He walks backwards on his toes like a kid, which is oddly cute.
“I didn’t name her.” He shrugs and unlocks the car. “So, it’s 5:49,” he adds as he glances down at his Rolex, probably the most expensive thing I’ve seen him wear. “Grub or go straight to the bar?”
“Where’re we going?”
“Where it all started,” is his cryptic reply.
The car starts with a cough and with a burp of black smoke it rumbles out of the lot and down a side road.
My cell phone begins to vibrate. I swear, if it’s Mom wanting to know where I’m going...
The ID blinks an unsaved number, but I’ve memorized his number by now. I go to silence it when Roman snatches it out of my hand and answers it.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Pizza Palace, where I can be your personal pan pizza for the low price of—”
Mortified, I snatch my cell phone back and punch END. “Are you crazy?”
“What?” He laughs. “They’ll call back if it’s important.”
I purse my lips into a thin line and stuff my phone back into my purse. I guess he’s right. Not that Caspian will call back. Am I even in his phone, or am I an unknown number like he is in mine? What sort of lovers—friends, even—are not listed in each other’s cell phones?
The leather squeaks a little against my shorts. Roman let me take a shower and change before we left the condo—thank God, because with my makeup all smeared and my nose red, I looked more like a mid-90s Ozzy Osborn.
Roman should have turned tail and run—screaming.
I reach for the radio, but he slaps my hand away. “Ow! Jeez, I just wanted to turn it on.”
“Driver picks the tunes, shotgun forfeits the right to complain.”
He turns into a gas station and taps the broken fuel gauge. It’s been stuck on empty for three miles now. “Never too careful,” he says as an excuse, and gets out. “I’ll leave it running while I go in. It’s hot as balls outside.”
“You’re so kind.”
“Don’t let this pretty face fool you,” he tsks, before briskly making his way to the building.
The skin on my legs makes a horrible sticky noise as I slide down in the seat. My sweat somehow solidified my legs to the pleather. Painfully, I pry one leg up and my knee hits the dashboard. The compartment pops open with a snap and a CD case slides out and hits the floorboards with a sharp clatter.
Curiously, I pick up the case and pop it open. The burned CD inside is labeled in sloppy chicken-scratch handwriting, Your Song Sweetly EP. He still burns CDs? That’s sort of adorable. I haven’t burned a CD since the iPod was invented.
Knowing that this constitutes as prying, I still pop it into the antique CD player. I chance a look up. The bright glow of Roman’s hair is unmistakable through the automatic doors. He’s two people away from the register, talking with the guy in front of him.
The CD player makes a whining noise, clicks, and the radio goes silent. Static fills the cab. I wait impatiently for any signs of life. Then, apprehensively, Roman’s voice drifts across the speakers, “Hi, it’s Roman...and this is, um, everything I couldn’t say.”
I suck in a breath.
The sweet, soft sound of an acoustic guitar fills the small car like a sunrise. When he begins to sing, the song...it sounds like an orchestra of heartstrings painting a love story. It’s a dizzying sort of song that gets you lost in your own head; it takes you back to someplace bitter and beautiful. It’s sounds like all the moments you’ll never have again.
It’s spinning around on the barstool the day after Caspian first kissed me, it’s dancing in my room to ‘Bed of Roses’ when I first heard it on the radio, it’s singing “Born to Run” with Dad on our road trips into the mountains, so whole and lyrical and bittersweet the words sink down into my bones.
This is what missing someone must sound like—uncontrollably hopeful and sad, hand in hand.
The thought hits me then—the only reason Roman would ever write this sort of song. Why any musician would.
It’s because he’s in love.
Roman exits the store.
I slam my finger on the radio button, and talk radio fills the car. My heart thrums in my throat as I wipe the tears out of my eyes. What’s wrong with me? This is Roman Montgomery, not Paul McCartney or Elton John or Willie Nelson.
But that song...
Suddenly, talk radio kicks out, and his CD spins to life again. A guitar strum, a word, and the song catapults me into almost-hysterics.
“Stop it!” I hiss, jamming my finger on the eject button. The CD pops out, but before I can grab it, the stupid thing goes back in. What the fuck is this thing—possessed?!
The stereo crackles. “Hi, it’s Roman—”
“Stop! Please!” I beg, repeatedly jamming my finger on the eject button. What if he finds out I snooped? What’ll he do? He’s almost to the car when the radio gives up the CD again, and I rip it out desperately. He’s at the nose of the car. I slam the CD into the case and shove it into the dashboard moments before he pops his head in through the open driver’s side window.
His lips are set into a thin line. “Thought you could be sneaky, huh,” he says disappointedly.
Heat prickles onto my cheeks. “I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t think you—”
His seriousness cracks into a cheshire grin. “All right, I’ll stop torturing you. Change it to whatever you want after I fill ‘er up. Just not Top 40s. Got it? Or that Roman Holiday station. One more ‘Crush On You’ and I’ll seriously crush myself against a moving bus.”
Relief floods through me like liquid coolant. “Oh no, the end of the world is nigh.”
“Nigh is right. Boaz is playing tonight. Boaz. Women will be offering up their first born children by the time his set’s over.” He hops halfway in through the window to put his soda in the cup holder in the middle.
I turn off the ignition for him and swing the key ring around on my first finger. “That good, huh?”
“You don’t think girls dig him because of his killer mohawk, do you?” He gives me a meaningful look as he slides back out of the window.
“Speak for yourself, his mohawk makes me hot,” I reply with mock-indignation.
Chuckling, he turns off the car and begins to pump gas, bobbing his head to the 80s techno coming from the gas station speakers. I glance back at the dashboard even though the coast is clear.
Roman in love? If that isn’t the juiciest bit of news I’ve heard since Holly’s death, I don’t know what is. Neither Roman nor Holly ever admitted to being in a relationship with each other, but everyone suspected. Who could be better than Holly? She was pretty much perfect, according to every Holidayer ever.
Besides, how could Roman settle for just one girl? World-renown womanizer, playboy, what-have-you...in love?
I don’t care,I keep telling myself, because I have Caspian, and Caspian and I are good. We’re good. I don’t care.
The car door opens and he slides inside. “Okay, now that Sweet Pea is appeased...” He gives me a once-over, pulling at his red suspenders. Does he even wash them? And who the hell wears stupid red suspenders anyway? I don’t care. “You look tense.”
“Huh? Yeah, I’m great. Just sort of tired from last night...” I show him my Band-Aid as an excuse before I hand him back his keys, but he bypasses them and grabs my hurt hand instead. His eyebrows furrow as he inspects the Band-Aid. “You got hurt?”
“Just a scratch. I got patched up last night.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Of course.” I roll my eyes and try to pull my hand away, but he holds firm. His calloused fingertips are warm against my freezing fingers.
“And you’re freezing.”
“My hands are always cold.” I wish he’d just let go of my hand.
A cheshire grin curves across his lips. “Cold hands, warm heart?”
I scoff, finally yanking my hand away from his. I try to rub the warm fingerprints away. “Cold hands, no
heart.”
“Nah, just gotta tune it. Like a radio.” He reaches toward me, but I knock his hand away.
“If you dare try to tune me, mister, you’re dead,” I warn, trying to keep a straight face, but his smile is infectious, and I can’t help myself. He tries again. “I mean it! I’ll tickle you!”
The threat seems to work. He settles back into his seat, putting his hands up in defeat. “Oh-ho, tickle fights. Getting serious already?” But he’s not thinking about tickle fights—that I can tell by the sneaky sort of eyebrow-wiggle.
I stick out my tongue and push my hands between my legs to warm them up. “Oh whatever. Playboy.”
“Not anymore.”
“As of today, or this minute?” Why am I being so mean?
He looks like he wants to ask the same thing, but he shoves the keys into the ignition instead and pulls out of the gas station. “I...haven’t been with a girl since Holly died.”
But what about that song? I want to ask, but I purse my lips together. I don’t want him to know I snooped. And why do I care? We’ve only spent a few days together. It’s not like we’re together.
“Almost a year to the date,” he adds. There’s something more in his voice that he doesn’t say, and I don’t pursue it.
“What a surprise,” I mutter, staring out the window. “I had sex the first time on Saturday.”
“So you are with someone?”
I shrug, but finally, when Roman turns the radio back on, I say so softly I don’t think he hears, “I don’t know.”
Chapter Seventeen
From the looks of it, Isla Lona is the redheaded stepchild of the Strand. You might have heard rumors about all the trouble it causes—the fights, drunk-in-publics, the exclusively hot and exceedingly off-limits bartenders—but Myrtle Beach keeps it tucked away in a safe, abandoned corner so it stays just that—a rumor. That’s exactly where we find Isla Lona, in a dimly lit side street with boarded-up windows, graffiti, and old posters lining the walls to the door. The place looks abandoned, except for the line of hipsters and rockoholics wrapped from the door down the street, some stinking of marijuana, others stinking of sunscreen.
“What a...lovely establishment,” I compliment as we pass a poster that says, ‘NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO F***IN’ WAY YOU’RE GETTIN’ IN.’
“Yep. Welcome to the Isla Lona.”
“We’re never getting in with that line.”
“Just follow my lead.” Roman bypasses the line in quick strides. “Luis!” He calls to the doorman, giving him a high-five.
The people in line grumble and shift in discontent. I try not to make eye contact, because I’m sure they could kill me with one look, and I don’t blame them. I hate line-cutters, too.
“¡Que pasa, amigo!” the doorman greets in a thick Spanish accent. “Boaz’s in the green room if you’re looking for him.”
“Nah, he’s probably playing his Gameboy. Don’t want to mess up his gym matches.” He motions me to step up beside him, and I do. “She’s with me.”
“Legal?”
“Funny,” I deadpan.
“Ah no! Did not mean like that.” Luis the Doorman chuckles. “It is a pleasure, señorita. How did you get mixed up with this pendejo?”
Roman’s eyes widen. “Did you just call me a—?”
“He bought me condoms,” I interrupt, and lean in to whisper, “if ya know what I mean.”
“J-Just to ask her for ice cream!” Roman flubs, a blush blossoming on his cheeks. “I wasn’t—we weren’t—ah shit...”
The bouncer howls a belly-rippling laugh, and slams his hand on Roman’s back heartily. It knocks the breath out of him. “It’s okay, pendejo, I understand. She’s fierce.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” Roman replies and outstretches his arm. His blush is sort of fading, but it might just be because he shifted into the shadows of the wall. “Mademoiselle, shall we leave him to his doorman duties?”
“We shall, good sir.” I pull my arm into his. Even if he is in love with another girl, this is safe enough, right?
The venue is a sea of dark moving shapes. The lights are low, neon lights beneath the beers and liquors behind the bar casting shadows on everything inside. Black lights color Bon Jovi’s illustrated head on my t-shirt and my Converse shoestrings neon purple. Roman’s orange hair looks radioactive. The stage takes up half the building, cascading down into an open cement floor. The rafters are rusted; the roof—or what I can see of it—is tin. At one point, the Lona might’ve been a small warehouse. It definitely still smells like one.
So this is where Roman Holiday played their first gig when they were still just Holly and Roman? I can’t see the tattoo of the bar’s name on Roman’s shoulder because it’s so dark, and his shirtsleeve covers most of it, but I know it’s there. Isla Lona in curling, loopy script, so faded it almost looks like Is a Lone.
A chill curls up my spine.
The crowd, elbowing each other to get through the masses, are a bunch of hipsters with cornrows and black-framed glasses, baggy sweaters, and tight jeans, beside rock gurus and locals come to hear Boaz—or to quote the marquee outside, ‘THE BOAZINATOR.’ What a ham.
The crowd reminds me of the Lining a little, how little clusters of people hang around tables and shoot the shit at the bar, and it begins to make me feel guilty, and a bitter taste curls against my tongue. I’m out on the town with a rock star and my dad’s bar is sinking into foreclosure.
What’s wrong with me?
A few uncertain music-goers glance Roman’s way, conflicted, but no one says a word. Probably because it’s too strange to comprehend. A rock star here in Myrtle Beach. I’m sure plenty of celebs come to Myrtle, but they probably don’t come to places where they can catch herpes from the toilet seat covers. The fact that Roman is here in this darkly lit claustrophobic corner of the world is what makes him alluring and mysterious. He turns heads as he tries to move through the crowd, curious glances that turn into double takes.
It also doesn’t help that he can’t move through a crowd worth shit. When we make an inch of leeway, he backs up to get out of someone else’s way. With my arm slipped into his, I can feel him beginning to tense and twitch with nervousness. He migrates around people like they’re land mines ready to explode.
At this rate, we’ll never get a good spot.
“C’mon, slow poke.” I take the lead, hip-checking a hipster.
Roman follows behind me like a dead weight. You’d think he could navigate crowds more easily since he’s been making them for the past five years.
Finally, I break out of the throng of people to freedom and sit down in one of the stainless steel stools at the bar. I pat the seat beside me. “Unlike you,” I tell him as he sits down, “I’ve actually spent my life in the crowd. Ever heard of the hip-check? The elbow-rub?”
“I’ve heard of elbow love,” he replies, ordering a drink.
“’Time Warp’?”
“It’s just a jump to the left—hey look! There’s the Boazinator.” He nods his head toward the stages.
A blue mohawk bobs over the top of the crowd, carrying a keyboard. He situates it in the center of the stage, huge-ass stereos behind him, and brushes an invisible piece of lint from his black and red kilt. He’s wearing unlaced combat boots and a black t-shirt that reads in a really ridiculous Terminator-esque script reads, ‘THE BOAZINATOR.’ “Is that seriously his solo handle?”
“Hey, don’t judge the Boazinator.”
“No judgments here. Why aren’t you playing with him?”
He shrugs noncommittally. “He doesn’t need me crowding the stage,” he says, but there’s something unspoken in those words. Does he think that he can’t anymore? Or could it be he’s just afraid? The bartender slides him a beer, and he thanks him, taking a sip. It smells like apple cider. “And if I did, the press would be here in droves. Boaz can accomplish low-key. I can’t.”
“Even under another name?” I ask.
“And what other name wou
ld I choose?”
Shrugging, I scoot away from the couple on the other side of me who look like they might just suffocate in each other’s mouths. “Something exotic. Erico Martinez.”
“Do I look like an Erico Martinez?” He motions towards his white-tan skin. I never noticed before, but there is a scattering of freckles on his arms.
“You definitively don’t look like” —I pause before I mouth— “Roman Montgomery.” To emphasize, I give a pointed look at the tiger and phoenix tattoo on his bicep.
He rubs it with a shrug. “Because I got a sleeve?”
“And dyed your hair. And abandoned your badass leather.”
“You thought that sweaty leather was badass?” He nods appraisingly, thinking. “You know, I can bring that back...”
I shake my head. “Don’t.” And then, quieter, I add, “I like you now.”
“As the ex-rock star of the defunct rock—”
“—Pop—”
“—Band you hated?”
“No. As you.”
For a long moment, he doesn’t say a word. He just stares, like he didn’t hear me properly the first time, his emerald eyes reflecting the purples and blues of the bar lights. Doesn’t he believe me?
I want to tell him that, okay, maybe his hair is too orange and sometimes he has a wishy-washy temperament, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. He doesn’t have to try to be extraordinary for me, because a part of me thinks he already is.
I keep my mouth closed, however, because how could I live up to the girl in his song?
Mohawk rushes offstage and the lights flicker to tell the crowd t-minus five minutes until the show. The bar is so crowded now they’ve pushed us together. Our elbows graze each other when we move and send electric shivers up my skin.
He rubs the condensation off the beer glass with his thumb. “I’m not the same guy I was a year ago, Junebug.”
I think about myself, and the cut on my hand, and wonder how anyone could be the same after all is said and done.
“I know.”
Chapter Eighteen
The lights flicker and a pre-made beat pulses through the speakers onstage. Roman leans back against the bar and orders another beer. I sit straighter, trying to see over the movement of the crowd. Maybe bar seats were a bad idea—I can barely see anything, much less pay attention to the music with so much lipsuck going on from the couple beside me. By the third song, I’m sure they’ll be doing the last tango in Paris.