Page 6 of Perfectly Accidental

“Jesus, where has this enthusiasm been all your life?”

I glared at her and she chortled happily.

As I followed her out to her car, I rolled my eyes at her. Mum had plenty of reasons to hate raising teens, but there were definitely times she enjoyed it. No matter how moody or degenerate I was, she still found plenty of opportunities to laugh at me. Sometimes, I wondered if I gave her a few of them on purpose.

I went to pull open the passenger door, but it was still locked. I gave her a quizzical look over the top of the car. She leant on it and looked at me seriously.

“I do this, and I need a favour from you,” she said.

“Uh huh…?”

“I need you home when Maddy arrives on Saturday.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes again. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“No maybes, Roman. I mean it. I barely ask you for anything–”

“You literally just asked me to go to the shops!”

“Heaven forbid a mother ask her eighteen-year-old son for some help around the house,” Mum said sarcastically. “Come on. I put up with a lot of your shit, dude.”

“Dude?”

She sighed. “Give me a break. I’m trying.”

I shrugged. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

She unlocked the car, but the conversation clearly wasn’t over.

She pestered me for the rest of the week. Constant barrage of annoyance.

So it was that I was in my bed, relatively not hungover on Saturday morning at the most ungodly of hours. Just as she’d wanted.

“Roman!” Mum called and I heard the slight nervous tremor in her voice.

“Suck it the fuck up,” I muttered to myself.

I was not cut out for this shit. I wasn’t father, brother, uncle, or even vague figure material. But Mum had begged. She’d pulled out all the guilt trips. She’d even threatened to ground me, then both of us had laughed and laughed at the absurdity. But that had been enough to show me that she was serious. She seriously needed me. This wasn’t like all the other times I could let her down. Besides, the boys weren’t even awake yet, so how much shit could I get up to alone before midday on a Saturday?

I hauled myself out of bed, ran a cursory hand through my hair, and trudged to the kitchen.

“Oh. My. God,” I heard the familiar annoying tones of my older sister as the front door was closed. “And then we’re going on to Monaco. Richard says he’s going to teach me how to play poker.”

Paris hadn’t changed at all. She still had bleach blonde hair, perfectly over-styled as always, far too much makeup, far too little meat on her bones – by absolute intention *cough cough* – and she was dressed like she was going to a trashy night club. In the middle of the day. She was the shallowest, most irresponsible person on the planet. And I had an intimate knowledge of shallowness and irresponsibility to give me plenty of authority on the subject.

She was also, apparently, still as dumb as a brick if she thought she’d ever understand poker. And numerous of her boyfriends had tried teaching her over the years.

I couldn’t help it. I snorted. “I doubt even rich Dick’s got enough money to cover your losses.”

Paris frowned at me, but I was distracted as a small body ploughed into my lower half and wrapped itself around my legs.

“Uncie Roman!” a voice squealed.

I looked down and saw a mop of brown curls attached to me. I presumed there was a child under them.

“Uh, hi…” I said slowly, my hands raising.

Finally, the child under the mop looked up at me and I was sucker punched by two big, round blue pools of utter innocence. She was a beautiful little thing, staring up at me like she already adored me. Fucking hell, but that was way too much to put on my shoulders that early in the morning.

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