Page 30 of Bottle Rocket
She laughed sharply. “Don’t look at me that way.”
“What way?”
“Like you feel sorry for me. Put some pants on. This conversation isn’t fair if I have to stare at your package.”
“You could try not staring at my package.”
Rosie glared. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“I don’t think you’re cold, Rosie Posey. I think you’re amazing. And it’s gonna hurt to leave. There. That’s all. I know you think this doesn’t mean anything, but—”
“It means something.” She scowled, and she was so perfect it was almost painful.
“I don’t want to lose you again.”
“You won’t.” She said that with such confidence. Leo had no idea where it was coming from.
“How?”
She put her hands on her hips. “You have friends in every city, don’t you? A lover in every port?”
That same sense of dread began to build in his stomach. It wasn’t untrue. He had a lot of friends who would take a tumble with him if the mood hit. He was never hurting for partners, but he probably fucked around far less than she thought.
“I guess.”
She smiled wryly at his answer. “Then I’ll be that.”
Under a no-strings, fuck-buddy arrangement, Rosie would be lost to him for most of the year. He wasn’t sure he could live with only brief tastes of her—tempting him, drowning him—before she pushed him out the door and on his way. Yet, that was the fate his lifestyle had destined him to.
“You want to watch me fuck Dean?” he said finally.
Her cheeks turned the color of wild roses. “If you’d let me.”
Chapter Seven
“I made this kite myself.It’s called a Rokkaku,” Benji said.
Rosie glanced up at the pink kite her little brother was flying. It was a shade darker than the sky currently melting into the late summer sunset. She was jealous of him. Benji and his hunky older boyfriend, William, had started making kites back in the spring after attending a program at the library, which was so ridiculously adorkable she could hardly stand it.
It wasn’t fair. Benji attracted hobbies like mosquitoes to perfume. He collected lingerie. He renovated classic cars. He made kites. She couldn’t catch a hobby to save her life.
Earlier that day, Leo had gone back to his RV after an hour of cuddling and pizza. He undoubtedly had things he needed to do, but her irrational side worried that he’d left because of that horrible postsex conversation.
Rather than freak out at home about it, she’d informed Benji that he needed to spend more time with his older sister and had invited herself on Benji and William’s kite date. Which was pathetic, but there she was.
They were at a big green space near William’s downtown penthouse. The large stretch of manicured grass was ringed by Bradford pear trees and parallel-parking spaces. It smelled like summer—grass and heat and sizzling concrete.
“Here, Rosie. You try,” Benji said. He was wearing stupidly short shorts and a tank top with Rue McClanahan’s face on it.
Rosie glanced at William, who was sprawled out on a picnic blanket next to her. He was watching Benji with such happy indulgence. It made a weird swirl of emotion catch in her throat: relief and joy and envy.
She stood and took the kite spool from Benji. A soft breeze lifted the kite higher in the air, and she smiled.
“You’re a natural. Hold that while I go make out with my man.” Benji smacked a kiss on her cheek and skipped off to William. She rolled her eyes but gave them some privacy. She had crashed their date, after all.
The tips of the kite twinkled in the dimming light, and she wondered if Benji had put glitter on it. She let the evening wash over her. The lift and pull of the kite in her hands, the sound of kids playing tag, the chirp of crickets, the warm air, and the pop of firecrackers a few streets away. It was almost meditative, which made it way too easy to think back to her time with Leo.
Everything with Leo had felt so right and so wrong at the same time.
