He cuts me off, keys jangling in the background. “Where are you? I’m coming.”
I grimace, even as I’m grateful.
Why. Why can’t he just fully, one hundred percent, all-around-suck? It’s so hard to hate a guy when he’s the type of person to drop everything to come pick me up when I’m stranded by a broken bus, even though I’ve never been anything but rude to him. The least he could have done was hesitate.Iwould have hesitated, if it were him.
I blink against the wetness gathering in my eyes and shake that thought away. Now is not the time to ruminate on whetheror not Roman is a better person than me—not when I’m stuck, afraid, and needing help. Now is the time to be grateful that heisthe type of man that he is, regardless of the type of woman I am. I can consider the implications of that later.
“I’m at a bus stop,” I tell him. “On…” I find the street name and read it off. “I don’t think that’s very far…”
“Not by car,” he says. “I’ll be there in ten.”
“Can you…” I gulp, glancing around the empty,darkstreets. “Can you stay on the phone with me?” I ask. “Until you get here?”
A pause before, gently, he says, “Of course, Sweet. I’ll stay on the phone. I’m coming.”
I close my eyes, and a tear falls free, rolling down my cheek. “Thank you,” I murmur.
“Of course. Always.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Roman growls, rounding his car. “Have you lost your mind? Why are you on the side of the road?Notnext to a broken down bus?”
I drop my phone from my ear, which he’s just hung up on, and wince as he takes my bike, anger lining every inch of his frame in the blinking light of his hazards. He slots the bike into the mount on the back of the car with a scowl.
“Well, it wasn’t dark when the bus broke down,” I tell him. “And I was only fifteen minutes away from home…”
“Fifteen minutes? By vehicle? What is that, forty-five minutes by bike? Elodie, what were youthinking?”
I was not, clearly, but it’s one thing for me to admit to myself that I made a bad choice. It is another thing entirely for me to admit it toRoman.
And so, I do not.
“I was thinking I could make it, obviously,” I snap, angrily wiping tears from my eyes. “You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”
“I just found you,” he grunts, coming around the car to grab my bag. “On the side of the road.” He opens his back door, sets my backpack in, then slams the door shut.
“Alone.”
He turns to me and unclips my helmet, shoving it under his arm as he goes for my elbow pads. I step away, undoing them myself.
“In the dark,” he continues, crossing his arms, helmet dangling from his fingers.
“Milesfrom home. I don’t think it’s a jerk move to be angry about you breaking your promise to be safe, and I definitely don’t think it’s a jerk move to be angry about you actively making unsafe decisions.
“You keep saying you aren’t stupid, Elodie. Well, prove it. Tell me what about this current situation isn’t stupid? The only smart thing you did was call me, and you should have done that an hour ago when the bus broke down. Then, you should have waitedthereuntil I got to you. What you absolutely should not have done is ride off into the sunset without a care in the world.”
He opens the passenger door of his car, tosses my helmet onto the floorboard, then gestures stiffly for me to follow it in.
I do, irritation simmering beneath my skin. I’m not a child. I made a stupid mistake, yes, but does that warrant him speaking to me, once again, like a wayward child?
He makes sure I’m secured in my seat before shutting the door and moving around to the driver’s side, quickly climbing in, apparently unwilling to miss even a millisecond of the time he has to lecture me.
The entire ride home—only ten minutes, but boy does he make it feel like ten hundred—he gives me lessons on safety,taking precautions, what to do in unexpected situations, how to assess if an unexpected situation is dangerous or not, and on and on until my blood pressure rises high enough to graze the moon.
It’s not that I disagree with him, really. I agree with everything he’s saying. I agree that I made the wrong choice, and that I should have called him earlier. I agree that I need to be considering things more carefully before making decisions that could result in me being in danger. I agree, wholeheartedly, that I made a mistake.
I do not agree that the solution to this mistake is being locked in a car with a man who sees fit to speak on the subject at length with zero grace or consideration for my feelings or intentions.
Still, I bite my tongue. There’s no use at all in trying to talk to Roman when he gets like this, and I’m not wasting my breath attempting it. I keep my mouth firmly shut through the ride, through storing my bike in the garage when we get home, and through getting inside, all while he monologues, following me through the garage and house, up the stairs, until we reach my room where I stop him with a hand on his chest before he can enter.
