Page 1 of Bottle Rocket
Prologue
Thirteen Years Ago
Leo alternatedbetween eating his sour-cherry snow cone and sipping his lukewarm beer. He liked the taste of the snow cone better, but he wanted the beer. One made him happy, and the other made him reckless. He would choose reckless any day of the week.
He watched as his girlfriend, Rosie, lit a single Black Cat firecracker with a smoldering punk before dancing away from the fuse. The firecracker snapped and flashed. Adrenaline washed over him. He loved blowing shit up. He especially loved watching Rosie—his amazing, dependable, stable Rosie—blow shit up.
She skipped over to him. She’d gotten tan this summer, and her hair was bleached from the sun. She was too good for him.
“Your turn,” she said sweetly. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes big and blue and innocent. He placed his cups in two small holes he’d dug in the sand by the blanket. She handed him the punk and eyed their stash of firecrackers, which was a few feet away from their blanket on the sandy bank of the river.
“I love you, Rosie Posey,” he said back. He’d been trying to say it more and more. They were running out of time, and he wanted to make sure she knew it.
She landed in his lap, and he snuffed the punk out in the dirt so he could grab on to her. He found her hipbones under her tiny, low-rise jean shorts.
“I love you too.” She nipped his lip, and his heart started to race.
He enjoyed having her above him, and he liked the tiny bite of pain. It made him hot and uncomfortable in equal measure. He didn’t really know what it meant.
The sun was setting behind her, and her skin was awash with pink and gold. He tried to memorize the image.
She took a drink of his mostly melted snow cone but ignored his offer of beer. Then she kissed him until his mind was blank of anything but the desire to bury himself in her.
They hadn’t had much sex, but they talked about it all the time. What it meant. What felt good. What didn’t. They talked about it more than they had it, but he liked that about them.
He loved talking to her. They talked about his California dreams and the songs he was writing and his guitar lessons. They talked about her college admission letter and her parents who she hadn’t seen in six years and her little brother who she was so worried about. They talked about the restless itch under Leo’s skin. The way he wanted to leave this place and never come back. How he wanted to move and fly and run. That standing still in this dumb fucking town for another day, week, month—it all made him feel as if he were burning alive.
They talked about how she’d helped raise her brother and sister, and how her grandma was run too thin. That Rosie would never leave her family. That she wanted a home that was hers, one that was stable and perfect. She wanted normal—the white picket fence, the mom and dad, husband and wife, the retirement plan, the pretty lawn.
She talked about how she wanted to be loved. He talked about how much he loved her.
But he didn’t want to talk about love or sex now. He wanted to feel Rosie’s skin under his hands. Right as he reached for her T-shirt, she jumped out of his lap with a smile. She didn’t smile often. That was what made the uninhibited ones so precious.
“Smoke bombs,” she said. “We need to light them before it gets too dark.”
He grabbed the punk out of the sand and relit it with his lighter. “You do it. I wanna watch you.”
She preened playfully and made her way over to their stash, grabbing a clear bag of small, colorful balls. He finished his beer, then his snow cone.
She emptied the bag and arranged the smoke bombs in a line. Then she lit every single one until there were billows of rainbow-colored smoke wafting around her.
It was the most beautiful thing Leo had ever seen. He wished he could capture the picture—the powdery smoke caressing her skin, the sunset behind her, the strong lines of her body as she moved—and hold it forever.
His chest started to ache as she shot him another rare smile. He had a plan. It wasn’t a well-thought-out plan. Most of his plans weren’t. He was going to head to LA and try to be a musician. It was actually the freedom that appealed to him, not the music, but he didn’t know what else he was good for. It sure as shit wasn’t the crap his parents had planned for him.
Rosie also had a plan. It was a very good one. All herPs andQs in place, all the forms filled out to aT.
They talked about everything, but they hadn’t said the most important words quite yet. They were coming soon though. They were sneaking up on them quickly, each day putting them closer and closer.
He stood and grabbed Rosie around the middle, drowning in her breathless laughs as he picked her up and lowered her to their blanket. Goodbyes were always hard, but this one was going to break his fucking heart.
Chapter One
Rosie tooka deep breath and swung open the wooden door of the community center classroom. This was the Summer of Rosie: Take #6. Still-life painting.
She’d been calling it the “Summer of Rosie” rather than “Mission to Find a Hobby” or “Your Succulents Are Not a Personality,”and she was hoping the painting class would go better than the women’s choir audition, the mountain biking, the umpiring, the beer brewing, and the improv class.
It wasn’t that all of the attempted activities had been a disaster—though the improv class had beennot great—but she just didn’t feel passionate about any of them. She’d woken up in May, the day after the school year ended, and realized there was absolutely nothing in her life she was passionate about.
