Page 100 of Wild Love
Rosalie Belmont
Business Manager at Rose Hill Records
Rosie,
This isn’t work-related, and you know it.
—Ford
Mr. Grant,
It would be easier for me if you could behave as though it were.
See you next week.
All my best,
Rosalie Belmont
Business Manager at Rose Hill Records
I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I walk into the office on Tuesday morning.
I’ve spent the weekend getting to know Cora better. Getting to know her mom, Marilyn, better. Sharing experiences with the daughter I never expected and realizing I can’t quite imagine my lifewithout her.
She’s fucking cool. Really cool. I would still think that even if we weren’t related.
I’ve also spent the weekend worrying about Rosie. A pit hollowed itself out in my stomach when I walked away from her bunkhouse last Thursday night, and I haven’t been able to shake that sick feeling all weekend. I should have gone after her.
I let her walk away too damn easy.
No matter how much fun Cora and I had. No matter how much I overate at Peter’s Drive-In. No matter how exhausted I was from walking, biking, and waking up early to swim. I couldn’t shake that sick feeling.
Like I went out, but may have left the stove on.
Like I just got to the airport, but may have left my passport at home.
I feel like I went to the city with Cora and left something incredibly important behind.
A piece of myself.
I only managed to get any sleep with my hand wrapped around the key at the end of my chain.
She told me I was one of the good ones, but that doesn’t count for much when I feel so damn awful.
So, when I walk in through the open sliding barn doors, I expect to feel relief. I plan to lay it all out in an organized and logical fashion when the right moment presents itself. To tell Rosie there’s nothing complicated about the two of us if she doesn’t want there to be. That I don’t care about the mess. There’s no one I’d rather be messy with.
But when I walk in to see Scotty leaned up against Rosie’sdesk, laughing his way through some dumb story about his weekend, all logic flies out the window. She’s wearing a dark purple pencil skirt with a matching blazer and a pair of nude stilettos, like this is the damn city or something.
Never have I seen her dressed so formally for work since she started here with me.
Never has a pencil skirt looked so good on a woman.
I turn my eyes on my desk, breezing into the space and doing my damndest to avoid staring at her. From my periphery, I see Rosie shift over to peek at me, around the painter guy. He doesn’t bother acknowledging my presence, or he’s so busy staring at her that he hasn’t noticed me.
I have no doubt she feels the animosity rolling off me. She’s always been especially attuned to my moods—she’s always been one to call me out on them too.
There’s been no tiptoeing where Rosie Belmont is concerned, and I decide I’m done tiptoeing too.
