Roman Holiday

chapter Eleven

Roman stops in mid-step in front of an airbrush parlor, and I run smack into the back of him. “Oof! Hey, at least gimme a head’s up when you stop—”

A man with inky black hair surfaces from the surf shop next door. The man from the stop-n-shop a few nights ago. The eagle feather is pinned into the ribbon on his gray fedora tonight. He picks into his bag of cotton candy for a blue puff and eats it.

Roman grabs my forearm. My eyebrows scrunch. "Do you know him?"

"Nope"—and suddenly he shoves me into the airbrush parlor, leading me behind a clothes turnstile, and grabs a dorky Myrtle Beach hat from the top of it. He holds it over the side of our faces toward the street, our faces so close his hot breath warms my lips, too close for comfort but too far for anything real to happen.

Maybe he'll...

His eyes nervously watch the reflective mirror that shows the street, and it deflates me just a little, disheartened, that he doesn't even notice. The man passes slowly, searching over the racks of clothes. Roman jerks me down below the clothes rack until the man finally passes. After a minute, he pulls away and returns the hat to its proper place as if nothing happened. I turn to the cashier to make sure she’s giving us a funny look, and sure enough, she is.

Okay, so that actually happened.

"Roman?" I go to grab his shirt but my hand comes up empty. I pale. "Roman?" The orange of his hair hangs a right out of the store. "ROMAN!" I run out of the store after him and catch up a few feet down. “What was that for?”

“What was what for?”

“Please, don’t do that.”

“Do what? I’m starving. Where's this pizza place again?"

"You're impossible."

"Impossibly possible," he corrects. "Ah-hah! I knew it was over here somewhere."

I scowl and follow him into the nearby pizza joint. It's a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant with cheap beer and free smells. Locals scatter across the dry-rotted booths, watching some soccer team at the World Series on the small TV in the corner. We order two sodas and a large olive and mushroom pizza, and sit down at one of the cracked vinyl booths. The lighting is low, and terrible, and the walls are this horrendous eggshell white with kitschy Italian pictures and signs strung up with duct tape. The pizza is the sort you can fold in half, and watch the grease trickle down onto your plate like water.

Roman takes another slice, popping a fallen mushroom into his mouth. "How the hell do you like mushroom and olives?" he asks between chews.

"I should be asking you the same thing. Weirdo," I tease.

"Oh, yeah we are." He lifts his soda and we clink glasses. "It's a wonder you're single—you are single, aren't you?" he adds, more curious than nervous.

I shrug, eating another olive. "I dunno. I've been too busy for a relationship. I mean...there's a guy, but it's nothing serious. He's about to go off to college, and I'm about to stay put. When we started seeing each other I was...in a bad place. Then he came, acting like my broken was nothing, like he knew he could shake me once and listen to all the broken bits of me rattle around, and everything would be fine—that I am broken, but still loved and still wanted. Not beautiful, but enough."

"Enough...I like that. The whole notion of it. My manager told us to be perfect, to be examples. We weren't good enough. We had to be better. What a different world I'd live in if he just wanted Holly, Boaz, and me to be enough."

I look down at my uneaten crust of pizza. "Too bad it's a faulty notion. Because being enough is never good enough."

"I think your hair is pink enough," he offers.

"And I think your hair is orange enough. But it's not good enough, right? You can't honestly say you were aiming for that color."

His nose scrunches. "You're right. I wasn't. Were you aiming for that pink?"

"I wasn't really aiming for anything," I reply, picking another olive off my next slice. I can only eat half of it while he devours the rest of the pizza. "Must be nice, not having to watch your weight."

"Are you kidding?" he downs the last bite with a gulp of soda. "I ate nothing but salads for three years straight. I had to buy new jeans four months ago. Living on Ramen noodles is killing my figure."

"Isn't that a shame. You had such nice abs too," I joke, but he just gives me this pained look. "Mag's has that poster, yeah," I clarify, "then one where you're all, you know...ripped."

"That really doesn't surprise me. Ready to go?"

"Whenever you are."

He takes my hand, fingers lacing into mine, and pulls me out of the booth. We blend into the swelling evening crowd, and follow them across the boardwalk. A sign pointing toward the beach access is lit up by a flood of lights, and we follow the arrow onto the sand. The beach at night reminds me of those old grainy black and white movies, the moon painting everything in monochromatic colors. The stars shimmer as if they're fireflies stuck in a vat of molasses.

He flunks down on the sand, spreading his legs wide. “I always thought I'd retire to the beach. What do you think, this a good enough spot to start?”

I sink down beside him and dig my toes into the sand. “My dad used to say the same thing." It feels so strange to bring Dad into conversation, but in the good sort of way. Like when you can't hold a sneeze in any longer.

“Yeah? My dad did too." He shakes his head, running the thick white sand through his hands. "He said that the fast times are never as fun as you think they are."

“You've had a few of those, I guess."

He exhales slowly. “Yeah, I have." His orange hair glows like frozen fire from the light pollution on the Strand. After a moment, he tilts his head to the side, as if something flicked his ear. “Do you hear that?”

"The...waves?"

He rolls his eyes. "No, listen."

I cock my head, but all I can hear is the roar of the ocean. “I don’t hear anything."

"Yeah, you do." Then he begins to hum. I recognize the tune immediately, and my ears prickle at the sound of faint, but real, music. A band, somewhere, is playing a song. The bandstand does play shag music at night after all.

I grin. "Van Morrison. 'Into the Mystic.'"

He leans into me, his shoulder knocking against mine, and begins to murmur the lyrics in a soft and warm baritone, as sweet as honey. Caspian was never this romantic—this is romance, isn't it? The way he looks at no one but me, his eyes filled with more than what his mouth can ever say. But I feel myself inexplicably drawn into him, like the opposite side of a magnet. We are so close, the heat from our skin hovers between us like a force the chilling beach breeze can't sweep away, electrified a thousand times over. The smell of the sea mingles with his scent, so intoxicating it feels like a dream. Cinnamon and merlot. All I want to do is sink into him, into the mystic—my heart so full of sound and sea and sky it could burst.

I've never felt like this before, not with Caspian, not with anyone. With Caspian it was always give and take, but then after a while I gave so much it began to feel like I was supposed to and Caspian always took, always expected it. I don't feel like Roman expects anything at all, or if he does it isn't obvious to me, and I think I like this sort of friendship, the type that isn't based on merits and gifts, but moments and memories and songs.

His voice grows softer as the song finally winds to a close and my stomach dips because I don't want it to end. I am in big, big trouble.

"Roman?" My voice is timid and foreign to my ears. His fingers brush lightly against my cheek as he pulls a stray strand of pink hair behind my ear. My face turns toward his hand to feel his warm fingertips against my cheek again. Caspian is ten thousand leagues out of my mind.

"Yeah, Junebug?"

"I'm glad I met you."

Down the beach, a group of college kids from Coastal Carolina light a squadron of roman candles into the night sky, sparks of white that, from a distance, look like shooting stars. They howl as the sparks fade into the darkness. I almost jump out of my skin, startled by the sound. Roman blinks and shakes his head as if snapping out of a daydream.

“It’s getting late,” he mutters suddenly, and jumps to his feet. “Aren’t your parents worried?”

Anger flushes over my cheeks. "No. I'm not a kid!"

"How old are you?" he calls over his shoulder as he begins to leave. "Sixteen?"

I fist my hands, marching after him. "Almost nineteen! F*ck you very much!"

"Same differe—" His foot catches a sinkhole and he faceplants into the sand. I squat down beside him. He props himself up on his elbows and gives a long, tired sigh. "Karma's a bitch."

"Apology accepted," I reply, and jut out my hand to help him up.