Page 50 of For The Weekend
Not that we’re in a relationship. Or, I mean, arealone. We’re in a fake one for this weekend, but I suppose it still proves my theory correct.
“What about your cousin?” he asks, dragging me out of mysunshinehaze.
“Oh. Uh, she’s…” I flit my hand around. “She’s mostly harmless. A spoiled princess who always gets what she wants.”
“And what about you? What do you want?”
I tilt my head back, watching as he rolls to a stop at the red light and turns on his left blinker. “What do you think I want, Roman?”
He slants his gaze to me, answering only after his eyes skate from my face down my throat to my chest and back up. “I have a few ideas.”
I immediately lower the window for some air. “You better put that…charm away. We have a wedding to survive.”
When the light turns green, he makes the left as he swipes his palm over his mouth. “No one’s ever accused me of being charming before.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? Save it for the audience. But not too much in front of my dad, okay? We actually get along, and I want to keep it that way.”
“You a daddy’s girl?”
I shrug, unapologetic. “A little, yeah. He’s a doctor and a lot more understanding of my ADHD.”
“You have ADHD?”
“Yeah, you couldn’t tell?” I ask with a laugh, but he narrows his brows in my direction.
“No. It’s an invisible disability. Why would I be able to tell?”
I’m about to make an excuse, explain away how I’m flighty and inattentive and constantly interrupting others. Because that’s what’s been drilled into me—that I should hide my eccentricities so as not to make others uncomfortable.
Even as I feel nauseated about spending the weekend with my family, where I’ll be made to feel bad about how different I am, I feel the need to apologize. Make myself smaller.
It’s sick.
When I don’t answer, he juts his chin toward me. “That why you’re always playing with your necklace?”
I release said necklace. “You noticed that?”
“I notice everything about you.” At the next stoplight, while I’m still reeling from hisI notice everything about you, he reaches for the round pendant, rolling it between his fingers like I do before dropping it back into place. “What’s it like for you?”
“My ADHD?” When he nods, I tip my head side to side. “When I was young, I was always in trouble for talking in class. My grades were okay, but it was a struggle. It didn’t come easy, not like my brother.”
“What’s his name?”
“Alex. He’s finishing up his residency to be an orthopedic surgeon. He’s two years younger than me and kind of a douche.”
“Kind of a douche?” Roman purses his lips, muffling the distinct sound of laughter coming from the back of his throat, and I’m determined to make him really laugh this weekend. I’m dying to hear it.
“Okay,” I acquiesce. “He’s a big douche. Twenty-eight and knows everything about everything. I can’t stand these young kids.”
“Young kids? Twenty-eight isn’t young.”
I hold out my palm like it should make sense. “But he’s in a whole different decade than me.”
“You’re only thirty,” Roman says, and when I nod likeduh, he says, “Did you know I’m forty?”
I gasp, playing at horror. “I’m fake-dating an older man!”
That earns me a quirk of his brow. “How old did you think I was?”
