49. My Girl
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
my girl
IMOGEN
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
I’m standing in the middle of an empty apartment overlooking the water. It’s got floor to ceiling windows, beautiful hardwood, and brand new appliances. Practically perfect.
“So?” The landlord asks, her voice throaty like she spends all her free time trying to break cigarette-smoking records. “You want an application?”
It really is a stunning little apartment, but my mind has been elsewhere this entire trip. Seattle hasn’t been as much of a reprieve from Emerald Bay as I had hoped, with the similar look to the neighborhoods and everything; it all reminds me of Roman.
I even had to hold back tears when we passed by a western-themed diner on the drive over here.
“Uh, sure. Can I take it home? I’m on a bit of a tight schedule.”
“Go nuts.”
She pulls a piece of paper out of the big binder she’s carrying, and I thank her one last time before heading down to the lobby where Piper and Jay are waiting for me.
“So? Was it a winner?” Jay asks hopefully.
We’ve been looking all weekend and I know they’re both getting tired.
“Yeah, if paying three grand a month counts as winning,” I grumble as the next applicant gets ushered upstairs. “Not really in my price-range.”
His shoulders slump a little, but he nods empathetically.
“That’s criminal,” Piper mutters, getting to her feet. “I think I saw a couple more places with vacancy signs out front if you want to keep looking.”
My stomach growls for what has to be the fifth time in an hour, and I just know I can’t put it off any longer.
“Nah. It’s time to grab some food.”
“Oh, good idea!” Jay chimes in. “These viewings should have a little cheese board or something to welcome you, you know? People get snacky apartment hunting.”
“Do you really want to touch cheese that’s been manhandled by other people?” Piper asks.
Jay rolls his eyes and I can’t help but chuckle as we get into the car. He spends a couple of minutes scrolling on his phone before suggesting a little sushi place that’s not far from where we’ve been staying.
I’m already daydreaming about what I’m going to order when my phone buzzes.
ROMAN: You planning on coming back to your AirBnB any time soon, darlin’? Or have I lost you to the big city forever?
“Uh… holy shit.”
“What is it?” Piper asks.
“It’s Roman.”
I have to read the message a few times over to fully process it, scanning each word for some secret hidden meaning that isn’t there.
“Are we still mad at him?” Jay asks, a hint of caution in his voice, mixed with his patented excitement.
“God, I don’t know anymore.”
The words on the screen almost don’t seem real, and more importantly there’s a big part of me that’s still angry with him for not trying to contact me sooner. I’ve spent two weeks agonizing over the fucking punctuation marks in every message I sent, wondering what I did that pushed him away; I’ve let his absence take up every little bit of free space in my head, and now he just pops back into my life with a text? What the hell am I supposed to do with this?
IMOGEN: Wow. Would have been nice to hear from you earlier.
ROMAN: I know. I’ve got a lot of groveling to do, if you’ll let me.
“Jay, can you drive us back to the house?”
I want to know what he has to say for himself. I want to know if it’s an excuse, or a genuine apology.
“You got it!”
Jay steps on the gas, weaving skillfully through traffic as Piper turns around in her seat.
“What are you gonna say to him?”
“I don’t really know.”
The rest of the ride is pretty much silent, with me typing out everything I want to say to Roman before deleting it over and over, all while trying not to throw up on the rental’s faux-leather seats. I was really starting to think this was over, that he had decided to move on without me.
As Jay turns down the street to our place, I spot Roman leaned up against his car, in his fucking cowboy hat. I feel sick and excited and angry all at once.
“Goddamn, look at Dr. Burke!” Piper exclaims.
The worst part is I look like shit in comparison.
I smile despite my nervousness as Roman carefully places a bouquet of pink roses on the hood of his car, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket and watching intently as we pull into the driveway.
He’s just as scared as I am.
I’m frozen in my seat as Jay parks the car, staring at Roman walking up the driveway with the roses in his hands. He’s even got Mitzy beside him, dressed up with a little pink bow around her neck.
He really went all-out.
I don’t know what to do or what to say, and my emotions keep flipping between extremes. One second I’m elated, and the next my anger begins to overpower me. Two fucking weeks. He couldn’t text me back for two weeks, and the whole time I thought he was just content to let our relationship die.
But now he’s here, like this.
Piper turns to me, her hand resting on the door.
“Iggy, are you okay?”
That’s when I realize I’m shaking, and it’s been getting progressively harder to breathe. I dig for my inhaler in my purse, taking two deep puffs as Roman stops just short of the car.
“I think so, I am now at least.”
Piper climbs out, opening my own door for me and helping me to my feet. She puts her hands on my shoulders and I’m immediately drawn into the warmth of her gaze.
“Do you need me to be here while you guys talk?”
I shake my head, tears slipping down my face, but she wipes them away and flashes me an encouraging smile.
“I’m a phone call away, okay? I promise.”
“Thanks, Pipes.”
I hadn't even realized that I’d started to cry.
Piper hugs me tight before heading to the house with Jay, each of them briefly acknowledging Roman as they pass. It’s only another moment or two before he steps toward me, the roses clutched tightly in his fist.
“Those are for me?”
“They are,” he murmurs.
My head is swimming and I’m finding it hard to focus on… well, anything.
“I’m fucking pissed at you.”
“I got lost, darlin’, felt helpless and didn’t know what I should do. I could have done better, should have done better, and I’m sorry.”
The flowers in his hands are shaking as badly as I am.
“I handed in my resignation. Wasn’t going to sit in a conference room with a bunch of suits and answer questions about us. Didn’t seem like there’d be a point, because for every question they’d ask, you know what I’d have to tell them?”
I shake my head.
“I’d tell them that you’re my future, I’d tell them you’re everything to me and that I was a fool for not seeing it earlier. I’d tell them that every time we’re in the same room, the only person I find myself looking at is you. I love you so much it brings me to my fucking knees, and I’m going to spend every single day going forward proving that to you. If you’ll let me.”
I spent two weeks terrified that I’d be left to pick up the shards of my broken heart. I was so terrified that we’d have to start over, that we’d just up and vanish from each other’s lives, but even though I’m still pissed at him, there’s a part of me that understands. I’ve been too afraid to reach out in the past, left texts unanswered only to crawl back to them weeks later and suddenly realize the impact it might have had. You just don’t see what you’re doing in the moment. You’re always too numb.
I step toward him and take the flowers from his still-shaking hands, holding them to my chest.
“You really mean that?”
“Every word.” He lets out a deep, trembling breath before gesturing awkwardly at the car. “I thought we could go for a drive? Unless you want to talk here.”
I look back at Piper and Jay, dutifully watching us from the front steps. The thought of having this conversation with my friends within shouting distance fills me with an even more anxious dread than was already there.
“Sure. Let’s go.”
Mitzy pants softly beside us and Roman smiles, glancing back to Piper and Jay.
“You guys like dogs?”
“Love ‘em!” Jay calls back. “Need us to babysit?”
Piper crouches down, her hands on her knees.
“Come on, pretty girl!” She coos. “I saw a tennis ball with your name on it!”
Roman takes my hand and leads me down the driveway toward his car while Jay and Piper coax Mitzy inside the house.
“Where are we going?”
“There’s a little park nearby,” he tells me, sliding into the front seat. “I figured we could sit and talk. I owe you a lot more than flowers and some gummy worms.”
“Gummy worms?”
“Logan said they were your favorite. Check the glove box.”
Of course my brother had a hand in this.
I round the car and plop myself down into my seat, finding a bag of candy the size of my head exactly where he said it’d be.
“Jesus, Roman! This has gotta be like a month’s supply!”
“Yeah, and it’s not nearly enough,” he mutters, starting up the car. “You ready?”
I nod, buckling my seatbelt as the engine rumbles to life and his dad rock immediately starts blaring through the speakers.
“Sorry,” he chuckles, turning it all the way down.
I hold back a smile as he starts to drive, heading away from the majority of traffic and down some narrow roads. The trip is short, but even then it feels like it only took a moment or two for each of us to lose any of the nerve we’d built up, falling silent as that familiar awkwardness of the past few weeks begins to claw its way back in. Luckily the location Roman’s picked is gorgeous enough to snap anyone out of their funk.
I gaze out at the secluded little area at the edge of a sunlit-lake. It’s a picturesque sight, right out of a painting, with a few boats out on the water even in spite of the chill that lingers in the air.
“Imogen, I owe you a huge apology. It was wrong of me to shut you out, and there isn’t a single excuse I could give you that’ll make up for what I’ve done. But when your brother told me you thought things were over between us, I realized how much I let everything spiral out of control. I never wanted this to be over.”
His eyes are wet with trepidation, and he’s struggling to keep control of his voice the whole time he talks; I’m not doing much better. My anger flared a couple times, but it quickly began to dampen when I got to hear him take responsibility. For a while I was wondering if I was going crazy, and this simple validation is a massive relief.
“Roman, I didn’t know if you were okay, or if we were okay. You said nothing would change, even after we got caught, and then you froze me out, and that fucking hurt. If we’re going to be together, we need to be able to communicate. No falling off the radar when things get hard, no leaving the other person in the dark.”
It feels strange to finally be saying everything that’s been filling up my notes app for the past month.
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make things right, darlin’.”
I take a moment to stare out at the water, letting everything sink in. He drove all the way here for me when he could have just as easily let me slip through his fingers. He clearly does care about us, enough to fight for what we had when it counts, it just took him some time to get there.
“Wait, so then what have you been doing for the past two weeks?”
“Sleeping,” he replies, a little sheepishly. “I was so depressed, it was the only thing I could do to get through each day. When I finally made the decision to quit, it was like the fog disappeared and everything became a lot clearer.”
“Was Frankie mad? When you told him, I mean.”
The last thing I’d want this to do is ruin some of his friendships, just when he had started building them back up again.
“Nah, he took it well. Told me it looked like I hadn’t had passion for the work in a long time, and he’s right. I threw myself into my research after Christa died, looking for some kind of answer, but it was more distraction than passion. I felt like there was a chance I could find the reason why she took her life, that someone out there had cracked the code, and it would all make sense to me.” He swallows, doing his best to stay calm. “So it wasn’t about the work anymore, it was only about me. The past month gave me a lot of time to think about what really matters, and I know that’s you, without a shadow of a doubt.”
I press my forehead against his, holding myself together through shuddering breaths. This whole time I’ve been looking for some kind of peace, but only finding anguish in a torturous kind of anticipation.
Now, everything I’ve been hoping for is right here in front of me.
“I want you too, all of you.”
Roman captures my lips, and I almost burst into tears when I realize just how much I’ve missed this.
Missed him.
Missed us.
“So please don’t go,” he rasps as he pulls away, an old fear present in his eyes.
“What?”
The words stun me for a moment, and I’m not quite sure what to say.
“Don’t move to Seattle.”
“Roman, I’m going to school here. My life is?—“
“I know, I know, but— look, I’ve thought this all out. I could drive you, and I could pick you up, and?—”
“Every day?” I chuckle.
“Why not? I applied to a culinary school here. If I get in, I’ll be making the same commute. And even if I don’t, who’s to say I couldn’t make the time?”
“Hmm… carpooling together? That’s quite the commitment,” I tease. “Next you’ll be asking me to move in with you.”
Roman’s cheeks grow redder as he bites down on his lip, and I know he’s about to say something equally terrifying for the both of us.
“That part’s all up to you,” he breathes. “Offer’s on the table. I’d never force you into anything, just… Please don’t leave Emerald Bay, darlin’.”
It’s not like I want to, that place was just starting to feel like home after all.
“To tell you the truth, I wasn’t really wowed by anything we saw out here. Except maybe this view you found.”
Roman takes my lead and runs with it, not wasting a single second.
“We could rent a house by the bay, with a view just like this. You can have an office, and I can have an even bigger kitchen. We’d be close to your brother and your friends, and most importantly we’d be together. So please… Just stay.”
The panicked, hopeful gleam in his eyes wrenches at my heart. I don’t want to have to start all over again in a brand new city, to leave Logan behind after we’ve just rebuilt so much of our old relationship, but most of all I don’t want to go another second without this man in my life.
I stroke his cheek, watching the light off the water glisten in his eyes.
“Alright.”
I can feel a massive weight fall off me the second the words begin to leave my lips, and in that moment I know there couldn’t possibly be another answer.
“I’ll stay.”