Goodbye Earl(70)

“I’ll be reporting you to the police for harassment, just so you know,” Rosemarie said when he came up for air. The water was tinted orange in the sunset light. She dove in after him.

“Forgive me, Kingston. You do look amazing, though. Congrats on that,” Leo said, shoving off with his feet and floating on his back. Rosemarie loved seeing his no-glasses face. It was like seeing him naked, which she also loved. She’d seen Sparrow half-naked, but never all at once.

She didn’t want to think about Sparrow, so she thought about Leo instead.

“Leopold, am I your girlfriend?” Rosemarie asked. She backstroked to where he was and floated.

“Hmm. I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

Leo flipped and swam to the edge of the pool. Rosemarie watched his back muscles; she loved how his long body moved. He climbed out and sat dripping, kicked his feet.

“You’re in love with Sparrow, Ro. I mean, obviously I know that.”

Soon, Rosemarie and Leo were going to be spending every waking moment together for the entire summer before he went to school in Boston. They rarely argued, and even when they did, it was usually something small that could blow away like a bubble. Rosemarie didn’t want to get in any sort of minor disagreement with Leo right now or ever. Her relationship with Leo was so pure, precious, and easy it had to work smoothly or her whole life would be thrown out of orbit. Kasey was gone now; Kasey’s mom was gone forever. Life could rumble off the tracks at any minute, so yes, everything with Leo had to remain smooth. Rosemarie depended on him too much.

He was squinting in the sun, avoiding her eyes.

“It’s…obvious that I love you too, Leo,” Rosemarie said gently.

“Right.” He nodded, refusing to look at her. “Just don’t let her mistreat you or, like, break your heart or whatever.”

“I won’t.” She thought of how hot she felt confessing her feelings to Sparrow earlier in the afternoon compared to the coolness coming off her in the water now. She wanted to remember everything, even the things that hurt, so she could tell Kasey all of it like she promised. “What about Claire?” Rosemarie asked him. Claire was a girl from church whom Leo used to date, and Rosemarie didn’t realize she was jealous of Claire until Leo told her Claire wasn’t going on the mission trip and Rosemarie’s body flooded with relief.

It was selfish to want Leo all to herself this summer, but so what? He wanted her all to himself too. It was how their relationship worked even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else. It didn’t have to.

“You love Claire,” Rosemarie forced herself to say, scared of what Leo’s response would be. She flipped and went underwater, swam across the pool and back again. She popped up and sat next to Leo, nudging him playfully with her shoulder.

“I only love Claire a little. I love you a lot,” he said finally.

“I love you a lot, too,” Rosemarie said to him, touching his wet face.

*



Rosemarie was already in her pajamas when there was a knock at the door, and it was Sparrow. Rosemarie asked her if she wanted to go outside and talk on the trampoline, and Sparrow said yeah, sure.

“What’s up?” Rosemarie asked once they were out there lying down. The sky was full of stars. She couldn’t stop looking up at them; Sparrow was looking up at them too.

“I was thinking maybe this should be it for us. Like, whatever this weird thing is we’ve been doing, I think I’m done with it. When you go to Costa Rica and when I go away to school, maybe we should leave it here in Goldie and not talk about it anymore again, like ever. Because I’m not gay, Rosemarie; I’m not. Like, I had sex with Frankie today. I have sex with Frankie, like, every day.” Sparrow said the last part softly, and when Rosemarie looked at her, by the light of the kitchen-window glow, she saw a tear smooth down into Sparrow’s ear.

“Okay,” Rosemarie said. She said it again. It was all she could say. She didn’t want to ask anything and she didn’t want to hear any more either. After a couple minutes of quiet, Sparrow got up. The fence lock opened and closed.

*



Rosemarie cried in her bedroom with the light off, but it wasn’t all because of Sparrow. It was because of Kasey and Kasey’s mom and high school ending, and her aunt too. Her mom had told her earlier that her aunt’s cancer was back, and she imagined her aunt dying and Rosemarie wanted everyone to stop fucking dying.

She cried because she knew she was hurting Leo and she didn’t want to hurt Leo. She got her phone off the nightstand and called him. She didn’t try to hide that she was crying when she told him she was sorry.

“For what, Ro? Did you think we were in a fight earlier? I didn’t. It felt like we were just talking,” Leo’s sleepy voice said. There was a blankety muffle on his end of the line.

Rosemarie told him about her aunt and she told him about Sparrow too. When she was finished, she heard a bit of rustling and then quiet guitar strums. Leo was playing “Pink Moon” for her. She cried some more because it was so soft and pretty and she loved that song so much and it was Just So Leo for him to play it for her in the dark when she’d called him crying about the weight of being human.

“Do you want to stay on the phone together until we fall asleep? Let’s stay on the phone together until we fall asleep,” Rosemarie heard him say when she was nearly knee-deep in a dream.