Roman Holiday

Tuesday

Chapter Thirty-Three

The Black Sheep were new-metal indie rock. And terrible at that. They screamed the entire time, and the guitarist fell off the stage drunk before the end of the set. What's worse, instead of drawing a crowd, they repelled people like the Black Plague. That should've been their band name.

I still have a headache from that stupid band when I wake up in the morning. Sleeping only made it worse. That, and the paranoia setting in. A paparazzo got a shot of me changing into my PJs last night and thirty minutes later, it was viral on every Roman Holiday forum on the net. The most constructive criticism I got was "Slut nds 2 wrkout."

Welcome to Junie's Hell.

Chuck has to drive me to the Lining again. Second day on the floorboards and it's getting old.

Twisting my hair up into a sloppy bun, I tell Geoff, "I'm taking ten before we open. Didn't get a chance to eat dinner."

"Sure thing boss." He salutes. There are dark circles under his eyes where he didn't get much sleep. He managed to keep himself together during hours last night, but he ducked out the moment we closed. I think he's still in the clothes he wore yesterday. "We getting any deliveries today?"

"The usual Tuesday shipment. Stock what you can and put the rest in the back." I grab my purse and return his salute.

"Don't get caught!" he hollers after me.

I pull up the hood of my jacket and open the front door. A paparazzo leaning against a meter perks and snaps a few shots before I dash by him. He follows me halfway down the street until I lose him in a boutique and pop out the back entrance. That's one good thing about Asheville, I guess. Bookstores sit beside coffee shops that sit beside art galleries and bakeries and eclectic shops you can get lost in for hours. Dad and I used to walk through downtown every Wednesday while Mom went to her book club meeting at the library. She doesn’t go to book club anymore—although with how well my slut-shame has gotten around, she might be welcomed back with open arms.

I rarely walk downtown anymore. It’s as if Dad’s ghost follows me wherever I go, breathing down my neck, so that I’m both alone and never alone, always with him and without him. Kind of like whenever I turn on the radio and hear him.

I duck into my favorite bakery and wave at the cashier, Mac, behind the counter. “So what’ll it be?” Mac asks. “I got a good cheesecake today.”

“I’m in a double-chocolate mood,” I reply, and he cuts me a piece of plush chocolate cake, nutty peanut butter lining—the works. It’s decadent and savory, Dad’s favorite. Mine too, when I am on the verge of an emotional breakdown.

Paparazzi, Roman, foreclosure...

I'm pretty sure my life is beginning to rival a soap opera.

On the way home from the beach, Maggie discussed her plans for saving the Lining. She calls it Operation Rock-N-Hard-Place, because that's exactly where the Lining is now. A car wash wouldn't be enough money, and since the only gigs that come through our bar are the local kind, a benefit concert is out of the question. I don't want to tell Maggie that the future looks bleak, but in a month she won't have to worry about it anymore. She'll be at NYU studying journalism. Caspian will be at Northwestern.

And I'll be here, eating double-chocolate cake and listening to Roman Holiday on the radio, and consoling Geoff. The paparazzi will die down soon enough when they realize I'm nothing to Roman Montgomery. He hasn't even made a public statement about me. After the photos ran, he emerged in L.A. with his manager and answered everything the press asked him—about the photos, about his music, where he's been for the past eleven months. But the moment they bring up my name? Interview over. Like I really am a secret—or worse, not important enough to be a secret.

A pair of high schoolers at the window table—they look like sophomores—suddenly gasp. One flips her long, black hair back and asks Mac, “Hey, turn it up! It's about Roman Holiday!"

Mac reaches back and turns up the volume. "I thought they were broken up."

"... although it is not confirmed by manager Joe Maroski, rumor has it that Roman Montgomery of Roman Holiday will challenge Jason Dallas for the infamous Garden gig he lost a few months ago—"

The high schoolers sigh together. The black-headed one tells her friend, "I can't believe they let him walk free. Is there no justice in this world?"

"He so didn't kill Holly," her friend replies. "Didn't you see those pics? Roman's totally nowhere in the picture. His car's not even in the garage in one of the pics."

"That doesn't mean he wasn't there though."

"It totally does. Like, in one of the photos you see him walking into the bathroom and trying CPR on her. Totally heartbreaking!"

"Probably the first time he ever kissed her."

"You're such a bitch." Her friend scowls.

This feels like déjà vu.

Nick Lively goes on, "Roman Montgomery has yet to comment on this rumor after the debacle at Myrtle Beach, but his manager has confirmed that he was not in Myrtle Beach during the vigil. More curiously, what has happened to Junie Baltimore? Have we seen the last of her? This is Nick Lively, glad to be home in Los Angeles, and this was Five on Five News."

Mac turns down the radio again when Jason Dallas's new song begins, and suddenly the bakery is very, very quiet. I look up from my cake in mid-chew. Mac and the high schoolers stare at me expectantly, like I'm supposed to say something.

I swallow and clear my throat. "What? Is there something on my face?"

The girls whip back around and whisper quietly to themselves. Mac leans over the counter. "Are you still...?"

"What, do you really think I'd be that lucky?" I point out.

Mac laughs. "You're right. Impossible."

Impossibly possible.

I lift my gaze to the window just in time to catch the paparazzo I dodged earlier staring at me. Like an evil roach, he brings his camera to his face. I take a huge bite of cake just so he can take the photo and give him the bird.

"Do you got a back door?" I ask Mac with a mouthful, handing him my empty plate.

Speechless, he thumbs behind him.

"Thanks." I pull the hood up over my head again and leave, squeezing down the tight alleyway and back up the hill to the Silver Lining.

From the outside, the bar's an unassuming building. Beautiful red brickwork, two stories, framed with large square windows. I'm not quite sure what it was before Dad bought it and renovated the building, but now it's home. A neon sign hangs off the side of the wall, an arrow with the name spelt vertical inside it, pointing down to the simple black-door entrance.

Hal's already on his barstool outside, clenching and unclenching his biceps, inspecting them. He looks up when I call his name, and grins bashfully. "Hey, boss."

"Nice pecks," I comment and fist-bump him. "It's gonna be an easy night. No bands."

"It's always easy, boss."

"Even with the paparazzi? Job's getting too easy for you, Hal?" I joke.

"Job's never hard if you enjoy it," he replies. My face falls a fraction. "You okay, boss? With all this attention and everything..."

"I'll be fine," I reply. "Don't worry about me—oh, and keep Cas out tonight, too."

"Still bitter?"

"Geoff is." I sigh as he opens the door for me. I step inside, the air cool and heady with mahogany and bourbon. It's too dark to see the scuffs on the slick wood floor, and the gum under the tables, but a blue neon glows over the liquor bottles behind Geoff, casting pale shadows across the barstools and high-top tables. Geoff flips a shaker behind his back and catches it, never missing a note as he hums along to Roman Holiday's "Crush on You." He pours a virgin martini for my best friend.

Maggie stops spinning on one of the bar stools and a grin spreads across her face. "My love!" she cries, throwing up her arms.

I throw up mine and we slow-motion run into a colliding hug. "Where have you been all my life!" I mock-wail.

Anguished, she jerks her head away. "In the land of men! It was sexy and very, very tiring!"

"Welcome home. Hell's been expecting you."

She throws back her head and laughs, the new beads on the ends of her dreads clattering together like wooden wind chimes. "I don't know why I ever left. Any bands tonight?"

"Nope."

"Good!" she chirps. "I've already talked to Geoff and he said he'd cover for you if I stole you away for the evening."

I hop up on the barstool next to her. "I'm still grounded, bb."

"And Geoff will cover, hello." She rolls her eyes. "What else are you going to do tonight?"

"Let's see here, play a paparazzi game of hide and seek?"

She makes a face. "We'll give them something to really take pictures of. C'mon, bb. I promise it's not Quidditch," she adds, taking my hands in hers. "Let's show everyone the Silver Lining's greatest secret."

"Secret? I'm front page news, bitch!"

She thrusts her fist into the air and crows, "That's the spirit! Thought we'd hit up that new techno bar down the street. You know, do a little bump and grind. Get our groovy on."

"See, that's just not fair. Why do I have to miss all the fun stuff?" Geoff pouts, taking an envelope out of his back pocket. He extends it to me as Maggie downs her drink and pulls her purse over her shoulder. "Some guy dropped this off while you were out. Oh, and we got that package of lights you ordered last week."

I don't even glance at the envelope, waving it away. "Oh, no, I've had enough hate mail to last me the week. Seventeen more came today."

Geoff shrugs and sets the letter down in front of me. "Then, love, you do the honors of trashing it."

"With pleasure."

Picking it up, I aim it for the garbage behind the counter, but something slides inside the envelope. Curiously, I flip it over, and suddenly my stomach drops into my toes.

In a squinty chicken-scratch handwriting is one word:

Junebug

My heart suddenly migrates to my throat, because I recognize that handwriting. My fingers find their way under the lip of the letter, and I slowly pry it open.

"Bb?" Maggie calls from the door and mimics the white-man shuffle with Hal. "Coming or what? Time to feed the beast! Arrroooooo!" she howls.

"Yeah, gimme a sec."

I dig into the envelope. There are two pieces of paper. The smaller piece is thicker. Even without reading it, I've been to enough concerts to know what a ticket looks like. I turn it over. A single admission to Jason Dallas's BLACKHEARTED tour at Madison Square Garden Saturday night.

The other piece of paper is a letter folded in half. There are only four words on it, written in the same chicken-scratch handwriting, that sends an electric shiver through my blood and bones.

Secrets don't make friends.

"Hey, bb!" Maggie calls again from the front door, and drums her hands against the doorway. "Time's ticking and I still gotta do my hair! Pick out my clothes, reapply my makeup...anyway, I have a lot to do before we go out!"

I hold up the letter to Maggie. "Did you see who delivered this?"

She shakes her head. "I just got here."

I turn to Geoff and he sets down the glass he's cleaning. "That bad, huh?"

"What did he look like?" I ask, unable to keep the crackle from my voice.

"Sorta tall, New York Yankees hat, and red suspenders. Like your dad used to wear—hey! Where are you going?"

I dart out the door, Maggie close on my heels.

"Bb, what's wrong? Who's—?"

"It's Roman."

"He's here?" She looks down both ways of the sidewalk as if she'll find him disappearing around a corner. How long had it been since he dropped it off? He could be gone by now. "Okay. I go left and you go right, plan?"

Nodding, I break into a run down toward Haywood Street, looking through the sharp glare of the evening sun into shop windows, for him. Why would he deliver it personally? Why not just send it by mail? He must know I'm being watched like a hawk by the paparazzi. He must know I'm a social pariah now. Why would he come here? Why wouldn't he stay to see me?

When I get to Haywood, I hang a right up the street. I pass Mac's bakery, a bookstore—and then I pause.

I turn around.

He steps out of the bookstore. His hat is tugged low over dark chocolate hair. His original color, but I can't imagine him with anything other than that god-awful orange. He's wearing clothes that can't be cheap, acid-wash jeans, Nikes, and a graphic t-shirt, but I can recognize him from the suspenders. Those cruddy red suspenders he always wore.

"Junie." His voice is soft. He has his hands in his pockets, one wrist wrapped in an expensive-looking leather band.

"Hi," I reply, breathless. The envelope is bent in my hand.

We don't say anything for a long moment, partly because I'm afraid I'll say the wrong thing and he'll disappear, and partly because I'm not sure what else there is left to say.

"Thank you for the photos," he finally says.

"They weren't mine to do anything with."

"Anyway, thank you."

I nod, and another stretch of silence falls between us. There's so much I want to say, how the few moments with him were better than most every moment without him, that whenever I fall asleep I dream of another world where we aren't Junie and Roman, but two anonymous people who met and fell in love. I want to ask if he loves me, or if he ever entertained the idea. I want to know if all those moments he spent with me are as golden as they are in my soul, and how little by little he has begun to fill the space my father left behind.

I want to ask if I'm anywhere in his heart, if I am enough for him as he is for me.

But I'm afraid where those questions will lead, and I'm afraid that everything that needs to be said already has been.

I'm afraid that the scar of Holly is too big, and my importance too insignificant. Secrets don't make friends. I feel the envelope, and finally realize what I really want to know.

"Why weren't you there?"

He raises his eyes to meet mine. The evening light makes the hues of green a murky, muddy orange, and filled with so little warmth I almost don't want to look into them at all.

He knows what I mean—not why he wasn't there that night, although that, in retrospect, he had a little to do with it. What I mean is why he wasn't there for her. Why hadn't he seen the signs Boaz so easily noticed?

Or maybe the greater guilt is that he had noticed them, and maybe that is his burden to begin with.

I hold up the ticket and the note. "Secrets don't make friends," I repeat. "I deserve to know, don't I? That, at least?"

He shifts from one foot to the other as a couple passes, not even sparing him a second glance. They remind me, in aching clarity, of the night at the Isla Lona, and that we could be them. But there are too many snakes in the water, and there are too many caution signs of drowning for us to attempt. If I had to give my heart away to someone who'd never return it, I at least deserve the story no one else knows. I deserve the real one that made this man I can't help but love.

"It's a long story," he finally confides, and takes off that ridiculous NY Yankees baseball cap. At least, his hair matches his eyebrows now. "Would you..."—he motions down the sidewalk—"Please take a walk with me?"

He holds out the nook of his arm, and I pull mine through it, and we move down the sidewalk, touching, but now so many words unsaid apart.