Page 94 of Here We Go Again
Joe watches her too as he talks. “Growing up, I was relentlessly bullied for being effeminate, a sissy, a wuss, afunny boyas my dad used to say. It wasn’t even because they thought I was gay. I just wasn’tmanenough. I was too sensitive, too quiet, interested in the wrong things.”
Onstage, three of the judges are holding up 10s, except Deena Diva, who’s flashing a 7. In response, Logan starts doing a striptease to win her over, naturally. Rosemary’s attention shifts back to Joe. “But when I dressed up as Rita for the first time, I felt like I was taking all those names they called me and claiming them as my own. The femininity that had made me inadequate in the real world made me a showstopper when I performed in drag. I learned to love myself onstage.”
Joe’s shimmery eye shadow catches the light. “I haven’t been to a drag show in over thirty years. Drag shows were supposed to be a place where we were safe. A place where we could escape their hate and love ourselves. But they don’t want us to love ourselves, not even behind closed doors. And that’s hard for me because I love safety.”
“So do I.”
Rita’s fake nails dig into Rosemary’s hand as she squeezes. “I know you do, Rosie. That’s why I’m telling you. Some things are more important than safety.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
LOGAN
She’s in love with the girl?
What the hell was she thinking?
Shewasn’tthinking, that was the problem. Two whiskey-sevens with Remy and a Pendleton neat from the bar, and she’d surrendered herself to the bubbly, dizzying joy of being in a queer space. A church basement full of queens young and old. Joe transformed and Rosemary in a leather jacket.
That jacket. She should’ve known better than to dress Rosemary like this. As much as the pencil skirts and the nylons and the heels drive her absolutely wild—and they do, dammit—nothing prepared her for Rosemary in a leather jacket and a white T-shirt and jeans. Rosemary with a fake cigarette dangling from that anxious mouth.
Logan has been hoisted by her own horny petard.
And then she went onstage and sang that song from middle school summers. She confessed the truth.
I would always change the boy to girl in my head.
This is a disaster, and it’s all Remy’s fault.
Remy with his cute-ass house in this cute-ass town they can’t seem to leave. It’s like the land of the Lotus Eaters inThe Odyssey:they’ve all drunk the sweet Ocean Springs nectar and they’ve been lured into a sense of complacency. This is a road trip. They shouldn’t stay in any place for too long; they should keep moving at the same pace as Logan’s restless mind.
But instead, they’ve stayed. And it’s beennice.
She’s never had someone she can comfortably relax with as an adult, but on warm afternoons, all she wants to do is sprawl out on the couch with Rosemary, napping and reading while she types away on her laptop. She’s never enjoyed silence with another woman. Her short-lived relationships have always been frenetic, packed with activities and passion and sex, and they’ve always burned out with equal force.
And it’s not that there isn’t passion with Rosemary. But there’s also grocery shopping. There are days they go to Rouses and wander the aisles with a list from Remy for the night’s dinner. There are long conversations where Rosemary asks her questions like she genuinely wants to know the answers, like she wants toknowher.
Women never want to get to know her. That’s not thepointof her.
Logan is long legs and big boobs, a fun time, always down for a party and a good fuck.
But Rosemary. Rosemary just wants to hold her damn hand and read chapters of her book aloud and look at her like she’s doing right now in this tacky church basement. Her blue eyes shining like sapphires and her expression so open, it makes Logan dizzy.
She finally finishes her exit from the stage and approaches the table where those blue eyes are watching her. “What a rush!” she announces, throwing herself down in a chair. “I legit feel like I just snorted a bunch of coke and fucked over the middle class.”
Her joking comment does nothing to diminish the intensity of Rosemary’s stare. “You were incredible.”
Her face warms, and she pulls her blazer off, throws it over one shoulder. “Did you like it?” she asks, aiming for flippancy again.
But fucking Rosemary. She’s so earnest as she replies, “I loved it, Logan.”
Love. Logan had used that word, hadn’t she? In the song? She’d confessed to loving Rosemary back when they were girls.
And she had. Before she understood what love was—what losing it could truly mean—she let herself love Rosemary Hale.
Back onstage, a young kid death drops as a song comes to a screeching halt, and the room goes wild, giving Logan a reprieve from those eyes. “Give Miguel ahand,” Gladys insists into the microphone, and Rosemary puts her fingers into her mouth and whistles for the kid.
“All righty, folks. Up next, we have a very special one-night only reunion tour for a pair of New York dames.”
