Page 21 of Bottle Rocket

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Chapter Five

Leo was stillin a daze when Rosie left that afternoon. She forgot her sketch but remembered her sex list. Leo put the sketch in the loft in his bedroom where he was currently storing his art.

That evening he pulled it out to add detail to it. Small flushes of color with his colored pencils. A sun stripe on her shoulder.

The next morning, he studied it again. It filled him with the bright sunny summer feeling he got in very specific circumstances. A hot night with barbecue smoke in the air. Cold lemonade on a parched tongue. The juice of a watermelon sticky on his fingers. The scent of chlorine and popsicles. The white-hot magnesium glow of a sparkler.

He took out his sketchpad and idly doodled while he waited for his coffee to brew. He had a meeting with Robin Erco and Sasha Holiday to discuss the pop-up shop. It would be weird to see Sasha after his interlude with Rosie. He had no idea if Rosie would tell her.

An hour and a half later, Sasha greeted him with, “So … heard you went fullTitanicon my sister yesterday.”

“Excuse me?” Leo said, some Midwestern-flustered niceness slipping into his voice.

“You know, Jack painting Rose before banging in a Renault Towncar? Only you were in an RV, and your name is Leo, so—”

“God, Sasha. Filter, please,” Robin Erco said with a laugh.

Leo wasn’t coy about the shit he did, especially the sex he had, but facing Rosie’s brash younger sister was making him shy.

“Oops. Wrong foot, that’s me. Hi, I’m Sasha Holiday, head of marketing for Lady Robin’s. We’ve spoken via email, and you evidently had a secret love affair with my sister a decade ago that I didn’t know about until brunch this morning. Nice to meet you.”

Sasha and Rosie seemed similar at first glance. Both blonde with short hair, blue eyes, and fey-like features. But their smiles were worlds apart. Sasha’s was impetuous and a little mischievous, while Rosie’s was reticent and sparing.

Leo shook Sasha’s hand. “Leo Whittaker. Nice to meet you.” He hugged Robin. She looked gorgeous today in a leather pencil skirt and a crisp white sleeveless top that popped against her dark tan skin. Very boss lady. They were old friends, and he had an important question to ask her later. One that was not appropriate for Sasha’s ears.

They were in Robin’s office, which was sleek and modern with lots of gold embellishments. He was into it. It matched Robin’s femme fatale vibe.

“Let’s hit the easy bits first,” Robin said. She was very take charge. That was one of the reasons he got along with her so well. “The Lady Robin’s Independence Day Pop-up Party is on July third. It runs all day, and we’re on track to display your art.”

“Yes. How many pieces can I display again?” he asked. He had that info buried in an email somewhere, but he couldn’t remember.

Robin directed the question to Sasha. She pulled up a chart on her iPad. “We have enough hanger thingamabobs for ten, but that will also be limited by the size of your pieces. If they’re huge, I’d say we might only be able to get five in the space.”

“None of them are huge,” he said.

When Robin and Sasha had first approached him about selling art and his coffee table books, it had been because they’d shown interest in his stylized stuff—hisCharacterscollection—but then Robin had discovered that his book,Lovers,was set to release the day of the pop-up shop. They’d agreed to make it a launch party/signing.

He didn’t make a big stink when his books released because, if possible, he’d already had a gallery show for the collection. He viewed his books as conference and convention bait, but Robin and Sasha seemed to disagree. Per their emails, they wanted him to sell some of his more patriotic or ironically All-American stuff fromCharacters, but other than that, he had free rein.

They got the important details hammered out—what time he could arrive to hang his art, how many books they’d ordered, pricing. Then they discussed the sexy steampunk promotional art they’d hired him to create. It was in his wheelhouse, and his mind was already running away from him. Gears, where the cogs were butt plugs. A man in Victorian dress but showing lingerie underneath. A steampunk warrior woman armed with an arsenal of dildos. He loved these types of projects.

The meeting wrapped up, and Sasha, who had warped into an uberprofessional marketing badass about halfway through, grinned and said, “Want a lube sample?”

“What?” He kept expecting Sasha to be like Rosie, but she wasn’t at all.

“I gave some to Rosie yesterday. We named it Slick and Slide.” Sasha pulled a bottle out of a bag at her side and handed it to him. He took it with a smile. He sure as hell wasn’t gonna turn down good lube.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Test it on your wrist a few hours before use to check for allergic reactions. And be nice to my sister. Oh! And that’s water based, so it’s safe for use with toys.”

He ignored the lube talk and said, very seriously, “I will be.”

He intended to keep that promise. He and Rosie might not be a long-term match, but his heart was full of her. He couldn’t imagine hurting her. As long as they communicated and were on the same page, he didn’t see why the next five days wouldn’t be a-fucking-mazing.

Sasha gave him a warning stink-eye and a big smile before exiting Robin’s office.

Once Sasha was gone, Robin leaned back in her throne—uh, leather desk chair—and arched an eyebrow. “So, Rosie Holiday, huh?”