Page 60 of Here We Go Again
“Am I supposed to be the prickly pear?” she snaps. “Is Rosemary? Your metaphors are usually better than this, old man.”
Joe reaches out, almost as if he could touch the prickly pear if it wasn’t on the other side of a small fence. “Life is the prickly pear. It’s always going to be a combination of beauty and hurt, no matter how hard you try to protect yourself from the hard parts. There is no way to avoid pain.”
Logan stares at the pink blossoms flourishing in the heat. “I don’t understand that metaphor at all,” she lies.
“Hmmm…” Joe grumbles. “Well, I can’t help but notice you started calling herRosemary.”
“She’s been doing that accidentally!” Hale pops up beside them without warning, like a sunburned Jack-in-the-box. She’s smiling, and she turns to look at the nearby plants.
“Oputina polyacantha,” she says without even reading the little plaque beneath the cactus. “I love prickly pears.”
ROSEMARY
She’s on a trail in the desert, surrounded by hundreds of petroglyphs, and she can’t even enjoy the rich history because of legs.
Specifically, Logan’s legs. Peeking out beneath the hem of her overalls. Ten miles long, lean calves, bruises on her knees. Those legs brushing against Odie’s black fur as Logan holds the leash.
Those legs pressed against hers under a blanket on a rooftop. The heat of them.
Rosemary squeezes her eyes closed. She almost kissed Logan last night.
Kissed.
Logan.
She can’t remember the last time she kissed someone. Hell, she can’t remember the last time shewantedto kiss someone, but on that rooftop, she wanted it so badly, it climbed into her throat like thirst. So, she almost did it.
How ridiculously unsafe that would have been.
But the shocking thing is how entirely safe she felt in that moment. They had talked the way they used to—honestly and openly, exchanging secret hopes and fears—and then Logan had wrapped them both up in a single blanket, so close they could share body heat and breath. Logan called herRosemary, and it felt like someone yanked open a file cabinet in the very back of her heart and everything came spilling out.
Logan leaned in close, and Rosemary could’ve kissed her.
But if she had, there would’ve been no closing that file cabinet again. Her heart didn’t do anything in moderation, either.
So, she swerved. Saved them both.
“This is hella cool.” Logan points to an engraving of the sun knife on a rock, white against the dark stone. “These hieroglyphs are some cool shit.”
“Petroglyphs,” Rosemary corrects. The morning has turned muggy with purple and gray clouds on the horizon. Rosemary is sweating behind her knees, but that might have more to do with the crop top Logan is wearing under her overalls.
“Storytelling never ceases to amaze in all its forms,” Joe says. Then he clutches his chest.
Logan laughs. “Sucha melodramatic queen.”
But Joe is still clutching his chest, and his mouth is twisted in a grimace of pain, and Logan stops laughing. “Joe?”
“I—” He tries to take a breath, but it’s shallow and sharp. “I-I don’t feel—” He tries and tries to catch his breath. Rosemary drops to her knees in front of him in the desert.
“What do you need?”
“It’s hot out here,” Logan says. “Maybe he just needs some water?”
Rosemary has Joe’s water bottle out of the basket attached to the wheelchair before Logan finishes her sentence. Joe attempts to drink out of the bendy straw, but most of the water dribbles down his chin.
“Logan!” Rosemary clutches her own chest, trying to subdue the rising panic there. “I think there might be something seriously wrong.”
“I’m sure he’s okay. Let’s try to calm down…”
