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My heart speeds up, suddenly anxious. What doesn’t he care about? Is he done doing this? Already? What could I have possibly done, we haven’t even seen each other and—
“I don’t care if people see us,” he adds. “Gods, good girl. You’re not only a bad liar, even your expressions are obvious. Good thing too, since you never actually say what you’re thinking.”
Is he insane? He can’t just decide not to care. “But...you can’t do that.”
“I can. I did.”
“Roman—”
“What did Catalina say when I left?” Roman asks, clearly unwilling to continue talking about this.
“Cat,” I correct reflexively.
He frowns. “I don’t think I’m going to get used to that.”
“Why?”
We turn the corner into a crowded stone hallway. “Do you have any people that you grew up with that are first name/last name people?”
“What?”
“You always call them by both their first name and their last name, like…” he thinks for a minute. “You always say ‘Sebastian Cesariao.’ We went to all the same schools for almost twenty years. There was only one Sebastian, I know who you mean without the last name.”
I shrug. “Oh, yeah I guess.”
Roman nudges some guy out of the way so I can keep walking beside him undeterred. “Well, it would take an act of the gods for Catalina Minola to become ‘Cat’ to me.”
“Like marrying her best friend?” I say, then immediately glance over my shoulder to see if anyone heard me.
He scoffs. “That’s not an act of the gods, good girl. God is nowhere near this union. This is entirely sinful.”
The back of my neck heats and I bite my lip. I tangle my fingers in my skirt, knowing full-well why I didn’t wear tights today, even though I didn’t even think I would see him, and he’s right—there were no gods involved.
“You’re a first name/last name person for me.”
Mostly.I don’t want to think about how easily it’s starting to shift.
His brow furrows. “Really? Strange. You’re not for me.”
“Well, of course not, you always called me, ‘good girl.’”
He flashes a grin at me. “And looks like I was right, you turned out to be just as good as I thought you’d be.”
I cough, and pat myself on the chest with an open palm, as if to dislodge the air choking me.
“You okay?” he asks.
“F-fine.”
“Well, what didCatsay?”
“Nothing,” I lie. “She didn’t care.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Bullshit.”
He’s right. In reality, my friend spent over an hour complaining that I didn’t tell her about this, then just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, she started in on very specific sex questions, but the last thing I want is to relive it by telling Roman. “No really. She wasn’t phased. That was, um, hardly the first time Cat’s seen something like that.”
Roman’s expression alone is enough to tell me I haven’t quite hit the “no big deal,” vibe I was going for. His mouth has become a tight line. “Is that so?”
