Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues

Roman and Stanley were a match made in hell.

Ashley didn’t realize it at first. She thought, as they left the campground behind, it was possible things would turn out okay.

Roman would have handled the Stanley situation differently than she had, but that was too bad. Roman wasn’t in charge—she was. And she had to remain upbeat about her ability to make this trip work, because if she didn’t, who would? It was up to her to integrate this motley crew: one crotchety old man on an unstated mission, one freewheeling Florida beach bunny in mourning, and one Afro-Cuban developer from Wisconsin who, when he wasn’t kissing her, kept himself busy by ruining her life.

There had to be a joke in there somewhere.
An old codger, a sad tramp, and a hot Latino walk into a bar …

She didn’t feel like laughing.

Ashley didn’t actually feel up to any of it this morning, but she and Roman and Stanley were going to spend a lot of time in this car. It would take until early afternoon just to get to Ohio, and then onward to Wisconsin tomorrow, another two days’ driving. Starting off with a friendly atmosphere could set the tone for their entire trip.

Leaning forward, Ashley tried to convince herself she was eager to get the good times rolling.

“So Stanley, are you going to tell us why you’re interested in visiting Wisconsin all of a sudden?”

Stanley grunted.

That was it. No more. Just a grunt.

Ashley looked at the back of Roman’s neck. His hairline was getting a little softer—time for a cut, she guessed, if he were home in Miami. He probably had a standing appointment. That line across the back of his neck had been so precise when she met him … when?

“What day is it?” she asked.

“Monday.”

A week ago. Wow. It felt like a lifetime.

She slung an arm around him. “It’s our anniversary, Roman. Seven days since we met under that palm tree. How romantic. We’ll have to get drinks later to celebrate. Piña coladas, maybe.”

“It wasn’t the kind of palm tree with coconuts.”

“I know. With my luck, if it had been I’d have gotten conked in the head right off the bat. Wouldn’t that have made your life easier?”

She nuzzled her nose into the back of his neck. Roman’s chest rose and fell beneath her arm, but the stiffness in his posture made her think he was enduring rather than enjoying her attentions.

A shot of irritation made her want to lick his earlobe or suck on his neck. Annoy the crap out of him to pay him back for her shaky uncertainty about pretty much everything.

Yesterday, Roman had kissed her like he needed something, like she had it, like she
mattered
. He couldn’t take it back.

Maybe he wasn’t trying to. It could be he just didn’t go for PDA. Or he didn’t like being surprised by the last-minute addition of random old men to his travel plans. Roman wasn’t big on surprises.

She folded her forearms across the back of his seat. “Everybody’s so crabby. We should play a game or something. An icebreaker. Two truths and a lie? Roman, you first. Tell us three things about yourself, and one of them should be a lie.”

“I’m not a fan of icebreakers.”

“Come on. Give it a whirl.”

“The smell of your gum is giving me a headache.”

“That’s too easy—it’s got to be true. Now I’ll know whatever you say next has a fifty-fifty chance of being a lie.”

He sighed. “I’d rather not play, Ash.”

“Was that a lie? Because that could make everything kind of confusing. I think we should stick with non-game-playing-related lies, or else—”

“Please,” he said quietly. “I really do have a headache.”

Her gum soured. She felt jittery, a chittering tin top whirling in random spirals right at the edge of a drop. “Fine. Stanley? What about you?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Stanley said. “You want entertainment, talk to your boyfriend.”

“Who said I’m her boyfriend?” Roman asked.

“I’m old, not blind.”

Ashley clamped her jaw tight and sat back against the seat, annoyed with herself.

He wasn’t her boyfriend. It shouldn’t hurt to hear him deny it.

They rode along, listening to the highway noise and the distant squawk of the stereo. The mad spinning of the top in her head accelerated.

“Can somebody turn up the radio?”

No one did.

She unbuckled her seat belt, climbed over the armrest, and jacked up the volume.

Stanley scratched his ear, squinting at a sign. “You want to turn right up there.”

Roman glanced at his navigation system. “GPS says to go another four miles.”

“This way’s faster. Turn right.”

Roman passed the turn.

Stanley cleared his throat, lowered the window, and spat. The gob landed against the passenger-side window, where Ashley watched it smear across the glass, its stop-and-go progress a disgusting measure of their velocity.

Fuck
, she thought.
Fuck, fuck, fuck
.

She should have pulled Roman aside and given him some pointers on how to handle Stanley. He had to be handled, or else he got defensive and prickly, and when he was in this mood, he did things like accidentally-on-purpose spit on your car, just to see if he could wind you up.

Winding people up was kind of a sport for Stanley.

He began clearing phlegm from his throat.

“You spit in my car again, I’ll leave you by the side of the road,” Roman said.

“I didn’t spit
inside
the car, son.”

“I’m not your son.”

“Thank the Lord for small favors,” Stanley muttered.

“What did you say?”

“Guys—” Ashley interrupted.

“I said, ‘Thank the Lord for small favors.’ ”

“Roman, honey, you can’t actually put Stanley out of the car,” she said. “He’s old, and it’s hot.”

“Ashley,
honey
, whatever bed he makes, he’s gonna lie in it.”

“See, that’s the way he talks to you,” Stanley said. “He’s got no respect.”

“If I didn’t respect her,” Roman bit out, “Sunnyvale would be rubble by now.”

“Can we just try, like, a five-minute quiet period?” Her voice sounded far away, small. She couldn’t stand listening to the people she loved at odds with one another. It was what her parents had done when they were together, bicker and snap, one-up each other, score points until one of them won and the other started yelling. She’d always been in the middle, working to calm them as they shouted over the top of her head.

“Fine,” Roman said.

She was taking her second deep breath when Stanley twisted around in his seat to look at her, jerking his thumb in Roman’s direction. “You know why you should stay away from this one? He thinks he’s smarter than everybody else. Take that turn he blew past back there—that turn would’ve saved us half an hour, but he decides his computer knows better than a man who’s lived in this part of the country most of his life!”

“I might have made the turn,” Roman said calmly, “if you’d bothered to explain where it went. But I’m not going to blindly drive off the map because you say to. It might be fine for Ashley to follow your directions without questioning your motives, but …”

Ashley covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes.

They were making her heart race, and she was suddenly so tired. She’d been tired for days. Tired from thinking about her grandmother and tired from trying to figure out the right thing to do. Tired from looking through those boxes, tired from crying. She’d gone to the ghost town with Roman last night emptied out, willing to take whatever he gave her because she didn’t have the energy anymore to stop what was happening between them.

It had been enough to know he liked her. Enough that he wanted her, that he trusted her with his story, that he kissed like he meant it.

This morning, though, it wasn’t enough. Everything looked different, and it wasn’t because of Stanley, although it was starting to seem like bringing him along had been an epically bad idea. She’d been up half the night thinking about Roman and what she was getting into with him. What he wanted. Whose side he was on.

Because the thing about Roman was, he wanted her. He would take from her, take
her
if she let him—her support, her body—but what could he give her in return? They weren’t equals, they were antagonists. She was blackmailing him. That hadn’t changed.

And even if she slept with him, nothing
would
change.

Ashley had slept with the wrong men often enough to know that sex never shifted the balance of power or transformed anyone’s personality. Sex just made everything more complicated.

This was why they were heading to Ohio, rather than straight to Wisconsin. Not because she was afraid to go to Wisconsin—although, yeah, she was. It scared her to think about talking with Esther about her grandma. She feared getting to the end of this trip only to discover she still had no answers and no idea where to go next.

They were going to Ohio because Ashley wanted to see Nana.

Nana had confidence. Nana was
direct
. She knew exactly who she was and what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid to say it. She was energetic, bawdy, funny, and she called things like she saw them.

Nana was incapable of making the sort of mistake with a man that Ashley had been making ever since she grew boobs, and if Ashley could just get to Camelot, Ohio, to ask her, Nana would help her sort out how to think about all this—her feelings for Roman, her power over him, his power over her.

When her shoulders got sore, she had to drop her hands from her ears. Roman and Stanley had stopped fighting about her and started plucking subjects to argue over out of the scenery—farm subsidies and the interstate highway system, duck hunting, the “check engine” indicator that had lit up on the dash. Anything. Everything.

This was what Stanley did when he found someone new to do it to.
God
, how had Ashley failed to anticipate this? And why the hell was Roman letting him get away with it?