Page 22 of Rosie and the Beast Next Door

“David’s the one whose brother died, right? I thought that was Hudson,” Mr. Willingham tried again.

“No,” Gene said patiently. “Shiloh died.Hisyounger brother is Hudson. Shiloh, Hudson, and Dylan were like the three musketeers when they were younger.”

“Dylan’s the hockey player,” one of Mrs. Mabel’s students said. “The hot one with the memes.” She mimed stomping on a camera.

“He’s living with me,” I blurted. Everyone swiveled toward me. “Well, notwithme, but next to me—”

Max cleared his throat and said, “We’re here to talk about literature.”

“I’m not,” one of Mrs. Mabel’s students said. “I want to hear about Dylan.”

Everyone’s eyes burned with curiosity as they swiveled back toward me, but I didn’t want to annoy Max, whose eyes flashed with something unreadable at Dylan’s name.

Was it jealousy? Maybe the librarian outfit was working.

Max motioned for us to sit, but I couldn’t with the painting. He flipped through the book and took the pencil from behind his ear to jot something in the margins.

Well, as long as I was being awkward …

“I painted this,” I announced without preamble. “For the Alaska section.”

Gene coughed so loudly, it sounded like he was loosening up something that had been lodged in his lungs for at least ten years. Mrs. Mabel patted his back, and Mr. Willingham handed him a hard candy from his pocket.

“It’s beautiful,” Gene finally managed to say after all the ministrations. Gene’s coughs were legendary at book club, enough to almost be counted as their own book club member. More than once, they’d saved me from one of Max’s questions that might reveal I hadn’t actually read the book, so I couldn’t complain.

Mrs. Mabel gave me a sympathetic look. “Max,” she said. “Rosie has something to show you.”

I felt like a second grader bringing her mom a rock she’d found on the playground. Max looked up from the book. “Wow. Where did you find this?”

My cheeks felt hot. “I painted it for the Alaska section. If you want it. You don’t have to, of course.”

His eyebrows winged up in surprise. I seemed to have taken him off-guard. “Sure.” He studied the painting. “I didn’t realize you painted like this, I thought …”

I waited for him to finish his sentence, but he merely shook his head.

“Thought what?” Mr. Willingham prodded.

Max looked a little embarrassed when he mumbled, “Well, just that you weren’t this good.”

Oh, wow. Okay. Had he never peered in the windows of my shop before? What about me had made him expect less?

I didn’t grow up in Winterhaven, which sometimes left me feeling like an outsider—even if most people were really kind to me. Max, though, was the ultimate insider—born and raised,generational Winterhaven resident. He was eight years older than me and sometimes treated me in the same dismissive way he did Mrs. Mabel’s students.

I shook off the hurt. That’s what Project: Ardent Adoration was about. He was going to go from knowing nothing about me to knowing everything. Starting now.

“I could hang it for you,” I offered.

He nodded slowly. “Let me get the step stool. And then we’ll get started with our discussion,” he said to everyone else.

I looked at Charlie, who pressed her hand down at her side, her hand signal for, “Be chill.”

I took a deep breath.

I purposely took my time hanging the painting, not sad to miss the discussion. Even though I’d actually read the book, I didn’t have much to say about it. Max was connecting the themes from this novel to a post-modernist poem only he and Mrs. Mabel had read when I reached too far to adjust the angle of the painting and teetered. I overcorrected in the other direction and the stool wobbled.

In the circle, Max was saying, “The sense of fatalism rooted in the pointlessness of accomplishment is demonstrated by using a semi-colon when a colon would have shown deliberate—”

“Oh crap,” I said before anyone could learn more about brilliant punctuation choices. I tried to catch myself, but there was nothing to grab as the step stool swayed unsteadily. I reached for a shelf as I fell and landed with a loud clatter amongst dozens of Alaskan-authored books I’d pulled down with me.

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