Forgetting Roman

{five}

{five}

                “Thanks for walking me back to my dorm,” I told Declan as I hugged myself. The temperature had dropped in the few hours I had been in the bar and the thin sweater I had on wasn’t enough to block out the cold winds.

                “Its fine,” he replied as he stuffed his hands deeper into his jean pockets. “Are you sure you’re okay? You turned ghost white back there.”

                I nodded and glanced over my shoulder at my dorm building longing to walk through doors into warmth, “I’m fine. I’m just a bit tired.”

                “Alright, well it was nice meeting you.”

                Glancing over back at him, I gave him a small smile and nodded. “Yeah, it was nice meeting you, too.”

                Declan flashed me a smile before he began backing away slowly, “I’ll see you around, Aspen.”

                I watched him walk away, his leather jacket gleaming under the sidewalk lamps. I believed his words right there and then.

++

                I sat on the far side of the couch, one leg crossed over the other as I held a red solo cupped filled with water in my hands. Roman sat beside me, a joint placed between his lips and fingers. Although too some the smell of marijuana was disgusting, to me the smell was enough to make me close my eyes and remember the feeling of being high run through my body.

                I knew that the situation I was putting myself in was dangerous. Yet, the thrill of being so close to something as deadly as Roman replaced the urge to take the joint away from him and inhale it myself. I had gone months without any relapses. I was handling myself well enough to suppress the urge that was beginning to claw at the pit of my stomach.

                “So,” Dylan, a friend of Roman’s said as he leaned forward and took the joint from Roman’s fingertips. “What’s the deal between you, two?”

                Next to me, Roman placed his arm around the back of my head and laid his large hand on my bare shoulder. Through the fabric of my blouse, I could feel his thumb moving up and down in a calm manner.

                Dylan watched us with red eyes as he took a hit, finishing it off. He kept the smoke in for a few minutes before he let it go and a weak smiled crossed over his lips. Whatever they were smoking, must have been really good. Both he and Roman had taken only a few hits from the small joint and already their eyes were glazed over.

                “It’s been a month, bro. You never keep a chick ‘round that long.” Dylan added after he cracked open a cold beer that was in an ice chest next to the small wooden coffee table in the middle of the small apartment living room.

                Though his words should have set of bells in my head telling me that Roman wasn’t one sticking around long, I let them pass right over me.

                Besides me, Roman pulled me into his side and from the corner of my eye I could see the sly smirk that crossed over his now wet lips, “She’s different.”

                Different- he used that word a lot to describe me. What was so different about me? What did he see in me that was so different from all the others girls that went to our school? Roman was well known for his cold exterior and hard reputation in and out of school. What did I have that could have possibly caught his eye?

                “She screams ‘innocent’,” the fake blonde who had been silently sitting next to Dylan said. Now she did not. She screamed ‘prostitute’ if I was being completely honest. “Apart from the cheap hair, that is.”

                I laughed at her comment and for the first time since sitting down on the worn out couch in the small and dingy apartment, I spoke. “Trust me the only one between us two that has cheap hair, is you.”

                Dylan raised his brows and besides me Roman chuckled.

                “Feisty,” Dylan commented as he placed a hand over his girlfriend’s mouth to keep her from talking. “I can see what you mean by different. I like her.”

                I weakly smiled, unsure of what to do or say. Roman laughed again and moved his hand up and down my arm, causing warmth to spread from the friction he was making against my skin. Looking up at him, I noticed the smile that had taken place on his lips as he looked down at me.

                “Me too,” He said, and with that he looked back over at Dylan and told him to spark up a blunt.