Page 38 of Here We Go Again
“But the binder!”
“Fuck your binder!”
“Rosie, sweetheart,” Joe coaxes. “It’s the Grand Canyon. I need to see it. We all need to see it.”
He sounds so earnest, and for the first time, his pleading expression doesn’t look like a performance. Even amid all her anxiety, Rosemary finds her heart aching for Joe.
“Then why didn’t you just say that when you asked us to take you on this ridiculous trip?”
“Because you would’ve said no,” he says plainly.
Rosemary opens her mouth to argue again, then closes it around another scream. He’s right. Driving him to Maine is one thing, but if Joe had said he wanted her to go to the Grand Canyon with Logan Maletis, she would have refused.
She stares at the streaks of dirt down Logan’s loud tropical shirt. Then she stares down at her own floral dress, two reddish-brown paw prints perfectly imprinted on her boobs.
She’s not overprepared. She is completely and totally out of her depth.
“Can you even find a hotel at the Grand Canyon at the last minute when the entire country is on summer vacation?”
Joe holds up a Booking.com reservation on his phone. “Done! And look. It’s pet-friendly!”
Her brain is already trying to recalculate routes and driving distances and how much more time she’ll have to spend with Logan thanks to this little detour. “Out of my way,” she snaps, shouldering Logan aside and dropping to her knees in the dirt. She starts muscling the lug nuts off the destroyed tire.
“Does this mean—” Logan starts.
“Please shut up, Maletis, and just help me change this fucking tire.”
It’s a little after nine when they finally pull into the town of Tusayan, and Rosemary feels dead behind the wheel.Five hundred miles in the wrong direction. Two hours spent at a run-down mechanic to get a new tire. Her brain keeps spiraling around those numbers, and she feels like at any second she could burst into tears. Or vomit.
No one else seems to be faring any better. Joe’s been asleep since they entered Arizona, Logan is hangry and covered in dirt, and Odysseus keeps pacing around the back seat like Rosemary’s anxiety is contagious. Everything smells like dirty dog and burnt rubber, and their Southwest-themed hotel shines like an oasis in the dark. She’s so relieved, she could cry.
That is, until she sees the room Joe and Logan booked for the night. Roomsingular.
It’s one hotel room with two queen beds and nothing else.
“What is this?”
Logan drops her duffle bag onto the bed closest to the door. “Home sweet home.”
“You only booked one room?”
“There was only one room available,” Joe says groggily as he rolls himself over to the second bed.
And that’s it. It’s official. These two clowns are definitely conspiring to push her toward a full mental breakdown. They’re like the idiots who opened the bag of winds inThe Odysseyand blew everyone completely off course for ten years.
“And what is the sleeping arrangement supposed to be?”
It’s clear Logan didn’t actually think that piece through as she rubs a hand up and down the back of her neck. “Well, uh, Joe and Odie will sleep in that bed.” She points to the one by the window. “And then—”
“You can sleep on the floor?”
Logan’s mouth hangs open even more than usual for a minute before she snaps it closed. At which point Odysseus leaps onto the closest bed and rolls his filthy body up and down the duvet. “Stop! Down! You mangy dog! You’re getting everything dirty!”
The dog ignores her. Logan hums a few bars of “Cruella De Vil” again before she takes charge. “Odie. Off.” She snaps her fingers, and the dog jumps off the bed and plants his butt on Logan’s rainbow Vans.
Rosemary is going to cry and vomit at the same time, actually. “I can’t handle this. I’m getting in the shower.”
“Great!” Logan grabs Joe’s bags and brings them over to his bed. “Take Odie with you.”
