Rowan wasn’t sure if she was being gracious or if she was pissed off. She also realized she didn’t actually care either way. This wouldn’t continue past the awkward thirty minute drive back to Claire’s car in the bar’s parking lot.
Rowan looked back to Juniper. “Are you staying?” She asked anxiously.
“For a little longer, I think,” Juniper answered barely above a whisper.
“Can I at least leave you my jacket?” Rowan asked, hoping the warmth left behind in her jacket could envelope Juniper’s body. Maybe it could be an okay substitute for the real thing.
“Thank you. I can give it back to you tomorrow, if you still want me to help you move into your new place.”
“Whenever. There’s no rush. And of course I do, if you’re still up for it.” Rowan shrugged out of her jacket and leaned down to wrap it around her shoulders. She noticed the way she tried to hide burying her nose into the collar. “Don’t stay out here too long, okay Junie?”
“I won’t.”
“I’m serious. Don’t keep punishing yourself.” Rowan furrowed her brows as she lingered over one last moment of silence from Juniper. She sighed and stood up, “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She turned to head back over the dunes, looking over her shoulder every few steps at the woman she could no longer bear to leave behind.
Chapter 12
The next morning Rowan sat up from the spot she had carved out for herself on her dad’s couch over the last few hours. While waiting for him to finish up at the fish market so he could help haul her stuff to her new place, she had intended to get some reading done. She had a stack of books on a variety of subjects that would have interested her on a normal day, from a book on the salt marshes of the southeastern Atlantic coast to a new queer romance novel she had pre-ordered months ago.
All she could think about was Juniper.
She needed to get up and move, expend some energy to be able to think more clearly. She laced up an old pair of beaten-in high tops and opened up the back screen door. She inhaled a deep breath of the thick, salty wet air drifting in from the bay. She would never get over the smell of being home.
Home.
She jogged across the small carport and swung open the splintered double doors of her dad’s old whitewashed shed. Most of the shed was taken up by her small two-person jon boat. Stepping carefully around the side of the boat, she searched over the shelves that lined the interior of the shed, scanning half-used paint cans and various tools and equipment, until her eyes stopped on an old suitcase strapped together by bungee cords.Rowan Birdsongwas scrawled across the front in thick, over-outlined black permanent marker.
Even though she and Juniper had thought about what it might be like to take a plane to go see each other, her reality had been much different than that. Instead of taking a plane back and forth, she boarded a Greyhound bus for an 800 mile journey each way. Twenty hours and three station transfers later, it only really made sense to come home for winter and part of summer break anyway.
She grabbed what she was looking for, her old basketball, and bounced it twice on the concrete floor to check if it was still inflated. It was. She let out a laugh at the recognition that even her old man still came out here to shoot hoops from time to time.
Back out on the carport, she stepped fifteen paces back from the hoop nailed to the shed over top of the doors. She set up, bounced once, and easily sunk the basketball, swooshing through the tattered net as it made its way through.
Fuck, I still got it.She laughed again.
She jogged over to retrieve the ball and shot again, this time from the right. Repeated the process again from the left. Swoosh. Swoosh.
Part of why she had gotten so good at basketball was out of fear of her dad’s teasing threats that she wasn’t going to be out there all afternoon every day busting up the side of his shed. More laughs escaped from the childhood memories of every cringe, every tuck of the head into her neck after the ball slammed against the wood to the side of the hoop or bounced off the roof. Every side eye she gave the back door waiting to see if it were going to creak open. It was more funny than anything, and oftentimes it resulted in him joining her. And then as she got older, it resulted in him challenging her to games of one-on-one. That was the other part of why she had gotten so good. All the time Victor could manage to spend with her, he had done so with intention.
Right on cue, the back door swung open, and her dad popped his head out.
“You’re lucky I heard three swooshes, kid,” he jeered with asmile on his face.
“Nothing but net,” she laughed back as she reached up to touch the torn net lace. “Or, whatever the hell is left of this.” She backed up further, took one more shot, and noticed he was still standing there watching. “You wanna play?”
“Nah, I can’t get these old bones to move fast enough to take you on anymore.”
“Ah, I see. You don’t want to play unless you know you can win. You can shoot though, or is your old model too vintage for that now?”
“Give me that damn thing,” he protested as he jogged toward her.
Rowan passed the ball to him, he set up, shot, and sunk it.
“Little shit,” he teased, clapping his hands on her shoulders and shifting right away into a bear hug.
“Just trying to keep you motivated. I didn’t hear you pull up. Where’s your truck?”
