Page 95 of Love At First Fright
“No, I haven’t. I’ve been busy.”
“I bet you have,” Brody laughed. “It’s all over the internet. Pictures of you and the screenwriter, what’s her name, Rosie?”
“Rosemary,” Ellis ground out. He didn’t like hearing her name in Brody’s mouth.
“Sure, well, what are you planning on saying if Theo asks about your little side piece?”
Ellis took a deep breath, it was now or never. “I’ll say thetruth, Brody. That I was never dating Jenna, Rosemary is not my ‘side piece’ but my girlfriend, and that we’re very happy and I would ask that our privacy is respected.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line.
“I’m afraid that won’t do, Ellis.”
34
The day before the interview,Rosemary had landed in Atlanta airport. She’d spent a large chunk of her flight intermittently looking into how to move to the UK as an American citizen and watching horror movies.
The idea of telling Ellis she loved him and that she wanted to move to the UK—notforhim, but he was certainly a factor—had energised her. Her whole body felt lighter.This must be what love feels like.As excited as she was to see her dad and visit the home she’d grown up in, a big part of her was just as excited for when she was on the return trip to London. It wasn’t just Ellis; she’d given more thought to moving there in general. To be closer to Dina and Immy, especially as Immy’s twins grew up. To build a life for herself in a place that she loved with people she loved. She’d have to break the news to her dad, of course, and she didn’t relish that conversation, but she planned to put it off until after Christmas.
With only two days to go, Atlanta airport was dressed to the nines with Christmas decorations. After the more sparsefestive decorations in the UK, she’d forgotten how hardcore Christmas was taken back home.
Rosemary spotted her dad waiting by the arrivals barrier, holding a single yellow tulip that she knew he’d picked for her himself the same day.
“Hey, sweetpea,” he said, pulling her into a bear hug. Rosemary knew she’d inherited her dad’s exceptional hugging abilities, as Immy and Dina had told her on numerous occasions that a “Rosemary hug” was aggressively elite. She liked being on the receiving end of one, though, feeling all-encompassed. Her dad’s earthy scent combined with the flower’s, and she sighed, feeling the softening in her bones that a person can only get when they get a hug from their parents.
“Hey, Dad, missed you.” She blinked away tears, looking up at him. Russell Shaw was tall and wiry where Rosemary had inherited her mother’s short stature. But in addition to her great hugging ability, Rosemary had gotten her dad’s complexion, the two of them pale with ginger hair, though her dad’s forearms and face were speckled with many more freckles, since he spent so much time in the sun.
The last time she’d been home was six months ago, and so much had happened since then.
“Did you have a good flight? How’s the filming going?”
“Good, watched a lot of movies. And filming is great, Ellis is perfect as Alfred”—oh, how opinions change—“and the director is fantastic.” She had told him over text that she was dating Ellis, but she’d skimped on the details. Thankfully, her dad hadn’t asked too many questions, though she suspected he was holding back a barrage of them right this moment.
“Ah, and would that be Ellis Finch, the movie star?” Her dad arched an eyebrow, tugging on his faded baseball cap witha free hand. It was dark green, with the logo for the Shaw Flower and Fruit Farm: a sunflower. It was the first cap her parents had produced as merchandise for the business, more of a prototype really.
Her mother had hand-sewn the name and flowers on it, a little wonky and misshapen. Rosemary remembered that when they had professionally printed the first set of caps, her mom had tried to give her dad a new one, but he’d refused. Said his old one was perfect already. Later that evening, Rosemary had been reading on the porch when she spotted her parents out slow-dancing in the sunflower field, celebrating their successful harvest. There was no music playing, but they’d swayed to a beat that only the two of them could hear, surrounded by shoulder-height yellow petals.
“Yes, the movie star. Don’t be weird about it, Dad.”
“I won’t be. Will I get to meet him eventually, give him the old talking-to?”
“What am I, sixteen?”
“You’re always going to be my baby girl, sweetpea,” he said, looping an arm around Rosemary’s shoulder and pressing a kiss to her temple. “Got a surprise in the car for you.”
“You already got me flowers, Dad.”
“Well, she wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to bring her.”
“She?” Rosemary peered ahead at her dad’s Chevy truck, just ahead of them in the airport parking lot. She couldn’t see any woman sitting in the car. But as she approached she noticed a little ginger head with pointed, tufty ears poking just above the base of the passenger-side window. A sign on the car’s internal screen showed the temperature set to pet control and a little sign read, “My owner is coming back for me soon.” And meowing like her life depended on it was a scrawny ginger kitten with the roundest eyes Rosemary had ever seen.
“Oh my goodness, is she one of the litter you found in the barn?” she asked, as her dad threw Rosemary’s suitcase in the back.
“Yeah. She’s the runt, though, I’m pretty sure. The only ginger one, too, the rest are all black-and-white.”
“Did you ever find their mama?”
Her dad’s smile dropped. “I did. She didn’t make it. I buried her out in the sunflower field. I think she was a stray, must have found the barn and thought it was a good place to give birth. When I spoke to a vet, they said she’d probably been too old for another litter.”
