Chapter 12
Roan
When Pope said they’d be staying in a suite, Roan hadn’t really had any idea what to expect.
He’d only ever stayed in motels and campgrounds, so stepping into the lobby of a fancy-ass downtown hotel with glittering chandeliers and a bunch of people running around in stuffy uniforms attending to the guests came as a shock to him.
Doubly so when one of them asked if Roan wanted him to carry his bag.
Since it was a backpack, the same as Pope, Danger, and Ocean carried, he hadn’t known why the man had bothered; he thanked him and continued moving so he didn’t get left behind.
After what had to have been his longest elevator ride ever, they stepped off on the top floor and followed Pope down the hall.
The room he led them into was easily half the size of his grandparents’ house, with two giant, king-sized beds and a whole area that looked just like a fucking living room.
There was even a table with four chairs beside sliding glass doors that led out to the balcony, and holy shit, the couch was comfy as hell.
Now, as they stepped back into the room after Pope had spent much of the day either speaking in front of a room full of history buffs or being besieged by them as they peppered him with questions, Roan was exhausted, and he’d done nothing but help Ocean keep the books stocked on Pope’s table and use people’s phones to take pictures of them with him.
Danger had seen to it that there was cold water on hand, his withering glare helping to move people along when they lingered too long and started holding up the line.
He broke down all the boxes too, stacked them on the dolly when they were finished with them, and brought new boxes whenever they started running low on books.
And that was all before the reception.
The conversation around the table had gone over Roan’s head so often that he’d deliberately taken his time eating, just so he’d have something to focus on that made sense.
“Man, those people can talk,” Ocean said as he pulled the tie out of his hair and shook his head, golden strands spilling around his face. “It’s cool how interested they were in what you had to say, though.”
“How’d you learn all that stuff?” Roan said as he left his boots by the door and shucked off his jacket.
He hung it in the closet beside the rest of their leathers and jeans and turned to see Pope pulling a bottle of pop from the mini-fridge.
The room had a whole ass kitchenette, with a coffee maker, microwave, sink, and shelf filled with cups, plates, and even silverware.
The last motel he’d stayed at hadn’t even had a coffee maker in the room, just a microwave that stank of garlic and mold and a battered plastic ice bucket.
Coffee he’d had to retrieve from the dining room, where breakfast offerings had consisted of cereal, bruised bananas, oatmeal, and plastic-wrapped pastries that had been mushy and stale.
A few had even had mold on them. Here they ordered room service, and bacon, eggs, sausages, toast, and even pancakes were delivered to them along with a carafe full of piping hot coffee and several different flavors of creamer.
Watching Ocean put so much sugar in his that it could have legally been considered dessert drew chuckles from Danger and Pope, prompting Ocean to explain that while he loved caffeine, he hated the bitterness of coffee and had to mask it before it could pass his lips.
His nose had even wrinkled when he’d watched Pope sip the steaming brew without adding anything to it.
“The stuff I talked about today, or just stuff in general?” Pope asked once he’d finished half the soda in the bottle.
“All of it, I guess,” Roan replied.
Pope jerked his head in the direction of that sweet-ass sofa, and Roan followed him over, Ocean trailing behind them once he’d grabbed a drink from the fridge too.
Danger was already seated in one of the easy chairs, having exchanged his jeans for a pair of sleep pants the moment he’d taken off his boots.
“Some from books; they are always a good place to get started, but mostly from talking to people,” Pope explained.
“Not sure if you know this or not, but Sunshine works down at the historical society. You’ll get to check it out next week during the car show; they always have displays inside, including tons of photos dating back generations.
If you look closely enough, you’ll find the whole history of the automotive industry in those images. ”
“Cool.”
“Anytime she comes across a tidbit of information she thinks I’d be interested in, she passes it along, and I do my best to line up a face-to-face meeting, since I hate using that goddamn video chat shit unless I absolutely have to,” Pope explained.
“I usually have a few questions prepared to kickstart the conversation, but once you get most people rolling, there’s plenty you can learn as long as you’re willing to sit still and listen. ”
“That was always the hardest part for me,” Ocean said. “Even when I was curious about something, I’d get so twitchy that I’d miss bits of information because I couldn’t focus. It sucked the worst when people thought I was doing it on purpose, because I wasn’t.”
“I hated school,” Roan admitted. “The only reason I got passing grades was to keep my grandfather from getting a call from one of my teachers. It was always a toss-up over who he was going to yell at the loudest, me or the teacher for making whatever I’d done, or failed to do, his problem.
Most of the shit they taught was boring as fuck and useless, like seriously, when the fuck has anyone ever asked you to explain the difference between a subject and a petticoat?
I still don’t even know what the hell a petticoat is. ”
“Isn’t it something ladies always have under their dresses in westerns?” Ocean asked.
“A subject and a petticoat?” Danger muttered, scowling as he glanced between Roan and Pope.
“You got me,” Pope said and pulled out his phone, typing the question into the search engine, before snickering.
“What?” Roan said. “Did you figure it out?”
“It’s women’s skirts, right?” Ocean asked.
“Well,” Pope began, “petticoats are women’s skirts, but the question the teacher wanted you to answer was the difference between a subject and a predicate.”
“What the fuck is a predicate?” Danger asked, beating Roan to the question.
“It’s the part of the sentence that tells the reader what the subject is doing,” Pope patiently explained. “For example, if I said, ‘The dog barked.’ The dog is the subject and barked is the predicate.”
“Why the hell don’t they just say that?” Roan asked. “Why come up with some fancy-ass word instead of just saying to draw two lines under what the subject was doing? That would have been easy.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you never went to your teacher after class and asked her to explain it to you better,” Pope said.
“Fuck no,” Roan said, vehemently shaking his head.
“I hated that lady. Every time she returned one of my papers, she made a crack about me exhausting another one of her red pens while she was correcting it and that I’d need to put in more effort if I had any hopes of getting anything higher than a C minus in her class.
I was happy to take the pass and get the fuck out of there.
I was already working my ass off to get the C minus. ”
“Were there any classes you liked?” Pope asked.
“Art, even though I sucked at it,” Roan admitted. “And I always got As in shop and music.”
“After hearing you sing, I can see why,” Pope replied.
“I loved art and music,” Ocean said. “But I was an utter disaster in shop, like seriously, the teacher told me he’d pass me as long as I promised not to touch anything else since he was tired of having to send me to the nurse’s office.”
“And on that note, I know who we’ll be keeping away from power tools,” Danger remarked, chuckling as he reached for his pop.
“I loved my history classes too,” Ocean admitted.
“All the conquests and exploration were seriously badass. Still blows me away that people actually lined up across from one another on the battlefield, though. The guys in the front were basically cannon fodder. Math class was too easy most years, so I’d just blow through the homework in class to save time while the teacher was still going through the lesson. ”
“School never held much appeal for me, either,” Pope said, which practically sent Roan’s brain into meltdown mode after the way the other man had commanded everyone’s attention today while he’d been sharing some of the lore he’d collected.
“But stories and legends did, so I set out to collect as many as I could.”
There was a pause as Pope fiddled with the cap on his bottle.
“Let me ask you this,” Pope said after he’d taken a swig. “Has there ever been anything you were passionate about?”
Squirming, Roan shrugged and would have stalled by sipping his own drink if he’d remembered to grab one. “Just singing, but I mostly do it where no one else can hear.”
“Why?” Danger asked. “After what I heard the other night, there’s no reason for you to hide your voice.”
“I guess,” Roan muttered. “It would be cool to have a thing that I was good at, the way you’ve got all those accounts you keep track of and Ocean has surfing and Pope has his books.”
“Then make singing your thing,” Pope said. “Mark’s always looking for live entertainment. There are a few other guys in the club who play instruments; you should get together with them and talk. You might discover the makings of a band.”
“I’m not ready for all that yet,” Roan said. “But if you really think it will be alright, I’ll sing something on the next talent night.”
“And we will be in the front row watching you,” Ocean declared.
“Exactly,” Pope said, while Danger nodded.
Him, Roan wasn’t so sure about. He might be in the front row, but whether or not he’d be paying attention was up for debate.
“What if I’d rather have you play guitar while I sing?” Roan asked Pope.