By the time the last bell had rung, Rosemary was completely numb. She felt lonely as she found her locker and gathered her books. Rosemary couldn’t wait to see Wes and Evan. She’d missed them all day. She didn’t have any classes with them, and the one glimpse she’d gotten of Evan during the day had made her want to cry because he hadn’t seen her. She rested her forehead against the cold metal frame of the locker and closed her eyes.
She felt familiar, callused hands on her arms as she stood there. As she turned to them a commotion broke out in the next row of lockers. Evan squatted down to get a look underneath.
“It’s two girls fighting,” Evan said. “That’s the second fight I’ve seen today.”
“Come on, Rosemary. We don’t want to miss the bus on our first day of school. Got all your stuff?” Wes asked as he gently tugged on her arm.
After she nodded, Evan slipped her backpack off her shoulders and slung it over his own, evidently unconcerned that it was pink canvas.
Rosemary followed them to the schoolyard, where all the kids waited for their school buses to arrive. Though they only lived half an hour from Morehead, the bus ride would take well over an hour by the time she was dropped off in front of her house. Following them mutely, Rosemary noticed Wes kept looking down at her, the concern plain on his face. Wes hugged her, quietly asking her if she was all right. She felt Evan’s fingers slide through her wild, curly hair. For the first time all day, she felt her world return to order.
Rosemary had been close with Wes and Evan since they were itty-bitty, and they’d always looked after her like this. It was a comforting gesture and one that brought tears to her eyes with its easy familiarity, after a day that had been utterly foreign. Her chin quivered, and she pressed her lips together tightly.
“Your day suck as bad as mine, Rosie Posie?” Evan asked, fingering one of her unruly locks. Rosemary nodded and ignoring the crowd around them, focused on Evan gratefully as he continued. “Coach popped everyone who ran late coming out of the showers with a wet towel. I’ve got a big, red welt on my butt. I can still feel it stinging.” The quiver in her chin stopped as he grinned sheepishly and rubbed the aforementioned butt cheek. She knew he was making light of his pain to help her feel better.
“You have to take showers, too?” she asked, her heart beginning to lighten somewhat.
Wes chuckled. “Yeah, nobody warned us about that, did they?”
“No! I was in a room with a gazillion other nekkid girls,” she muttered, laughing when the boys gagged and made puking sounds. “At least we didn’t get popped with a wet towel.”
Wes slung an arm around her and hugged her again.
It was at that precise moment they drew the notice of three sixth-grade girls and a boy waiting in the line next to theirs. Rosemary recognized the boy from her science class, where he was seated next to her. She’d taken an instant dislike to him that morning when he’d flicked one of her tight, curly locks with his freshly sharpened pencil, poking her with it and marking her new white shirt. He’d asked her if she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket. Hardy-har-har, like she’d never heard that one before. She’d given him an evil look and ignored him.
Now his jeering voice crowed over the rest of the chaotic noise on the schoolyard. “Hey, look! Curly Girlie has a boyfriend. No wait! She has two boyfriends! Are you gonna kiss ’em?” he asked in a singsong voice.
Rosemary looked on in shock as the three little girls standing with him began laughing, and pointed at her. They took up the boy’s chant, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”
Turning to Wes and Evan, Rosemary saw their features turn from shock to stone-cold anger. She looked back to the other group, and now the whole line was laughing and pointing at them.
It was hard enough to survive this first day. Add to that her desperate need to fit in and find her place amongst these students, and poor Rosemary made a life-altering mistake.
At the top of her lungs, Rosemary screamed loud enough for everyone to hear, “They aren’t my boyfriends! They aren’t my boyfriends! I don’t like them at all!” Her fellow classmates from DivineElementary School turned, round-eyed, and gaped at her. They all knew Rosemary, Wes, and Evan were seldom apart.
Bus number 11 pulled to a stop in front of their line of kids. Wes and Evan lifted their backpacks from the ground and turned from her. Evan glanced back at her as the kids in the other line continued to giggle and point at her. His eyes were filled with tears of betrayal. Wes’s shoulders were slumped, but he didn’t look back at her, just stumbled forward in the line. She opened her mouth to speak, even touched him, but he shrugged her hand away.
Rosemary looked at the boy, and he stuck his tongue out at her triumphantly. She turned away in defeat. She already knew she wasn’t going to be friends with him or those bratty girls, but now she’d lost her two best friends, and for nothing. Once on the bus, Wes and Evan made their way to the back seat. Unused to riding a school bus, her instinct was to follow them, but she knew she couldn’t do that now.
She was looking for an open spot when her friend Rachel Lopez beckoned her over. In tearful relief, Rosemary collapsed on the seat.
“Wow! Rosemary, you’re just as dumb as a brick, aren’t you? Are you okay?” Rachel asked, as always balancing wit with compassion. Thankfully, the insult wrapped in sympathy kept her from crying.
“I dunno,” she whispered. Rachel patted her shoulder and left her in peace. Rachel made sure the other kids left Rosemary alone on the ride home.
At home, Rosemary flopped on her bed and came to the realization that she needed to apologize. She had to make this right. Right now. Otherwise, seven long, lonely years lay stretched before her. After walking the short distance to their house, she asked Mrs. Garner if she could talk to Wes and Evan.
Mrs. Garner said of course she could but then kindly asked, “Rosemary, how was your first day?” Rosemary could’ve sworn Mrs. Garner was a mind reader sometimes.
Rosemary looked at the woman and finally cratered. Mrs. Garner held her as she sobbed and told the whole mortifying story. Compassionately, Mrs. Garner patted her back and smoothed her hair then shared a similar experience from her own life.
“Honey, I guarantee you’re going to survive sixth grade. It doesn’t feel like it right now, but you will. This does explain why Wes and Evan were so quiet when they got off the school bus earlier. They’re in the backyard. Why don’t you go work all this out? Take these with you.” She handed Rosemary a paper plate with chocolate chip cookies Mrs. Garner had baked for them.
Carrying the plate of cookies, Rosemary stepped out onto the back deck of the Garner house. Wes and Evan were occupied with their soccer ball. At first, she thought they didn’t notice her there, but after a while, it became apparent they were waiting for her to make the first move.
She enticed them with the snack first. “Hey! I’ve got cookies.”
The boys ran over to where she sat on the deck petting their cat. They each picked up a cookie and stood there munching on them, looking at her guardedly.
“I came to apologize. What I said was so wrong, and I don’t even know why I did it. I hate that boy. He was mean to me earlier today, and when he got all those other kids laughing at me, I just…lost my mind.” All her pent up tears streamed down her face, and her voice shook uncontrollably as she spoke. “I feel like my heart is breaking, and I wish I could take those words back.” She paused at the looks on their faces. Now they were furious. Did she say something wrong? Did they not believe her?
“He was mean to you? What did he do?” Evan asked, his grubby hands curling into tight fists.
Wes grasped her hand in his. “Yeah, what did he do?”
Relief coursed through her. “He flicked my curls with a sharpened pencil and put a mark on my shirt,” she replied, pointing at the gray mark on her shoulder.
“That rat bastard!” Wes muttered. “He could’ve hurt you.”
“His pencil was sharp, and it poked me through my shirt.”
Evan snarled and said, “Son of a—”
Rosemary put her finger to her lips. “Evan, you want your mama to hear you talking like that? She’ll wash your mouth out with soap again. Let me get this all out, okay?” Rosemary needed to tell them everything. Otherwise, she might never get the guts again. “When they started laughing at me, I wanted to make them shut up. We laugh about gross boy-girl stuff all the time, but I really do love you both, like always. I’d be your girlfriend if you wanted me to.”
She finished with a pounding heart, braced for the gagging and puking sounds to begin. Both boys just stood and stared at her. Her heart started pounding, and she felt an icy chill race up her spine.
Wes spoke first while Evan looked on silently. “What are you going to do when that boy teases you tomorrow when he sees you with us?”
Rosemary grinned at him and said, “I’m not going to do anything but watch my boyfriends beat the crap out of him.” Wes laughed out loud, and she gladly went to him and hugged him hard, so relieved they still were her friends. She turned to Evan, who was still quiet, although he looked like he’d enjoyed the mental image of punching that jerk’s face in. “Evan, can you forgive me? Please?”
Evan looked her in the eye and she caught a glimpse of the pain she’d seen earlier. She tugged on his shirt sleeve. He finally hugged her and said, “You know, we’d have kicked his butt right then if you hadn’t said what you did. I wish you wouldn’t have been ashamed of us.”
She’d really hurt him, and she hated the way that felt. Speaking from her heart, she said, “I’m so ashamed of myself. I’m sorry I hurt you. You’re my best friends, and I’m lost without you.”
Stepping back, Evan looked at her, stuffing his hands in his pockets, and said, “Of course I forgive you, Rosie Posie. I can’t stay mad at you.” He grinned and added, “But you’re gonna have to get a handle on that mouth if you still want us to marry you.”
When he said that, they all fell laughing on the ground making puking, gagging noises.
Chapter Seven
Wes held the door for Rosemary as they left The Dancing Pony. Evan’s big pickup truck was pulled over to the curb, waiting for them. Her palms went damp, and she frowned, not ready to face him yet.
As she stopped on the sidewalk, Wes asked, “Is your car here?”
Rosemary shook her head. “No, I rode with Kathleen and Bernadette.”
“Come on, baby. It’ll be fine,” Wes encouraged her quietly. He opened the truck door and helped her climb in. There was country music playing in the background, and the dome-light came on, revealing Evan’s stoic countenance.
That was something Rosemary always had difficulty with. Evan was hard to read because he tended to hide his feelings, unless they happened to explode like today. Wes’s emotions showed in his eyes, but Evan had a mask he could throw on in a heartbeat. He wore it now.
Wes pulled the door closed, and they headed toward the house. The darkened interior of the truck was quiet except for the radio. Wes held her hand on the seat between them, stroking her palm soothingly with his fingertips. They rode in silence.
Rosemary’s nerves were stretched to their limit by the time they pulled up to the house. Evan shut off the engine, climbed out, and held out his hand to help her from the truck. Normally, she’d have climbed out on the passenger side with Wes, but Evan was making the effort, so she wordlessly went to him. Maybe that would communicate something to him, encourage him to doff the mask he was still wearing, but he simply helped her then released her to walk over to the porch on her own. Her shoulders slumped a little, and she braced herself for whatever would come from this conversation.
The house was cool compared to the high temperature outside, even though the hour was late. Wes turned lights on in the kitchen and living room. Evan sat down at the kitchen table, and she joined him. She sat with her clammy, icy hands clenched together in her lap once Wes joined them. He took one of her hands in his.
“Baby, your hands are like ice,” Wes murmured and rubbed it between his warm, callused ones. She still had no idea what to say that would make a difference. She was utterly stumped and looked at Evan and Wes, her eyes brimming with tears. It shouldn’t be this hard.
Chin wobbling, she finally spoke. “Maybe it would be best, if we…let each other go. Left each other alone. We keep hurting each other, Evan, and we hurt Wes in the process. My mouth keeps getting me in trouble with you. It—it shouldn’t be this ha–ard.” Along with the sob that escaped, a dull ache began in her chest. “I guess I can’t make you happy. I upset you and hurt you, and you hurt me, and maybe we’re not good for—for each other. I can’t live like this.” She paused her babbling, unable to catch her breath through the hitching sobs in her chest, and looked into Evan’s eyes in time to catch the crumbling of his mask.
* * * *
Evan was ready for their little firecracker to come out fighting. It’s what he’d expected the moment she’d climbed in the truck. Her silence on the drive home was unusual. She was always one to take the bull by the horns. What he wasn’t prepared for was the forlorn hopelessness in her eyes and the defeat in her voice.
“No, no, baby. Please don’t say that.” Evan didn’t care how he looked as hot tears overflowed, and his shoulders slumped in defeat as his inner resolve left him. He reached across the table for her other hand and placed it against his cheek and kissed it. “Please don’t leave me. You were right. It’s no wonder I’m divorced. I don’t deserve you if I can’t keep my emotions in check better. When I saw you on that ladder, I didn’t stop myself when I should’ve. I know better than to yell at you and embarrass you like that. There has to be a way we can make this work, Rosemary.” He went to her and knelt by her chair, looking into her eyes with desperate hope. “You’re the only woman that can make me feel alive. I love you. Please forgive me.” Oh god, please don’t leave me.
“We say we love each other, and then we hurt each other and we hurt Wes, which is even worse because he’s always in the middle.”
Evan looked at Wes and saw him wipe his eyes. Wes knew what this meant. If they broke up now, it included Wes, and it was going to be for good this time. Evan knew Wes wanted Rosie even if Evan wasn’t in the picture, but she’d made it clear she couldn’t be happy without both of them. If that had been a possibility, they would’ve gotten together years before. For her, it was all or nothing, and Evan wanted to give her what she wanted. He wanted it for Wes, too. Wes had earned her trust, and he deserved her more than Evan did.
“Please, baby, please don’t think that breaking up is the answer. I love you so much. I adore you,” Wes whispered, his voice cracking. “We love you and have wanted you so long. Forgive Evan, for all our sakes. I’ll keep him in line myself. I’ll shove my fist down his throat if I have to. We just got you back. We need you and want you in our lives so much.”
Evan swiped his tears away with the back of his hand and said, “Rosemary, I’ll let Wes beat the crap out of me, rather than hurting your feelings again. I only want to love you and take care of you.” Judging by the doubtful look on Rosemary’s face, they were not making much headway, and Evan couldn’t blame her. He’d promised to hold his temper in check and not yell at her or embarrass her after the sunbathing incident. His track record was not impressive so far.
Verifying his thoughts, she asked, “How are you going to make these changes? It’s obvious they aren’t going to happen because we wish them to.”
“What if I talked to Ethan, Jack, or Adam and asked one of them if I could meet with them and start working stuff out? I imagine they could help me get my head on straight about you. ” At this point, he’d be willing to start seeing a therapist if it would prove to her he was sincere.
Rosemary nodded. “Yes. But if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to put your heart in it because I’m done warring with you. When you get like you were at the store today, the bitch in me comes out with her claws bared. Having Wes watching us go at each other like t
hat makes it even more painful. I don’t see how we can ever be happy the way we’re going right now. Something needs to change.”
Evan felt hope kindle in his heart again. “So you’ll give me another chance?”
Rosemary shook her head. “No. I’ll give us another chance because I’m just as responsible for losing my temper. We have to change something. I know it was love that motivated you this morning, but it was love mixed with pride. I let my mouth run wild right back at you because of my injured pride and embarrassment. We were both wrong.”
“Rosemary is right. Sometimes it’s like we’re still in fifth grade. We’re supposed to be in love.” Wes gestured between Evan and Rosemary. “You’re supposed to be in love.”
Rosemary sniffled and nodded then released their hands and rose from the chair. She searched through the cabinet above the coffee pot for some acetaminophen and took a couple then made her coffee.
Observing her, Wes asked, “You have a headache, baby?”
Returning to her chair, Rosemary nodded. “Yes, since lunchtime. It was better earlier, but now it’s pounding again. The coffee might help.”
Wes stroked her shoulders and neck, catching Evan’s eye. She closed her eyes, and he rubbed more thoroughly. “It’s the stress. Why don’t you let us rub your shoulders and back? I’m sure it will help your head. If you stayed the night, I know you’d sleep well on your new bed. You’d feel all better in the morning.” Wes leaned forward and kissed her temple, gesturing with his chin for Evan to come closer. Evan wasn’t so sure this was good timing, but she seemed receptive.
Rosemary’s eyes popped open, and she chuckled. “You want me to stay so you can take advantage of me.” Wes scooted closer on his chair and drew her into his lap. Evan took a position on her other side.
Rainier, Heather - Rosemary's Double Delight [Divine Creek Ranch 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 7
