Roman Holiday

chapter Twenty-Seven

For the next hour, Nick Lively goes through—in horrifyingly specific detail, I might add—the events that led up to mine and Maggie's arrest. When they show a live view of the police station, the guard swivels back to us with a wide-eyed look. "That's you?" he gawks.

"Fame!" Maggie singsongs.

The guard's face grows wide in surprise before the door opens, and he quickly scrambles to his feet. "Sir," he greets the other officer, who stops at our cell door and barks both of our names in a rumbling baritone. Maggie and I jump to our feet. No wonder the guard looks scared shitless. This guy is a behemoth.

"This way, girls," the new officer rumbles.

We scuttle after him. We'll take the hell-hath-no-fury officer over the copious amounts of drunks who have begun to populate our small cell. We barely have any elbowroom as we wiggle our way out. Nesky was right about Thirsty Thursday, and one of the drunks was beginning to look a little grabby.

Big 'N Tall leads us to a nondescript office and closes the door after us, waving his hand to two metal chairs. We plunk ourselves down in them, the metal cold against my bare thighs. I really want my shorts back. The cold seeps right through these gym shorts.

The officer—no, he has to be more than an officer to have an office, a major? Lieutenant?— takes a seat on the other side of the desk, and his thin gray mustache twitches as he reaches down and pulls up two bags full of our clothing. I sigh in relief.

"Let's talk, girls," he says, sliding an emerald gaze between the two of us. It looks familiar, but I can't quite place it. Had he been to CherryTree before on a disturbance complaint with my dad?

Maggie elbows me in the side and whispers out of the corner of her mouth, "Check. Tag."

Oh, dear f*ck.

Maybe the policeman had been to CherryTree on a noise ordinance, but that isn't how I recognize the eyes. His badge reads, in full, BYRD MONTGOMERY. I swallow hard. I can finally put a face to the man who disowned his son. I don't blame Roman for never confronting his father—the man's a giant. And he has a look that could freeze steam. I probably have a death wish, but I summon up enough courage to ask, "I'm sorry, this is a stupid question but...are you Roman's..."

He studies me and leans back in his chair. "If I am?"

"We're big fans?" Maggie offers with a timid laugh, shooting me an are-you-insane-or-do-you-have-a-death-wish look.

"Most young women are," he replies. "What I don't understand is why two fans would desecrate Holly Hudson's vigil by streaking naked to give my son time to escape."

"Did...he get caught?"

"No, he called me."

I blink. Once. Twice. Had I heard wrong? Roman...called his father because of us? And his father answered?

Seeing my confusion, he adds, "Multiple times." He slides the plastic bags with our clothes in it back over to us. "Both of you are banned from every cemetery in Horry County for life."

We stare at our wrinkled clothes. At the very bottom is the Roman Holiday underwear that started it all.

"That's it?" I ask. "We're free to go?"

"What about our bail?" Maggie adds.

"Paid." He stands and adjusts his belt. "And both of you are advised to be out of the county by morning. As in, you will be out of this county by morning."

Maggie's jaw drops. "You're kicking us out of Myrtle Beach?"

He inclines a graying eyebrow. He really does look a lot like Roman, from the facial structure to the condescending way he can raise just one eyebrow and make the rest of the world feel infinitely stupider. "Or I can escort you back to your cell."

Maggie turns to me with a definitive nod. "You know, I'm feeling totes homesick. You?"

"Totes," I agree.

We grab our bags, and they take us out the back. Officer Nesky is kind enough to drive us back to Maggie's car on his patrol so we bypass the media vans setting up out front. Through the rearview mirror, I watch as Roman's father greets Nick Lively with a handshake—and then promptly scares him back into his van.

By the time Nesky drops us off by Maggie's car with the warning that, come morning if we're still around we're more or less under arrest again.

"Didn't even get to lay out..." Maggie mutters, pulling onto the road, our esteemed officer following close behind. "Eh, I'd get all ashy, anyway."

I pick up the tabloid I'd tossed down into the floorboards earlier today and leaf to the article about me. I can't even remember what I thought was going to happen five hours ago—that he'd ask me to come along? That he would forgive me for something I had no control over in the first place? That somehow, in this odd, strange mess of a circumstance, he could realize how we deserved each other?

Which, I now realize, was a stupid idea.

"I mean, he totes can't follow us all the way back to the condo, right? He wouldn't, would he? I mean, I might gotta take a poo when we get back to the condo, and you still have to pack..."

I nod absently, scanning through the article. It's my name, over and over. Junie Baltimore. Junie Baltimore. Junie Baltimore.

Maybe John should've gotten the memo that Junie Baltimore doesn't exist anymore. It's Junie Conway—if I would've been born a month sooner, it could still be Baltimore, but I was still seventeen when Mom and Chuckles wed.

"...And then a big green penis came out of the sky and K.O.-ed everyone."

Startled, I glance up from the article. "Excuse me?"

"You weren't even listening!" Maggie accuses with a pout.

"I was!" I argue, but she rolls her eyes and I give in. "Okay, I really wasn't."

"You totes gave that garbage more attention than me. I'm hurt. Genuinely."

I clasp the tabloid to my chest. "You lie!" I gasp, trying to be funny, but when she frowns and doesn't reply with her usually witty comebacks, I drop the tabloid back to the floorboards. "What's wrong?"

"I feel like a total skank, bb, following John around for a whole year while the bastard went on this massive manhunt for RoMo...and I actually enjoyed it." She shivers. The cars on the interstate rush by in a blur. "Just so you know, like, I totes would've never done something like that. You know, if I was a pap. I wouldn't have..."

I put a comforting hand on Maggie's shoulder. "I know. You would've made up something better."

"Damn, yeah, I would—I mean, me? A pap? C'mon, bb, we all know I got better tastes than The Juice."

"Start your own magazine. Call it The Red Rag."

She makes a face. "Ew, totes gross. I'd call it something classy, like Incognito or something."

"Sounds ominous."

"That's the plan—if you end up in Incognito, then you totes did something super stupendous. Or super stupid."

My attention drifts down to the tabloid at my feet again. I wonder how often people think they are doing stupendous things that are stupid...or stupid things that turn out stupendous.

When we reach the condo, Officer Nesky—who has been trialing us the entire time—pulls up behind us in the loading zone to wait while I pack my things. Halfway back, I began to devise a plan on how to break the news to Mom and Chuck, hoping that they haven't seen the news. If they have? I might as well go ahead and ground myself. As we pass the breezeway on the way up, Chuck materializes out of the elevator. I must jump three feet out of my skin.

"OhmyGod!" I slam a hand on my haywire heart. "You scared the shit out of me."

He puts a hand on my shoulder, his face unreadable. "Junie," he says in his best fatherly tone. My shoulders wilt. Oh no, he's seen the news. "We need to talk."

I hope for help from my best gal pal, but Maggie points upstairs and slips into the elevator without me with an apologetic smile. Remind me never to rely on her for help ever again.

"I really don't want to..."

"Junie."

What I want to talk about is how I really, really want to talk to my dad. And that's something neither of us can grant.

"All right."

He leads me out onto the pool deck. It's dark, and most of the vacationers are out at dinner or playing mini-golf. He sits down in one of the chairs and I take the one beside him.

He laces his fingers together. "Your mother and I...we know. Your mug's been all over the news, Junie."

I deflate a little. Of course, he'll talk to me about getting arrested but not about the foreclosure. I'm not privy enough to know that sort of thing in their eyes. "Yeah, that..."

"And I just wanted to tell you that it is all right. We all do stupid stuff. Hell, I still do stupid stuff. Like not telling you about the foreclosure.”

Suddenly, he has my attention. "How did you know I knew?"

He shifts in his chair, scratching the back of his neck nervously. The bald spot on his head gleams in the moonlight. Dad had a bald spot too, but he always wore hats and bandanas so it wouldn't get sunburned. Chuck must put sunscreen on his. “Your mother found out. They called back.” He heaves a sigh. “We were going to tell you...after our vacation.”

“Oh.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t even know about it until I got the mail one day and there was a letter addressed to William Baltimore.”

“The bar's still in his name?” My voice is tight. "Mom didn’t transfer it over?"

“She didn’t want to. What I’m saying is, your mom wanted to handle it herself.”

“Handle it? She kept it a secret. That's my bar. That's my future."

"But it doesn't have to be," he tries to reason. "This is your life, Junie. The bar was your father's."

I ball my hands into fists. "And that is my father's bar. And my mom lied to me! She's known about it for God knows how long! We could've done something! I could've done something..."

But Chuck's shaking his head vehemently. "She was going to tell you. I married your mother because she’s honest, and she’s smart. She wouldn’t keep a secret like that from you. I wouldn't either. Don't hold this against her."

"It's hard not to."

"I know," he agrees softly. "But try to understand. Your mother hates secrets."

I have no argument to that. Mom could've kept Chuck a secret, but she hadn't. She chose instead to be ridiculed for marrying so soon after Dad's death that it reeked of an affair. They shunned her from the book club, from barbeques, from Homeowner meetings...she took it all with flawless elegance, electing to fill her time with new things—woodworking classes, yoga, weekends off with Chuck.

Even I know that Chuck and Mom honest-to-God love each other, and I know that Mom and Dad honest-to-God did, too, and a love like that you can't keep hidden because you don't want it secret. You want the whole world to know.

I'm not mad at Chuck because he loves my Mom. I'm mad at him because he’s not Dad. And, all of a sudden, that sounds like a very silly reason to be mad at someone at all.

"I'm just mad," I finally admit, "and I'm sort of scared."

He reaches over, very tentatively like I'm a wild tiger at the zoo, and places his hands over mine. It's supposed to be comforting, I guess, but his palms are sweaty and heavy. "We'll all sit down and figure it out, okay, Junie?" When I pull my hands out from his and wipe them on my shorts, he adds, "Is there anything else?"

"Remember when I went to get underwear?" There are still bits of dirt from the cemetery clinging to my nails.

Chuck thinks. "That the night I had cherry moonshine? Good stuff, those Davidsons...what about it?"

I take a deep breath and start from the beginning. It's a long story, and I flub a few things—I leave out the beach, and dancing at the Lona, and the CD in his car—but I have to give him credit for listening so long. As the words spill from my mouth, it feels like a great anchor has been untied from my feet, and I am slowly rising back to the surface for air. I know about secrets, and I know about lies, and I know they can fester far deeper than any truth ever will.

When I finish, he puts a hand on my knee and says in a very solemn voice, "Junie Conway, you're grounded—for life."