Page 3 of When We Meet Again

His tongue darts to his lips, sweeping slowly over them. A movement that my body is strangely hyperaware of.

I snap my gaze back to the trees.

“Uncle Jaxon, huh? Is he still crazy? I haven’t seen him since your twenty-first birthday.” He kept trying to get Roman to take home the redheaded waitress and insist on finding out if the carpet matched the drapes. Roman didn’t cave. Instead, he came home with us and slept on our couch.

“Yeah. He’s still fucking nuts. Never trust a man with black eyes,” he rumbles with his voice low and gravelly.

“Same could be said about those withgrayeyes.” I cock a brow and dare myself to look at him again. Dead in his stormy eyes. The eyes that try their darndest to suck me in every goddamn time we’re near one another.

Roman slowly rubs his thumb over his bottom lip. “You’re right.” His gray eyes turn dark. “You shouldn’t trust me. My intentions are almostneverpure when it comes to you.”

My stomach drops at his words and my entire body feels like it’s humming. As if an electric current is speeding through me.

“Ugh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Being at my brother’s funeral and around the extended family isreallybringing out the best in me,” his words dripping in sarcasm. All ten of his fingers run roughly through his thick, dark hair, as if he’s trying to punish himself.

I try to shake off what he said by digging my nails into my palms.A distraction. Roman’s a serial flirt. It’s flattering, whether he meant what he said or not.

And he’s right. Extended family isa lot.Even being around my mourning mother is a lot, let alone the others. Offering condolences. No amount of ‘I’m sorry’s’ or ‘I’ll pray for you’ will make any of this any better. So I do what I do best in terrible, life-altering situations—I retreat into my safe space. My bubble. Which nothing or nobody can penetrate until I’m ready to let them. I close myself off to the world and suffer in self-induced, debilitating anxiety.

“So, how have you been, Rome…aside from all this?” I stare at him, admiring how much he’s matured since I’ve last seen him. “How long has it been? Two, three years?”

“Something like that,” he flicks the lighter, watching the flame.

An unwelcome breeze kicks up as I close my eyes, trying to be in the moment. I’m not in the Philippines. There is no massive wave coming at me.

I peek out of the corner of my eye and see Roman looking off the patio down to the grass, dark hair falling over his tan forehead. His features are the exact opposite of Patrick's. Patrick had a tan, but usually a brighter shade of pale, covered in freckles. Light hair. Light gray eyes, almost blue. He got that from his mom. Roman, on the other hand, has olive skin, and deep gray eyes that turn almost charcoal in the sunlight. Black hair and eyelashes that every woman tries to recreate at the salon.

Roman’s sixteen years younger than Patrick, which makes him fifteen years younger than I am. The lucky bastard has no wrinkles or a single gray hair to show for his ripe age of twenty-four.

“So, you’re good?” I ask again.

“Been busy. Boats won’t sail themselves, you know?” he answers, short and sweet. A man who leaves everything to the imagination. A twenty-four-year-old man who owns his own company. It’s admirable. “I don’t know. All of this is putting my life in perspective.”

He turns to me, his hand resting on the railing, his pinky brushing mine. I refuse to budge, and I’m curious as to what’s going to fall out of those stupidly perfect lips of his. We used to talk about life and all the deep stuff that comes with it. I never got my fill of conversation with Patrick, so I was pushed to discuss all of the intense topics with Roman. We would fit it all in during the time we would see each other.

“I make good money. I barely have to do anything because I have a whole team under me that does it for me, but it’s like…” He lets out a puff of air, tilts his head and his eyes find mine. As if I’m his lifeline. “I need more. I need to find my passion. I wantto be happy. Settle down.” A flock of birds fly overhead, grabbing our attention, before he continues. “I want to someday have little Romans running around. There has to be more than just working, meeting up with my buddies, drinking, and...fu—” His eyes move to his shoes. He has a very healthy sexual appetite. Everyone knows it.

Once Roman stopped coming around, there would be countless times when Patrick filled me in on the types of girls Roman would leave the bar with. Sometimes I would even sense a hint of jealousy in Patrick’s tone. I would ask him about it, but he would digress. I just never understood why he stopped wanting to see me. Why he disappeared. Patrick was consistent in telling me that it wasn’t me, but it sure as shit felt like it.

“Little Romans, huh? Your poor future wife,” I joke, and I feel an awkward tightening around my heart.

His eyebrows pinch as if he's disappointed, I don't have life-altering advice to give him. He's young. He'll figure it out. Six years with Patrick, I realize, has made me less of an empathetic person. Not intentionally, but his lack of internalizing anything anybody says rubbed off on me. I guess that’s what happened to him after serving in the Coast Guard. One too many drownings on his watch. Or maybe he simply had some psychopathic tendencies…I guess I'll never know.

Roman’s eyes narrow quickly and he gives me a half-ass fake smile. “Yeah, I guess.” That’s all he says, and now I feel like a complete bitch. But I can’t give him the comforting words he's looking for. Hell, I have no idea how to console myself right now. Anything I could possibly say wouldn’t be fair to him. It wouldn’t be fair to anyone.

“What are your plans?" he asks, changing the subject. "Are you moving back to Pittsburgh with your mom, or do you plan on staying here in the apartment?” He clears his throat as ifthose words made him choke. It's the question of the hour, ladies and gents.

I'm from Western Pennsylvania. A quiet town outside of the city where everyone knows everybody's business. That wasn't always a bad thing, though. Despite the known 'gossips', everyone looked out for one another. While the small-town vibe makes me feel comfortable and at ease, I think I’d prefer to stay here.

Before the trip, Patrick and I had found a cozy little apartment close to Venice Beach. I instantly fell in love with it. The natural light. It had a minimalist feeling I loved, but internally I had no idea how to participate in such a venture. I’m anorganizedhoarder. You’ll never see me on the show, though. My stepdad taught me how to find a ‘home’ for everything. After we moved all of my “crap” in, Patrick insisted I get rid of "all the shit I don't need." His words, not mine. That was our official first argument, and it didn’t last too long.

I feel my cheeks heat as I remember that night. It was like we couldn’t get enough of each other. The way he wanted every inch of me at the same time. Tears well in my eyes as the memory goes dark. Those hands will never touch me. His lips will never be on mine again.

“Hey. You okay, Kensi?” Roman snaps me out of my dark thoughts using the nickname he’d given me the first time we met. Back when Patrick couldn’t wait to introduce me to his little brother. Roman was his favorite person in the world.

If I’m being honest with myself, at one point he was mine, too.

“Roman,”Patrick waves over none other than the guy I’ve been eyeing all night. “Roman, this is Waverly Kensington, my new friend.” A sliver of a grin crosses Patrick’s lips. “Waverly, thishere’s my little brother, Roman.” He pulls his brother closer to him. “Don’t say anything…he’s only eighteen, but we’re friends with the owner and it’s our cousin’s bachelor party.” Roman weighs me with a hungry look, ignoring Patrick’s info dump.

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