“I want you to call me Rose,” she said to him one day.
“Why?”
“I don’t like Rosa. It’s too…ethnic.”
“But, it’s you,” he said. He ran his finger over her cheek when he said it, and she leaned her head into his hand.
“Rosa—beautiful Rosa. Please don’t try to change who you are. You’re perfect.”
She blushed again, and that was the first time he kissed her.
Her parents were very strict, and were opposed to her dating a boy from Aspen, but Tucker was relentless. He made excuses to come and see her in Basalt on the weekends. He sketched her all the time, and for Christmas, he gave her parents a portrait he’d painted of her. They accepted him after that, and while they were still very strict with her curfew, they did allow her to go out with him.
Rosa’s brothers didn’t like Tucker or Jace. They’d gone to school in Basalt and worked the ski area. Both Tucker and Jace were on the ski team, so they ran into them often. The day Tucker tried to start a conversation with one of them, he’d told him and Jace to leave his sister alone.
Tucker didn’t understand what he meant. Why had he said they should leave her alone?
“She’s got a mind of her own,” Jace said that day. Tucker pulled Jace away when it looked like a fight was brewing between him and Rosa’s oldest brother.
Jace’s reaction surprised him, and they argued. Tucker told him he could fight his own battles, and he didn’t need Jace to intervene. It was important to Tucker that Rosa’s family liked him, welcomed him, and accepted him.
It was one of the worst fights the two brothers had. Tucker could feel Jace’s anger, and he didn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense to him.
When they were in their senior year of high school, Tucker approached his father the night before Thanksgiving. He wanted to propose to Rosa on Christmas Day and wanted to marry her right after graduation. His father wasn’t opposed to Rosa, he told him. He liked her, but Tucker was too young to be married. His parents were in agreement that he should finish college before he thought about marriage. If he and Rosa still wanted to be wed then, they’d have his parents’ support.
Tucker was invited to Rosa’s house for Thanksgiving, and he went, hoping to have a chance to talk to Rosa’s father. If he agreed to let them marry, maybe he could get his parents to change their minds.
Rosa’s family was more against the marriage than Tucker’s parents. Her father told Tucker it would never work between them. They came from two different worlds. Once Tucker went away to college, he’d see that more clearly. Rosa would never fit in his world. Tucker insisted her father was wrong. The economic differences in their families didn’t matter, but her father was intransigent. He refused to discuss it further and asked Tucker to leave.
He was angry and didn’t want to upset Rosa, so he left. On his way to the truck, he saw one of her brothers standing not too far from it. He ignored him. With the mood he was in, getting into an argument would just escalate.
“Cabrón,” her brother said when he walked by. “Telling my father you want to marry my sister. You think Rosa loves you?”
Tucker kept walking.
“You think you’re the only pendejo who comes around to see her? You’re wrong, and you’re the same—assholes, both of you.”
Tucker knew Rosa’s brother was trying to rile him, but he kept walking. When he got in his truck, he threw it into gear and drove away, his tires laying rubber on the road.
He drove and drove that afternoon. He went up to Independence Pass and hiked to the top. He sat
there, trying to get his temper under control, until the sun began to set.
He drove back to Basalt then, hoping to talk to Rosa. He needed to see her.
When he pulled into the driveway, he saw two figures standing near the back shed. It looked like a man and a woman, in a heated embrace. He stopped the truck and climbed out, startling them. He heard Rosa gasp and realized she was with another man. She ran toward him, calling his name. He remembered backing away, turning, and getting in his truck.
“Wait,” she screamed at him. She reached the passenger door before he could lock it, and climbed inside.
“Tucker, please,” she begged. “Let me explain.”
“Get out of the fucking truck, Rosa,” he’d screamed at her.
She refused. “We have to talk,” she told him. “You don’t understand…I love him.”
Tucker couldn’t think straight. How could Rosa love someone else?
He told her again to get out of the truck. He looked up and saw the man walking out of the shadow of the darkness. If the man got any closer, Tucker was afraid he’d kill him.