Page 72 of Here We Go Again
She scrambles off Logan and starts sputtering incomprehensible excuses. “I’m tired” and “we shouldn’t” and “Joe.”
“Whoa! Whoa.” Logan sits up quickly. “It’s okay, Rosemary. We don’t have to do anything else. There’s no pressure at all. I may be a fuckboy, but I’m also a fan of enthusiastic consent.”
The problem is that Rosemary couldn’t be unenthusiastic if she tried. “Sorry,” Rosemary mumbles.
Logan shakes her head. “No sorrys. You have nothing to be sorry about. I’m the one who got carried away with her horniness. I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.”
“It’s not that I… I mean, I want… um…” She has no idea how to do this, how totalkabout it, when she’s spent more of her life trying so hard not to think about it.
But Logan isn’t mad. She isn’t mocking her. And what Rosemary really wants is to tell her. “I’m not… like you. When it comes to sex.”
Logan smiles, but it’s different than the lazy one before. “Not slutty, you mean?” she asks jokingly, and Rosemary realizes this is the smile Logan uses when she’s pretending not to care.
“I don’t think you’re slutty. Unless you want to be slutty?” Rosemary has no idea if slutty is a good thing or bad thing these days. “But I’ve never had sex. Like, at all.”
The smile vanishes entirely. “Oh. So, you and Jake never…?”
“Definitely not. We were each other’s beards. You do know he came out his freshman year at UW, right?”
Logan’s mouth hangs open. “Nevernever, then?”
Rosemary rushes to explain herself before Logan rushes out ofthe room in horror. “I don’t really date or think about dating very often. And sex has never felt that important to me, so I just haven’t prioritized it. Which probably sounds really weird…”
“Not weird at all,” Logan says, not rushing anywhere. She’s still sitting right here with Rosemary. “Maybe you’re asexual. Or aromantic. Or both.”
“Maybe…” she says. She’s looked into other labels for the way she experiences attraction, but none of them give her the same sense of rightness she found with the word lesbian. She knows she doesn’t experience sexual attraction like other people, but she’s pretty sure she does experience it.
“It’s okay that you don’t want to have sex with me,” Logan reassures her with a real smile. It shows the entirety of her crooked teeth. Rosemary is obsessed with those teeth, that mouth, and the possibility of this moment.
“The thing is… I think I do want to have sex with you.”
“Oh,” Logan says again.
“Oh,” Rosemary repeats.
They sit in silence for a minute until Logan finally speaks. “I have an idea….” Her smile turns devilish. “Would you take a nude photo of me?”
Rosemary sits uneasily on the closed toilet seat and watches Logan turn on the hot water in the bathtub.
“A nude…?”
“Yep,” Logan says as the bath begins to fill. “Tuesdays with Morriedemanded it.”
Rosemary barks out a little laugh at the ridiculousness of Joe’s life advice. “And you’re going to listen?”
Logan shoots her another devilish grin, and this one sends an anticipatory tingle through her limbs. “If you want to. You’re in control here. Just how you like it.”
Rosemary doesn’t fully understand what she means.
Logan seems to sense her confusion. “Is it okay if I take off my overalls?” she asks, and Rosemary nods slowly.
Logan unfastens the buckles, and Rosemary is mesmerized by the way her jean overalls wiggle down over her hips, then slide down her long legs.
“Can I take off my shirt?”
Rosemary nods a little faster this time. Her instinct tells her to look away as Logan pulls the tank top over her head, but she fights that urge and lets herself stare. Orange sports bra and tan skin. Fire on fire. The thirst is back in her throat as she understands. Logan is handing Rosemary complete control over whatever happens in this bathroom.
“Can I take off my sports bra?” Logan asks with an impish grin.
