Page 49 of For The Weekend
Chapter 14
Eloise
We’ve been driving for almost two hours, from West Chester to a ski lodge in the Poconos for Lily’s wedding, and Roman keeps my mind off the mile markers by answering any and every question I throw his way. I learn more about his childhood and his mother, who was a beloved teacher and friend to the community. He tells me how each of his siblings takes after her in some way—Ian, an ability to create art, Griffin, his love of reading, and Taryn, her fierce yet loving personality. When I ask Roman what he inherited, he shrugs and mumbles, “I think I’m more like my dad than anyone would like to admit.” Then he quickly moves on to how all four Stone siblings have tattoos in Violet’s honor and tugs up the sleeve of his T-shirt to reveal the single balloon with his mother’s name on it, floating up to the sky on his right triceps. It’s both sad and sweet, yet I ruin the moment by asking how far down his tattoos go.
The man merely tosses me a delicious curl of his mouth before asking what tattoos I have. When I tell him nonebecause I’m afraid of needles, he murmurs, “All that pretty skin. A beautiful canvas.”
It takes me about two and a half minutes to recover.
We talk a lot about Mazie and Steve, the bunny rabbit, but we don’t touch on Mazie’s mother at all. Roman doesn’t seem to purposely avoid talking about her, but he also carefully sidesteps mentioning her. I don’t know if there is drama or if it was a contentious divorce, but since Roman seemingly has full custody, I assume there’s some type of bad blood there. And if so, I don’t want to accidentally bring it up, so as curious as I am, I keep my mouth shut about it.
“I’m tired of answering questions,” Roman says, cutting me off before I can ask about why he chose to be a mechanic. “Your turn.”
“But you’re so much more interesting than me.”
He silently replies by motioning outside of my window. We’re in the mountains now, the trees a colorful blend of orange, yellow, and red, but that’s not what he’s showing me.
It’s the sign.
We’re fifteen miles away.
I let out a whiny sigh, and he clamps his bear paw on my thigh. “It’ll be all right.”
“If you say so,” I pout, and he squeezes my leg.
“I won’t let anybody say anything to you. Don’t worry about that.”
I study his profile, so stark and rugged, yet somehow gentle. Or maybe that’s me projecting what I want on to him.
Then again, he’s always been soft with me. I couldn’t be scared of him if I tried.
“I can feel you stressing,” he says, rubbing his thumb back and forth on my inner thigh. “Tell me who everybody is so I know when to run interference.”
I take a deep breath. “Okay. So. My mom’s tall with bleachblond hair, but even without that, you’ll be able to tell who she is because she’ll be the one yelling at me.”
He turns to me. “She doesn’t really yell at you, does she?”
“No. Well… I don’t know. She doesn’t talk to me like an adult, I’ll say.”
Roman doesn’t like that, and he grumbles something I don’t quite catch, so I go on.
“My aunt Beverly has short, dark hair with this…No more wire hangersvibe.”
“What?” When I hold up my hand, pretending to wave around a hanger, he frowns. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“You’ve never seenMommie Dearest?”
He shakes his head and exits off the turnpike.
“Well, maybe you’re better off without watching it. Sloane and I had a weird obsession with it when we were kids. Probably because of the controlling mothers… We were working out our trauma.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Never mind. The point is, between my aunt and my mother, you need to play it cool. They’ll sniff you right out if they know something’s up, so be cool.”
He huffs. “I’m always cool, sunshine.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. He’s called me that before.Sunshine. Because I’m his sunshine?
