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Rose grew up without enough of a lot of things.
Her mom never quite had enough money to pay for the breakfast scheme her elementary school ran, and the fridge never had quite enough fruit in it to stop Rose’s bones aching and the hairs in her arms and legs forming little coils, and the electricity bill jar never had quite enough cash in it to cover the AC during the summer. They never seemed to have enough change in their pocket for an ice cream, and their grades were always one or two letters below what she’d need for a scholarship to the private school on the other side of town.
When she was little and her night vision was non existent and her jeans stopped somewhere mid calf even though she’d only been given them two months ago, she used to wish that one day some rich couple would realise they wanted a child and fall in love with her when they saw her playing at the park and her mom would be glad of the relieving of the financial burden and she’d be swept up into a fancy car and drowned in silks and furs and leather. In that dream, the couple would have their chef make them breakfast and let them drink grapefruit juice by the carton and the AC would never turn off if she didn’t want it to. There’d be a chest freezer full of every ice cream she could think of, and it wouldn’t matter about a scholarship because her tuition fees would be paid in full for the best music school the world had to offer.
She grows out of that fantasy two weeks before they turn fourteen, when she meets Ray from down the road and decides that no matter what life had looked like before Ray, it was worth it and wonderful because it set her off on the path to run into him outside the corner store near the high school she’ll be attending next year.
It’s not until seventeen that they realise that drowning in silks and furs and leather is still drowning.
——
“I love you,” Rose says to Ray, seventeen and living with her boyfriend and somehow sort-of-something with the two richest people she’s ever met in her life. She leans up on tiptoes to press her lips to his in echo of the words she’d just said and tries not to notice Willie recoiling into himself, like just being near such a blatant display of affection burns him.
Ray smiles against her mouth. It’s drawn tight, though, and Rose assumes he’s noticed the same thing. “I love you too,cariño.”
When they pull apart, Bobby is fastidiously studying the ceiling, and Willie’s staring at her phone so hard Rose is surprised it doesn’t break.
She sighs, quietly, just for herself and Ray.
It’s an uphill climb with these two, the sort of uphill climb that requires hiking sticks and hydration bladders and sugar cubes to maintain energy levels. They’ve been camping on a rocky outcrop for weeks now, somewhere between gentle kisses goodbye and saying “I love you”.
The words come easily for Rose.
She knows them in at least five languages, the English her mom made them practice, the Spanish they whisper into Ray’s hipbone, the French that Luke Patterson from the Hard Rock Cafe in the city centre promises to every customer that says they’ll come back, the Tagalog they practiced in front of a mirror a million times after the first time Bobby admitted he speaks a little, the ASL she made Victoria teach her when Willie told them she has non verbal episodes sometimes.
The words come easily and crash into the back of her teeth with enough force that sometimes she thinks they’ll shatter into a million pieces, all sharp enough that they’ll tear her to shreds from the inside out until she drowns in love confessions and her own blood.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Tesoro,” she says to Willie instead of anything stronger. They wish they could write on the damn sky how much they love him, but he’s got no tolerance, no prior experience, and they don’t trust that the words wouldn’t overload his system, even if they whispered them in the dead of night. She feels like a hardened addict looking at some fresh faced partygoer on their first day of college.
He smiles at her, tired and sad and aware of their own shortcomings. Well, they’d probably call it a shortcoming, that they can’t fashion themself to be able to receive all the love Rose wants to give them. Rose calls it a cruelty, and one she lays the blame of squarely at the feet of his father. “See you tomorrow, Rosie.”
She kisses him goodbye and hopes he can’t taste the splintered words and copper hiding under her tongue, wishes she could stay for long enough that he’d bite her lip and replace the coppery restraint with real blood and want.
“Night, Rose.” Bobby’s got a habit of doing that, of saying goodbye and hello and a million stupid, ridiculously smart things from at least halfway across the room, like he doesn’t want her to feel like she has to do anything about it.
They’re in front of him in seconds anyway, cradling his jaw and ignoring that if he keeps losing weight in preparation of running season then they’re gonna start coming away from holding him like this with their hands bleeding. He’d ignore her if she told him that and she’d rather not waste both their time. “You try to get some sleep tonight.”
He shrugs, half hearted. They both know he has less control over his sleep cycle than his bravado and self imposed caffeine ban like to pretend. He could do meditation and exercises and drink warm, lavender flavoured milk and still be up to greet the sunrise. “I’ll try. I’d sleep better if you stayed.”
“You know I can’t,” she says, instead of I’d stay forever if you asked. She likes to think he can read between the lines, just like she likes to think that his own I love you, I wish I could hold you is hidden between the clunky syllables of I’d sleep better if you stayed . “I’ve got the weekend off, though.”
His eyebrows quirk up. “The whole weekend?” He asks, slow and careful like two whole days with his not-quite-girlfriend is too good to be trusted. It’s fair, Rose hasn’t taken a whole weekend off in the whole time she’s known him, including that one time she got the flu from her coworker.
Sick days are for people that can afford them.
Plus, the basket of antipyretics and decongestants and painkillers in the cupboard under the till is more extensive than the bottle of nyquil and the packet of tylenol they and Ray have.
She nods and perches on his thigh. He doesn’t look strong enough to hold her weight but she’s tested it enough times to trust him now. “Friday night through Monday morning. Absolutely no obligations to be anywhere.”
He wets his lips with the same screwed up expression he gets trying to do complex algebra. “That’s three nights.”
“Yeah, that’s three nights, baby. And two and a bit days.” They brush his hair behind his ear, try not to cry at how obviously he reacts to the touch, wonder when they became so weak for someone who bleeds green and cries dollar signs. “And Ray’s got the weekend off, too. You and Wills got any plans?”
“Um, it’s my birthday on Saturday, so I gotta have dinner with my dad and my cousin and stuff.” It takes a couple of seconds, too many seconds, for it to click. She can practically see the record freeze and scratch and rewind in his brain. “Did… did you guys. You don’t hafta, do you want me to pay you back for the shifts? I can- I don’t want you to lose out.”
Rose grew up with not quite enough of anything but there was always, somehow, enough money in the jars and the bank for her mom to take her and Tori’s birthdays off and buy them a cupcake with a candle. They think about how Trevor Wilson is rich enough to ground every plane on the east coast, and yet apparently not rich enough to buy his son a birthday card. They bite their cheek until the copper flavour in their mouth is entirely real and resist the urge to burn the Wilson mansion to the ground and then burn the fucking ashes.
“It’s your birthday, dumbass,” Willie says, cheek smushed against Ray’s thigh, both of them having migrated to the bed while Rose talked to Bobby. “If anything needs paying for or covering, I’ve got it. You are gonna allow yourself to be fussed over for once in your fucking life.”
It’s rich, coming from Willie. Rose had to tie her wrists to the bedframe with Bobby’s school tie just so she’d sit still long enough for Rose to give her a Christmas present.
Bobby looks the bad kind of uncomfortable, the kind of uncomfortable that means he’ll be feeling guilty for weeks about this, not just the kind of uncomfortable that means he doesn’t know how to act in a situation. Rose presses a kiss to his temple. “I’ll let you buy whatever food you want.”
He squints at them, suspicious, as though letting him feed her is some kind of hardship he doesn’t think she can endure. Rose remembers they’re not the only one facing an uphill climb to get a partner to accept offerings. Bobby and Willie may struggle with four letter words and kisses that don’t ask for anything but affection, but it’s not like they and Ray have been easy to wine and dine.
“What if I want lobster?” He asks after a moment. “And steak. Surf’n’turf with thousand dollar wine out of my dad’s cellar.”
Rose imagines telling him she loves him over a candlelit dinner and silverware that could feed a family in the trailer park she and Ray live in for days, if sold to the right pawn shop. It makes her skin crawl. “I’d have to kill you, I’m afraid. I’d make it look like your dad killed you for being a poly bisexual with designs on construction work. You’d be a queer martyr.”
He grins and kisses her cheek, easy and elastic like their mutual discomfort is the only thing that makes sense to him. “How about I give you in cash what it would cost, and you make a donation under my dad’s name to wherever you feel like donating?”
“That’s not a birthday meal,” they warn. They don’t say no. She’ll give him a birthday card and he’ll hand it back with a signed cheque inside and they’ll both pretend that they’re not bending their morals. “What do you want?”
“Chinese takeaway,” he decides after a moment. Willie cheers from the bed, and Rose exchanges a glance with Ray that tells her he finds it as hard to believe as she does that these two could have Scottish caviar delivered on room service but still get excited over stuffing the batter cases from sweet’n’sour pork with special fried rice. “And the cool chocolate seahorses and shells.”
“Those are five dollar chocolates,” they say slowly. He’ll get chocolates from his cousin that probably cost a medium sized town. It feels almost mocking that he’s asking for chocolate so within their budget when his tastebuds were trained on private chocolatiers and confectioners.
“Yeah, and it’s amazing five dollar chocolate,” he says, so seriously that the fear that he’s making fun of her is assuaged. It’s not that she thinks he’d ever mock her on purpose, but it’s not like she’s the only one in the room prone to getting overly defensive. “Wills, isn’t the chocolate that’s seahorse and shell shaped the best chocolate?”
“Oh for sure,” Willie agrees, half asleep and probably somewhat high on the feeling of Ray’s fingers carding through his hair. Rose would blame it entirely on the oxytocin rush of the poor guy getting actual physical contact if they didn’t know that Ray’s also just a goddamn wizard. “It’s got the white chocolate in it, right? It’s amazing.”
Bobby nods, bright and excited. Rose imagines the pair of them at five years old, craving chicken nuggets and getting coque au vin instead. It hurts in a way she doesn’t care to examine. “Yeah! I want that, and Chinese, and tango ice blast slushies from the gas station.”
“We could put rum in them,” Willie suggests. Rose pictures them meeting their mother, who taught Rose to drink straight tequila by introducing it into every drink possible until they could stand the flavour. She’s not sure Willie could survive being hugged and kissed and having her cheeks pinched while mama Molina fusses over her, but she hopes that one day- well. She hopes they make it there. All of them.
“You’re a goddess,” Bobby says flatly, and Rose knows it’s code for I love you . They don’t know if either of them have ever actually said the words, if they’ve ever even heard them said in their direction, or if they learned later on that feelings are a weakness, if the full hearts they can see hidden away inside the pair of them were always locked away or if one day they were forced into cages.
“I know,” Willie replies easily, and that means I love you too .
Rose forces herself not to scream at how clearly they love each other and how clearly they want to say it, and kisses Bobby properly, murmurs happy early birthday so close she can see his pupils dilate, then finally eases herself off his lap.
“See you tomorrow,” she says to the room at large, and closes the bedroom door behind her on her way out. “I love you,” she says to the wood, because even though she’s dying to say it, she remembers throwing up in the Covington downstairs bathroom after a bowl of soup that was just too goddamn rich, remembers being unable to eat anything more substantial than a plate of crackers after the month she’d spent giving Tori most of her meals when she got really sick.
They’re not sure they’ll do them any good by saying it to their faces.
‘Te amo’ she texts to Ray, and she can just see him glancing at the other two, at the overflowing drawer of their things at the top of Bobby’s dresser, at her lipstick collection next to Willie’s political theory notes, at his broken watch pried to pieces and laid out amidst Bobby’s tiny screwdriver and glasses, at the four colour coded toothbrushes in the mug visible through the open en-suite door.
‘Nosotros también te amamos.’