Chapter Fifteen

Pamela had met most of Rose’s friends on her last visit to Cambria a couple of years earlier, so there was no need to introduce her around. Still, it seemed to Rose that there was a kind of insulation in numbers, so she invited everyone for a get-together at Pamela’s rental house. That would account for at least one evening when Rose wouldn’t be expected to deflect her mother’s criticism or respond to an interrogation about the status of her life.

She’d wanted to invite everyone to her own cottage, but Pamela had insisted that the place was too small, too run-down, too dark, too far from town—pretty much too everything, and not enough of everything else. Although Pamela was horrified by her little rental house’s size and décor, at least it had an ocean view, and a fairly decent back patio looked over a vacant lot next door that was carpeted in green grass and colorful wildflowers. Pamela admitted, grudgingly, that an afternoon cocktail party outdoors might be acceptable.

Picking a date and time that worked for everyone was tricky, but Rose settled on a Monday at five p.m. Monday was the slowest business day for the shops, so Rose, Kate, and Gen were able to get away. Jackson didn’t work on Mondays, and Will, Ryan, and Daniel, who pretty much did their own thing, found the timing was good for them as well.

Pamela had imagined a sedate, dignified gathering with cocktails and canapés, and that’s what she had prepared for. So she was both surprised and flustered when Ryan and Gen arrived with cold beer, Kate showed up with chips and salsa, Daniel came in hefting a couple of pizzas, and Jackson rummaged around on the patio, pulled the canvas cover off the gas grill he found there, pronounced it acceptable, and then left in his truck to get some steaks and corn on the cob.

“He’s going to barbecue?” Pamela hissed to Rose once Jackson had backed out of the driveway. “I planned a cocktail party, not a … a hoedown.”

“Relax, Mom,” Rose told her. “Jackson’s the best chef in Cambria. If he’s going to grill steaks, believe me, you’re going to want to eat one.”

“Well,” Pamela replied, skepticism in her voice.

Pamela had prepped for the party not only by purchasing hors d’oeuvres and a selection of high-end liquors and mixers, she’d also systematically removed everything she considered tacky from the little house—except for the Barcalounger, which was too big to hide in a closet. The end result was that the cottage looked stark and plain without the garden gnome greeting visitors and without the various signs that declared BEACH THIS WAY and THIS HOME IS BUILT ON LOVE AND SHENANIGANS. Rose had liked it better the other way, but she thought it best to keep her opinions to herself.

Rose’s friends greeted Pamela warmly, and received polite acknowledgments in return. Then they all fell into the easy, comfortable banter of people who had known each other long enough not to have to impress one another, or worry what anybody thought. All except for Will, who hadn’t arrived yet.

Rose wondered if maybe he’d backed out, and it occurred to her that she wouldn’t blame him if he had. She wished she could get out of it somehow herself, but since she was the cohostess, that seemed unlikely.

“Where’s this gentleman of yours?” Pamela asked once everyone else had arrived, Jackson had left for the food, and Lacy was moaning happily while the shiatsu setting of the Barcalounger worked its magic on her.

“That’s a good question,” Rose said. She was just about to reach for one of the beers Ryan had brought, but she decided she’d better call Will first.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Where the heck are you?” Rose asked without preamble. She ducked into the cottage’s single bedroom and closed the door for privacy. “My mother’s asking about ‘my gentleman,’ and I haven’t had time to get drunk yet. I can’t handle her grilling me about my love life until I’ve had a chance to get drunk.”

“Sorry,” he said, sounding flustered. “My car broke down.”

“That’s a likely story,” she said. “If you didn’t want to do this, you should have—”

“No, really. I’m stranded on the side of Highway 1.” She heard the sound of traffic in the background.

“Oh. Shit. Okay, hang on. I’ll come get you.” She got the details of his location and went out to get her purse and her keys.

“Wherever are you going, Rosemary?” Pamela wanted to know.

“Will’s car broke down. I have to go get him.”

“Sit down and relax. I’ll do it,” Ryan offered.

“No, no.” Rose saw her chance to get out of her mother’s immediate vicinity, and she wasn’t about to let it get past her. “I’ve got it. You’re drinking already.” She pointed to his beer, the contents of which hadn’t gone down more than half an inch. “I haven’t had anything, so it’s best if I go.”

“Are you sure?” Daniel asked.

She stood on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to Daniel’s cheek. “You’re sweet, and very gentlemanly, both of you, but I’ll do it. I won’t be a minute.” Hopefully, there would be a tree down in the middle of the road, and she’d be much, much longer than that. One could dream.

 

Rose found Will just north of the Cambria limits, parked at a rest stop overlooking the beach. She got out of her car and stood there appraising Will’s old Volvo sedan, which would have looked okay had it not been for the black smoke still drifting out from under the hood.

“That’s not good,” she said.

“That was my expert opinion, too,” he admitted. “It started sputtering out on the highway, and I just managed to limp over here. Had to push it the last twenty feet.” He ran a hand through his sandy-blond hair and gave the car a stern look as though he could shame it into behaving.

“Huh. What do you want to do? Call a tow truck?”

“Nah. I’ll do that tomorrow. For now, it’s okay here. Let’s just go to the party.”

Rose gaped at him. “Really? This is our out. I mean, your out.”

“I don’t want an out. I want to meet your mom.”

Her left eyebrow, adorned with a silver barbell, shot up. “What the hell for?”

He grinned at her. “A deal’s a deal. One fake date is entitled to another. I’ve got to pay my end.”

“But you don’t have to—”

“Let’s get going,” he said, and went to her car and got in.

 

“Thanks for coming to get me,” he said as they got onto the highway and headed back toward Cambria.

“Think nothing of it. If you hadn’t had an emergency, I’d have had to invent one.”

“That bad?” He winced in sympathy.

“No. Not really. I mean, yes, but …” She shrugged. “She acts like everything’s beneath her! The rental house, the garden gnome, the damned Barcalounger.”

“The … Wait. I don’t—”

“It doesn’t matter.” She blew a puff of air upward to move the bangs out of her face. “It just gets annoying sometimes.”

She’d said it didn’t matter, but Will thought that it certainly did. Because Rose’s mother’s disapproval didn’t stop with garden gnomes and Barcaloungers—whatever those particular items had to do with anything. Will suspected that Pamela Watkins disapproved of a great many more things, her daughter among them. He thought of his own parents—steady, reliable, supportive. How much would it hurt if nothing he did was good enough? He felt a rising tide of sympathy for Rose, and something else: an anger, an indignation, that anyone would treat her that way.

“It’s her issue, you know,” he said after a while, with the blue water passing by on their right as they moved south on Highway 1.

“What?”

“Your mother being critical of you. It’s her issue, not yours. Parents—they bring a lot of their own baggage. I don’t know what your mother’s baggage is, but she’s got some. Otherwise, she’d be able to accept you the way you are.”

Rose shot him a quick look of surprise, started to stay something, and then stopped. She looked back at the road in front of them.

“I keep hoping, you know?” she said after a while. “Hoping that my relationship with her will somehow magically heal itself. It’s stupid. What kind of idiot keeps hoping for something that’s never going to happen?”

“It could happen,” he said.

She glanced at him. “You think?”

“Yeah. But if it does, it’s going to be because she changes, not you. Because she’s the one with the baggage.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m not gonna hold my breath for that.”

They got off the highway and headed down Ardath Drive toward Marine Terrace. He’d been trying to think of what to say to her, and he finally just settled on the truth.

“Rose?”

“Hm?” She looked at him briefly before settling her gaze back on the road.

“She should be proud. To have a daughter like you, I mean. Your mother should be proud.”

They arrived at Pamela’s rental house, and Rose found a parking spot on the street and turned off the car. Then she faced him, hesitated, and suddenly leaned forward and kissed him.

She smelled like lavender and vanilla, and she tasted like ripe promise. The sudden release of all of his tensions felt like his body sighing. Everything he knew vanished and became this, this moment, this one kiss. His hands moved up and buried themselves in her hair.

“Rose,” he groaned when she separated herself from him.

“This is just …” she whispered. “Just a thank you. For what you said.”

“Is that all it was?” His voice sounded too loud in the confines of the car, in the confines of this moment, and he softened it to a whisper. “Just a thank you? Because, to me, it feels like more.”

“No, no.” She shook her head as though clearing it. “I’m not … I’m …”

“You’re done.”

“Yes.”

“I know. You told me. Except, the thing is? I don’t think you’re really done. And when you realize that you’re not really done, I want to be the one you’re not done with.” He felt nervous, tingly, the rush of the kiss still pulsing through his veins. He hadn’t meant to declare himself—not now, not when she wasn’t there yet—but he couldn’t seem to help himself. And now that it was out there, he was glad. “You’re not ready yet, and I get that. And we can just go on and do our pretend dating until you are ready. But you should know that for me, it’s real.” He leaned forward, gave her a chaste peck on the lips, and got out of the car.

He came around to the driver’s side and opened the door for her. She was still sitting in the same position as when he’d kissed her, immobile.

“Rose?” he prompted her. “You coming?”

“I … uh … yeah.”

He held out a hand to her and she took it and climbed out of the car.

“All right,” he said brightly. “Let’s go convince your mother you have a suitable boyfriend.”

She simply nodded, the power of coherent speech apparently still eluding her.