Rome and Julie

“Don’t forget to call me right when you land, and—”

“Okay, Aunt Maggie. I love you, too.” I cut off Maggie’s rant that had been lasting about 10 minutes. I pulled her into a hug, noticing how tense she was. This was, after all, the first time I’d ever taken a real vacation. A week at camp every year of my kid days didn’t really count. No planes were involved then.

“Rome, you better take care of her.” Maggie warned with mock anger. He grinned, wrapping his arm around me. I was sure the rushing people around us in the airport saw my bright red blush.

“Do I ever do anything but?” He said, squeezing my shoulder. I groaned, shrugging out from under his arm, and leaning over to get my bags. Rome had already taken our suitcases to the conveyer belt. Over the intercom, a woman’s voice announced that our flight was boarding.

“Okay, well, I guess that’s us.” I said, Maggie suddenly pulling me to her, giving me another hug. I rolled my eyes at her silliness, assuring her I would call and keep her updated.

“Geez, she’s worse than a mother.” I muttered as Rome and I walked through the airport to where our flight was boarding.

“Not my mother. No one’s worse than my mother.” I laughed at him.

“So true.”

When we reached our destination, we waited in line silently, until we reached the front, showed the lady our tickets, and got on the plane. I tried to ignore the way my stomach rolled around in my body, caused by nervousness.

“So you’ve never been on a plane before.” Rome stated as we sat down. I glanced sideways at him, not daring to look out the window.

“No.” I swallowed hard, pretending that I wasn’t afraid to ride on planes and that I knew we weren’t going to die. Rome tried to make conversation a few more times, bless his big heart, but I didn’t respond, too busy gripping the arm rests with a hold I’m sure was similar to a snake’s. Finally the lady came on the intercom, telling us to stay seated and to put on our seatbelts. She went through her drill, stating where the bathrooms were and the exits. Thanks to my request, we were in coach. I didn’t want to be in some first class area, surrounded by snobby people. Plus, I didn’t want to feel out of place.

Before I knew it, the plane started moving, and my eyes widened ever so slightly.

“Rome, what’s the chance of us dying on a plane?” Catching my desperate and rushed tone, Rome looked over.

“Julie, are you afraid to ride on airplanes?” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Answer the question.”

“Uh… around 1 in 350,000.” Although his words should have been reassuring, they weren’t in the slightest. My heart still hammered hard in my chest, and my brain was pounding with awful scenarios that didn’t include Rome and I walking off the plane safely.

“Jules?” Rome’s voice was getting distant, and when the plane started tilting upward, my breaths got quick and loud. I felt Rome’s hand unwrap mine from around the armrest, and take it in his own. My shock lessened how frightened I was. “Julie, tell me something.”

“What?” I hissed through clenched teeth, looking upward at the ceiling, biting my lip. Why had I agreed to this? Wait, I hadn’t. Rome and I were forced by his parents.

“Anything. Tell me anything.” I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. “What about this German Shepherd of yours? Tell me specifics about him.” This caught my attention.

“Like I said before, I want it to be male, and I’ll name him Max.” The plane moved around, I assumed from the storm outside that hadn’t ceased since it started yesterday. I took another deep breath and continued. “I don’t want him neutered, because in a few years, I want a female, and they can have puppies. I want him to be trained, and I want him to love only me. Also protective—” There was more harsh bumping, and then a pause for a second. “Also protective of me. He’ll sleep on my bed every night with me, and I’ll spoil him to no end.” I kept going on about my future dog, knowing that Rome was just doing this to distract me. But the whole time I was talking, Rome’s hand was warm in my own, and his eyes were on me.

I didn’t know if he knew, but he was doing a fantastic job of comforting me.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the seatbelt sign is off. You may now move around the cabin. There is turbulence from the storm, but we’re mostly above it now. There is a chance we’ll get more though, so be prepared to return to your seats. Thank you.” I sighed, running a hand through my hair, knowing probably fifty gray hairs sprouted.

“Thank you for distracting me.” I said, sending Rome a nervous smile.

“No problem. Although you did nearly give me a heart attack. You looked like you were having one!” I laughed, noticing that our hands were still interlocked.

“Uh, Rome. You can let go now. I think I’m fine.” Rome flushed, and let go quickly, as though I had a disease. “Although if there’s any more turbulence, you better have your hand ready to go.” I grinned, trying to loosen the tense feeling that suddenly fell over us, failing.

“Dick Livingston wants us to buy, but his company is pretty much as low as low gets. He’s offering it for an amount way too high for what it’s worth. We can’t bring it back. There’s no way. There has been too many problems with the—”

“Okay, then. Don’t buy. Tell him no.” I didn’t know why Rome was telling me, when he already knew he wasn’t going to buy a freakishly suckish company. He was probably trying to get conversation to start again. From there, Rome and I started talking about business, but, too tired and worn out from my plane-phobia, I just let the conversation keep going, even if the subject was a sucky one.

For hours we talked, which was a change for us. Rome and I never just sat and talked about things. And, a surprise to us both, I’m sure, it wasn’t all about business. Just… stuff. Like people I met at camp, and things Rome does in his free time—which turns out that he works out all the time. I never would have guessed if I hadn’t seen his pretty arm muscles. I even went kind of emotional on him, and talked about how I felt so guilty that I held back Maggie and Robert. How I caused them to be in their financial situation. Rome assured me it wasn’t my fault, but I knew otherwise.

Soon, after what felt like five hours, I succumbed into the abyss of darkness, otherwise known as sleep.

When I woke up, I knew that someone had put a pillow under my head and a blanket over my body, and my forehead was resting against something cold and hard. As I woke and saw the clouds, I knew that it was the window.

Sitting up, I rubbed eyes and ran a hand down my face. I glanced over at Rome, to find him asleep, sitting awkwardly without a pillow or blanket, his head resting in his hand. Grinning slyly, I took my blanket and draped it over him.

Ever so carefully, I picked Rome’s head up, using his cheek to tilt his head over onto my shoulder. Resting my cheek on Rome’s soft head of hair, I found myself oddly comfortable, and closed my eyes to pretend to be asleep.

As I waited for Rome to wake up, I made a list of things to do while we were in the Caribbean. First, I needed to take Rome’s credit card and buy him a whole new wardrobe of casual clothes. That was priority. Second, I needed to get my dog. Third, I wanted to swim with dolphins. Everything else Rome could plan.

I felt Rome stir underneath my head and I had to use all my willpower not to grin. For a moment, there was no movement, but Rome soon pulled his out of from under mine, letting mine drop to his shoulder. I felt the blanket drape over me, but Rome didn’t push me back over to the window.

I sat like that for what I thought to be ten minutes, then slowly got up, pretending to rub my eyes and stretch. I was aware of Rome’s eyes on me.

“What?” I asked in what I hoped was acceptable as a groggy tone. Rome grinned, shaking his head.

“Nothing, Jules. Nothing.” I shrugged turning to the window, staring out at the clouds. After a while, I got sick of looking at the reminder of how high up we were, so I turned to Rome.

“So…” I trailed off.

“So?”

“Rome, you’re supposed to make a conversation.” I groaned, my gaze strangely falling to Rome’s hand, which was sitting alone on his knee. He laughed, bringing me back to the present. I tried to act like nothing weird happened, but by Rome’s inquisitive look, I knew I was failing.

Soon after, we landed, and I couldn’t be more relived. It was hard to talk when we’d nearly covered every subject of conversation.

“Do you remember when you’d just turned seventeen and I was thirteen, and I wanted to come to your birthday?” I asked, looking over at Rome as we walked through the airport, out bags and luggage rolling behind us.

“Yes.”

“And you had your friends from school over. I came to your door, but you didn’t let me in. And it was raining, and I was—”

“Julie, stop.”

“—getting rained on. I don’t think you thought I knew that you didn’t want your friends to see me. For them to figure out I was the one you were getting married to. And—”

“Julie—”

“—I had your present in my arm. I’d made you a scrapbook of us. All the pictures Maggie had managed to get us when we weren’t looking. Like us drinking lemonade on the back porch, us playing in the leaves that one—”

“Julie! I know! I was a freaking bastard to you. I knew that the moment I slammed the door in your dripping face. I felt awful. Why do you have to bring it up?” Shocked at how loud Rome was yelling at me, I finally fell silent. My lips rolled into a thin line as I squinted my eyes in confusion.

“I don’t know… I just thought…” My voice was barely a whisper, and got caught in the mess of the airport and flowed behind us. Rome didn’t hear me. I didn’t expect him to, either. His actions were those of a stranger to me.

“Julie. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“No. No. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Even though I didn’t know it was such a sensitive subject to Rome. How could I? I was over that day when he was totally rude to me. Totally over it. Why wasn’t he?

“Julie, seriously. I raised my voice, and I want you to forgive me.” Rome said, grabbing my shoulder to stop me.

“Okay. You’re forgiven.” I said quickly, continuing to walk towards the terminal. The rest of the walk was silent and weird, and I silently cursed myself for bringing up the stupid subject.

When we made it outside, the heat hit me hard. I wasn’t prepared for the warmth that beat down on me from the sun, a huge difference from the coolness of the airport. The Caribbean was a huge difference in weather than rural Ohio.

“Whoa.” I tried to take in all my surroundings at once, resulting in a minor headache. A sign caught my attention, mostly because it read ‘Madden.’

Before I knew it, Rome was leading me by my elbow towards the guy holding the sign, a grand looking limo beside him.

I tried—failed—to suppress my groan.

I saw Rome smiling as the guy opened the door for me and I rolled my eyes in response. On the way to wherever we were going, Rome and I started conversation, putting the little incident behind us. Rome and I were good at that. Forgetting things in order to make moments less awkward.

“So after we unpack at the hotel, we can go to the beach, or do whatever you want to do.” Rome said, pulling out a brochure and handing it to me. On it were millions of little attraction in the Caribbean. Out the window, I could see that the place we were at—Tortola, I think—was pretty mountainous. Not to mention it was so beautiful.

“Let’s go to the beach.” I said, keeping it simple. Rome nodded, and I put the brochure in my purse. We soon arrived at the grand looking hotel, where a bellhop was immediately by our sides, offering to get the bags up to our room. We let him, mostly because we needed to laugh about how frantic he looked where he couldn’t see us.

I watched from afar as Rome went to the front desk to check in. The woman behind the desk was flirting big time, with girly little smiles and unnecessary giggles. It made me sick. When Rome went on other vacations without me, did he flirt back with the most likely millions of gawking, flirting girls?

“Okay. We’re good to go.” Rome said as he walked over, and I noticed a smile on his face. The thought that that woman put it on his face made me want to gag. I followed Rome to the door, where the bellhop was waiting. He looked pretty scared as we walked out and around the building, which made me want to laugh again. Ah, the beautiful humor of a bellhop.

“That will be all.” Rome said as we arrived to our room door. Rome slid out his key card, chuckling as the bellhop walked away. He unlocked the door, and opened it for me to walk in. But I was too busy staring at the ocean behind me. I was like, maybe thirty yards away from our hotel/suite. Our suite was on the beach. “Jules?”

“Oh, right.” I said, turning to walk in the suite. From the outside, I could tell the place was pretty huge—two stories and wrap around balcony on the top floor—but on the inside I knew my inference was correct. Very correct. Not only was this place beautiful, but rather huge and highly decorated. I grinned. “Where’re the bedrooms? I’m sick of these bags.” I said, turning to Rome, who was staring at the floor.

“Uh, Julie… when my parents picked us out a room, they didn’t exactly listen to our requirements. They didn’t get us the most expensive one like I asked… but…” I raised my eyebrows. “they only seemed to have gotten us a one-bedroom suite.”

“Oh.” I said, deflating a little. Well, that could be handled. “That’s okay.” I shrugged, going to a hallway to where I assumed the bedroom was. There was a bathroom, a workout room, and a study, but no bedroom.

“It’s upstairs.” Rome said, already at the stairs when I returned to the main living room. I struggled getting up the stairs, and Rome, being the gentlemen he is, didn’t help me at all and stood at the top of the stairs, watching me fumble with all my bags.

“You know, a little help would be nice.” Rome was still laughing, so I tuned him out, eventually making it to the top of the stairs. “Okay.” I breathed, letting go of my bags temporarily to push my hair out of my face, which I had stupidly kept down.

Rome proceeded to the bedroom, and I had to hurry after him, otherwise I would have gotten lost in the ‘suite.’

When we walked in, I smiled at its comforting beachy theme, and soft colors. It was a decent size, and the bed was huge. Rome and I unpacked silently, but it was amiable. When we were finished, Rome and I ordered room service to eat before we went to the beach.

While we ate, I had turned on the radio to avoid any more silences.

“I’m confused as to why your parents think this will help.” I said through a mouthful of sandwich.

“When I know the answer, I’ll let you know.” Rome said, completely nipping that conversation in the bud. While I contemplated ways to start back up a conversation, Rome finished his meal, politely excusing himself, reminding me of meals at home.

Feeling bad for leaving Maggie, I was no longer hungry, and got up to clean up our mess. When I was finished, I went to the bedroom to put on a bathing suit. I couldn’t find Rome, so I went to the bathroom to change into my plain orange bikini.

When I left the bathroom, I was fully ready to go. I had on my cover up—Rome’s dress shirt, which I’d so politely never given back—and my beach bag, which included the necessities of going to the beach. In the bedroom, I realized Rome was in there, and his back was to me. Thank God too, otherwise he would have seen me gawking. Just from his back muscles, I could tell that I would have to take some serious self control to keep me from drooling all over myself when I saw his front. Quickly, skipping out of the room before he could turn around, I danced downstairs, grabbing some snacks from the cabinets—on Rome’s debt—and stuffed them into my bag.

I heard Rome come downstairs, and I turned around, only to see that Rome had put a shirt on over his plain brown swim shorts. I tried to feign indifference. In five minutes, we were out of our suite and onto the nearly pure white sand—so bright that I had to cover my eyes.

The ocean was a beautiful blue. Like… super blue. Rome muttered something about how it matched the color of my eyes, and I was really flattered. After all, the color of the ocean was gorgeous.

I got my towel from my bag first, laying on the towel. After a while, I knew there was something different from the times I went to the beach at camp. As I sunbathed, I couldn’t put my finger on the thing that was different.

Listening to the ocean and seagulls in the air, I finally realized.

“Rome, why aren’t there other people on the beach?” It took a while for Rome to answer, so I looked up at him, where he was standing, arms crossed, his deep gaze somewhere in the ocean. “Rome?”

“Wha-uh, yeah. This is a private beach.” Rome looked down at me, but I knew he wasn’t really seeing me. Whatever he was thinking about was obviously stuck on his mind. So I left him alone to do whatever he wanted while I bathed, still in Rome’s shirt.

Rome had already seen me in my undergarments, but I wasn’t exactly fully awake when he did, so I was a little self-conscience. I one-by-one undid the buttons on Rome’s dress shirt, until it was fully unbuttoned. Swallowing harder than necessary, I took of the shirt.

After I’d thrown it on the sand beside me, I glanced up at Rome to find him completely absorbed by the ocean. Great.

“Are there public beaches we can go to? For some reason, being the only two people on the beach is a little weird.” I asked, leaning up on my elbows. There was no reply, and by Rome’s deep stare, I didn’t really expect one. So I got up, rolled up my towel, stuffed it and Rome’s shirt in my bag, and slung it over my shoulder. “Rome!”

“Yeah?”

“Can we go to a public beach? This is weird.” I said gesturing around us—the bare, open, beautiful beach.

“Uh… sure.” Rome was really acting strange. He stared at me for a while, and I stared right back, my gaze inquisitive, his intense. Finally, Rome seemed to come back to the present time, and he snapped back. I did noticed his gaze momentarily trail my body, and I tried not to jump back and cover myself with my arms.

“Rome? The public beach?” I reminded him, getting his gaze on my eyes. Men will be men, even if they are sophisticated like Rome. He lead us back to the suite, where he called a car to pick us up. While we waited I turned on the flat screen television, flipping through channels, not deciding on one by the time the car arrived.

We got in, and while we rode, the driver tried to make talk.

“What’s your name pretty lady?” His tone wasn’t grotesque or perverted, but polite. I smiled nicely at him through the rear-view mirror.

“Julie. And this is Rome.” Speaking of which, he was staring at the window, continuing to be all mysterious.

“Are you guys on a honeymoon?” Glancing at Rome to see if he was as alarmed by the question as I was, I realized he wasn’t hearing a word we said.

“Um, no. We’re…” I wasn’t sure what status our relationship was. “Engaged.” I exhaled slowly, letting my cheeks puff up with air. Today was proving to be a weird, boring day.

“Congratulations.” The man said. “You have a rather pretty lady, there, sir.” The driver said. Rome looked up at this, and replied with a smile.

“Yes.”

I rolled my eyes at his rather limited answer. If someone told me that my fiancée was pretty, I would have said something more than yes. Like, I know, she’s gorgeous. Or, yes, she is really something. But Rome is… Rome.

“Here we are.” The driver said, stopping at a curb, which lead to a beach full of people. As we got out, I realized how awful I probably look in Rome’s dress shirt—which I’d put back on in the suite—with my bare legs showing. Rome slipped the driver a twenty, told him to keep the change, and followed me out the door.

“So. We’re here. What do you want to do?” Rome asked.

“Well, I’m going to get a drink. And you,” I said, shoving my bag into Rome’s chest. “can go set my towel out and give me some money.” Rome smiled a little and complied, and I watched his form as he disappeared in the crowd to find us a place.

“Can I help you?” I jumped as a deep voice interrupted my staring at Rome. Quickly turning my head towards the voice, I found it was a young—hot—guy behind a juice bar.

“Oh! Uh… yes.” I paused, blushing like a mad idiot. “Can I get… a piña colata?” The man grinned, full of straight, white teeth, and started preparing my drink, not even asking me if I was old enough to drink one. I watched as his dark toned hands worked to get my drink ready, and I found myself very interested by him.

“That’ll be $8.00.” I handed him the ten, our fingers brushing momentarily. To be acting this way around a guy other than Rome was steeping me into confusion. When he handed me my drink, as I tried to leave, he started up conversation, about where I was from and who I was with, to which I replied ‘a friend.’

“The United States isn’t that great.” I said, rolling my eyes. “Especially since I live in Ohio. I mean, what’s great about Ohio?” I asked, making myself comfortable on the swivel chair I was sitting in. By now I was done with my drink.

“Lake Erie borders it…” The guy—he introduced himself as Pedro—muttered with humor, and I laughed.

“Right…” While we were laughing at his pathetic attempt to make Ohio better than it is, Pedro started stroking my arm with his index finger. I froze, unable to move. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t pull away.

Rome decided to walked up, then looking pretty gorgeous with the sun casting highlights on his face, even if his shirt was still on.

“Julie.” Rome said in a voice that was very stone-like. “Who’s this?” His teeth, I noticed were clenched.

“Can I help you, sir?” Pedro asked in an annoyed voice, as though he was interrupting something, which he wasn’t.

“Yes. I’d like to retrieve my fiancée so we can spend some time together.” Pedro’s finger stopped moving and pulled away.

“Who do you think you are? Get lost, freak.” Pedro said, his chest puffing up in that dumb male, masculine way. Rolling my eyes, I stood up to go to our towels. Except when I pushed on Rome’s chest, I was surprised it too, was puffed up, and unmoving.

“Rome. Stop.” Before I knew it, Pedro had hopped over the counter, and was in Rome’s face, which was red with anger.

I was very confused. Why were they fighting again? Almost no words had even been spoken between them, give or take a couple of sentences. What was going on?

While I was trying to comprehend what exactly was happening, Pedro moved his fist back, swinging it around to punch Rome in the eye. I gasped, catching Rome’s head before it hit the sand.

“Dude! What the hell?” I yelled at Pedro. “What were you thinking?” I asked, to both Rome and Pedro.

“He was claiming that he was your fiancé, and talking to you like you were dirt. Where I come from ladies are only treated with the utmost respect. There is no ‘retrieving’ them as he said, like dogs.” I saw where he was coming from.

“Well, I am, in fact, Rome here’s fiancée. And I’m sorry he insulted your ways, but it won’t happen again.” Meanwhile, Rome’s eye was already getting swollen and bruised, but by the looks, it would only last a couple of days. “Rome, let’s go.” I said, pushing on his upper back to get him to sit up. We stood, and I helped him over to our towels, which he had to pathetically guide us to.

“He has a good punch.” Rome said as he sat on his towel looking out at the ocean. I paused a while before replying, thinking about the book Siddhartha and trying to listen to the ocean to find peace, coming up rather short.

“I’m sure it’s just a minor bruise. I’m sorry I uh…” I couldn’t exactly apologize for accidentally flirting back with a guy. I mean, Rome had probably done the same to me. “Led him on. I didn’t mean for him to get the wrong idea.”

“It’s okay. And thanks for nursing me, Jules.” I smiled and laid down all the way on my towel exposing myself towards the sun. Slipping of Rome’s shirt again—this time completely unfocused on if Rome was watching me or not—I set out to tan.

When I woke up, I was rather surprised that I’d fallen asleep, even though it was common with the sun’s heat to fall asleep. I moved aside the strap on the top part of my bikini that wrapped around my neck to check my tan, to find that I’d gotten considerably darker.

I sat up, looking out at the people and children playing around with each other. It was nice to see everyone so happy.

After a while I realized Rome was asleep beside me, without his shirt on. And thank god he was asleep, because I drooled considerably. This dude was… well, he was pretty freaking built, and not just for a business owner. For any man.

While I waited for Rome to wake, there wasn’t really anything interesting to do, so I ate some snacks from my bag and applied sun tan lotion. As I sat exposed to the sun, I heard some yelling and a ‘heads up!’, but I reacted too late and something hit my head with a harsh sting.

I rubbed my head before turning to see who was the perpetrator. A teen boy who had sandy blonde hair and these freaking dark blue eyes jogged over to me, his body gleaming in the sunlight. All these hot guys at the beach were not doing mine and Rome’s marriage any good.

“I’m so sorry.” The guy said, getting closer, allowing us both to get better views of each other. We were probably the same age, he was maybe a year or two older. “I’m Hayden.” I smiled.

“Julie.” His smile was white, and I couldn’t handle any more gorgeous guys, perhaps subtly flirting with me. “Well, I have to wake up my fiancé so we can go eat dinner. I guess I’ll see you later, maybe, maybe not.” I watched his face fall, and I felt bad.

“Oh… okay.” He grabbed his frisbee, which I figured had been the thing that hit me in the head, apologized one last time, and ran back over to his friends.

“Rome. Get up.” I said, shoving his shoulder harshly, my gaze struggling to stay on his face. “Rome!” I pushed him again, and he grumbled, his eyes beginning to open. As he sat up, I studied him while he wasn’t exactly coherent.

Rome had the kind of hair that made your fingers itch to touch it, and his face look chiseled as though gods carved it out of stone. His lips were perfect for kissing—like I would know—and his eyes were so deep that I’d often find myself getting lost in them when I was a younger girl. His body, which I’d newly discovered to be gorgeous, had definitely changed since the last time I’d seen him without a shirt on—he was fifteen, I was eleven—and his muscles were one’s made of steel, which came as a surprise.

Let’s face it, I don’t need other cute beach guys. I have Rome. And Rome is Rome, which is good enough for me. Bring on the gorgeous guys. I have Rome to use and compare against them, and laugh when they lose.