22. Roman
22
ROMAN
“Alright, folks, that’s the end of our first round! We’ll take a quick break while I check through each team’s answers and then reconvene to announce the winners in about twenty minutes. So go ahead and order another round of drinks for the table or grab some food while you wait. I highly recommend the burger of the day if you’re hungry.”
As if on cue, my stomach grumbles loud enough to be heard over the bar chatter.
“Hungry?” she asks innocently, smiling into her drink.
I look around for our waitress. “Just a little. I somehow forgot how many calories my body needs when I’m actually working out hard.”
Locking eyes with our waitress, I send the universal gesture for when you get a minute . When I turn my attention back to Lily, it’s just in time to catch her eyes snapping from my chest to my face.
Realizing she was checking me out, a smirk lifts the corner of my lips. I wore a simple black t-shirt tonight with jeans, but I realized when I was getting ready earlier that I’m probably going to have to buy some new clothes soon. With the way I’ve been working out lately, my muscles, especially my upper body, have filled out to the point of stretching my clothes at the seams.
Which Lily has noticed. And if the way her cheeks go pink is any indication, she’s not having very pure thoughts about it.
“What do you want to order?” she asks. But one of the words comes out as a squeak, making Lily wince in embarrassment.
“The cheesesteak hoagie,” I answer easily. “A full one. I’ll probably get some fries and mozzarella sticks with it, too. What are you getting?”
Her eyes widen at the amount of food I plan to order. “Uh, I guess I’ll get a cheesesteak hoagie, too. But just a half.”
I nod my approval just as the waitress stops by our table. We order our food, then settle back into a comfortable silence after she leaves. But I’m terrified of lapsing into any discomfort now that we’ve decided to treat the rest of the night as an ordinary hangout, so I speak first.
“So…what would you normally be doing on a Thursday night?”
She seems amused by my question. “Rotting at home on the couch with Garfield.”
I chuckle. “Alright, what if we were doing this on a Saturday night?”
She hums. “Saturday night? Probably nothing. Not much has changed from when you met me two years ago. I’m still not a big partier. Possibly going out to dinner with my friend Tina, but that’s about it.” I’m about to ask a follow-up question when she adds, “Now if we’re talking weekends in general…that’s a different story.”
My eyebrow quirks in curiosity. “Do tell.”
She shrugs, smiling. “Tina always teases me for it, but I really only have two modes: homebody or adrenaline junkie. I’m either sitting at home, bingeing five seasons of Breaking Bad, or diving a shipwreck with my brothers. I have no in between.”
“I feel like those things would appeal for different reasons,” I say with interest. “Although, even before my injury, I don’t think you would have gotten me into a shipwreck. Swimming with turtles, absolutely, but going inside a shipwreck? That sounds terrifying, Liliana.”
“You say that now, but I bet I could change your mind,” she says. “It’s a surreal and incredible experience to be swimming between the tables of an old dining hall.”
I try to picture it, which is why it takes me a second to notice that Lily is looking at me funny, her eyes slightly glassy.
And then I realize…it’s the first time I’ve talked casually about the before and after of my injury.
The thought is a shocking one. So much so that I need to steer the conversation back to Lily before I can dwell on it.
“So…brothers? Plural?”
She nods. “Two. Sean is older, Colin is younger.”
“What about your parents?”
I watch her throat move on a rough swallow. “It’s just my dad. My mom passed away when I was young.”
My chest tightens, knowing the loss of a parent all too well. “Shit, I’m sorry, Liliana,” I say quietly.
She gives me a shaky, but genuine, smile. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”
I take a sip of my drink, giving her an opening. After my dad died, I shut down any conversation about him when people tried to talk to me. But on the other hand, I could see that it helped my mom to talk. I want to give Lily the opportunity to take this conversation whichever way she needs, and I’ll be supportive regardless.
I think she might know what I’m doing because she gives me a grateful smile. “Do you have any siblings? And if you don’t, would you like to borrow any or all of mine?”
I let out a relieved chuckle. “No and no. Sorry, I’ve already got a friend who acts like an annoying little brother. I don’t think I could handle any extras.”
She seems to perk up at that tidbit. “Oh yeah? Who’s that?”
“His name’s Mikey. We were best friends in middle school. We…lost touch after high school for a few years, but one day, he just showed up on my doorstep like a stray.” Huffing a laugh, I add, “At any given point, he might walk into my house and raid my fridge. The guy has zero boundaries.”
When Lily’s smile grows, I study her for a moment. “He would absolutely love you,” I tell her. “If he were here, I guarantee you two would become instant best friends, and I’d be left third wheeling in the cold, suddenly the butt of every joke.”
“Well, now I have to meet him,” she says with a laugh. “I’ll take all the help I can get with making you the butt of every joke.”
I shoot her a glare, but there’s a playful undertone in it. We’ve come a long way from the grumbles and glares of day one.
We’re interrupted briefly when the waitress appears with our orders, and the food smells so good that our conversation stops for a few minutes as we both tear into our cheesesteaks.
Lily lets out a groan of appreciation, then covers her still-full mouth with her napkin and says, “This is the ideal pub cheesesteak.”
I nod my agreement, too busy taking another giant bite to answer with words.
“What would you say your favorite food is?” she asks.
“Right now? This cheesesteak.”
She laughs. “No, seriously.”
I take my time chewing as I think over my answer. Then I swallow and say, “Steak. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve eaten it, somehow, it’s always going to be my favorite.” Gesturing at my cheesesteak, I add, “It’s probably why I was only half-kidding about this cheesesteak.”
She’s smiling as she shakes her head. “For some reason, I expected you to go in the opposite direction and say some kind of greasy, super unhealthy fast food.”
My nose scrunches in distaste. “Definitely not. I won’t argue that some of them taste really good, but I don’t think any exist that don’t make me feel like total shit immediately afterwards.”
I’m too busy taking another giant bite of my cheesesteak to notice Lily’s hesitation.
“So…then what’s the excuse for smoking?”
My eyebrows rise as I look up and meet her gaze. She’s clearly calling me out.
After a moment, I sigh and drop the sandwich on my plate. “Touché. It’s a filthy habit.”
She snorts, which might be the cutest fucking sound I’ve ever heard, especially with the added sight of her chowing down on that cheesesteak. “No shit. But that doesn’t answer my question.”
Another sigh, this one heavier. I figured she would ask me eventually. It’s too-obviously a side effect of my injury.
“It started as a ‘fuck it’ moment where I just wanted to destroy my body,” I admit. “And then it kind of grew on me. It became this weird form of stress relief, and after that, it was just a habit.” I shrug. “So bottom line is, I don’t really have an answer for you.”
She cocks her head. “I guess it doesn’t really matter at this point. You’ll probably walk any day now, and then you’ll have to quit because of our deal.”
“I basically already have,” I murmur, more to myself than to her.
She frowns. “What?”
I shrug again, trying to play it off. “I haven’t really been smoking lately. Only time I do is when I light one out of habit or when I’m stressed.”
Her mouth drops open. I want to tease her about the lettuce stuck between her teeth, but instead, something very different comes out of my mouth. Somehow, acknowledging the fact that I’m smoking less feels…freeing. This disgusting habit that I only picked up as a way to self-destruct feels way less needed than it used to.
“You know what I hate about it?” I ask, suddenly animated. “It kills my taste buds. Food tastes different when I smoke. It makes everything bland.”
Lily’s nose scrunches adorably. “That sounds horrible.”
“It’s the fucking worst. Between that and not being able to work out the way I want to, I feel like I haven’t been able to enjoy food in two years.” Absentmindedly, my gaze drops to my plate. “Or not until recently, I guess,” I muse.
When I look up, that same glassy look from earlier is back in Lily’s eyes. But this time, I don’t run from it, I just accept it with a smile and say, “You have lettuce in your teeth. By the way, what’s your favorite food?”
She goes bright red and fumbles for her phone so she can pull up her camera app. I chuckle at the way she demurely picks the lettuce out, turning so that I can’t see her do it.
I’m finishing off the last bite of my sandwich by the time she turns back. Her eyes widen at my plate as I go for the mozzarella sticks, but she still answers my question.
“Um, probably Hungarian food. It’s my comfort food.”
I pop an entire mozzarella stick in my mouth. “That’s meat and potato dishes, right? Would I know any specific ones?”
“Goulash, maybe. It’s a beef stew.”
“I didn’t know people even made stew still.”
“Somewhere, my poor grandmother is turning over in her grave,” she mutters. When I give her a confused look, she explains, “My dad’s mom was Hungarian. She’s one of the reasons it’s a comfort food—the other is that I love a good meat and potato dish. But a lot of the famous ones are stews.” Her eyes light up with excitement. “Their food is incredible . You would love it.” And then she hesitates in a way that has my focus zeroing in on her next words. “Maybe I’ll make you some after you’re discharged from the clinic.”
The air becomes suddenly thinner. Because that’s not a casual comment.
That’s a future comment.
I don’t get a chance to respond to it—if I even could—because static suddenly crackles through the speakers and the MC’s voice sounds out.
“Alright, folks, we have our winners! And it looks like it’s by a landslide . Wow. This is incredible. Congratulations to our winners… The Agony of De Feet! ”
A cocky grin slowly slides across my face.
“Where are our winners sitting?” the MC calls out, looking around. “I’ve got your prizes right here!”
When I raise my hand, he makes a beeline over to us, microphone still in his grip as he drops an envelope on the table.
“Congratulations to The Agony of De Feet! Not only have you won two tickets to the local movie theater, but you’ve also set a History Night record here at King’s Cross. Out of the thirty questions asked, you got twenty-nine of them correct!”
There’s a smattering of applause around the restaurant, but I barely notice, because all I can think about is that I’m annoyed I got one question wrong.
When the MC finally walks away and calls an official end to Trivia Night, I wipe my hands and reach for the envelope.
“Movie Tavern. Nice.” I slide the tickets back inside, then meet Lily’s gaze with a grin. “So, what horror movie are we going to go see?”
* * *
I don’t think either of us is ready to leave when the waitress finally brings us our bill.
We’ve been here for almost two hours. After Lily finished her cheesesteak, she ordered another drink, pulled her leg up on her chair for a more comfortable position, and promptly asked me for my top three movies.
After that, we snowballed from one random question to another. We talked about our likes and dislikes, shared memories, told meaningless stories. It was comfortable and…refreshing. Because God knows our entire relationship has been centered around the most serious part of both of our lives, so being with her in this kind of setting has been a relief.
It didn’t help that my affection for Lily grew when a dessert menu was dropped at our table and her eyes grew adorably large at the idea of cheesecake. She tried to get me to eat some, but I lied and said I’m not a fan of that particular dessert. In reality, I just wanted to watch her as she ate it, dancing excitedly in her seat.
But it’s our waitress’s second pass by the table to ask if we need anything else, so it’s obvious that the night needs to end.
“We’ll take the check,” I tell her with an apologetic smile. It turns into a sigh when she has the check immediately ready to whip onto our table, but I just reach for my wallet and pull out my card.
“Here, we can split it,” Lily argues.
I quirk an eyebrow at her. “Not a chance, Liliana.”
Her lips purse. “But tonight was my idea. Honestly, I should be the one paying.”
“Not a chance,” I repeat. Then I drop my card on the tray and hold it out toward our waitress, who hurries off. It earns me a glare from Lily, but I merely wink at her in return.
The gesture is something of a mask, though. I always would have paid, but the real reason I wanted to is because it’s the only semblance of masculinity I can gather tonight. If I can’t pick her up in my car, or hold a door open for her, or even call this a true date, the least I could do is pay.
Once we’ve settled the bill, we silently gather our things and head toward the door. It isn’t until we’re outside and I pull out my phone that I realize, fuck, I should’ve called an Uber while we were still at the table.
I’m trying to figure out how to convince Lily to leave me here to wait alone when she notices the open app on my phone. And it all becomes a moot point because she doesn’t even hesitate before asking, “Do you need a ride?”
And every attempt at feeling like a normal guy on a normal date with a normal girl goes right out the window.
I wave her off, trying to hide my discomfort. “Nah, don’t worry about it, I’m just going to call an Uber. You don’t need to wait for me.”
With the way she’s gesturing for me to follow her before I’m even done talking, I don’t think she was really asking. “That’s silly. I have my car here and nothing else to do tonight. I’ll drive you home.”
I suck in a breath, still undecided, and watch her walk toward her car. It’s only twenty feet from the restaurant entrance, so when she reaches it and turns back to lift her eyebrows at me in question, I let out a shaky exhale and direct my wheelchair her way.
She drives an SUV, so finding space for my chair isn’t a problem. It’s the awkward process of getting in and out that makes me nervous.
I eye the passenger door, mentally calculating if I can get in without needing her help. But I realize quickly that I would need to take the wheels off if I wanted to do that, and this chair is a bitch for that kind of thing.
Lily must notice—and translate—the muttered curse under my breath, because she looks at her car, then back at me. “If you get into the passenger seat, I’ll just put your chair in the trunk. Easy.”
A huff of frustration escapes me. “We’re not at the clinic, Liliana. You don’t need to be my PT.”
She cocks her head, wearing that same familiar look of patience that she wears during our sessions. When she speaks, her voice is gentle, but firm.
“Roman, I’m not being your PT. I’m being a human who cares about you and wants to help.”
When I meet her eyes and see the truth in them, I swallow thickly and nod. I should know by now that any offer from Lily is genuine. That knowledge is what makes me move to the passenger side of her car and transfer into the seat.