Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (14 page)

He had no idea how long it took. He didn’t care about time. He only cared about the slippery swollen shapes of her and the secret red flush of her cunt. The prickle of her leg hair against his neck. The way she shuddered for him.

The way he could unravel her, so exactly like the way she unraveled him.

When she came, he felt it ripple through him and transform into a keen awareness of everything at once—his grip on her hip, the musty shag carpet flattened beneath his knees, the briny ocean taste of her, the low reverberating volume of her moan. How far the sound would carry out the open window.

How far he would go with her.

How far the future stretched out in front of them, and how good it could be. How fucking
good
they could make it together, however they decided to be, wherever they wanted to go.

Ashley put both feet on his shoulders and shoved him away. “Swear to God,” she said. “If you even so much as breathe on me, I’m going to die.” She dropped her legs, covering her eyes with her forearm. “I might already be dead.”

Roman sat back on his heels, amused. “Yeah, but how are your rivets?”

“Fused shut. Or something. I don’t even know. God. You’re going to want to fuck me now, aren’t you? You can’t. I’m dead. That solves that problem.”

Roman unbuttoned and unzipped his pants. He glanced over his shoulder at the window on the far end of the Airstream, determined that he wasn’t likely to moon anyone, and dropped trou.

“Scoot over,” he said.

Ashley lifted her legs and made room for him. When he lay down beside her, she put her head on his shoulder and curved her body around his. Her limp hand found his hard cock.

She sighed. “I’m going to have to
do
something with this, aren’t I?”

“That, or close your eyes and pretend to fall asleep while I stare at your naked body and jerk off.”

“I’m not sure if that’s sexy or weird.”

“I’d be making this face.” Roman fisted himself and made what he hoped was a bug-eyed creeper face while staring at her breasts, panting.

Ashley got the giggles really bad.

By the time she was over it, he’d moved above her, and she’d folded her arms across her breasts, saying, “No, no, I’m not ready, I’ll
die
, Roman, aren’t you worried about my
death
?”

He kissed her in places that might make her laugh. The point of her chin, the point of her elbow, the tip of her nose. Her ribs.

Then he kissed her where he wanted to. Along the side of her body from just beneath her armpit to the dip of her waist. Her navel. Her thigh. Her throat. Her breasts.

Everywhere.

He took his time, counted her freckles, found faint tan lines from at least three different bikinis.

He loved her with his mouth until her end-of-giggle sighs turned into another kind of sighing, and then her arms fell open and she opened her legs and said, “Oh, fine. Get the condom.”

He fished one out of his shorts pocket, smiling, and she rolled it on. Her hair was a disaster. Her nose was a little sunburned. She looked freshly fucked in the most glorious way.

“Any tips?” he asked.

“For sex?”

“In the Airstream.”

“I’ve never had sex in here before.”

“You haven’t?”

“Nope. I’m an Airstream virgin.”

“Me, too.”

“Be gentle with me, honey pie.”

“I’ll go slow, sugar.”

He lay down beside her, caught her leg at the knee, and draped it over his hip. She helped him find the right position, the right angle, and then he was inside her, and he couldn’t remember what had been so goddamn funny.

He couldn’t remember his own name.

He knew hers, though.

“Ashley,” he said, and she shushed him.

“I know.”

They kissed and moved together, tongues thrusting, bodies softening, accepting, melting. He pushed her hair out of the way and kissed her neck, because his head was so heavy and she was soft there, intimate skin, and he could hear her breathe, he could find a place to feel that was safe because it was her, all of this was her.

Too much. He was too worked up, too close already because it killed him listening to her come, and the soft press of her walls against him, her
heat—

“Don’t move,” he said.

She laughed softly and squeezed.

“Ash! Don’t.”

After a few seconds, the crisis passed, and he was able to lift his head and kiss her again. To make long, slow strokes inside her, looking for the perfect angle, searching for the best way to make her feel the right amount of way too much.

He found it with her knee lifted higher, her hips tilted just so. He found it, and he worked at it. Felt her clutch him. Her fingers pressing into his biceps. Her teeth scraping over his shoulder.

“Fuck. Roman. Don’t—don’t stop.”

“I’ve got you.”

He had her. He had Ashley, here in her bed, but only because she’d gotten him first.

When she came, she pulled the orgasm from him, grabbed it up from his balls and coaxed him out of himself, flung him into the night, the stars, the dark black emptiness of the universe.

She kept him from feeling the cold.

He woke late that night to remember they’d left the windows open. The night air nipped at his skin. She was spooned against him, though. He was safe.

Roman found the sleeping bag on the floor and pulled it over them both.

Carmen couldn’t believe it.

She stood on the porch of the Sunnyvale office, staring at the spot where her clipboard had been and where, now, there was nothing but a rock stacked on top of a pile of her papers, their edges curling, ruffled by the breeze.

The hippies had stolen her clipboard.

She considered the rock—a fist-sized landscaping stone, white and smooth—for a long time. She thought about how good it would feel to hurl it through the office window.

She wanted to. Carmen wished she could forget Sunnyvale, her father’s expectations, Roman, and Noah. She wished she could walk straight to the car where she’d slept last night, release the emergency brake, back out of the parking lot, and roll away.

She would never look back.

The Sunnyvale situation had exploded in her face, and Carmen wasn’t sure whether she’d lost her hold on things when her father had discovered the strange man in the bathroom yesterday morning or if it had happened later in the day, when the hippies invaded.

Probably later. Probably her control had slipped away for good the moment she saw the line of slow-moving cars approaching the lot. Or just afterward, when they turned in and parked, and the people who got out began unloading reusable bags full of groceries.

They’d come with drums and water, hacky sacks and wooden stakes and flat white pieces of poster board. Supplies for the occupation. Sign-making materials.

They’d come to stay, and it was all because of the man in the bathroom. The weird man with the truck full of junk who’d broken into the office and hidden in the shower, waiting for the right moment to make his stand.

Gus.

He’d been sitting on the toilet yesterday when she talked to Roman. Afterward, when she ate that Caramello bar. He must have been listening when Noah fed her M&M’s out of the palm of his hand, when Noah spread her legs wide, kissed her deep, made her moan.

Gus had been in there
the whole time
.

It made Carmen edgy to think about it. It made her neck hot and her temples pound, but none of that was anything compared to how discomposed she felt when she looked at the spot where her clipboard was supposed to be and saw the rock there instead.

A fucking rock. What was she supposed to do with a rock?

When the world got unruly, she needed her clipboard’s hard edge biting into her arm, resting on her stomach and providing her with a clear set of action items in dark ink, a
plan
.

Without one, she wanted to flee, but she couldn’t. She had to stay, because she wasn’t someone who quit. Carmen brought the world under control. She fixed it beneath her thumb and held it there where she could see it and know it.

She didn’t like it when the world got away from her. It made her feel unsafe.

Deal with it
.

That’s what her father had said. Yesterday morning, Heberto had gone into the bathroom to take a piss and come out dragging a stranger.

He’d coaxed Gus’s name and story out of him, and then her father had turned to her and said,
I have to get to my meeting. You deal with it
.

She’d thought she could. She’d thought everything would be fine. Carmen had left Gus in the office with Noah and started doing a sweep of the property, phone pressed to her ear as she searched for a company that would take over the demolition, because Noah—obstinate, loyal Noah—refused to handle it.

That was what she’d been doing when she’d discovered Gus’s co-conspirator, Mitzi.

The older woman had been hiding in one of the rental units, primed to pop out and dramatically throw her body in front of the wrecking equipment when the time came.

Or something. Carmen hadn’t quite followed the plan, but she’d caught the whiff of prima donna clear enough.

Both of these people were friends of Ashley’s, of course. Ashley of the palm tree, Gus the bathroom eavesdropper, Mitzi the bulldozer sacrifice—they were crazy, all of them, and they had other, crazier friends who were already on their way down from a swamp commune in Georgia so they could hang out protesting and being crazy together.

This was the plan Gus and Mitzi had hatched in secret: a last-ditch attempt to save Sunnyvale by occupying it before the construction crews could take it down.
SAVE THE KEY
DEER! their poster-board signs proclaimed, as though there truly were Key deer here to be saved.

Last night, the commune people had erected tents on the beach, lit a bonfire, and had a party, drumming and dancing and singing while Carmen sat on the porch and wondered how on earth everything had gotten away from her.

Roman wouldn’t return her calls, and she couldn’t find anyone—not a demo company, not a handyman, not
anyone
—willing to come demolish the property for her on short notice.

It was a nightmare.

But this was a new day. She’d set her clipboard on the railing and spent ten minutes in the office bathroom freshening up. She’d come out of the office thinking she could give herself a clean slate. Tear yesterday’s pages off and rewrite her lists from scratch. Find a new approach to this mess.

But this … Her clipboard, gone. Replaced with a rock, as though rocks and clipboards were equivalent.

She wouldn’t stand for this.

Carmen descended the porch steps and sailed past the parking lot, where the commune people gathered behind a giant Econoline van and slurped curry-smelling something out of reusable plastic bowls.

She ignored them. Beside the pool, she passed Mitzi playing tag with a group of grubby children. She made a sharp left turn onto the path to the beach, taking the pavers in the longest strides her skirt would allow.

Her arms swung loose at her sides, and she hated that.

She kept going until she spotted Noah standing on the dock with Gus. He smiled when he saw her coming.

“Hey!” He waved.

Carmen’s fists clenched. Her thighs clenched. Her heart clenched.

“You need me for something?” he asked.

There were a million somethings she needed him for. The problem was that none of them had anything to do with the lost clipboard or the illegal encampment of commune people.

Carmen needed Noah to teach her how to be a woman who could go out on a boat and drink a beer while the sun set.

It sounded like a thing anyone could do, but she never had, and she didn’t know if she
could.

Just sit there. And sip. And watch.

“Yes.” The word came out the way she said everything—clipped and cold, impatient.

Noah slapped Gus on the shoulder and said, “Give us ten minutes, huh? I’ll come find you and we can talk about this some more.”

“No problem, man.” Gus winked at Carmen as he walked past.

I am not that woman
, she wanted to tell Gus. But she didn’t.

When she and Noah were alone, he moved closer and cupped the back of her neck. “How are you holding up?”

Not well. She needed something to grip.

“I still don’t understand why you’re indulging this,” she said.

“Baby, we talked about it last night.”

“I know, but …”

But when breaking-and-entering junk dealers named Gus were discovered in the bathroom, you didn’t
befriend
them. You didn’t ask them thoughtful questions, scratch your beard, cross your arms, lean in with warm understanding as you listened to their life story.

You got rid of them. Called the police. Kicked their asses.

Unless you were Noah. Then you did all the wrong things.

Noah was not on her side. He was on Roman’s side, which meant he was on Ashley’s side, which meant that Noah had welcomed the protesters as though they were visiting dignitaries.

Carmen was the only one who saw them for what they were. Interlopers. Thieves.

“They took my clipboard,” she said.

“Who did?”

“I don’t know! I came out of the office and it was gone.”

Noah put his arm around her, pulling her against the brick wall of his chest. Her nose knocked against his collarbone. She turned her head, surreptitiously inhaling his smell.

“With all your plans and stuff?” he asked.

“No, they left those. They just took the clipboard.”

“So you need something to write on. Maybe we can find you a book.”

“I can’t use a book. I need the clipboard.”

Stop it
, she told yourself.
You sound like an infant
.

His hand soothed up and down her back. “I’ll help you look. I’m sure somebody just borrowed it for a minute. These folks down from Georgia—Mitzi was telling me they’re big on communal property.”

“It’s mine.”

“I know. C’mon.” He steered her around and guided her down the dock. “We’ll see if we can find it.”

They walked along the pavers together, their steps disjointed because they weren’t the same height and the stepping-stones hadn’t been designed for two people side by side.