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 none because 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 bleach blond 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 hangers vibe.”
“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 seen Mommie 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?
Not that we’re in a relationship. Or, I mean, a real one. 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 my sunshine haze.
“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 his I 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 like duh, 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?”
“I don’t know. I figured in your forties because of your siblings, but to be honest, it’s really hard to tell with you. You look anywhere from twenty-five to fifty-five. You’re ageless like The Rock.”
“The Rock is not ageless. I’m pretty sure he’s, like, fifty.”
I hike my shoulders up to my ears, dropping them heavily. “Well, you could tell me he’s thirty, and I’d believe you.”
He places his hand back on my thigh. “It bother you that I’m a decade older than you are?”
“No,” I answer immediately and honestly.
“Good.” He nods. “Now, tell me when you were diagnosed.”
“In college. I played volleyball all through high school and was really active in clubs, always out with friends. I was that girl…you know, the super-talkative one, friends with everybody? It never occurred to me or my parents that the reason I was always on the go or my mind wandered was because I had ADHD. But then I went to college and…” I mime an explosion with my hands.
“Everything fell apart. I didn’t have my safety net.
I didn’t have a daily schedule with places to be and things to do and people telling me where to go.
I had low executive functioning skills… I didn’t even know what executive functioning skills were then.
Only that I couldn’t figure out how to plan my day.
I couldn’t figure out what the most important thing to do was.
I didn’t want to go out or do anything because I couldn’t even think about getting up to get dressed. It was too overwhelming.”
Roman runs his palm up and down my leg, soothing me, but I doubt he’s even consciously thinking about it. It doesn’t feel like it’s a decision. It feels like he’s mindlessly touching me because he likes it. Because he’s already realized I like it.
I continue with the rest of my story, feeling more emotionally safe than I have in a long time.
“I ended up failing out of school and went home. Mommy dearest was pissed at me, but after a few weeks, it was my dad who took me to an appointment to see a psychologist and then a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with ADHD and depression. They put me on some antianxiety and depression meds, which turned everything around with help from a therapist so I could understand coping mechanisms—and why I could function in high school, but suddenly not in college. It took about a year, but in that time, I became obsessed with baking. So, I went back to school and got a degree in business to learn how to open my own bakery, and fast-forward a few years, here I am.”
“With me,” he says, an echo of what I said during our dinner.
“With you,” I agree.
And it’s with that calming thought that he makes a turn onto the long drive leading up to the lodge.