Roman Holiday Page 2

  "I lost track of time," I reply, a little disheartened. Nothing about my hair? Or how excited he is to see me? "And I didn't see your text until I got in my car..."

  "At least you're here." He takes me by the hand and leads me into his house and up the stairs to his bedroom. I've only been in his house when no one's around, and even then I've only seen the kitchen and his bedroom. A box of Chinese takeout sits on his nightstand, and James Bond blares from the TV.

  My heart, already beating nervous and erratic in my chest, twists a little. Not that I was expecting a candlelit dinner over filet mignon and sweet potato but...maybe a glass of Merlot at least? But all I can say is, "Oh, Cas, you shouldn't have."

  "I thought we could get comfortable, you know, since it's our six months and all," he replies, curling his arms around my waist, and kisses the nape of my neck. "I like what you did to your hair."

  "Maggie's idea. She says it brings out my eyes." His lips are like feathers against my neck, quick kisses that dot up to my ear, his fingers falling between my skirt hem and my skin. My mind goes numb. Who needs filet mignon and wine? He turns me around and presses his lips against mine.

  "Yeah, it's hot," he murmurs into my mouth, and eases me backwards onto the bed. "You'll be hot at the beach. Wish I could see you in your bathing suit."

  I laugh nervously. I hate bathing suits. Almost as much as I hate Roman Holiday. "You sure you can't come to the beach with me? If we behave the step-idiot might let us share a room together..." I tease.

  He sighs against my cheek. "Baby, you know I can't. We're not...you know."

  "But we could be," I almost-argue, but it only sounds like a suggestion. I can never argue with Cas. It's not that I'm afraid to, it's just...

  Well, I don't want him to non-dating dump me.

  He rolls off me and snags the takeout from the nightstand. I sit up as he hands me a pair of chopsticks. He asks, "Aren't we good? Like we are?"

  No, I want to say, because this isn't real. I bite into an eggroll to prevent myself from answering.

  "Besides," he continues with a mouthful of lo mien, "I have to house-sit. Dad’s paranoid about someone stealing his pool table.” He points his chopsticks downstairs. The pool table is mahogany, but it might as well be made of elephant tusks for how much it cost.

  I fish around in the lo mien for a crunchy red onion. “But isn’t that why you have a security guard on-call?”

  “He's shit. I know how you feel baby, I really do. I want to go...but I have things here and...stuff." He runs his large, warm hands down my thigh as James Bond jumps out of an exploding airplane and tumbles mercilessly through the clouds. “But tonight? Would you be happy with tonight?”

  “Of course." I try to laugh off the anxiety that is beginning to bloom again. The Chinese food feels like stones in my stomach. I abandon my chopsticks in the box. "Tonight will be perfect."

  “Perfect,” he echoes, clicking off the TV, and sets our takeout on the nightstand again. His hand traces the line in my jaw and gently brings my face to his. He smells like fresh laundry, crisp and clean. He has the best hygiene of any guy I know. Immaculate hair, plucked eyebrows, a caramel tan that accents every curve of his thick well-defined muscles. He kisses my neck, and runs his fingers through my fuchsia hair. I normally have it pulled up into a ponytail, but he loves my long hair wild and unruly.

  In the real world, far away from this bedroom, I am anything but unruly.

  I swallow the lump in my throat as his lips migrate up my neck to my cheeks. The sensation makes me shiver because he's so gentle, and his lips are so warm. He kisses my ear, my eyelids, my forehead, and finally my lips.

  There’s a radio somewhere else in the house buzzing to the faint tune of Roman Holiday's "Crush on You."

  I close my eyes, and sigh into his mouth, surrendering into him. He wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me on top of him, and my legs instinctively clamp around his midsection. He tastes like Po Chen’s egg rolls and Coke Zero. My heart is thrumming a million miles a minute.

  Be confident. Be cool. Be okay with this.

  He claps his hands twice and the room crashes into darkness. His hair glows like gold in the faint light of the electric candles on his headboard. His parents don’t allow real candles in the house, so he buys electric ones. He has a whole drawer full of them. The mood has to be perfect, the set compelling. What’s a good story without a good backdrop? In his room, everything is strategic. Everything is placed to his advantage—the TV remote, the clapper, the tissues, and the picture of a half-naked starlet on the ceiling. Perfectly placed and perfectly lit, as if we are the centerpieces in an extravagant music video.

  Roman Holiday is so loud now, wailing "I want to crush, crush, crush on you. Crush on you like back in high school. I want to crush with you, let me crush with you."

  The irony almost kills the mood.

  He traces his fingers so slowly and carefully up my body, my thighs and knobby knees, like a sculptor accenting the curvature of a statue. My heart rattles in my ribcage like a miniature earthquake, and soon I don't hear Roman Holiday at all. All I hear is my heart, and my breath, and all the white noise in my head buzzing with worry.

  This is just like we planned, orchestrated to perfection. I shouldn't be nervous. We planned this, I coax myself, and for a brief moment, I'm not sure if my heart is trembling because I am excited, or frightened.

  He kisses me and tells me he loves me, and travel his lips down my neck and across my collarbone. One of the candles on the headboard dims, sighing with me. I wonder why he bothers with electric candles. They hide the posters of heavy metal bands and busty Harley riders papering his walls, and cast his black comforter and black pillows into pale gray. There's no scent to them, not vanilla, not cinnamon, or—God forbid—baking cookies.

  “Ready?” he asks over Roman Montgomery howling "I want to crush, crush, crush on youuuuuu!" We both know this has been a long time coming, and there won't be a more perfect moment.

  Except he really could turn off that radio.

  We’re on the verge of something, and all I can think about is that damn radio and the electric candles. I want to nod, say yes, but my head is too heavy to move. His hands wrap around my midsection, fingers sinking into my skin. I want to do this, don’t I? For him? Maybe after he'll change his mind, and we can be public. We can actually define something in our twisted lives together.

  The sighing candle finally goes out, and his halo of hair dulls to a grayish yellow. I close my eyes. This is where my life fades to black and I wake up in a bed of roses.

  But it doesn't.

  I feel him tug up my skirt and peel down my underwear. I'm supposed to be doing something right now, aren't I? Unbuttoning his jeans with reckless abandon, moaning about how thick he is, how I can't wait for him to come inside me. Isn't that how it happens?

  The awful Roman Holiday-infused silence is killing me. I crack open an eye to ask, in a voice that sounds too high and too loud, "What was the surprise?"

  He kisses my inner thigh, and I grip the bed sheets. "Surprise?"

  "In your text..."

  "Ooh, that." Grinning, he takes something from the headboard beside the dead electric candle. "I hate ribbed, but for you I'll make an exception."

  I take the purple condom package, my throat constricting.

  "Do you want to put it on me?" His voice is playful.

  "I...don't think I'm ready for that." Did I mean putting it on him or sex in general? I am eighteen—nineteen in a few months. And by a few months I mean eight. By teenage standard, I'll start collecting cobwebs up there if I don't start. But staring at the purple package makes my stomach heave.

  He chuckles, deep-throated, and kisses my neck again as if it'll wash away my worry. But it won't. Closing my eyes, I wait for the fade out. I wait for the romantic music, but Roman Holiday is reverberating off every wall, echoing. "I'm gonna crush, crush, crush on you..."

  Then—suddenly—it happens.

  My
breath catches in my throat and tears spring to my eyes. I grip the bed sheets harder, my knuckles turning white. His lips are on my neck, burrowed in the nape, as his hands travel along my body to my breasts. I didn't wear a bra to the house. He doesn't have to worry about taking it off. This is perfect.

  This is just like we planned.

  My blurry eyes focus on the remaining electric candles, a constant light without a flicker, shaking as we rock back and forth, back and forth. His breath comes faster and harder. He groans, swelling inside of me until—nothing.

  No fade out. No romantic music, but Roman Holiday has slowly transitioned into a pop country song I could place if I listened hard enough, but everything sounds muted except for the white noise in my head.

  He rolls off me, and brings my hand to his lips to kiss my knuckles.

  "Happy six months," he whispers, staring at the ceiling as I blink away the tears and the pain, feeling hollower than ever before, "to our little secret."

  Sunday

  Chapter Three

  The condo has a new paint job this year. Guess the sea-foam green didn't cut it anymore. There's a new pullout couch too, and a new TV to replace the one from the Stone Age that kept losing reception last year. The bedroom is a conk shell blue to match the sailboat picture hanging above the bed, and the kitchen has new tile in the pattern of a checkerboard. The only thing the renovation hasn’t touched is the bird-shit yellow bathroom Dad hated.

  “I feel like I should be following the Yellow Brick Road every time I lay a brick in here,” he used to complain. Of all the things to keep, it was that god-awful yellow?

  Staring around at the condo, I realize that I don't remember a lot of the other smaller details of our yearly beach week. Like who gets the ice for the cooler? Who checks us in? Who unloads the suitcases and who make coffee in the mornings?

  It isn’t two minutes after we’ve walked in the door with our suitcases before Darla pays a visit. She doesn’t knock. She never knocks. She's loud, smokes a pack of Marlboros a day, and downs tequila as if it’s low-calorie soda.

  In other words, Dad loved her.

  Picking up my Vera Bradley duffle, I haul it into the bedroom before she sees me. Not that I don't love Darla—because I do—but she couldn't wait another ten minutes before barging in with her big hoo-rah? I press my ear against the crack in the door to listen.

  “Knock knock!” Darla trills, her flip-flops making slapping noises against her feet as she prances inside.

  Mom squeals in excitement. “Darla!”

  “Oh, Sherry,” Darla says. “I’m so sorry about Willy, dear. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s all right. He would've wanted me to move on.”

  I disagree. Wrenching away from the door, I fling myself down on the bed and clench fistfuls of duvet in my hands. How could she know what Dad would've wanted? Did he tell her to marry her high school sweetheart three months after his death and make me look like the bad apple my senior year of high school? Everyone thought it was just convenient that he died. Thought she had been cheating on Dad with Chuck. They looked at me with a mixture of pity and leprosy, as if infidelity was catching. I'm not sure which was worse.

  Don’t think about it. Breathe. My fingers unfurl from the covers.

  If Mom knows how I feel about her marriage, she hasn’t said a word, but it’s not like I’ve been very subtle about it. At the wedding, I boycotted the bridesmaids’ dresses, showed up late to the ceremony, and skipped the rest of the reception where I think I was supposed to give a speech. I’ve kept my distance from Chuck—Charles—especially at the bar. He doesn't know the ass-end around pale ale, never mind how to shake a martini.

  I begin unpacking to busy myself, shoving handfuls of shirts and shorts into the top drawer.

  There are seldom things that man can do right, but making Mom laugh is one of them. Dad could do that, too. Mom's one of those women who barely cracks a smile. She's all business, little talk. Why she marries men who are complete clowns is beyond me.

  “Knock knock, har-dee-har-har, I can joke too!" I mock in my worst Chuck impersonation and reach back into my suitcase for my underwear. My hand comes out empty. I pat down the rest of my suitcase, but all I find are socks and bras. "Fuck. It's official. This vacation can't get any worse."

  “Junie! Darla wants to see you! Why don’t you come out and say hello?” Mom calls from the kitchen. I've been summoned. Can't be avoided.

  I stand and open the bedroom door, forcing a smile. "Darla! Didn't even hear you come in!" Lies, all lies.

  Darla gives an overly theatrical gasp when she sees me. “Oh my gosh, what the hell did you do to your hair?"

  Keep smiling, I remind myself. "I dyed it."

  She rakes me over with a studious look, pursing her pink lips together. "It's definitely a change."

  "And she will be going to the beautician as soon as we get back," Mom adds, giving me a meaningful look.

  "I like my hair," I defend, even though it is a little bright. Out in the sun I look like a walking lollipop.

  "But think about what everyone else thinks," she replies.

  I narrow my eyes at her. Like she can talk. I clench my jaw to keep from saying as much. Darla notices the tension and eases in with a wave of her hand. "Girls just want to have fun, Sherry. Let her experiment and find herself. It's not like she has a tattoo," she adds.

  "She's eighteen," Mom tells her, as if that will finalize the argument. And she's forty-two. That didn't stop her from making poor life choices.

  "Well, I think she looks gorgeous. It brings out her gray eyes," Darla replies, finally pulling me into a rib-crushing hug.

  “I’m gorgeous too,” Chuck jokes, pulling the luggage cart into the condo. He parks it in the kitchen and wipes the sheen of sweat off his wrinkled brow. "In fact, I'm damn near beau-tee-ful."

  "In a coffin," I mutter so only Darla can hear, and her cheeks balloon as she tries to keep from laughing. Grabbing my purse from the kitchen counter, I pull it over my shoulder. “I’m going to the store.”

  “For what?” Chuck asks.

  “Underwear!” I call exasperatedly over my shoulder and slam the front door behind me.

  CherryTree Ocean Club is a condominium on the north side of Myrtle Beach. It's a nice place if you overlook the peeling tan and peach paint and the tarnished railings. The parking lot has potholes, and the palm trees planted by the entrance droop like soggy sponges, but that doesn't stop the tourists. Overlook the smell of diapers and chlorine and you might have yourself a really good time. It's definitely not Chuck's kind of place because it's no five-star resort, but Dad loved it. He said, "Places like these have character!" Sort of like the Silver Lining. One of the toilets might not work and you might find gum on the bottom of a chair, but it's a place where everyone knows your name. Like in Cheers.

  The store is further than I remember, four blocks down Ocean Boulevard on the right. I walk along the tiny sidewalk, passing pancake houses and new towering hotels with neon signs and twenty-story balconies. Dad hated that the old beach houses were getting sold off and torn down to make way for these vacation towers, but I always thought they were pretty at night, and that the view from the rooftops must be spectacular.

  Halfway there, my cell phone vibrates. I dig through my purse. "'Ello," I greet happily in a British accent so bad I make myself cringe, "you've reached Junie Baltimore, barmaid and best friend to the sweetest, most kick-ass pal in all the—"

  "You forgot gorgeous," Maggie interrupts. "I felt a disturbance in the force. Although that might just be my lady parts stirring from seeing hunk-a-licious Caspian Gardener washing his car on my way to work. Oh, bb, so sexy."

  "Yep."

  Maggie doesn't even know Caspian and I are non-dating, so she definitely doesn't know I gave him the hymen high-five. "Sorry I missed the sight." I pause at the red light and wait for the walk sign. The store is across the street, beside a family-owned ice cream joint called the Ice Cream Emporium. It's busy to
night, and it's only six-thirty. Tourists pack the picnic tables with their white sneakers and fanny packs. At least half of them have on pink SAVE HOLIDAY t-shirts. "Is there something going on this week or something with that Crapidayer shit?"

  "Um, yeah, the vigil. Where've you been living, under a rock?" She doesn't let me answer. "Never mind, you're out of the loop. There'll be a vigil on Thursday at St. Michael's cemetery in Lynn Island to celebrate Holly's life and raise awareness of teen suicide and all that jazz. Supposed to be a super big deal. MTV's gonna be there and everything."

  "Because MTV is such a premiere news source," I deadpan.

  "Oh shush," she scolds. "If I could be there, I totes would. Are my people there in droves?"

  "You have no idea," I deadpan, staring at the tweens nose-deep in their cell phones, pink peacock feathers in their hair to match their t-shirts. "In fact, a few of your people are eating ice cream as we speak—I hate ice cream."

  "Which is stupid. Ice cream is the frozen nectar of the gods. I think it's so silly you hate it because some kid body-checked you with your own ice cream."

  I roll my eyes. "It's just a bad memory, okay? The little shit's friend, this girl, said 'Aren't you going to clean that up?' and I was so mortified I cried in front of him. Dad had to come rescue me and asked the little snot 'Aren't you sorry?' He was egging for an apology, but snotface never gave one. He and his friend just walked away. Like I wasn't worthy of an apology."

  "Children. They're like trolls, only smaller."

  "I know, right? I just hate ice cream. It's bad for my figure anyway," I add jokingly.

  She laughs. "Right, because you're so fat."

  "I am—Oh! Also, to add to this fuck-tastic vacation, yours truly forgot her underwear."

  "Ha-ha! Karma, bitch! For not going with me last night!"

  "Oh, shut up." Averting my eyes away, I make a break across the street as soon as a purple Scion passes, to hell with walk signs.