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Things like; “he’s been totally spaced for months, now” complete with knowing look in my direction; “he left Derek’s to meet her last week” with accompanying wink; “the girls have missed him” as Rio waggled his eyebrows; “he’s gone soft, with her good influence” as Steve gave me a winning smile. This last one was intended as a friendly dig, but I saw the way Hadley looked between Roman and me like there was more puzzling out to do.
When I finally had us excused – having to quite literally drag Hadley away – she thankfully said nothing. She continued saying nothing as she watched Mason ask me if I wanted to go to the movies that Saturday. If she noticed the way my eyes slid to Roman before I said yes, she kept right on saying nothing.
A real date would change everything for good. Wouldn’t it? No more being uncertain of what Mason and I were. Right? No more wondering if holding Roman’s hand counted as cheating (because it probably was). And, certainly no more almost-kisses like the day before. I was presumably properly with Mason now; the only lips I kissed would be his.
Wednesday was strained and awkward with Roman in the morning, but got steadily more relaxed as we got closer to school. Roman even smiled at me almost completely normally at Lunch. Well, normal for Roman at school anyway. After school, we went to pick up Maddy. She ran into his arms far more adorably than was absolutely necessary –see how Hadley’s ovaries like that when I tell her!– and heswung her around with a huge smile on his face.
I noted the way the younger mums looked at him. Kind of that leery way older women looked at younger men like they knew they shouldn’t, but they just can’t help themselves. I grinned, but didn’t say anything to him until later – where I was informed that more than one young mum had hit on him before.
When we got home, Maddy insisted on coming in to see my room while I changed. Roman started to make a joke about coming too, then stopped quickly enough and with a look on his face that I didn’t think Maddy was to blame. He went to their place and Maddy followed me up to my room. She had a good nosey around, but that at least gave me some time to make sure I wasn’t flashing her anything she shouldn’t be flashed. She chattered away as she looked over my stuff until she got to a picture of Roman and me that I’d printed and stuck on the headboard of my bed with all the other pictures of people close to me.
“Why is there a picture of Uncie Roman here?” she asked.
So, I explained, “I put pictures up of all my friends.”
“What about me?” she asked, turning to me with a frown.
I smiled. “I don’t have a picture of you.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. Shall we take one now?”
She threw me one of those huge smiles and we took position in front of the picture of me and Roman; we took a sensible and a silly – like all good photo shoots should be.
When we were done and I’d assured her that I’d print it out as soon as possible and put it up with the one of Roman, we went back over to Carmen’s and found Roman in the kitchen. While Roman cooked dinner, I shepherded Maddy upstairs and got her changed then took her outside to practise cartwheels. After that, it was dinner time, bath time, and bed time for small children. As per usual, it took at least three goes to get her to stay in bed.
Roman and I dropped onto the couch with a heavy sigh. And, from there things got awkward again. He put his arm around my shoulder while I found something to watch and we fell into old habits. We were laughing about something when he started tickling me and I looked up at him.
My heart fluttered and I got that old familiar feeling in my stomach as we looked into each other’s eyes. It was too familiar and my body felt like it was on autopilot. Thank God my brain was still working before one of us moved forward.
“I should go…” I said as I stood up faster than I’d ever stood up before.
He shot up with a single nod and ended up on the other side of the room. “Yeah, probably.”
“Okay. Okay. So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”
He nodded once again. “Yep. Bright and early. At the ute.”
“Okay. Yep. Morning. Good. Night.”
I grabbed my jumper and let myself out. I paused at my back door and could just see an orange spark pacing outside his in obvious agitation.
“God, you cannot do that,” I chastised myself, feeling even worse than the most horrible human in the world.
Thursday we were even further behind square one than we had been on Monday, but we both seemed to be suffering a pretty good case of denial. He smiled and hugged me and chatted about what Maddy had been up to all morning – apparently a heavy amount of talking about my finer qualities. But, his eyes were tense and full of something pretty close to that darkness the likes of which I hadn’t really seen in months when it was just the two of us.
Friday was no better. Especially when Mason went past us as I got out of Roman’s ute and reminded me to pick a movie for our date. I noticed Roman take a step away from me even though he hadn’t been standing anywhere near me. I smiled at Mason and nodded, but there was no ignoring the fact that Roman and I had no idea how to behave around each other and it seemed like time might not be able to fix it after all.
Still, Mason.
Mason was the goal and I’d reached it.
I shook off my worries about what Roman and I were and focussed on the blue eyes that always held a smile for me.
