“Hey, how do you ladies want the burgers?” Dylan called.
“Bloody,” I replied.
“Ew, disgusting!” Electra shrieked. “And here’s something for you to file away for future reference, dipshit—you don’t cook a Gardenburger like a meat burger, you just cook it till it’s not frozen anymore.”
“Kiss my ass, bitch!” Dylan said merrily.
“Kiss mine!”
“You first!” He stuck his ass out and pointed at it. She kissed the air and he went crazy laughing. Roman shook his head and winked at me over the flames.
When we were done eating, Electra went inside to call Josh and the four of us stayed outside and smoked twilight cigarettes. The sky was all violet and red. Electra wrapped the fence with bamboo and put out tiki torches last summer to feign tropical. If not for the police helicopters circling overhead and the constant rush of passing traffic out on Fountain, the ambience would be downright sultry.
Dylan gave Roman a long look. “Hey, brother, can I ask you something?”
“Sure you can, brother,” Roman replied. He had a hand resting comfortably on the back of my neck.
“Is it hard for you to be away from your fine-ass woman so much of the time?”
“Please,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“No, seriously,” Dylan said, rolling his right back. “I want to know.”
Roman looked thoughtful. “Well, of course. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering.’ Cause you know chicks, they get lonely. And when they get lonely…well…all I’m saying is you shouldn’t leave a fine-ass woman unattended for too long.” He gave me a sly wink, looking devilish in the firelight. We settled into an uncomfortable silence. I shot Dylan the look of death and kicked Ava under the table.
“Bacco, tabacco e Venere riducono l’uomo in cenere,” she said to Roman, knowingly. Wine, women and tobacco can ruin a man. Roman laughed.
“What the fuck was that?” Dylan demanded.
“Nothing, bastardo. You come inside with me now,” she commanded him. “If you’re coming to San Diego with me for the weekend, then we need to get packing.”
“Anything you say, bella.” He slung an arm around her neck and kissed the top of her head as they got up from the table.
I watched them go.
Roman was frowning. He looked concerned. “Do you get lonely?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “You should tell me these things.”
I shrugged again. “It’s nothing, Roman. I just get lonely. I miss you.”
He kissed me. “I miss you, too, Dalton. You have to know that.”
“I do.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
We kissed again. He told me he had something special planned for the weekend, in honor of our two-year anniversary. We were going away, just the two of us. I said I couldn’t wait.
Chapter 2
I was surprised when he proposed. It came out of nowhere. It was the Fourth of July and we were having wine and cheese and crackers and crème brûlée on a cliff by the ocean on Catalina. We were talking about random stuff like what kind of cheese is in cheesecake and how it’s weird that Italy is shaped like a boot and what was really going on in the movie Vanilla Sky. Then he got all serious.
“You know something…Dylan made a good point the other night.”
“Which was?”
“Us being apart as much as we are. It’s not right.”
“Oh, that.” I didn’t want him thinking I was some baby who went around bawling about how neglected she was. “Well, let’s not judge ourselves by anything Dylan has to say. He’s pretty much just a big dorky asshole.”
He laughed. “No, just outspoken, I think. An unexpected voice of reason.”
“That’s putting it very tactfully. Like saying he’s one sweet son of a bitch.”
He laughed again. Then he put his hand in mine and looked at me with soulful eyes. “Really, though. There’ve been some things on my mind that I’ve been wanting to talk to you about. I thought now that we’re alone would be a good time. What do you think?”
My heart was pounding as I nodded. I was expecting him to tell me he was tired of things the way they were, tired of me, tired of our relationship. I was too young, too silly and lacking direction. I was never serious, completely trivial, and always broke because I made impractical purchases like my Louis Vuitton Mary Janes and those strass-inlaid Chanel sunglasses that were almost as much as my rent payment but so fucking glamorous I just couldn’t deny myself. I felt jittery and nervous. What if he’d done some research and now he knew all the things about me he wasn’t supposed to know? What if he wanted to tell me what a horrible person I was for acting the way I did in his absence?
But that wasn’t it at all. Instead he started talking about the future and how much I meant to him and how he didn’t want to lose me but he was leaving again. Not just leaving to go home but really leaving. He’d gotten his next placement. He had to be in Cameroon by August 1 and would be staying six months. He said he was afraid that one of these days someone else was going to snatch me up while he was gone. He said he was afraid that I was going to find someone else. Fireworks exploded in the black sky above, shimmering gold and pink and green on the black ocean below. He asked me if I would marry him when he got back, and said that if I wanted, he would give up his career for me.
How grand and traditional. A moonlight proposal by the sea.
“Are you sure you want to marry me?” was all I could think to say.
“Why would you ask me something like that?” he laughed.
I guess because there are two sides to every story. The Roman me, the me he sees, is the nice Dalton. The lover. The one I would be all the time, if the mean Dalton, the hater, wasn’t always demanding her share of the limelight. That Dalton has fists. She bullies the nice one into submission. She says, “Listen, when you’re nice people fuck with you. When you’re not, you can fuck with them.”
Good Dalton says why. Bad Dalton says why not.
“I could see us getting married,” I said thoughtfully.
“So can I,” he said eagerly.
A thought popped into my head. Electra once saying our relationship is chaste.
I may tone it down around him, but I’m still far from darling. It’s not like we never get down. It’s not like we sit around listening to Mozart and comparing Monet and Matisse. Roman himself is not some stiff. He is a wild man. He speaks other languages and I’m not talking just French and Spanish. He lives most of his life in jungles and deserts that most civilized people wouldn’t go to if their lives depended on it. He wears his hair longer like a gay man or a celebrity and isn’t ashamed of it. He has a real camera, the kind that cost a thousand dollars and not some cute pink thing from Toys “R” Us with Barbie written on it.
We are not chaste. We are classy.
“But I would never ask you to give up your career,” I said boldly. “Your work is your whole life.”
He slipped the ring onto my finger. “Not my whole life, Dalton.”
He doesn’t