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It’s rare enough when Roman’s phone rings these days, rarer still when it’s Shiv calling. He assumes she’s joking when she invites him to Tom’s birthday party.
“Yeah, so, why the fuck would I want to go to that?” Roman asks.
“Because I’m asking? Because he’s your brother-in-law? Because you could spend some time with Rose?” Shiv lists.
Roman has never commented on Shiv’s choice to name her daughter after their dad’s dead sister. When he gets the urge to, he reminds himself the kid is lucky her name isn’t Logana. “Super compelling stuff, sis.”
“Gerri will be there.”
Roman tries to be cool, to keep his heart beating at a normal rhythm, to pretend above all else that he doesn’t care because he so, so wishes he didn’t care, and he fails at all of it. “Why would I give a shit about that?”
“Wasn’t it you who fell to the ground when we saw the dead wife montage of Gerri reciting a limerick? Or am I misremembering?”
None of his siblings had ever asked outright what the hell was up with him and Gerri. Just jokes, teasing at his expense about the sad boy following after his work mommy. Roman used to wish someone would just ask but then, he didn’t know what he would’ve said. Still doesn’t.
“Not sure what you’re talking about,” Roman says, flopping backwards on the couch and staring at the ceiling.
“Whatever. All of Tom’s people will be there and it would be nice to feel like I had people too, for one fucking evening,” Shiv says. A baby starts wailing in the background and Shiv sighs. “Shit, she’s already awake. I’ll text you the details. Just…try to show up, yeah?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Roman says, already knowing he’ll be there.
Roman steps out of the car in front of Tom and Shiv’s building, the heat and humidity choking him immediately. It’s barely July, why the fuck is it so hot?
He only deals with it for a moment before the air-conditioned lobby embraces him, lets him breathe a sigh of relief. When the elevator opens into Tom and Shiv’s floor, Roman sees a swath of Midwest transplants and hides his woebegone sigh.
Back when Roman thought he’d see and speak to Gerri again in his life, he used to hope it would be in a more neutral location, a restaurant or bar or park (he never goes to the park, but that’s irrelevant). Not that this place is necessarily fraught with bad memories for them, but, still. Too many people from those days. Too many ways for Roman to do or say something dumb.
But it’s been so many months since the signing and since he’d seen her. He used to check his phone incessantly, certain she’d call or text, certain that she missed him as much as he missed her. As time passed, though, Roman stopped checking and planning and hoping. He is a poison bullshit person, and Gerri deserves better than that. Better than him.
Roman pets Mondale’s head, the poor dog’s tail waving madly at the slightest bit of attention. The symbolism is a little too heavy-handed, though, so Roman walks over to the other playpen in the room where his niece kicks her feet and raises her fists in her bouncy chair. Shiv’s absolute twin, Rose has a dusting of red hair and bright blue eyes. She gives Roman a big gummy smile and he can see the sincere delight on her face, which is where the similarities to Shiv ends. He hopes this kid has more of a chance than he and his siblings did.
“Roman, hey, hey,” Tom calls out, his voice just as boisterous and grating as he remembers. Tom claps him on the back and waves at Rose, who squeals and kicks with even more gusto.
“Happy birthday, I guess,” Roman says.
“Great of you to come, Shiv will be thrilled,” Tom says. Roman cranes his neck to look at Tom’s haggard face and can see stress etched into every line. The job that makes your brain explode, indeed.
“I didn’t bring a gift,” Roman says.
Tom laughs as though Roman said something funny. “Your presence is the perfect present, ha ha, well, I’ll just be…” Tom walks off and Roman makes a face at Rose, whose face is now crestfallen. Much closer to Shiv again.
“Hey hey hey,” Roman says softly, stepping over the sparse wooden slats and the sad beige baby toys to get to her. He unclips Rose and hoists her into his arms, remembering when he did the same with Sophie and Iverson.
Rose grasps Roman’s collar in a tight fist and surveys the room from this new angle. Roman cocks his head to look at her face and is alarmed to see her frowning, chin quivering. Oh fuck.
“It’s ok, Rosie,” Roman says, bouncing her a little, but this only irritates her more and she starts crying in earnest. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Try patting her on the back,” says the only voice that could make Roman immediately follow its suggestion. He pats between Rose’s tiny shoulder blades and soon enough, she emits quite an impressive burp.
“Hey, it’s like a magic trick,” Roman says, handing Rose off to the nanny with a bottle in her hand.
“More like common sense,” Gerri replies.
Roman turns to look at Gerri for the first time in months and he nearly reels back in shock. “Jesus, you look like shit.”
“Well, thank you,” she says.
“No, fuck, I mean, like, you really do look like shit.”
“Who says you don’t know how to flirt?” Gerri says, but there’s not much bite to it. Not much of anything, really.
“Sorry, I’m…are you ok? Like, do you feel ok?” Roman asks. Because she looks beautiful, of course she does, in a blue linen sundress and her hair a little shorter than the last time he saw her, but her face is drawn and he can tell she tried to cover up the circles under her eyes.
“I’m fine,” Gerri says before coughing slightly.
Roman places two fingertips to her upper arm. “Are you sure? You feel warm.”
Gerri pulls her arm away. “I’m fine, stop feeling me.” Roman continues peering at her so Gerri rolls her eyes and says, “I’m not sick. I just get really hot then really cold, and all my muscles ache, and every joint hurts, but I’m not sick.”
“Ok, well, you just willingly came over to talk to me, so you’re clearly not yourself,” Roman says, aiming for levity and missing wide.
Gerri frowns at him slightly and nods once. “Ok.” She walks away, taking with her the remaining shard of Roman’s heart.
“Been here less than 5 minutes and already talking to Gerri,” Shiv says with a smug grin on her face.
“Hey, she came up to me,” Roman says.
“Uh huh. Thanks for coming,” Shiv says, giving him a quick, one-armed hug.
“Yeah, whatever,” Roman says. “Your kid’s cute when she isn’t experiencing an intense mood swing. Just like her mama.”
Shiv rolls her eyes but he sees the proud smile on her face. “She is. Finally sleeping through the night, mostly.”
“Didn’t you hire a night nanny?”
“Yeah, but her cries are fucking loud,” Shiv replies. “Get yourself a drink, I should play gracious hostess.”
“Good luck with that,” Roman says. They walk off in opposite directions, but Shiv wasn’t lying: these are all Tom’s people. He barely avoids speaking with Greg, and he hardly recognizes anyone else. He gets the sense that most people are from Waystar/GoJo, everyone trying desperately to impress and climb the ladder, and Roman feels profoundly grateful that he has no urge to do the same. A bunch of nothing people in an insulated, nothing world.
But then everything comes up to him just as he’s hit the one-hour mark and thinks he can exit politely. Gerri taps him on the elbow. “Can you take me home?”
Roman bypasses the easy joke (growth!) and instead says, “Of course.”
They walk around the periphery of the party towards the elevator, Roman walking protectively behind Gerri. He catches Shiv’s eye from across the room and she purses her lips, smugger than before. Roman mimes humping Gerri and flips Shiv off (Roman wasn’t changed in a day, after all) but stops when Gerri sees him.
When they step into the elevator, Roman requests a car in the app and then turns to Gerri. She’s got two pink spots on the apples of her cheeks, and he doesn’t think she’s blushing. “Feeling ok, Typhoid Mary?”
Gerri gives him a weak half-smile. “I just need to get home and rest.”
Whatever else she says, she must feel truly awful to ask him to help her get home. She once refused his offer when she was three martinis and an edible deep after a heinous board meeting.
When they reach the lobby, Roman asks, “The car should be here in a couple minutes. Do you want to wait outside?”
“No, it’s too hot,” Gerri says.
“How long have you felt…like this?”
Gerri shrugs. “Not long. A week or two.”
“Or two?” Roman echoes. “Jesus, Ger, you have to take care of yourself. Did you take any time off work?” Gerri shakes her head, keeps her eyes towards the street. “I feel like a benefit of a Scandinavian boss is that they don’t care if you take time off work, right? Isn’t that a thing?”
Gerri just shrugs and is saved having to find an excuse by the arrival of the car. They walk into the sweltering heat and are in the cooled interior in a matter of seconds after Roman runs around the other side of the car, sliding in next to Gerri. She’s already closed her eyes with her head back against the cushion, and he notices goosebumps down her arms and legs.
Simply put, Roman has never been very chill about Gerri and he has never seen her ill in any way. These two things combined are wreaking havoc on Roman, who understands he needs to at least pretend to be a little chill so Gerri doesn’t make him leave.
“Have you been to a doctor?” Roman asks. Super chill. Never been chiller.
Gerri reaches over and taps once, twice on Roman’s hand. It would be one of the greatest moments of his life if her hand weren’t so clammy. “No. It’s just a cold.”
Roman thinks of a million ways to refute this but says none of them. “What about your daughters? Aren’t they wor—”
“They haven’t spoken to me since I signed on for this job,” Gerri says, eyes still closed.
“Oh.” Roman doesn’t bother asking if anyone at Waystar/GoJo has expressed concern because who would? He would have, once. Still, clearly.
They arrive at Gerri’s building quickly, early evening traffic evidently slow, and Roman jumps out and runs to Gerri’s side before she can say anything.
“M’lady,” he says, bowing dramatically and offering his arm. Maybe the over-the-top theatricality will charm her and not remind her that she, you know, hates him. Gerri grasps his arm and leans on it a little more than Roman ever remembers her doing, and he escorts her into the lobby without saying anything. Roman nods and Gerri smiles to the concierge at the desk, and the elevator is already waiting open when they get there.
Gerri’s eyes are open now but she’s staring off into the middle distance, quiet. It isn’t that Roman doesn’t know what to say, it’s that he has so much to say that he’s worried it will all come pouring out if he opens his mouth: I miss you do you hate me I think I loved you can you forgive me do you miss me too I think I still love you can we ever fix this why haven’t you gone to the doctor?
The dilemma is, to him, understandable.
The elevator dings and they walk in unison to Gerri’s apartment. She pulls her keys from her clutch purse but just hands them to him with a sigh. “It’s the gold one.”
“Righty-o,” Roman says because that is definitely something he has said before in his life.
As soon as she enters her apartment, Gerri kicks off her shoes, sets her purse on the credenza, and walks off. A light down the hall suggests her bedroom. Roman puts her keys back in her purse and steps out of his shoes, too.
Roman’s never taken care of anyone before, but he remembers Grace tending to Isla when she had whatever germs make kids all mucus-y and sticky. Hydration, rest, medicine. Roman confirms his own suspicions when he opens Gerri’s fridge and sees nothing but cocktail ingredients and bottles of water. He takes the water then stops at the bathroom in the hall; his delightful little boomer has an honest-to-god medicine cabinet, and he shakes two ibuprofens into his hand.
He follows the glow of the light into the inner sanctum, Gerri’s plush and soft bedroom. The carpet is thick against his feet and he’d love to take hours to inspect every tiny detail because even when they hung out all the time, he never managed to make it into her bedroom, but there’s a hot blonde lawyer sprawled across her bed and Roman thinks she might have fallen asleep.
“Hey,” Roman says softly. Gerri’s eyes flutter open, wide behind her glasses, and she looks up at him.
“Rome?”
Rome Rome Rome Rome. He thought he’d never hear it again.
“Yeah, take this,” Roman says, holding out the pills. He twists open the water bottle and hands her that, too.
Gerri has closed one eye, apparently keeping two open was too much work, and she peers at him. “Roofies?”
Roman yips out a laugh and swims in Gerri’s answering smile. “No, ibuprofen, but hey, if you’re feeling better later, who knows?”
Gerri takes the pills and swallows them with the water then lays back down. Her breathing deepens and evens out quickly and now he’s certain she’s asleep.
Should he leave? Should he stay? Should he go through her dirty laundry?
He decides to at least wait until she wakes up and if she isn’t better by then, he’ll insist she go to a doctor. She might be pissed as fuck, but he knows if he goes home, he probably won’t hear from her ever again and he’ll be worried for the rest of his life.
Roman grabs a remote off her bedside table (there’s even a book there, she’s so fucking cute) and plays around with it a bit until the light dims as far as it will go before turning off. He pulls a lightweight blanket off the end of her bed and drapes it over her after deciding against changing her into her pajamas, however tempting that might be. Her dress seems comfortable enough.
He walks to a corner in her room with an overstuffed chair and a table with all sorts of decorative knickknacks on it. He plops into the chair and spends a fair bit of time trying to determine if they’re actually Gerri’s or put there by an interior decorator. When he sees an intricately decorated ceramic bowl that he’s pretty sure Gerri bought when they were in Japan, he stops being nosy and doomscrolls on his phone instead.
After he’s lost all his lives on all of his games and rotated through every single social media app, he gets a low battery alert and sighs. Gerri’s phone charger is resting on the other bedside table, and he doesn’t see any outlets near him. Modern man’s suffering is unceasing.
He plugs his phone in and wanders her room for a few moments but understands that if left unoccupied, he will do something that crosses a line. If it were anyone else in the world, he would not give a single shit, but it’s Gerri. So he grabs the book sitting next to Gerri’s lamp and returns to his chair. Gone Girl. He’s pretty sure it’s a movie and obviously he’d prefer watching it over reading the book but there’s no way to do that comfortably without laying in Gerri’s bed (hot, but again, runs the risk of her anger). So he opens the hardcover and starts to read.
Love is the world’s infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood is the quote preceding the novel. It reminds Roman of his family.
When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. Ok, that’s a banger of an opening line. And people say he’s fucked up.
He looks over at Gerri, curled on her side. He’s never thought of her head, not really. Her brain, for sure. He’s met a fuck ton of people in his life and Gerri is by far the smartest. Definitely smarter than his dad, and Roman understands now, with the wisdom granted by time and separation, that’s one of the reasons his dad resented her so much by the end.
He thinks of her eyes, sharp and scrutinizing, but so fucking pretty and blue. When he was at his most delusional, he used to think she looked at him differently than she looked at other people. Delusion or not, it was a happy time for Roman, looking at himself through Gerri’s eyes, like he was almost a person and almost worth something.
He thinks of her nose, a literal button nose that crinkled when she let her guard down, that she held in the air when she wanted to look down it at him.
He thinks of her smile (not her lips because he absolutely cannot travel down Pervert Lane right now). At one point he had 18 different smiles of hers categorized, and this was before he acknowledged, privately, that he had actual feelings for her.
He had been so stupid, in so many ways.
Roman blinks rapidly to clear his eyes and returns to the book.
He is over 100 pages into the novel (far past where Gerri’s bookmark was) when Gerri suddenly sits up and looks around in confusion. When her glassy eyes fall on him, she blinks several times.
“Rome?”
He sets the book down and unfurls his legs. “Yeah?”
She still looks confused and more than a little feverish, her cheeks pink and her hairline sweaty enough that her roots are starting to curl. But then she reaches out a hand for him and her face collapses and Roman goes to her as he always has, as he always will.
“You ok? Do you need anything?” he asks, but she just grabs his shirt and pulls him to her. She’s crying, in a snuffling, gasping, shaking kind of way, and all Roman can think to do for several moments is hold her close in the way, he can’t help but think, he wanted her to do when his dad died.
“I’m sorry,” she says into his damp shirt. He assumes she means for crying, or maybe for making his shirt a snotty mess, but then she hiccups another sob and keeps repeating it. “Rome, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, none of it went…I’m sorry.”
Roman brushes her hair off her clammy forehead then continues holding her. “Ger, hey, it’s ok.”
But she cries, and cries, and soon she’s taking those little gulping breaths he is unfortunately very familiar with, and he has no idea what to do. He rubs circles on her back, he rocks her a bit, he kisses the top of her head (in another scenario, this would be a dream come true but like, literally, he has had this dream several times), and he can’t figure out how to help her. The world has turned upside down.
“Ger, Gerri, baby, it’s ok, I swear,” Roman says. “I’m sorry too, fuck, of course I am, but you, you don’t have anything to be sorry for, yeah? I promise.”
She shakes her head and sobs out another weak “Sorry.”
Roman holds her even closer, one palm flat against her back and the other against her hair, and maybe he is thinking about her head now because Gerri has always loomed so large in his head, his imagination, his estimation, but now she feels so small, like something he should protect, like something he can protect.
“It’s ok, Ger,” he says. “I’m here, yeah? It’s all ok.”
She quiets down a bit, but her shoulders continue to shake and the rest of her body shivers, so Roman pulls the blanket up to cover her entirely. He leans back against her pillows and brings her with him, resting her head against his chest. One of her hands rests against his side and the other lays on his stomach.
Gerri finally calms down but Roman keeps rubbing her back, hoping he can help her fall back asleep. When he’s sure she has, he presses one more kiss into her hair and then turns out the light completely.
There’s no way he’ll be able to fall asleep, something that is difficult enough for him to come by but when it does, it’s under very specific circumstances and thread counts. Even more, though, it’s what’s running through his head that’s making it feel impossible.
Just months ago, he would’ve given his left nut to know that Gerri cared. But now, with the proof in front of him, he wishes she never cared at all because it means she was hurt by all of it, too. It means he hurt her.
“I’m sorry,” he says to the top of her head, but she doesn’t stir.
Despite his certainties, Roman is wrong (this does not surprise him) and he does fall asleep. He wakes up to a line of sunshine bisecting his face, much earlier than he normally would. Gerri is now sprawled on her stomach in the middle of the bed, her hip pressed against Roman, her hair fanned out on her pillow. He thinks her fever broke at some point in her sleep because there is…a lot of sweat. A lot. Gerri needs some electrolytes.
He stands carefully and shrugs out of his damp button down. Luckily his undershirt is dry, but his shorts have that pants-that-got-wet-and-dried-while-still-worn feeling that makes him itchy so he grabs his phone off the charger and goes searching in Gerri’s guest room. It’s less creepy to say he went through the drawers in a guest room than the drawers in Gerri’s room, yeah?
He lucks out and finds a pair of sweatpants that are soft as fuck, actually, so he puts those on and then lounges in Gerri’s living room as he taps through delivery apps. The deli on the corner opens soon so Roman schedules an order and then lays back on the couch. And then the doubt creeps in.
Should he just leave? Will she even want him here when she wakes up? Maybe he’ll just leave the food on her table and then skedaddle.
The games on his phone distract him until he hears a ping and a buzz near her front door. He jumps up and hurries to it, seeing the intercom lit up. He presses a button at random and hears, “Delivery, Ms. Kellman?”
Roman takes a breath, presses the microphone button, and puts on his Gerri voice: “Yes, thank you.” A small screen on the intercom comes to life and shows the hallway in front of her door. Which means Gerri probably saw him psych himself up every time he came to her place back then. Great.
After he grabs the delivery bags and sets them on her kitchen table, Roman shifts from foot to foot. No. He’ll stay until Gerri wakes up, he’ll make sure she feels better, and then he will return to his apartment and be alone for the rest of his life as he deserves.
That book is pretty good, though. That could keep him sufficiently distracted until she wakes up. Books holding a person’s attention—who knew? Certainly not Roman.
He steps quietly into Gerri’s bedroom again to grab the book when he sees Gerri sitting up in bed again, rubbing the lens of her glasses with her skirt. She sees him and her eyes widen, looking even more doe-eyed without her glasses.
“Oh. You’re here,” she says.
“Yes. Sorry. I was going to get the book? Your book. Sorry. I can leave? I should leave.”
“No, it’s—I thought I’d dreamt it,” Gerri says. She puts her glasses on and looks around. “You were reading my book?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Roman, stop apologizing,” she says.
“Sorry.” Gerri glares at him and he grimaces.
“Peti let me borrow it years ago,” she says. “Speaking of…” Gerri looks at him.
“What?”
“Those are her sweatpants.”
“What!” Roman shrieks. “I found them in the guest room. What the fuck.”
“They look great, though,” Gerri says with a smile. She scoots to the edge of the bed and stands unsteadily. Roman shoots to her side and puts a hand on her elbow.
“You good?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gerri waves him off.
“Are you feeling better?” Roman asks. She doesn’t feel as warm (or at least her elbow doesn’t) and her eyes look normal.
“Yes,” she says. She glances at the chair’s disheveled pillows and the book balanced on the arm. “You stayed all night?”
Roman’s heart pounds. “Yeah, I…shit, sorry, well, fuck, not sorry, but…yeah.”
Gerri chews on her lip. “Well. That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”
“I ordered some food if you’re hungry?”
“You did?”
“You have, like, no food here, unless you regularly dine on olives.” Roman pauses. “You used to have all kinds of nibbles here, didn’t you? Nary a nibble to be found around here.”
“That was…when I anticipated your company and didn’t want to hear you complain about your tummy the whole time.”
“Oh.” He thinks of her buying snacks for him, and he thinks of her sobbing on his shoulder, and he can’t think of anything to say.
Gerri sidesteps him to peer into her vanity and gapes. “Jesus, I look terrible.” Roman makes noises of disagreement as she sits and begins brushing her hair, pokes at her curls, and then clips it all back with a sigh. She turns to Roman. “I’ll get changed and then we can have breakfast.”
“Yeah, sure,” he mutters. He leaves her room and shuts the door behind him.
When he gets into her kitchen, bright in the morning sunshine, he unpacks the containers from the delivery bag. How many other signs did he miss?
“Oh, you got it from the deli on the corner,” Gerri says when she enters the kitchen, nearly matching Roman in a soft t-shirt and lounge pants. “I love their matzo ball soup.”
“Yeah, I remembered,” he says, pushing the container of it in front of her.
“I don’t remember telling you that,” Gerri says. Roman shrugs one shoulder. Gerri looks at him then away, opening a cupboard to grab plates and bowls. She hands a set to Roman and sits down, waits for him to follow suit.
He grabs a bagel and slathers on some cream cheese, pulls open a bottle of orange juice but doesn’t drink it.
“So how’s the book?” she asks, palms around her bowl of soup.
Roman brightens. “So good. Like, if I knew books could be that good, I would’ve started reading a long time ago. It’s super fucked up.”
Gerri nods. “Good to know.” She pushes a carrot around in the broth and asks, “So where did you sleep?”
“I…well, I sat in the chair for a while reading. Then you, uh, woke up kind of upset and then I sort of fell asleep next to you? S—”
“Don’t apologize,” Gerri says. Her cheeks are pink again but not, he suspects, from the fever. “You did more for me than…just don’t apologize.” She looks at him thoughtfully then asks, “Did I…say anything? When I woke up?”
Roman was not raised being told “honesty is the best policy” and was, in fact, raised hearing “stop crying, you whiny little shit.” An implicit lesson he also learned was to not remind anyone of anything potentially embarrassing. So it’s easy for Roman to lie: “Say anything? No, nope, not that I recall.” He finally takes a bite of his bagel. Delicious.
Gerri looks unconvinced and opens her mouth, so Roman interrupts.
“So why were your daughters so upset you signed on with GoJo?”
Gerri sips her own orange juice and sits back and, hopefully, backs off her previous line of questioning. “Well, after you fired me—the second time—I was…very upset. I spoke to the girls and they heard an incredibly abbreviated and sanitized version of most of what happened and I think they were hoping I was finally done with Waystar.”
Another thing he fucked up. It’s like a fucking ripple effect, an ongoing discovery of things he has ruined. “I’m sorry.”
“Roman—“
“No, not about stupid shit, about the big shit. All of it. And I never apologized in a real or fucking genuine way and I have a fucking mountain of regrets about a lot of shit but that’s one of the biggest. You deserved an apology. You just deserved better,” he says, his hands trembling by the end of it. Gerri is staring into her soup bowl and he really read this situation wrong, he’s certain of it.
“I think,” Gerri begins, and Roman freezes, “that a lot of awful things happened in a short period of time, and you hurt me, but I also hurt you, and I think you also spent an entire night taking care of me when we haven’t spoken in months. You didn’t have to do that. Surely that evens something out.”
“But—“
“There are conversations to be had, but this is a lovely breakfast and it’s nice to have you here again, so let’s focus on that for now,” Gerri says.
“Thanks,” Roman says quietly. “I’m, um, glad you’re feeling better.”
“Me too,” Gerri says. “I haven’t been that ill in a long time.”
“So you’re ready to admit that you were sick?” Roman says with a playful smirk.
“Not sure what you mean,” Gerri says, returning to her soup with a half smile.
Roman opens the container of fruit, pushing the strawberries and blueberries onto Gerri’s plate and taking the rest for his, but pauses when he sees Gerri’s eyes tracking him. “What?”
“You’re the only one who asked if I was ok,” Gerri says. She looks at him then away again, tapping her finger against her spoon. “I’m aware I looked like shit,” she gives him a look, “but no one said anything. So what I’m saying is, it was nice to have you at work, too.”
Roman grins and fights the urge to kick his feet in the air. “I’m a fun guy to have around.”
“You were also kind. To me. Most of the time.” She gives him a smile and cuts into her matzo ball with the edge of her spoon.
“I was gonna ask how work is but now I just assume it’s boring, yeah?”
“Mostly. Tom is…doing as well as you’d think Tom would. A perfect puppet, which is all Matsson wanted,” Gerri says.
“Well, Tom was always begging for a hand up his ass. Ugh, all the bullshitting and the ass kissing. Just the thought of that makes me itchy. I don’t miss it.”
“Yeah?” Gerri looks at him as though testing the truth of his words. “Good. You’re still speaking with Shiv, then?”
Roman nods. “Not as much, but, you know, progress. I don’t think her Lady Macbeth plans worked out so it isn’t like we’re in competition anymore, you know? So I’m not a threat. Competing for what, though? Like, he’s gone.”
Gerri taps his leg with her foot and it’s like a lightning bolt straight to his soul. “It’s good that you’ve realized that, Rome. And that you can talk about it.”
“I mean, shit, if you’re gonna keep complimenting me, I can keep telling you all the things I’ve learned,” he says.
Gerri glances at the clock. “Sure, I’ve got thirty seconds.” Roman laughs delightedly. “Kendall? Have you heard from him?”
“No. I sort of…don’t want to?” He looks at Gerri.
“That’s ok.”
“Yeah, I mean, maybe one day, when he gets his shit together.”
“When he’s learned as much as you have.”
He grins. “Yeah, exactly.”
“And Connor?”
“Alpaca farm,” Roman says.
Gerri raises her eyebrows. “You’re kidding.”
“Connor Roy was interested in owning an alpaca farm from a very young age,” Roman says. Gerri snorts.
“God, poor Willa. Dreams of being an ambassador’s wife just went right out the window, didn’t they?” Gerri says. Roman laughs, realizing as he does that he’s laughed more this morning than he has in a long fucking time. It becomes rapidly, painfully clear that he needs to mend this thing with Gerri. “Ok, speaking of dreams. Did you hear about Karl’s failed retirement fantasy?”
As she tells him the story, it becomes superimposed with every other time he’s sat gossiping over food with Gerri. He can’t believe it’s taken him so long to realize that he absolutely does not want to live a life without Gerri in it anymore.
“So he lost his entire investment,” Gerri says, rolling her eyes. “CFO of a Fortune 500 company and he got fucking scammed.”
“Well, no one ever accused Karl of earning it,” Roman says. They’re close to finishing their breakfast, and Roman’s stomach clenches in a panic. He wants to freeze time, preserve it in the amber light of the sun slanting into the kitchen.
“You want coffee?” Gerri asks. Relieved, Roman accepts the lifeline. He picks at the scant fruit remaining while Gerri tinkers with her machine. Then the scent of coffee fills the kitchen and Gerri sets a steaming mug and a jug of sugar in front of him.
“Thanks,” he says, then begins spooning sugar into his coffee.
Gerri watches him with a grimace. “I forgot what an ungodly amount of sugar you put in your coffee.”
“Well, it tastes like shit otherwise,” he replies.
“You know,” Gerri begins then pauses. Roman waits. “I used to wish you wouldn’t pay so much attention to me. I thought everything would’ve been so much easier if I could’ve gone back to being the, what was it, the filing cabinet. But then my wish came true, in a manner of speaking, and…well. I didn’t enjoy it all that much.”
Roman taps her leg the way she did to his moments ago. He’s certain he doesn’t deserve her kindness but that won’t stop him from awkwardly accepting it. “Well, you know, right back at you. Not the filing cabinet thing, obviously, I basically forced people to notice me, but, you know. You’re the only one who took me seriously.”
A small, genuine smile crests her face and then she shakes her head. “This is starting to sound a lot like a Conversation.”
“Yeah, I guess, but I missed it. Talking to you.” He scrunches his face and looks down at his coffee.
“Me too,” she says. He imagines the letters taking shape, expanding like a balloon, and carrying him to the sky.
“Well, shit, Ger. It seems we’re having a moment.”
She smiles at him over the rim of her mug.
The morning stretches out long enough that Roman decides to leave before it thins out and snaps entirely. All of it was more than he ever thought he’d get and infinitely more than he deserves but for the first time in a very, very long time, Roman feels a little bit of hope.
After he has helped her clean up breakfast and changed back into his pants (he snaps a pic of the label because made for women or not, those sweatpants are comfortable as fuck), Roman walks to Gerri’s door feeling oddly similar to a man walking to the gallows. It feels, for some reason, like The End now.
It’s the uncertainty. Will she text? When will she text? Will he leave and she’ll realize how much more peaceful things are without him? When they worked together, it was so much easier. He saw her everyday and always knew when he’d see her again. But now she would have to actively choose to see Roman and that has, historically, never worked out in his favor.
“Are you sure you’re feeling better?” he asks, spinning around to look at her once more. “Because I could hang around if not? But I don’t wanna overstay my…” He twiddles his fingers midair.
“I do feel better,” Gerri says slowly. “But if—”
“Excellent, wonderful, happy to hear it. Great seeing you and catching up, then. Should definitely do it again sometime. Not you being sick, I mean, shit, but maybe you could read the book and we could form a cute little book club. Probably just you and me, though, I don’t know anyone else who reads,” Roman stumbles.
“Thank you for everything, Roman,” Gerri says, saving him from himself. Old habits, apparently.
“Oh, it wasn’t…” He tapers off.
“It was,” she says. She steps forward and embraces him, an even lovelier experience when she isn’t burning up with fever and is fully cognizant of doing so. Roman hugs her back, every nerve ending in his body singing, and he holds her even tighter when he feels her relax against him.
How will he ever leave now? He can’t ever let her go. They’ve wasted so much time.
The intercom pings and Gerri steps away from him. She presses the button and the same voice from earlier says, “Delivery, Ms. Kellman?”
“Yes, thank you,” Gerri says. Roman gives himself a mental high-five. His impression was fucking spot-on.
But then he realizes what the delivery is right before Gerri opens the door and seriously considers jumping out of one of her large windows. She opens the door, accepting a gregarious bouquet of flowers that entirely obscures her face once she’s holding them.
He can see the small notecard staring out at him: feel better soon, Ger. -rr. The card swivels away from him as Gerri turns the bouquet in her hands, looking for the note.
“Roman, when did you—”
“Yeah, so, I sort of forgot? I ordered them when I ordered breakfast and I lowkey thought I’d be long gone by now so then you’d get the flowers and say to yourself, gee, what a lovely young lad, I ought to text him. I didn’t think I’d still be…here. Obviously.”
“Thank you, they’re beautiful. A little ostentatious,” she says, but he can’t see her face to see if she’s saying it playfully or irritatedly. He needs to get the fuck out of here.
“That’s me, ha ha, well, I should be—” He cuts himself off, sliding out the door before Gerri can close it and shutting it behind him. He walks the short distance to the elevator and jabs the button. It feels like it takes so long that he considers throwing himself down the egress stairs.
But he remembers the little screen on her intercom and forces himself to stand still and pull his phone from his pocket. As soon as he does, the screen lights up.
GK: On second thought, I’m not feeling better and since you’re such a lovely young lad, I thought you could help me in my convalescence.
Roman grins and turns back to Gerri’s door.