Roman Holiday

chapter Two

Tonight is Cas and my six-month anniversary—I mean non-anniversary. We're not public. Or anything official. I feel like I have to keep reminding myself that, but after tonight I won't have to. After tonight, we can go on real dates like real couples. Because we'll be official.

i got a surprise for u bby! ull luv it (; he texts.

His parents are both away on business—they're never home together, and when they are Cas makes sure to stay as far away from the house as possible—so he has the house to himself for the next two weeks. His dad's off in Colorado for a business retreat, and his mother is taking another "girl's vacation" to Cancun. Alone. So I can see why Caspian doesn't want to put a label on us. Just because two people are together doesn't mean they're in love, and just because they're married doesn't mean they don't love other people in the dead of the night.

I toss my phone into the passenger seat and crank up the station wagon. Chuck bought Mom a new car after they married, so I got saddled with this piece of shit car. At least it runs—on good luck and prayers.

The Gardener household is more like a hotel. Seven bedrooms, four full baths, and a living room as big as the garage. It easily dwarfs every single house around it. I park my cruddy car in the dirt pit beside the driveway so passing cars can't see it, and quickly change into a black skirt and tank-top that shows as much cleavage as I can offer—which isn't much. Fixing my hair in the rearview mirror, I pray that he'll like my hair. Anything's better than dishwater blond, right?

I sneak around to the back of the house. The glint of security cameras reflects the spotlights that snap on the moment I step onto the immaculate green backyard. I twirl a lock of my hair nervously, and knock on the back door. It's late. I hope he isn't mad.

We’ve been planning tonight since we first started...whatever this is. So, it's a big deal. Partly because I'm afraid of what I might have to lose in return for a public relationship, and partly because I'm afraid he won't want it.

Yeah, I'm nervous as hell.

Stop it, Junebug. You're beautiful. He'll think you're beautiful.

The doorknob rattles a second before the door opens and he bathes me in his brilliant white smile. My nervousness melts away. "Hey baby," he croons, and bends in for a kiss, "you're late."

"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."