Chapter Seven

“So, I kissed him, and then he kissed me, but I don’t think either kiss counted, because it wasn’t a real date,” Rose attempted to explain to her friends at Jitters the next morning. They were sitting around one of the small café tables with lattes and muffins in front of them—all except for Gen, who had a plastic container full of fresh fruit. Gen had always been a healthy eater, but she was particularly careful about it now, with the wedding approaching.

“Wait,” Lacy said, putting one hand up traffic-cop style. “If there was kissing, how was it not a real date?”

“I told you,” Rose said with exaggerated patience. “I kissed him because his ex-girlfriend is bitchtastic, and I wanted to see if I could make her head burst into flames. Which it almost did.”

“Okay,” Kate said. “So that explains the first kiss. But what about the second one?”

“He was gathering data.”

“Gathering data,” Gen repeated, a chunk of watermelon on a fork halfway to her mouth.

“Right.”

“Wait,” Lacy said, waving her arms. “Wait, wait. What kind of data was he gathering, exactly?”

“He wanted to see if he could replicate the results,” Rose said simply.

“The results of the first kiss,” Kate said.

“Right.”

“And what results were those, exactly?” Gen wanted to know.

Rose shrugged and took a sip of her latte. “Well, you know … not much. Except that it was so hot both of our faces almost melted off.”

Rose broke into a grin as her three friends stared at her.

“Will?” Kate said, looking perplexed.

“Scientist Will?” Lacy said.

“Well. He is a biologist,” Gen pointed out.

“Yes, Will,” Rose said. “I mean, he’s cute, right? He’s got that Southern California surfer look going on, which is … good. It’s good. But you’d never think it, would you? With the birds, and the studies and the … the data.”

“Wow. Your face melted off?” Lacy said.

“Almost. For a minute there, I thought I was levitating.”

“God,” Lacy said. “I want someone to collect my data.”

“I got my data collected just this morning,” Gen said, wiggling her eyebrows. “There was really a lot of data to collect. And Ryan collected it all.”

“Shut up,” Lacy said, throwing a wadded-up paper napkin at Gen.

“Let’s not get off topic here.” Kate, who had the happy, relaxed look of someone who got her data collected on a regular basis, turned toward Rose. “I want an answer to Lacy’s question. If there was kissing, then how was it not a date?”

Rose sighed impatiently. “I told you. I only kissed him to piss off his ex.”

“But it melted your face,” Kate pointed out.

“Well … yeah. That was unexpected.”

“One could argue that, beginning at the moment of the face-melting, it became a real date,” Gen offered.

“No.” Rose shook her head. “No, no.”

“But why not?” Lacy asked.

“Because I’m finished with men,” Rose said.

“Oh, honey.” Kate reached out and put a hand on Rose’s arm. “The thing with Jeremy was just—”

“It’s not about Jeremy.”

“So you’ve said,” Gen put in.

“Well, it’s not,” Rose insisted. “It’s not about him. It’s about … everything. And the kisses were just kisses. I enjoyed them. Okay, a lot. But they don’t mean Will and I are dating, and they don’t mean I’m not done. Because I am.”

“All right.” Kate nodded. “Do you want me to go to the animal shelter with you to pick out your twelve cats?”

Rose shot her a look. “Not today.”

“Birds,” Gen added. “She should get birds.” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “Maybe a snowy plover.”

“Shut up,” Rose said.

 

Some days Will hated his time with the birds, and other days he loved it. This was one of the latter. Sitting out here in the dunes, in the quiet of the morning, with the breeze on his face and the sound of the crashing waves in his ears, gave him time to think. Time to get away from himself and just … be. If he sometimes became so absorbed in his thoughts that he got less work done than he should have, well, he considered it a fair tradeoff.

The morning was foggy and cool, but not so cool that it was uncomfortable. The marine layer made everything feel soft, like the world had been wrapped in gauze. Sitting out here with his spotting scope and his notebook, he thought about his career, his goals, and the situation with Chris and Melinda.

And Rose. He thought about Rose.

He hadn’t even planned on going out with her. When he’d been pushed into it due to circumstances that had spun out of his control, he’d thought, Okay, fine. I like her, it could be fun. And then she’d kissed him.

He couldn’t recall ever having been so profoundly affected by a kiss. His body had reacted to her in powerful and unexpected ways. Of course, there was the expected reaction—he’d been relieved that he hadn’t had to stand up for a while—but aside from that, there was the sensation that he’d been taken apart and put back together again as someone better, happier, more at peace. It occurred to him that Rose’s kiss had done for him in a few seconds what a lifetime of organized religion never could.

And then, for reasons that escaped him, he’d talked to her about things he’d never told anyone. He’d revealed to her his insecurities, his feelings of inadequacy, his uncertainty about who he was and where he was going with his life. How in the world had that happened?

Now, having experienced all of that, he couldn’t help thinking about her, when he should have been thinking about the birds.

What was the point, though? She’d told him not once but a few times that she was finished with dating. And who could blame her? Relationships were trouble wrapped in annoyance, bound together with guilt and obligation. Just look at the whole mess with him and Melinda.

He couldn’t help wondering what would happen if she weren’t done with dating. What then? Would the two of them be relationship material? Could they make a go of it?

Which was a stupid thing to wonder about, since he barely even knew her.

But changing that—getting to know her—would be part, or even most, of the fun.

She was interesting. He found himself wanting to know what ancient hurts had caused her to be who she was. She walked around wearing a suit of armor made of hair dye, makeup, body jewelry, and snark. What had made her construct it? And what was under it?

He suspected that the real Rose—the beating heart and soul of her—was just under the surface. No one could kiss like that unless they had easy access to their living, pulsing emotions. He was curious about that real Rose. He wanted to know.

Will spotted one of the snowy plovers that was part of his study, as evidenced by a tag on its left leg. He approached it slowly, carefully. If he made too much noise or frightened it, it was going to take flight, and then who knew when he’d be able to spot it again? He eased forward, slow and stealthy, his movements as gentle as a mother’s touch.

 

Pamela Watkins started in on Rose within days of being invited to the wedding.

“You’re going to dye your hair, of course,” Pamela told Rose over the phone. She’d called during a lull at De-Vine, on the store phone rather than Rose’s cell phone. The strategy was a good one; Rose would never have picked up her own phone knowing it was Pamela, but she couldn’t ignore the business line.

“Of course,” Rose agreed. “Gen’s colors are pink and gray. Well, they’re calling it blush, but it’s pink. I know gray hair is in fashion, but I’ve never been a fan, so I thought I’d go with the pink.”

“Very amusing, Rosemary,” Pamela said in a tone that indicated the opposite. “Your natural brown is rather drab—let’s face it—but I think you’d look lovely with some golden blond highlights.”

Rose clamped her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Mother. If you’re worried about me having drab hair, then I suggest you embrace the pink.”

Pamela made a sputtering noise. “You can’t possibly be planning to ... at a Delaney wedding! You simply can’t—”

“Mother,” Rose tried.

“You’ll humiliate yourself, and me, and I simply won’t—”

“Mother.”

“Why, the bride will be mortified—”

Rose banged the handset of the phone against the bar a few times to get Pamela’s attention. When she put the handset to her ear again, Pamela was silent.

“Gen won’t be mortified, Mom, because she’s my friend, and she loves me, and she accepts me the way I am. Something you might give a whirl sometime.”

“It’s because I love you that I care about these things,” Pamela said, slightly more subdued now.

Rose knew she was telling the truth. She knew her mother did love her. The problem was that Pamela equated one’s appearance with the success or failure of one’s life. If you looked a certain way, it had to mean that you were happy, fulfilled, thriving. But Rose knew from experience that you could have the right hair, the right clothes, the right makeup, and the right dress size and still be miserable as hell, mostly because you were trying to be someone you weren’t. And that was the part her mother had never understood.

“Look, Mom, I know. I know you do,” Rose said. “But I’m going to look how I look. And as long as it’s okay with Gen, it should be okay with you, too.”

“I just thought—” Pamela began.

“Hey, Mom? I have a customer coming into the store. I have to go.”

“If you could only—”

“Oops! I’ve got someone on the other line. Gotta go. Bye, Mom. Love you!”

Rose hung up the phone and gazed around the shop, which remained empty except for her. Sandra and Gen didn’t want to take back Pamela’s invitation now that it had been issued, and Rose understood that. So, she pondered other things that might keep her mother from attending.

Car trouble.

Major illness.

Injury.

Flash flooding.

Since none of those things seemed likely, she was going to have to gird her loins for the onslaught of maternal disapproval.

Ah, well. A wedding was nothing without family drama. Gen didn’t seem to have much of that, so Rose would have to supply it for her. It would be a sort of wedding gift. Like a Crock Pot, but with guilt and recrimination.