Page 10 of Bottle Rocket
He wasn’t the most honest with people. He kept parts of himself stowed away, only releasing them when his paintbrush touched a canvas or his pencil a sketchpad, but he found he didn’t have a filter with her. He wanted to be an open book. He wanted her to touch all his pages.
“You were a cornerstone for me. A reminder that someone cared about me, even though we weren’t together. I loved to see what you were up to in college.” Her profile picture for years had been a photo of her wearing a collegiate sweatshirt over a collared shirt with a small, secret smile on her face. He had often stared at it while trashed off his gourd, wishing for simpler times. Then later, he’d sketched it from memory once her profile picture changed to one from her wedding.
“You should have reached out,” she said.
He lightly drew a circle around her kneecap. They should stop touching each other, at least until they had a frank conversation about what it meant. He pulled his hand away. She grabbed it and placed it back on her knee, a dash of defiance in the set of her jaw.
He loved that she was demanding his touch. It sent a strange pang through his stomach.
“I was a disaster,” he said. “Fucking around with lots of people, doing drugs, partying, ignoring my parents, couch surfing. I wasn’t reliable, and you’re so reliable. It wouldn’t have been right to pull you into my bullshit. If I had, I would have sucked all that steadfastness out of you until we were both empty. I would have used you up, and that’s not something I could fathom. I loved you too much.”
He wasn’t ashamed of his past or his present. He’d needed to make mistakes back then, but there had been so many times he’d almost phoned her, almost come home and asked her to take him back. But he hadn’t, and now there was the distance of thirteen years between them.
“I’m less of a disaster now,” he said, when she didn’t respond. “I’ve scaled down to a general low-key mess.”
She ate her snow cone and studied him. In between bites, her fingers toyed with the shoulder seam of his shirt.
“What are you thinking about, Rosie?”
Her eyebrows hitched down. “Your parents’ constraints stifled you. I’m not surprised you pushed some boundaries once you had the freedom to do so.” Her hand trailed to the side of his neck, her thumb on his Adam’s apple. “I also appreciate that you didn’t use me as an emotional crutch. My ex-husband did that to me. Used my love for him to make himself feel better, especially when he was fucking up.”
Leo frowned, a shaky, unsteady anger washing through him. “Sounds like he sucked.”
A laugh slipped from her. “Understatement.”
“Love shouldn’t be used as a weapon.”
“No.” She set her Styrofoam cup down beside her and leaned back on her hands. The loss of her palm on him felt like the end of the world. She tipped her head back, obviously enjoying the summer heat on her skin. “Where are you staying while you’re here?”
He drew the hollow of her throat in his mind. Imagined how to replicate the shine of her skin in the bright light, the bottomless blue in her eyes.
“A KOA campground. I live in an Airstream trailer.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
She laughed. “That is so perfect for you.”
“Yeah, I love it.”
“So I’m guessing you don’t do music anymore?”
Warmth rushed up his cheeks. “That didn’t last long. You should have told me not to run away to LA to be a musician. I wasnot good, and you were the most practical person I knew.”
“I thought you were good. You wrote songs about me. Even practical people enjoy flattery.”
“Damn. How misguided we both were.”
There was a softness around her mouth that made Leo want to kiss her.
“Tell me about the art,” she said.
He studied her, trying to detect any judgment in her eyes. A lot of people didn’t understand it, but Rosie’s expression was steady as ever.
“I have a few coffee table books and make a calendar every year. I do commissions and sell at adult novelty and kink conventions. Sometimes, I get hired to make marketing and product art. Essentially, I have a million side hustles, but they all center around erotic drawings or paintings of people.”
“My sister works in the adult novelty world. She sells sex toys.”
