proud of my path, even if it didn’t work out.
I’ve had to keep reminding myself of that these past three months.
Logan finds me at a small table near the window and sets my wrap down in front of me. I thank him and unwrap it.
He eats half the sandwich before getting distracted and spends the next ten minutes rapidly typing away on his phone, occasionally glaring at me. I see Pearl’s name at the top of his screen, one text, then two and three. He’s probably just informed my sister he won’t be arriving this afternoon.
We still have another eight hours to go. We can make it by tonight. I don’t know why she’s freaking out, but whatever. He’s laid claim to their friendship, so it’s his problem, not mine. If she’s trying to blow up my phone right now and bitch at me about it, I’m blissfully unaware.
Finally, he sighs and tucks his phone away. A loud crack outside pulls my attention to the window—the sky has just opened up, rain coming down so thick and fast I can barely make out our car in the lot. Logan’s jaw tightens.
“I’m sure it’ll pass,” I say. “We can get going once it lightens up.” He nods, but not in agreement.
We finish eating more slowly this time since it looks like it’ll be a while. The wedding is the day after tomorrow, we still have plenty of time. But still, these delays are getting ridiculous.
The longer we sit in the booth, the more I feel Logan’s eyes on me.
I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth, discreetly pat my hair.
He looks annoyingly put-together for someone who slept in the same shitty motel I did.
It takes genuine effort not to glance at the top two undone buttons of his shirt.
I manage it for about ten seconds before I’m staring at the small triangle of skin it exposes—tan, smooth, warm-looking.
It makes me feel slightly insane. He’s an asshole, I remind myself.
“What?” I ask.
He shakes his head. But a few minutes pass, and he finally says, “I just don’t understand why…”
“Why what?”
“You and Easton really never…”
“What is your obsession with Easton?”
“I am not obsessed with Easton. But I am certain Pearl told me he dumped her—”
“Which he did.”
“Yes. But she said it was for you. That you two were an item. She’s been saying that since the day we met.”
I shouldn’t be surprised she told him that. And yet.