Page 39 of Saving Graces
Kinsey, though, had definitely noticed Rosalie’s blatant ogle of her body. Her face said made you look, as clearly as if she’d said it out loud. Rosalie could ostensibly blame the hot tub for the color her face was right now, but more than one person in this tub knew that would be a lie. Why was the universe doing this to her? Actually, fuck the universe; this was all Savannah Grace’s fault. Winter homes in Vermont and outdoor hot tubs definitely wouldn’t be happening in Rosalie’s life if it wasn’t for her.
“Did you have a good hike?” Savannah asked, smiling.
“It was fine.” Cassidy shrugged. “Like it’s pretty or whatever but I still don’t know why you need a whole extra mansion to live in just for winter.”
Lane rolled their eyes.
“You loved it.” They ratted her out. “You took eleven hundred photos just of the view.”
“To be fair,” Kinsey said, “the views here are gorgeous.” She looked directly at Rosalie as she said it. Rosalie couldn’t tell if she wanted to roll her eyes or melt. Savannah poked her thigh deliberately under the water and she shoved her hand away, trying not to flinch.
“What do you think of the views, Rosalie?” Savannah asked her casually. Rosalie wanted to murder her.
“The trees,” she said deliberately, “are lovely. As is the lake.”
Kinsey smirked.
Rosalie lifted the hair off the back of her neck, starting to feel overheated. She raised herself up to sit on her knees, aiming for a little cool winter air on her skin and Kinsey stared. Rosalie glanced down and realized her move meant her own body was no longer fully hidden by the fizzing water, her dark green bikini top fully on view. Oh shit, did that seem like she’d done it on purpose? Her usually pale skin was flushed pink from the hot water and while her bikini was by necessity far less skimpy than Kinsey’s, it was still a bikini, so she may as well have held up a sign saying would you like to see my breasts? Being that Kinsey seemed to have lost the ability to blink, the answer was apparently still very much yes.
Rosalie had a wildly inappropriate flash of memory, Kinsey’s hot mouth licking and biting her nipples while she writhed against her, moaning. She wondered if Kinsey was remembering the same thing and pressed her thighs together against the agitated pulse of heat she felt at the thought.
Oh god. If this was how the first day was going, this was going to be an excruciating two weeks.
Before
“Please don’t do this,” Rosalie whispered, but she might as well have been saying it to an empty room. Savannah wasn’t exactly packing - she had nothing really to pack - but while she was still physically in the room, it seemed like in every other way she’d already left.
“It’s fine,” Savannah said, shuffling her small stack of belongings on Rosalie’s bed. “Look, it’s a good thing; you’ll get your room back and I’m no longer homeless.”
Coral - one of Rachel and Savannah’s friends from the party scene - just signed a lease on a tiny two bedroom and she’d offered one to Savannah. Her parents owned a small diner in downtown Nashville and she’d told Savannah they always needed waitresses. Savannah had trialled this morning and been hired. Suddenly, a couple of months off eighteen, she had a job and an apartment.
“You haven’t been homeless,” Rosalie said, “you live here with me.”
“You know what I mean,” Savannah said. She leaned back on the windowsill, looking at Rosalie where she sat on the bed. “I’m so grateful. You saved my life, you and Rach. But we can’t just sleep in the same bed forever.”
Since we had sex, Rosalie finished the sentence in her mind. The last two nights they’d both laid awake, rigid, on their own sides of the bed, the sound of their breathing somehow all consuming until Rosalie wasn’t even sure how to breathe normally anymore. She’d wanted nothing more than to reach out across the divide and find the warm body she knew was right there, but she’d made a promise and she was going to keep it. Her restraint didn’t seem to help though. Savannah was awkward with her and jumpy, as though they didn’t know how to be in the same space anymore.
Rosalie took a long shaky breath and steeled herself. “Am I ever going to see you again?” she asked.
Savannah’s brow furrowed.“Yes,” she said. “Of course. That’s not even a question.”
Rosalie glared down at her hands, her stomach churning. Rachel was gone and she didn’t seem like she was coming back. Her parents were dead to her, and as far as Rosalie was concerned they would stay that way until the day came that she heard her sister was okay. Travis might as well be gone too after their prom night disaster. And now Savannah was leaving her. Alone, in this bed, in this room, which had once been so full of the three of them.
Savannah seemed to come unstuck. She pushed off the window and came over to the bed, taking Rosalie’s hand and pulling her to her feet. She put her arms around her and Rosalie caught her breath. It was the first time they’d so much as touched since the night they’d ended up naked. It wasn’t a polite hug; it was fierce, their whole bodies pressed tight, Savannah’s arms squeezing her so close it was almost painful. As she let go, her lips found Rosalie’s neck, just for a second. And then she was gone.
And that - just as Rosalie suspected it would be - was that. Savannah didn’t show up again, and she hadn’t told Rosalie her new address. Rosalie was left alone. No sister, no best friend, no…whatever it was that Savannah was to her. She sat alone in her room at night, stared at her window, and ached.
Rosalie concentrated hard on imagining Rachel in her new exciting life in another state, but fear leaked through the cracks in her story. Would Rachel really go without saying goodbye to her? Would she not have found a phone somehow, called her sister’s mobile, even just sent her a text? Fair enough she wouldn’t want to run into their parents but she’d snuck in and out like a goddamned cat burglar for over a year; she knew how to evade them. Rachel had obviously decided the risk wasn’t worth it; her sister had landed on her feet elsewhere and Rosalie refused to consider any other option.
As for what had happened between her and Savannah, Rosalie turned it over and over in her mind. She thought about blaming the grief, blaming Savannah for being the one to kiss her, or chalking it all up to teenage hormones but she couldn’t argue herself out of the truth. She was gay. There was no way, after Savannah had melded her soft smooth body into hers, that Rosalie would ever be able to fool herself that she wanted anything different. So, now, there was that to contend with. Would her parents try to pack her off to a conversion center too, if they knew? Or had they learned their lesson losing one child? Rosalie didn’t care to find out.
She had one more year of high school to go. She imagined hunting Savannah down and saying now it’s your fucking turn so she could return the favour, and Rosalie could hunker down with her and Coral until graduation. Her parents paid her school fees though and she was too much of a goody two-shoes to drop out without finishing. One more year, then she’d leave for college. Maybe in New York, maybe in California, who knew? She could make it through that, right? Just a year? Besides…what if Rachel came home?
Rosalie was going to have to go it all alone.
And so she did. The days turned into weeks. Home was devastating. School was lonely. She tried to make new friends, girls like Georgia and Caitlin who’d been in her class for years, but it wasn’t the same as having Travis or Savannah or Rachel. They were surface friends. They’d never known about Rachel and while they seemed cool, Rosalie wasn’t sure how they’d actually react if she told them the truth about what she’d discovered about herself.
Before she knew it she was staring down summer break. Once, it would have meant her and Travis against the world, or her and Rachel scheming away from their parents, but now…nothing. As the heat grew so did her misery and boredom. Georgia and Caitlin invited her around sometimes, or to parties, but the parties in particular made her feel like an alien now, with everyone around her enthusiastically performing heterosexuality exactly within their assigned gender roles. One more year, she kept in her mind like a mantra, one more year and she’d get the hell out of Tennessee.
