12. Rosie

Chapter 12

Rosie

Forrester Sibling Group Chat

Rosie : Futons were created by a serial killer.

Haydn : By someone who hates sugar. Even the kind in fruit.

Bennett : By my second grade teacher who pointed out that I’d peed my pants in front of the whole class.

Jules : By my assistant who listens to the same song on repeat for days at a time, without headphones.

Jules : Wait, R. You were just singing the futons praises to me.

Rosie : In a few, very select instances, I can be wrong about things. It’s rare, so don’t get used to it.

I groaned and covered my face as the hot shower water ran over me, embarrassed at my own self. Why, Rosie? Why do you do things like this?

My fall at the bookstore played over and over in my mind on a loop, helped along by the throbbing pain in my tail bone. And did any of my efforts or pain change how Max looked at me?

If anything, it only confirmed to him he couldn’t take me seriously.

What would Elizabeth Bennet do?

Well, not fall off a ladder, for starters. But that ship had sailed.

She’d be witty. Charming without intending to be. Intriguing. Read. Take a turn about the room. Reject an embarrassing proposal. Bring around an unsuitable love interest.

The answer had to be in there somewhere.

When the hot water ran out, I got dressed in the buffalo plaid flannel pajamas I’d retrieved from my apartment earlier today. Pajamas with pants this time, thank you very much.

My Mona Lisa underwear was marked safe from the eyes of a certain muscular neighbor.

He could pick you up. Charlie’s assessment of Dylan ran through my head again as I pictured him doing pull-ups in the window, those biceps bulging in a way that made me understand for the first time why it was referred to as bicep curls .

Luckily for Max, the ability to carry me around like a queen on a palanquin wasn’t necessarily on my Significant Other Qualifications List.

Not that there was an actual, physical list. My brothers would have sniffed out something as humiliating as that in seconds.

But there was a mental list, and it was mostly based on Jack from While You Were Sleeping . Including the “we have an inside joke” smirk he gives Lucy when Joe Jr accuses him of leaning. I am a total sucker for the smirk. And the leaning.

But picking me up? No, sir. Not a requirement.

I’d missed a phone call from Dad while I was in the shower. I called him back and put the phone on speaker while I pulled my wet hair into two braids.

“Heya, Rosie,” Dad said halfway through the first ring.

“Hi, Dad.”

“You know I hate asking this of you, hon, but I’m out of money.”

My stomach dropped. “Already?” I’d just given him most of my tips from the restaurant last night.

“Alaska isn’t cheap,” he said, his voice edgier than before. “I can leave and find a job suited to my skills—”

“No, I’ll figure it out.” If Dad left, I’d lose my chance to have a relationship with him. Unless he decided to come back in another decade.

“Thank you,” he said warmly. “See you tomorrow for lunch?”

“Sure!” I’d have to shut the shop down in the middle of the afternoon, but it was worth it to see Dad.

“And you’ll bring some money then?” he nudged.

“Of course,” I said with confidence. That hundred dollars I had set aside for new paints was going to have to go do Dad.

After we hung up, I was feeling too wired to fall asleep. Especially on that futon. Double-especially with a bruised tailbone (and ego) and the guilt of giving Dad the tip money from Bennett. Which meant … Secret project time.

My secret project was born from an unhealthy lack of respect for proper sleeping hours and a deep-rooted desire to hide from responsibility. And since I currently needed to fix up the spare apartment for Dylan and get some sleep, it was the perfect time to unlock the bedroom door (the one Dylan had been so curious about) and step into my lair.

Across the entire wall was a painting unlike anything I’d done before.

I’d learned quickly that people liked to buy realistic paintings to remember their Alaskan trip: seascapes, animals, beachy images, snow-capped mountains, sea-tossed ships, sunsets, and any combination of all of those things. They were extremely commercial and didn’t require a lot from me other than time and inspiration.

And luckily for me, Alaska had an obscene wealth of inspiration.

While I enjoyed those paintings, and I truly did, it felt satisfyingly deviant to paint something completely different. A passion project. One that was probably terrible and wouldn’t earn me any money and would reveal me to be the impostor I suspected I really was.

Because my great work of art? The one I kept hidden away in a room where no one else could see it?

It was the opposite of realism.

It was complete, utter fantasy.

But, like, cartoon fantasy. Adorable animals painted in bright colors they’d never actually have. Like zebras with rainbow stripes and pastel green sloths hanging from swirling candy cane vines. Their eyes were animated-princess huge and not proportionate to the rest of their face. Some of them were painted in costumes of other animals—like an elephant in a mouse costume at a masquerade in an underwater library, dancing the waltz with a tiny mouse in an elephant costume. The underwater masquerade scene took up almost half of the bedroom wall.

How did all these animals breathe at this undersea masquerade ball? Magic.

That’s what every inch of this was to me. Absolute magic.

But also juvenile and embarrassing.

I could only imagine what a psychoanalyst might say about it as they peered through their reading glasses to the paper scribbled with copious notes: This is her desperate attempt to reclaim her lost childhood, and it proves her immaturity and unwillingness to embrace adulthood. Rosie can’t even take the medium she loves most in the world seriously.

Monet. Rembrandt. Degas. They didn’t paint pretend worlds with made-up characters. They analyzed culture with their paintings. Or they brought beautiful spaces to life that evoked strong emotions in our souls.

This? This was cotton candy. Fluff. Without substance. Dissolvable. A reflection of my inability to deeply delve into the trenches of humanity and suss out something significant. An entire room of evidence of how I could take a talent I’d been gifted with and somehow turn it into a lemon.

All the time spent here could be spent on something substantial. Meaningful. Worthy. Art that would make a difference in society and culture.

Instead, an idea for a sphinx cat, with a shell-studded monocle, dressed like a mermaid wouldn’t leave me alone. My fingers itched to paint her.

I sighed. Rosie Forrester, the failure who kept on failin’ (but with colorful paint!).

I started with a pencil outline on the wall, deciding to place Catocles (cat + monocle + sparkles; my brilliance knew no bounds) beside Bob, the otter dressed like a walrus doing the wobble (we didn’t need an official psychoanalysis of that one).

People were out in the world writing masterpieces like Shrubs of Fog , and I was creating hybrid animals with elaborate back stories only I knew about.

But regardless of all the reasons I shouldn’t … I was in love with this wall. Like Kathleen Kelly loving her bookstore level of love. When I painted it, I didn’t think about making enough money to keep my store open or worry about Dad living in Winterhaven again. Every single character represented a bright spark of joy straight from my soul.

A bright, secret spark of joy no one could ever know about.

I was in the zone when I heard Dylan’s voice explode through the wall.

“I need back on the team!”

It wasn’t yelling, exactly, but these walls were about as thick as the layer of paint separating them. A thump against the wall made it sound like maybe he pressed his back to it, right near where I was painting the sparkly finishing touches on Catocles.

I didn’t want to listen. Mostly.

Okay, I totally wanted to listen, but I knew I shouldn’t.

I’d already created the perfect shade of pale pink paint for Catocles’ fin, and I needed to finish it. There was nothing I could do.

I was just a victim of circumstance and thin walls.

“Maybe you need to find me a new team.” he said, heatedly. Then, after a pause, “Find someone to buy out my contract then.”

I painted in the fin, then squirted darker pink to mix into my shades of pink palette for making scales. The wall shook as it was thumped against several more times. Too light for it to be a fist. I pictured him tipping his head back to knock against it in frustration.

“Just tell me what to do, Harry.” His frustration was laced with desperation, an emotional combination I was intimately familiar with.

I paused along with him, but the only sound I heard was the wind whistling outside the window. I didn’t have blackout curtains in here, so the summer evening light shined through the gossamer window coverings.

“Bret says I need to clean up my image, prove I’m not a violent kid-hater, and go to therapy.” It sounded like he was talking through his teeth.

I waited, hoping for some sort of resolution. Maybe Dylan would conveniently repeat Harry’s entire response for me—along with a description of who Harry was. Instead, after a moment, he swore, and I heard a clatter that may or may not have been him dropping his phone, followed by silence.

If only Dylan and I could switch problems. Or have one of those body-swap moments from the movies.

I knew exactly how he could improve his image. A few well-worded posts, some heartwarming reels, a total social media makeover, and he’d be America’s Sweetheart. It wouldn’t be quick—I’d seen the video of the terrified kids at the game—but it wasn’t impossible.

And I happened to be in the market for an unsuitable love interest.

I studied Catocles in all her mermaid glory at the masquerade.

Sometimes dressing up and playing pretend was a lot of fun. Lia did it every time she got on stage—wearing her concert costumes and putting on her extroverted persona. Adults did it all the time when they went to comic cons or regency balls or Halloween parties.

We even sometimes did it less obviously, like Jules toning down pretty much his entire personality when he was at work. Or Charlie acting like she wasn’t as good at things so her moron fiancé didn’t feel bad about himself.

It was normal human nature to adapt. To mold ourselves. To pretend .

Maybe Dylan and I couldn’t swap problems (or bodies).

But I knew exactly what we could do to help us both—if I could get him to agree to it.