Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (21 page)

She didn’t want to feel the bite of nostalgia, sharp pins in her heart when he climbed into his own seat and held out a headset. “I adjusted this one for Carmen, so it’s probably a good fit.”

Ashley checked to make sure the noise-canceling function was turned on and slipped the padded cups over her ears. He was right—she didn’t even have to tighten the band over her hair. The hush fell, immediate and complete.

He slipped on his own headset, then leaned forward to turn a dial. When he spoke, his voice came at her from inside her own head, like the voice of God.
“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Buckle up. I’ve just got to run through the last few things on the preflight checklist, and then we’re good to go.”

Ten minutes later, they lifted off, and her father smiled to himself as gravity pushed its fist into her belly and pressed her shoulders to the seat.

Ashley squeezed her eyes shut tight.

It was easier to do that than to remember another plane, another father. Another life, when her parents were still married, still argued, still hated each other—but she and the man beside her had found pockets of peace, thousands of feet above the earth.

In those moments when her dad took her soaring above the land, over the water, he used to grin at the sky as though he’d made it himself, and he wanted to share it with her.

It had never been all bad between them.

It had never been all good with her grandma, or with any of the people she’d taken Roman to visit.

Maybe that was her problem: she wanted so much to flatten the world into two dimensions—love and hate, good and bad—when almost nothing was that simple.

“Will we fly all the way back today?” she asked.

“We just about could, but we’re going to have to stop in Nashville tonight. I’ve put in a lot of hours already this morning—I don’t want to risk getting overtired.”

That meant another airport. Going to a hotel with him, getting up with him, eating breakfast with him, another flight, an arrival …

“Where are we going to land when we get to Florida?”

“My car’s in Marathon.”

So tomorrow he would drive her to Sunnyvale. He would witness whatever was going to happen there, and then—

She didn’t know what then. She wondered how long it would take Roman to make his way home. Whether he would call her, or—

No. He would call her. She didn’t have to wonder about that, because when he’d promised to follow her, he’d been as solid as the rock they’d stood on.

Ashley wished she could lean into his solidity now.

Beneath her, the earth dropped away, and the shapes of the land revealed themselves.

At the lake earlier, clouds had blocked the sun, but those clouds had vanished and there was nothing,
nothing
separating her from the view laid out in front of her, on both sides of her, everywhere she looked.

Her father banked the plane into a turn, and Ashley floated above the barnyards, the sharp pencil lines dividing the land into farms and fields, roads and fences, forests, ridges, furrows—all of it so clear from up here. So obvious.

Roman was down there somewhere. Loving her.

Look at me
, he’d said.

She heard him so much more clearly in this silence than she’d been able to hear him on the shore, gazing out over the water.

It was always more than sex
, he’d told her.

Go, but I’m going to follow you
.

Go. But I love you
.

Why hadn’t she told him she loved him, too?

She should have told him.

“You remember when you used to fly with me?” her father asked.

“Yeah.”

He looked at her. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

Silence for a minute. Two minutes.

Time didn’t mean anything up here, only motion. The drone of the engines and the passage of their bodies through space.

“I think about you,” he said. “Just about every time I get in a plane.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“It doesn’t seem so long ago. Not to me.”

Ashley’s palms gripped her elbows. She pressed her forearms into her stomach in a futile effort to contain everything she felt.

He’d flown all morning, greeted her, humiliated her. He’d told her that he paid her grandmother to take care of her—implied that her grandmother had only loved her because she wanted the money he sent—and now he was being so …

So human.

So annoyingly human.

The way he smiled with pride at his stupid, fuel-guzzling luxury plane.

The predictable way he showed her his belly, now that they were done arguing.

When she was a kid, he’d take them all out for ice cream after the worst fights. He’d take Ashley up in his plane, and the height, the droning of the engines, the long view—all of it would smooth the anger out of him, the same way it smoothed it out of her.

Now that they were done arguing, there was vulnerability in his voice that she could
hear
. She could hear it because he’d paid maybe a thousand dollars for these fucking noise-canceling headsets, so she could hear everything—every breath he took, every word he spoke, even the nervous catch of an inhalation right before he said,
It doesn’t seem so long ago. Not to me
, burrowing into her, impossible to ignore.

She wished he were simpler. She wished this were easier: this man, this relationship.

She wished she knew how to manage it so she could see her father without tripping over memories of the heartbreak of her childhood.

She’d been a little girl who wanted her parents to love each other, but they hadn’t.

She’d been a thirteen-year-old who wanted her mother not to die, but no one had the power to grant her that wish. And what she’d been left with in the aftermath was a father who loved her but didn’t know what to do with her, and an anger at him that stood in for her anger at the universe, at God, at everything.

Neither of them had known how to cope with the enormity of her anger.

So he’d sent her to his mother, and his mother had given her the means of coping, but she hadn’t taught her how to repair the relationship with her father. Susan Bowman hadn’t known how to fix broken relationships or how to talk to her only son.

Ashley didn’t know how, either.

She hated her father. And she loved him.

She resented him. And she longed to be closer to him.

She shut him out and argued with him and tried to pretend he didn’t exist, and when that didn’t work, she wished he were easier.

And God, it all seemed so obvious now, thousands of feet in the air
—Because, duh, Ashley, you wished exactly the same thing about Roman
.

She’d wished, when she first met Roman, that her enemies would remain her enemies and her friends would always be her friends.

She’d wished, on the road with him, that the people she loved would love her back, and that love would feel like love—that it would never feel like condemnation, judgment, or disapproval.

She’d wished the people who loved her wouldn’t judge her, so she could be a spark of starlight, pinwheeling through the galaxy, beautiful and bright, without regard to morality or rules, propriety or complexity.

Ashley had wanted that because she’d loved her grandmother, and Susan was like that sometimes—bright and unbounded.

But Susan had been other things, too: secretive and selfish, heedless and impulsive.

And the thing about starlight was that it didn’t have to be born. It didn’t have to age or adapt or change. It didn’t have responsibilities or relationships. It just
burned
.

Which sounded nice, until you thought about how it died.

How it came from nothing, went nowhere. How it never learned, never grew, and never loved.

How lonely it must be, to be a spark of starlight.

“I always liked flying with you,” she whispered.

“Your mom did, too.”

“I miss her.”

This wasn’t true.

The truth was, she’d never allowed herself to miss her mother. She’d been too busy blaming her for dying. Blaming her father for letting her die, divorcing her, failing her.

She’d been too busy burying her anger, hiding her pain, and promising herself that if she loved freely and openly, she could fly.

She could be happy. If she just figured out how not to feel anything painful or deal with anything hard.

But here she was in this shiny new beautiful airplane, and she didn’t have any choice but to look down and see the real shapes of everything she’d left behind her on the ground.

Here she was, with her father.

“Tell me about Grandma,” she said.

And he asked her, “What do you want to know?”

Roman picked up a jar of cherry salsa from a crowded shelf and checked the price, though he had no intention of buying it.

Grandma Tommy’s Country Store wasn’t his kind of shopping experience.

Ashley would get a kick out of it, though. She would sink sample pretzels into every open jar of dipping sauce. She’d probably drip sauce on her wrist or her fingers and then suck it off, smiling, and make him taste. She’d force him to tell her which ones he liked.

They’d end up at the checkout together, their basket piled high with jars of cherry preserves, cherry salsa, chocolate-covered cherries, spicy mustards, and dipping sauces.

It would be one of those Ashley things where she transformed the tacky and mundane into the spectacular.

He took the jar off the shelf again and weighed it in his hand.

He walked to the front of the store and found a red plastic basket.

Esther was there, flipping through a rack of tourist T-shirts. Roman tipped a package of chocolate cherries into his basket, looked at it, and tipped in a few more. He’d give some to Noah’s kid, maybe. One for his assistant, Pete, who was always eating something sweet.

He’d save a package for Heberto. Throw him for a loop.

“Are you shopping or just killing time?” he asked Esther. As a local, she was unlikely to be interested in souvenirs. It had been Carly and Nana who’d wanted to stop here. They were on the other side of the store now, looking at wind chimes; he could hear Dora’s chirping voice and Jamie’s low tones in response.

“To be perfectly honest, I’m avoiding Stanley,” she said.

Stanley had stayed outside on a bench. “Is he bothering you?”

“He asked me to marry him.”

“He did? When?”

She waved her hand, as though the details were unimportant. “You were off with Ashley.”

“What did you say?”

Hangers scraped over metal as Esther continued flipping through the rack, and Roman found himself impatient for an answer. Stanley was a pain in the ass, but he was
Ashley’s
pain in the ass, and Roman had to admit, Stanley had grown on him since their argument. He had a few good qualities among all the bad ones.

“He wants me to move to Pennsylvania,” she said.

“Is that impossible?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Can you see me living at a campground?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ve never been camping.”

“It’s a nice place. Pretty.”

“You went there with Ashley.”

“Yeah.”

She flipped a few more hangers.

“Let me know if you see anything Ash might like,” he said impulsively.

Esther paused, then backed up a few shirts and pulled a gray V-neck off the rack. It was a woman’s style, sporty, with pink stripes on the sleeves and swirly pink letters that read
Door County
. “This one.”

“Is it the right size?”

“Yes.”

He put it in the basket. “Anything else I need to have?”

She peered in his basket. “You should get some cherry jam. And they have a great spice rub for grilling chicken. Do you grill?”

“No.”

“Are you going to see her when you get back to Florida?”

“I hope so.”

“If you do, you should buy a grill. She’ll make sure it gets a workout.”

Roman smiled, thinking of what it might be like to have Ashley in his life. Inviting her friends to his condo to grill chicken. Although it wouldn’t be chicken, it would be tofu or something. Could you grill tofu?

“Where’s the spice rub?”

Esther led him down a few aisles, trailing her fingertip along vacuum-sealed plastic
packages until she found it. She handed him one, and Roman took it. Then he took half a dozen more off the shelf.

“You’re in love with her,” Esther said.

His head bobbed up and down, overeager. He didn’t care. “Yep.”

Esther crossed her arms, gazing at him. She had small, pert features in a broad-planed face, the most notable of which were her cheekbones: rounded knobs set far apart, giving her a raw sort of nobility.

“You’re not a scumbag, are you?” she asked.

Roman suppressed a laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“Because Ashley’s been with enough scumbags.”

“I have a job. I could take care of her, if it came to that.”

Esther’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Let’s get you some jam.”

She led him to another aisle, and Roman followed, bewildered. She wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d thought Esther would be an old white lady with curly hair, a Mrs. Claus type who would clasp Ashley to her bosom and soothe her. But Esther was just … Esther. Small, tidy, and blunt.

“Hold out your basket,” she said. Roman did, and the weight in the crook of his elbow increased as she filled it with jar after jar of preserves. “How many people are you shopping for?”

“Four.”

She added a few more jars. “That should do it.”

Somewhere near the register, Dora screeched, and Roman heard Carly trying to calm her down.

“I knew about the sale,” Esther said. “Susan told me.”

“Oh?”

It was all he could think of to say.

“She told me about you, too. She liked you.”

“She drove me crazy,” he confessed.

“She drove everybody crazy. She was maddening.”

“But you two were close.”

“She was my best friend.”

“Why do you think she did it? To Ashley?”

Esther looked away, then back at him. “I don’t think she had one reason. Susan wasn’t … She didn’t make plans that way. She focused on what was right in front of her. She needed money, and there you were, offering to buy the place she’d promised to Ashley. She felt guilty about selling it, so she didn’t tell Ashley. That was a solution, for Susan. I told her it wasn’t right, but she was her own conscience. She didn’t listen.”