Roman Holiday - By Ashleyn Poston Page 0,24

It wasn't respectable enough. You ask him, I abandoned my family. You ask me..." He trails off. The lights of Ocean Boulevard flicker shades of blue and red over his face like a kaleidoscope. I wait for his answer, but he just presses his lips together and flicks on the radio.

His own song, "Deep End" blares through the speakers and he quickly turns it back off.

He clears his throat. "Silence is good, yeah? We don't need music."

"I can hum something?"

"Can you sing?"

"I'm so good I can shatter windows."

He chuckles, and for the first time since the beach, he cracks a ghost of a smile. "Then let's play The Shitty Song Showdown."

"Sounds awesome." I roll my eyes.

"We take turns humming a song and see if the other can guess it."

"Are you challenging my radio heart?" I press my hand to my chest, aghast. "How dare you!"

"I want to see if you're the real deal."

"You're on."

The traffic on Ocean Boulevard is slow and steady. Tourists pass in front of us to street vendors and souvenir shops. Ice cream shops dot the streets like confetti. It's easy to think how Myrtle Beach is fun and exciting, especially in the throng of lights and laughter, but in the winter when the tourists clear out and the vendors move down to Florida, Myrtle Beach becomes a ghost town. Roman grew up here, so he must be used to people passing through like sand through his fingers. Fame can't be much different. Am I just another grain of sand? Is he just another boy of summer?

I almost don't catch the beginning notes to my dad's favorite song tumbling from Roman's lips. "'Born to Run,'" I immediately quip. "Bruce Springsteen."

"That was an easy one," he relinquishes and waits for me to think of a song. I warble the first few notes of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the Rolling Stones, and instead of guessing the song, he begins singing with me. Show-off.

We coast to a stop at a light, the windows rolled down. The tourists hustling across the crosswalk give us a curious look as we howl the chorus. A laugh bubbles up in my throat, and I successfully hold it in....until he does a terrible Mick Jagger impersonation, and I lose it in a fit of giggles.

He slides me a cheshire grin. "So? Did I win? Huh?"

"That was decent," I reply, wiping the tears out of my eyes. "Your turn."

Thinking, he taps his finger on the steering wheel until it evolves into a beat. He ducks his head down and begins rapping.

"Oh my God, that's so 90s. You're showing your sublime age, Roman. 'What I Got.'"

"How the hell do you know that one? How old were you, ten?"

I frown. "Do I really look sixteen?" I flop down the visor and inspect myself in the mirror. Even at night, my pink hair glows. "Jesus, you can see me from space."

"Just means I'll never lose you, and no. I was just being an asshole."

I slam the visor up again. "Surprising," I reply, but all I can think about is the phrase Just means I'll never lose you.

"But I have seen sixteen-year-olds who look thirty. Now, that's scary. Ever been about to go down on a girl and realize she's not even legal yet?"

"Is this your way of saying you make poor life choices?"

"Fuck youuuuuu."

I punch him in the arm playfully and flick the radio back on, quickly turning it to the classic rock station. A sweet, slow power ballad drifts through the stereo. Almost instantly, my throat seizes. I want to turn it off, but Roman knocks my hand away from the knob before I can.

"Name this song!" he demands.

I swallow hard. Of all the songs in all the world, the radio had to play this one. It's the song I wish I'd heard with Caspian that night, instead of Roman's own "Crush On You"—the one I always wanted to...

Well, to fall in love to.

And here I am in a minty green WV Rabbit that smells slightly of ass, listening to the song that means more to me than Roman could ever guess. What are Roman and I? What are we pretending to be? Friends? Acquaintances? Even that? There's an invisible line where whatever we are ends and something quite frightening begins.

I look over to him to see if he's really waiting for my answer, and he is. "Bon Jovi," I whisper, unable to tear my eyes away from his melted emerald gaze, "'Bed of