Roman Holiday

chapter Nineteen

I sink down onto the couch and wish the ground would just swallow me whole. Or that a carnivorous seagull would come in and eat my heart out. Or a serial killer would break into the condo and end my poor, pathetic life. I'm a secret girlfriend to a gay guy. To a gay, hot guy.

To a gay hot guy who took my virginity.

"I think I'm going to puke," I moan, curling my free hand around my stomach.

"I know, right! Totes terrible! Oh, my poor va-jay-jay is crying in agony! Agony I tell you! But it's totes ballsy, you know? If his parents found out..."

I really do think I'm going to puke. I stumble to my feet and b-line it for the bathroom. I'm not even a secret. I'm a shame-scape. Just in case he is found out, he can whip me out and I'll play girlfriend. No one would ever know.

Just like Roman will never tell anyone he sang to me or danced with me to the Rolling Stones. Or kissed me.

I'm everyone's secret.

I barely make the toilet before I heave up the contents of my stomach. My virginity meant nothing. Not love, not devotion. There was no bed of roses, no French kisses, no whispers of "Baby, you're all that I need." There was nothing.

I am nothing.

"... Bb? Are you okay? This is ridic, I know, but hey at least we'll never have to go nuclear if he ever got a girlfriend, right?"

I wipe my mouth with a piece of toilet paper. "No," I reply, biting my bottom lip to keep myself from crying. "No, no no."

"But, bb, look at it this way—"

"We had sex," I blurt, and Maggie goes silent. "On Friday. After I left. I didn't go with you because I met Caspian. And we..."

"Oh my God, you hymen high-fived! He stole your cookie! He—how big is he?"

I moan and sit back against the ledge of the bathroom.

"And when you were going to tell me? Aren't I supposed to be your best friend?" she accuses. "What else aren't you telling me? That you had sex with Roman Montgomery too?"

And that is a whole other can of worms.

I massage my temples, gnawing on my bottom lip. Hold it together, Junie.

I should be livid, but I'm not. Not sad, not angry, not heartbroken. I am not enough to be anything. It's my worst fear, and my most terrible conviction, that without my father, and without the Lining, I am nothing at all.

"...Bb? I'm not mad at you," my best friend finally relents. "I'm just pissed. You should've told me. I feel so insensitive now. But, I mean, bestie to bestie...how big is he?"

That's it. That is my breaking point. I burst into tears in the bird-shit yellow bathroom and spew all of the dirty little secrets inside of myself to my best friend—Caspian, Roman Montgomery, and the foreclosure. She's my best friend. She's the one person I shouldn't keep secrets from.

"How stupid am I to think that I am enough?" I hiccup, tearing off another wad of toilet paper to blow my nose. "Why aren't I enough?"

"Bb, you're more than enough for me."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

"I understand. I screwed our history teacher in April."

I half-blanch, but then shake my head. "I knew it was impossible you got an A."

"A girl's gotta do, right? But he was hot."

"Yeah..." Mr. Williams was hot, if you got past the beard. "Are we even?"

"Bb, we'll always be even. Love you."

"You, too. Goodnight."

I get to my feet and wipe my swollen eyes. There is an unopened bottle of wine sitting in the refrigerator, just waiting for me. I find Mom's wine opener in her suitcase and pour a glass and shuffle out onto the balcony for some fresh air. My nose is still running, but I don't really care. My mind starts to wander back to Roman. Where are they now, on the interstate bound for some other destination, cursing the bane of my existence? I shouldn't have been so stupid—I should've known John would come looking. That he would find me.

Maybe if I'd listened to Maggie, maybe if I'd been more of a fan...

Stop it.

My phone vibrates in my back pocket and I pull it out again, thinking it's Maggie, but it's Mom. "Junie!" she exclaims, relieved, when I answer. "Where are you? Are you all right?"

"Yeah, we went to the Strand."

"Did you eat dinner?"

I can't even think about food. "Yeah Mom. We did."

"Don't you ever go so long without calling me again! You just up and left without anyone knowing! I was worried sick. Charles was worried sick."

I shake my head. Chuck would never be worried sick over me. "It's okay, Mom. What do you think would happen if I went off to college? I was fine—"

"It was still very rude. Your father would be so disappointed in you."

A lump forms in my throat. Would he really? "Okay, Mom."

"And Junie?" she adds before I hang up.

"Yes, Mom?"

Her voice softens with a sigh. "I love you to the moon and back." It's something she started saying to me when I was little. I think her mom told it to her, too. She doesn't say it all the time, usually when she's mad or worried. It's code for it's okay, I'm not really mad.

I swallow the knot in my throat with a sip of wine. "You, too."

Below, the beach is vacant. Pitch black waves rock against the pale gray sand, in and back out into the sea. There isn't a divide between the sea and the sky tonight. It looks infinite when the stars shine like brilliant diamonds on a velvet-black curtain. I read somewhere once that the stars were just holes in the heavens where the love of our lost ones pours through the sky to tell us that they are happy and that they are all right. I imagine if that's true then Dad's the Big Dipper. Leave it to him to be the big-ass ladle in the sky.

Would he really be disappointed?

I pour myself another glass and toast to the Big Dipper, and for the next hour, I talk with him about Roman, because Roman had begun to fill the crevice my dad left behind. What am I to a rock star if all I am in a secret?

What did I mean to Caspian?

What does the foreclosure mean to Mom?

All secrets. All locked away. All unwanted.

That is one thing I never wanted to be.





WE ARE GOLDEN

by Rue Norfolk

The Juice, June Issue #317

It’s early June, and I’ve waited outside of Muse Records for three hours. I am hot. I am sweaty. Los Angeles has never been more like Hell. However, there is one saving grace in this fire and brimstone town: Holly Hudson. She is supposed to walk through those double doors and into my life in five minutes (as long as I keep my camera tucked safely in my car, her PR agent stressed).

Holly Hudson, best known for the sensational rock band, Roman Holiday, with playboy frontrunner Roman Montgomery and estranged pianist Boaz Alexander, reportedly celebrated her birthday last week by herself. Which is odd considering she could have more hot tail than every bachelor on the Sunset Strip combined. And yet, she is still fantastically single.

So, my editor has dutifully charged me to find out why.

Holly Hudson barges out of the double doors, screaming into her phone, waving her hands in the air as if channeling a lightning strike to whoever is unfortunate enough to be on the other end. Her ringlets of chestnut hair are pulled into a high ponytail, bracelets singing in a chorus of clatter, her clothes a retrograde neon 80s fashion nightmare. But she works it. After all, her sensational style has been on the cover of Elle and Vanity Fair for months. They’re calling it “eclectic.” She has tucked her trademark peacock feather behind her left ear today, bouncing with her boundless energy.

“I told you she’d be here! Honestly, you never listen anymore! RoMo, I swear to God, if there’s one scratch on that rabbit I will cut off your penis and feed it to the sharks at the LA Zoo!”

Mystery solved.

She has always been one fiery phoenix of a girl, having risen from poverty to become one of the highest-paid entertainers on the market. She ends the call before her bright eyes—diamonds of blue that pin me like icy daggers—set on me. She slides her phone into her left bra strap and presses her hands on her hips.

“The Juice,” she says deploringly.

“Rue, actually. Rue Norfolk. I spoke with you on the phone—”

“You’re early.”

“Actually, you’re—”

“Let’s skip the small-talk.” She descends the steps on her f*ck-me heels and stops a foot and a half away. Her rep says she’s five foot three and one hundred and thirteen pounds, but I’m two inches smaller and twenty pounds lighter, and she looks anorexic. Closer, her cheeks are gaunt and dark rings show under her eye makeup.

“Small talk skipped,” I confirm.

She cocks her head. “Wait… aren’t you the little shit who wanted to order Chip 'N Dales for me?”

“And take you out to dinner. That’s still an option.” I grin.

“I never said no to the Chip 'N Dales.”

Her manager interrupts then, shooting Holly a meaningful look. “But she’s much too busy with her schedule,” the man digresses.

Holly sighs, and tells Joe Maroski she doesn't need a babysitter. “I’ll be a princess, I promise,” she says, before leading me up the street to a little corner cafe. Joe tries to deter us—I have, after all, stepped on all but one of his toes in the past—but once Holly’s mind is set there is no changing it.

I wonder if it’s safe for her without a bodyguard. Rumor has it, she hasn’t kept the same one for more than a month; the poor man-beasts can never keep up with her. She’s like the Hope Diamond on legs. You get one look at her in the open and you’ll never remember another cheap-ass engagement ring again, but good luck catching her.

At the cafe, she orders a skinny soy latte, no whip, in a dejected sort of tone that tells me she’d rather have the triple mocha latte with extra whip, and could you be a doll and drizzle some of that caramel on it too?

I order a tea.

“It must be hard,” I begin, “to be in the public eye all the time.”

We sit at a window seat, a peculiar spot, since it’s just inviting the paparazzi to take a good shot of her. Perhaps that is her plan: playing nice with the paparazzi—after all, I'm one of them. “That’s one question you can’t ask," she replies, "so save your breath. Oh, and don’t ask about my family. Or Roman.”

“Why is he so secretive?”

“You can’t ask that.”

There goes half of my interview. The world believes that they are the Cory and Topanga of Hollywood. I size up her expression, her mood, but she has sealed it all away. Even testing the waters might land me on the permanent blacklist, and that would be bad for business. So, we skim the water to find something we can talk about.

Which is—that’s right—the weather.

“Got a hot date on this beautiful Friday evening?”

She’s not going for it. “I don’t see why you try to interview people like me. I’m not going to tell you what you want to know. I won’t tell you where I live or what type of car I drive. You want to know my astrology sign? Aries. My SAT scores were 1460. Someday, I want to play a gig at Madison Square Garden.”

“Which, congratulations, by the way. Summer of next year, right? End of July?”

“I’m stoked.” A smile blossoms onto her face like a moonflower. “It’s been my dream since, well, ever.”

“So dreams really can come true.”

“Sometimes…” She shrugs. “Dreams change, too. What you thought you wanted at sixteen isn’t what you want at twenty.”

“Did you ever dream you’d be on the cover of Vanity Fair?”

“Used to!” She forces a laugh. “Now, all I dream about is a good night’s sleep.”

I nod sympathetically. “This sort of popularity must be tough. You’re the spokeswoman for Covergirl now, right? And a lot of charities.”

“Yeah,” is all she says. She sips at her skinny soy latte, looking out the window. A little girl passes with her mom and pauses at the window. She recognizes Holly, who smiles and waves down to her. Holly Hudson really is a good role model, despite what the reps say about her private life. There are rumors about her maladjustment to the pressure of constant popularity, but it’s not evident in my interview with her. She smiles and she’s happy, and sometimes she stares longingly out the window.

“If you could do it all again, would you?” I finally ask.

Her pink lips, seen in commercials for Covergirl across the nation, press into a half-moon frown. “I would do one thing different.”

“And what’s that?”

Her eyes light on me, and she gives a coy grin. “You’re not allowed to ask that.”

Four years ago, Holly Hudson was a high school sophomore, known for her killer guitar videos on YouTube and seven-year spelling bee championship. Her best friend, Roman Montgomery, was a high school deadbeat working at a mini-golf course as a pirate on the weekends (there were bounties of booty jokes, I bet). Then everything changed when Roman and Holly made the decision to film a first music video in the basement of her house. “We were just dicking around, Roman and me,” she’d reportedly told Esquire when they first catapulted into YouTube fame and scored the infamous record deal with Muse Records. “We didn’t expect people to enjoy us in our pajamas. Boaz came a few months later. We met him in Las Vegas. We really dug his style, so we became a threesome.”

The sleeper hit, 'Crush on You', escalated to the number one hit in the nation a month later.

The rest, they say, is history.

A paparazzo passes the window and snaps a flurry of photos. She tugs down the blinds without even looking up.

"Then what can I ask?" I finally cave, because all of my questions are apparently enemy territory.

She shrugs. “The thing I don’t like about interviews is how twisted words can get. If I say I love Roman, you think we’re having sex. What is love, anyway? I know the word in fourteen different languages. I can give you examples of their uses. Everyone wants to know about love. About my love, so you can twist it any way you want. But what about saudade? Duende? Toska? Words that should be like love—untranslatable.”

The door to the cafe opens, and a guy in a New York Yankees baseball cap and Ray-Bans makes a b-line for our table. An errant fan? Amusement crosses Holly’s face as she pulls off his sunglasses. I’m struck dumbfounded.

Why, hello there Roman Montgomery.

“You really are gorgeous,” I make the mistake of saying.

“Thanks, you, too,” he replies absently, and presses to Holly, “Joe-Blow needs us back.”

“Needs or wants?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Roman.”

“Holly.”

“I’m staying. The interview isn't over yet.” Even though it pretty much is.

“You’ve stayed long enough,” he retorts.

“Let me finish my coffee.”

“Is that it?” He points to her cup.

“No.”

He slams the entire drink back, drains it, and makes a face. “Gross, soy. Okay, now you’re done. Let’s go.”

"You’re buying me another one.”

They bicker like an old married couple.

I ask if he wants to join us, partly because I don’t want to attempt to follow in fear that my knees might buckle, and partly because seeing Roman out in the daylight is like seeing a panda in the wild.

“Pain in the ass,” he replies. “Too many people with camera phones and Twitter accounts.”

In all accounts, that's very true.

Their lives are swept along hidden skyways: the backdoors of music studios, their secluded apartment, and their unmarked cars. Holly gives him a pleading look and he sighs, sits, and removes his hat. He reminds me of a fugitive on the run, a tiger that has escaped his cage. If he’s a tiger, then Holly is a flightless bird, trapped in an ever-narrowing maze of cages. Even in the cafe, they’re squashed together, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the same predicament for however long their empire lasts.

A lot of Hollywood starlets don’t get the buddy treatment. They should be lucky.

“So… what’s this interview about?” he asks.

“Me,” Holly replies.

“What about you?”

“Everything. My bank accounts in Switzerland, illicit love affairs, my baby’s Daddy in Zimbabwe.”

“I didn’t know about the baby,” he replies in mock-seriousness, and then waves his hand off toward me. “You know how these cockroaches are—excuse me, paparazzi are cockroaches. You, Madame, are a vulture.”

“Potato, tomato.” I shrug. I ask him point-blank about his drinking problem, the slew of heartbroken one-night-stands, his reckless driving ticket, the speeding tickets—all seven, the rumored drug habit...

“I’m twenty,” he says as if it’s the end-all excuse.

“No, you’re reckless,” Holly counters. I like her more and more, a girl not afraid to bust a super hot guy’s balls.

“Life in the fast lane,” he impromptu-sings.

“Did you sing that into the girl’s boobs last night?”

“I do not serenade women’s breasts. I’m surprised you even think that, Holly,” he replies with mock-indignation. “And here I thought we were besties.”

“The Eagles, really?”

“Rather me sing Hall and Oats?”

“Take that back or I’ll burn all your Elvis records.”

“Ooh, I’m shaking in my blue suede shoes!”

I prompt, "So, you like being infamous, Roman?”

“Like it? I love it!” He laughs. “It’s the best thing that could’ve happened to us, right Hols?”

“Right.”

“Where do you get your inspiration?” I ask them. “A girl? Love? 'My Heart War' is pretty hipster,” I comment.

He shrugs. “Everything. I do most of the lyrics, but Hols and Boaz are good at the beat.”

Holly rolls her eyes. “And as long as I’m alive he’ll never write a song about a girl. It’s so cliché.” She scowls, although Roman is quick to argue.

“But everyone writes songs about girls. KISS, The Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber…”

“The Biebs has a girlfriend song?”

“If not, he probably will.”

“Isn’t it called 'Boyfriend'?”

“Whatever floats his boat.”

Before I know it, my time has run out. Holly asks if I have any last questions before they leave. And I do—one question for her. Roman says he’ll meet her outside.

“What is one word to describe you and Roman?” I ask after he’s gone.

She doesn’t even blink. “Ya’aburnee.”

Three hours later, I find myself in the small hotel room I can afford on my measly paycheck. There’s a cockroach in the bathroom, and I’m not sure whether it’s alive or pretending to be dead. As I sit down and lament over my own romantic failures, and how thankful I am to have a job that I love as much as it loves me, I type Holly’s word into Google.

Ya’aburnee.

Arabic. Morbid and beautiful, it is a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before the other because life, no matter how wonderful and exciting, would be too difficult without them.

It means, quite simply, “You bury me.”