Page 59 of Bottle Rocket
“I already told you, it doesn’t have to. We can fuck when you come to town.”
He traced his fingers up her thigh. This felt like a breakup.
Why did this feel like a breakup? She was pretty sure he was about to tell her the opposite. Dean’s words from the night before prickled the back of her mind. She pushed them away.
“This is hard for me,” he said. She nodded, too choked by panic to respond. “I’m going to tell you exactly what I want. You don’t need to respond. Hell, you can just take it in, and we can discuss it over the phone tomorrow. Or in a few weeks. I’ll wait for you to decide. I’d wait a really long time for you.”
“Best get it out, then.” Her voice sounded cold. She hated that her voice sounded cold.
He smiled as if he saw straight through her façade. “I want to be together. I want us to be in a relationship. Permanent. A pair. I want to be your person.”
Her heart was pounding. “How would that work?”
He slipped her hands between his. She clutched at his fingers.
“We do a mix of long distance and in person. I would still travel, because it’s part of who I am and my job requires it, to a degree. Maybe sometimes you come with me, especially in the summer. But then, during the school year, I come home as much as possible. I’ve been searching for a home for a long time. I think I was trying to find my way back here. To you.”
This was a lot. Her Summer of Rosie had gone off the rails, what with the orgies, the jam, the pegging, and this barrage offeelings.
“That’s … unexpected. What would a long-distance relationship look like with you?” Her mind latched onto the mechanics rather than the heart of what he was telling her. He wanted tobe with her. “Would we keep in touch? Would you sleep with other people?”
“We’d keep in touch. We’d talk every day. We’d come up with a routine that works for us. Our own routine. Calls in the morning and video chats at night. Lots of phone sex. We could be connected even if we aren’t physically together. And as for sex with other people, we make our own rules. I don’t have any desire to have sex that doesn’t involve you, but I’m open to whatever you want.”
He kissed her palm, and tears threatened to spring to her eyes.
Stupid tears.
Stupid feelings.
“I don’t intend to take your independence from you,” Leo continued. “I don’t want to change you or upset the security you’ve worked so hard for. I want to be a source of securityforyou. We could besecurein our relationship, even when we’re not in the same place. You could besecurein the knowledge that I will forever be on my way back to you.”
The type of security that Leo spoke of—it wasn’t at all how Rosie had expected her life to be thirteen years ago. She’d wanted the nest. The home. The steady job and steady husband. She’d needed to be close to her siblings. That was how she’d viewed security.
Now she wasn’t so sure. It was appealing, this proposition of Leo’s, but was it realistic? She was too much of a pragmatist to trust it.
“I didn’t anticipate this,” she said. Her voice was stilted. She grimaced. “I don’t know, Leo.”
“You can think about it.” He held her face in his hands. He was shaking.
She loved him. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that she’d never imagined that this type of relationship—something a bit unconventional, a bit strange—would work for her. She had always been steady, boring Rosie. It was hard to move on from that self-perception, though moving on had been the whole point of taking this summer for herself.
“I don’t want to leave my job,” she said. “And I like my condo.”
“I’m not asking you to leave either, Rosie. I love your condo. I want to help you make the backyard your own oasis. Maybe one day it could be a place that feels like home to me too … if you wanted.”
“This is a lot.” She felt overwhelmed. “There’s not enough room to make jam in your Airstream.”
As soon as she said that, she flushed. She wasn’t married to jam making, for heaven’s sake, but it was easier to address the silly stuff than the big stuff.
“If that’s your only issue with my proposition, then we’re doing pretty good.”
“I need to think.” She gently nudged Leo out of her space and stood. She turned back toward him, a zip of anger rushing through her. “You were supposed to help me work through a sex checklist, not upend my life, Leo.”
He held up his hands. “I know. Rosie, I know, but I … I don’t want to lose you, and it was never just sex to me. I lo—”
“Oh my God. Don’t say that right now. Wait until I’m not freaking out.”
