Harley & Rose

by Carmen Jenner

  And that does it—all my self-control flies right out the window and fat ugly tears spill over and slide down my face. “I love you too.” I can barely get the words out, I’m sobbing so hard.

  “I know. I have it on tape, remember?” He swipes the salt from my cheek and presses his lips to my wet eyelids. “I’m going to be back before you know it. Four years isn’t that long, and you’ll be finished college and the internship, and then we’ll talk about where we go from there.”

  “It’s a lifetime.”

  “I’ll be back at Thanksgiving, and we’ll talk every day until then. It’ll be like I’m still climbing in your window annoying the shit outta you.”

  “No, it will feel exactly like you’re gone.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, it’s gonna suck.” He pulls me to my feet and leads me down the stairs. Sliding an arm around my waist, Harley hugs my mom and shakes Dad’s hand, all the while keeping one arm around me, as if he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he removes it. I step out of his embrace and allow Rochelle and Dean to say proper goodbyes to their son, and then he wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me into him. I hold on while we both cry, and then he clears his throat and whispers brokenly, “I’m going to miss you so fucking much.”

  With one last kiss on my forehead, he turns away and climbs into the truck. The roar of the engine makes it somehow more final, and I sob uncontrollably as he backs out of the drive.

  He doesn’t make it five yards before the truck slams to a stop, its red taillights hovering, taunting me in the early SF morning. He isn’t moving, but I’m on autopilot. One step, two steps, my feet swallow the ground between us, and then he’s out of the truck, catching me up in his big arms as I wrap myself around him and smash my lips down on his, kissing him in a way that the parentals probably wished they weren’t privy to.

  When our kisses return to gentle sorrowful pecks I pull back and whisper, “I love you, Pan.”

  “Wendy, my Wendy,” he says breathlessly. “You wait for me. You wait for me or I’m going to come back and gut the asshole who takes my place.”

  “No one ever could take your place,” I tell him. He nods, setting me on my feet and smoothing the hair back from my forehead.

  “Rose, when I get home, I’m going to put a ring on that finger.” He cups my face with both hands, searching my gaze like a desperate man seeking salvation. “So you had better wait for me. Promise you’ll wait?”

  I nod and smile through my tears. “Forever if I have to.”

  “Forever is an awfully long time.”

  “Yes, it is,” I agree.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rose

  It has been an entire week since that godawful fight with Harley, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since, which I guess isn’t all that surprising, seeing as I’m the one who said I needed space. Business at the shop has been booming, but despite what I told him about needing time to figure out who I am without him, I haven’t done much figuring at all. I miss him like a junkie misses a fix. My world is incomplete without him in it, as if all color has been stripped away. It’s for the best, though, because it always ends the same way with us—with Harley breaking my heart.

  The phone rings, and I glance at Izzy and Ginger—the new girl we’re trialing this week. Both are tied up with customers so I set the roses down on the counter and wipe one hand on my apron before picking up the handset. “Darling Buds, how may I help you?”

  “Rose, darling, it’s me,” my mother says in my ear.

  “Mom, right now is a bad time. We’re rushed off our feet; thanks for coming in today to help with that like you said you would,” I say caustically.

  “I’ll be there later. I’m out running errands and decided to stop in at that Zuni place over on Market Street—have you been there?”

  Considering restaurants popped up in this city and disappeared just a few months later all the time, I would not have been surprised if I didn’t know what she was talking about. But I did. I’d heard talk of Zuni’s before, and it was almost impossible to get a reservation there. At least every time I tried, that was the case. “No, Mom, I haven’t been there.”

  “Well, come meet me now. We’ll have lunch.”

  I don’t hide the surprise from my voice. “You’re having lunch there? I can’t get away right now. I have work, and it’s Ginger’s first week, remember?”

  “What good is having your own business when you can’t leave whatever time you want?” Mom complains. “You know who does run his own business and make time for lunch with his mother? Harley.”

  My jaw clenches. “Well, why don’t you call him?”

  “Don’t be like that, darling. I just think you’re working too hard.”

  “You have to work hard in order to run a successful business, Mom,” I say impatiently. “Besides, I took time off a week ago, in Hawaii.”

  “Yes, and we all know how that turned out,” she mutters.

  I don’t have girlfriends I can talk to about these things. I work too hard for high-maintenance friendships and once you’re in a position where you get to select the staff around you, the hierarchy of friendly work relationships shift, and it becomes harder to make friends and keep them when you barely have time to scratch yourself. I don’t have anyone to talk to, and when I came back from Harley’s honeymoon I’d really, really needed someone to talk to. So in a moment of weakness, I’d called my mother. I’d told her all about Hawaii and my fight with Harley, and it had actually been therapeutic. Though it is a decision I’m beginning to regret on account of her bringing it up every five minutes.

  “Please, Rose, I’m not going to live forever, you know? There will come a day when I am dead and you’ll wish you had taken me up on that offer for lunch.”

  I sigh. Trust my mother to guilt me into doing her bidding. “It’s all the way across town, Mom.”

  “Then you better hurry,” she says and hangs up.

  I slam the phone down on its cradle, scaring an elderly lady buying a bunch of daisies and a few potted plants. Ginger squeals like a frightened piglet and holds her hand against her heart. I shoot them both an apologetic glance. “Sorry. Mothers …”

  The elderly woman gives me a tight smile, and I can tell she’s judging me from behind her ridiculously large frames. I smile tightly back and head over to Izzy, whose customer just left. “Can you hold down the fort for a while? My mother is guilting me into having lunch with her.”

  “Sure,” Izzy says, straightening a vase on the shelf. “Ginger and I will make sure the strippers are gone by the time you get back.”

  “No strippers,” I say, sounding oddly like my mother. I shudder and remove my apron, wondering if perhaps I should change my outfit before heading out. I have on a pair of black wide-leg pants and a boat-neck black and yellow top with thick stripes. I’m not sure about the top—I always feel a little like a bumble bee in it, no matter what I pair it with—but I decide to forgo changing because then I’d likely be upstairs for hours. It’s best to get this over with, like ripping off a Band-Aid, because I just know my mother has some ulterior motive. She never invites me to lunch. I grab my purse from under the counter and head for the door.

  “Fine, no strippers, but maybe I’ll go through the accounts and see if a certain Silver Fox would like to come into the store to pick up his arrangement this week.” Izzy winks.

  I haven’t mentioned Dermot to Izzy at all, but I know she gets a vibe about us because she makes an effort to tease me as soon as the door has closed behind him. Though he hasn’t been in since our return from Hawaii, which makes me think he found another barista to make his morning coffee. Even though I’d never intended to wind up blind drunk and in a compromising position with the man, I feel responsible for his absence. Dermot is paid up until the end of the year with his arrangements, but yesterday, when I made up Mrs. Carter’s bouquet to send to the house, I was struck with guilt, remorse, and an unhealthy amount of disappointment.

  “I like
you, Izzy, but please don’t make me hurt you,” I say. And I do like her. Izzy is young, in her early twenties, with a couple of tattoos and pale lavender hair. She has several facial piercings, and ordinarily that’s not my thing, but she manages to make it work for her. Crazy hair and piercings aside, she’s a hard worker, and I’d be lost without her.

  With a wink back at the girls, I open the door and step out onto the pavement to hail a cab. Thirty minutes later I walk inside the restaurant and find my mother at a window table in the corner. She has company. “Darling, you’re here.”

  “And you’re not alone,” I say sternly, and then turn my glare on Harley. “Did you put her up to this?”

  He meets my glare and raises me a glower, then he shrugs. “I knew you wouldn’t see me otherwise.”

  “You’re unbelievable.” I shake my head.

  “Rose, sit down,” Mom implores, glancing around the packed restaurant at the other patrons watching us. “You’re making a scene.”

  I breathe deeply and sit opposite Harley. My mother stands and kisses me on the cheek. “Well, now that you’re both here, I must go and help the girls at the shop. You two have a nice lunch, and take as long as you need. I’ll close up the store today.”

  “Mom.”

  She gives a tinkling wave and wafts away on a breeze of sugar and spice and Chanel No. 5. “Bye, darlings.”

  I count to ten in my head, but I still want to hurt them both for tricking me into this. I grab my mother’s untouched wine—rare for her—and guzzle half the glass in one mouthful, then I signal the waiter for another. “I thought I said I needed time.”

  “I gave you time; I gave you a whole goddamn week,” he says, nursing his beer and playing with the condensation on the outside of the glass. “I’m not giving you any more than that. Now we can do this here or we can do it at my place, where there’s bound to be a lot more yelling. Personally, I’d prefer to do it here because I heard this place has the best chicken in town.”

  I don’t know why, but this makes me smile. Maybe it’s because we’re both so alike. Maybe it’s because I love that he thinks about the great food this city has to offer as much as I do. Or maybe it’s because I just missed my friend.

  “There she is.” Harley smiles, and mine falters. He sighs and loses the grin altogether. “Rose, I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Do what?”

  “Avoid one another like this. I miss you. Life is shit right now, you know? It’s really fucking shit, and I need my best friend.” He reaches out and places his large hand over mine on the table. “I’ll get down on my knees and beg. I’ll sacrifice a lamb, pledge allegiance to any goddamn deity you choose, I just—I need you. Okay? In whatever form that takes.” He lowers his voice and leans closer. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep staring at your number in my phone and not call it. I know what I did was wrong, or the way I went about it at least, but please don’t shut me out.”

  My heart, my heart is bleeding, rattling against its bone cage and begging to be given over to the care of his hands, but my head? My head knows that my heart is a damn fool. “I’m sorry it’s been hard for you, but I think I need a clean break.”

  “No, no, Rose, come on. This is us you’re talking about. We don’t take breaks. We’re not friends who need a little time away, we’re family, and right now I need you,” he says, sounding desperate.

  “And what about what I need?” I ask quietly. “Does that not matter to you at all?”

  “Ah shit.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Yeah, it matters.”

  He glances out the window at the traffic going by, but it’s as if he’s not seeing any of it. His eyes are haunted. He clutches my hand on the table, only now he’s squeezing hard enough to bruise, and I don’t even think he’s aware of it.

  I place my free hand on top of his. Harley’s eyes snap to mine. He loosens his hold. “Hey, what’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing.” He picks up his beer and drains it dry. His voice is hoarse when he says, “I can’t lose you, Rose.”

  It’s in this moment that I realize my head is a damn fool too, because try as I might, I can’t stay angry at him. I want to. I want to scream and lash out with my fists and bitter words. I want to slice the knife in both of us deeper and beg him to tell me why. Why he waited. Why he asked another woman to marry him, and why he said those words the other day because there’s no way they could be true. If he hasn’t stopped loving me in all this time how could he agree to marry Alecia?

  I don’t ask any of this. I don’t lash out, and I don’t drive the knife deeper. I just curse my stupid, lonely heart for being unable to help itself.

  “Don’t lead me on, Harley. I deserve better than that,” I say, with tears pricking my eyes. It’s going to cost me something to let him in again, but it would hurt me more to shut him out entirely. “And don’t break my heart again.”

  Relief washes over his face, so beautiful and overwhelming that it’s as if I just saved him from a firing squad. He snatches up my hand and presses a series of rough kisses over it from wrists to fingertips.

  “I won’t,” he says on a ragged breath. “I swear I’ll never hit on you again.”

  I frown, because that wasn’t exactly what I meant, but a part of me knows that’s the only way I can have him in my life. As a friend. Anything else leads to me being heartbroken again. He’ll be my best friend, and I’ll go back to worshiping Harley Hamilton from afar the way I always have.

  It’s better this way for both of us, even if it feels as if my chest has been flayed open, my ribs pulled apart, and my heart smashed into a bleeding, broken pulp. It’s better this way. Even if my fool heart disagrees.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rose

  Harley and I are complicated. We’ve always been complicated. From the day we met it’s been our thing, or maybe it has always been simple and we’ve been the ones to twist it, turn it on its head and convolute what the rest of the world has already seen. All I know is that there isn’t a Rose without Harley or a Harley without Rose. So I guess it’s no surprise that everything just sort of returned to normal after our forced lunch date with SF’s best chicken. And it really was the best chicken in the city.

  Our lives might’ve returned to normal, but I still feel as if Harley is holding something back from me. Maybe it’s the initial awkwardness of all that we’d confessed to one another when we returned from vacation, or perhaps he was treading carefully, when I was bounding on ahead. Either way, I could see him making an effort to treat me carefully. But this too came with complications. Friends or lovers, we’re so much more than either of these labels we put on ourselves—we always had been.

  So when my phone rings on a Friday night, I know who it is without viewing the caller ID. I’m in the middle of my favorite episode of My Wedding Affair, painting my fingers and toes, which is something I don’t get to do often enough. I have a wedding this coming Sunday and though I know no one is looking in my direction while I set up a couple’s big day, I still like to look my best. I am a direct representation of my brand, after all. I clamp the polish between my first and second toes and answer my phone, careful not to mess up my fingernails.

  “Hey, what are you doing right now?”

  I pause the button on my TiVo. “Um … paperwork. Why?”

  He laughs. “Admit it—you’re spending this Friday night alone, watching re-runs of My Wedding Affair, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I snap, and hit the mute button, then I unpause the show because I’ve seen this particular episode enough to know what Dale Tutela is complaining about.

  “What is your deal with that show?”

  “It’s only the best program on television about weddings, Harley,” I say impatiently, as if he should already know this. And he should, because I’ve told him at least a hundred times. “You know how much I like weddings.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I hear the smile in his voice, which makes me smile too because though h
e may not understand it, he still gets it. “So listen, you’re staying in, right?”

  “Why are you calling me? You don’t call me—you just come over and annoy the hell out of me until you fall asleep on my couch and I kick you out when the snoring gets too loud.”

  There’s a knock at my front door, and I stiffen and then say, “You’re at my door right now, aren’t you?” Crap. Now I’m going to have to ruin my paintjob. “I’m not walking downstairs to let you in; I’m in my pajamas.”

  “Which ones?”

  I glance down at the embarrassingly gorgeous pink PJs with Bride to Bee inscribed on the back and a little bumble bee over the front breast pocket. I bought them a year ago from a designer outlet. I had no intention of actually wearing them, at least not until the night before my wedding, but doing laundry in this city is expensive, not to mention time consuming, and a few months ago when I ran out of clean sleepwear the day before wash day, I pulled them out of a drawer and they just never made it back in. They live under my pillow, or in my hamper until wash day. You’d think I’d be more ashamed of that fact, but they really are comfortable pajamas.

  “You’re wearing your Bride to Bees, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe,” I say slowly, as if that’s a loaded question.

  “Well it’s not like I haven’t seen them before, but my hands are full, so I’m gonna need you to come downstairs and help me with the bags.”

  I pause my show and toss the remote on the couch beside me, trudging down the stairs only to find him waiting at the door to my shop with a … camera crew? I freeze, my eyes going wide as dinner plates. I mouth the words, “What the hell?”

  Harley waves, and I could slap him. The camera is pointed directly at me and the little red light flashes. In a daze, I head to the door and flip the lock back, standing behind it as if the plate-glass window could shield my body from view. “Harley? What’s going on?”