Roadside Attractions

Twenty-Six

CULTUS LAKE, BC

As we lay in a comfortable silence, I can’t tell if it’s been seconds, minutes, or hours since we first intertwined. Wyatt strokes my still-damp hair as I rest my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and the rainfall. The muted light outside makes it nearly impossible to discern what time it is, but judging by how dark the room has gotten, it must be pretty late.

I still can’t believe this is real and that Noor was right . She’s never going to let me live this down.

Reluctantly, I pull myself out of Wyatt’s grasp to sit up, and he grunts in protest. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks. I’m sure he’d love to stay here all night.

“I should get cleaned up,” I say, fighting a smile. “Wash all the rain out of my hair.”

He props himself up on his elbow, giving me a devilish grin. “Need any help with that?”

“If you’re offering,” I remark, standing up from the bed, and he’s quick to follow me, his hands finding my waist, sending shivers skittering up my spine.

We head into the bathroom, and after making sure the temperature is hot enough, Wyatt steps underneath the spray of water, offering a hand to help me inside. It doesn’t take long before he has me up against the tile, his lips fused to mine, and I loop my arms around his shoulders, enjoying the feeling of the hot water coursing over my body, warming me up instantly.

I could happily make out with him all night, but we should probably have a conversation. About us. About what happens next. I lean back, about to open my mouth to say something, but then he reaches over me to remove the showerhead. He runs it over my scalp gently, and the words get caught in my throat as he uses his other hand to massage the warm water into my hair.

“Here,” he says, motioning for me to pass him my shampoo, which I unloaded into the shower yesterday, and I do so. He replaces the showerhead, squirting product onto his hands, then massages it into my hair. I close my eyes, sighing contentedly. I can practically hear him smile, even with my eyes closed, and he presses a kiss to my shoulder.

“So this is why you always smell so fucking good,” he says, the words muffled against my skin.

It goes on like this, and I let him take care of me until I can return the favour. I enjoy having an excuse to sweep his dark locks out of his face, clearing them away from his forehead, struck by how handsome he is yet again. The harsh line of his eyebrows, the slope of his nose, the curve of his jawline, the fullness of his lips. I feel a flicker of warmth in my belly. All mine.

When we’ve finished cleaning each other up, I kiss him again, softly this time, and he wraps his arms around my waist. “What were you going to tell me before?” I murmur. “I want to hear that speech.”

He exhales a laugh. “I barely remember anymore. I’m surprised my brain is even functioning after what happened today.”

“Glad to know I have such an effect on you.”

He squeezes me tighter. “You have all kinds of effects on me, Moore. ”

“Come on, you have to remember something ,” I persist, giving him a flat look. “I’ve never seen you look so determined.”

Wyatt sighs, a smile toying at his lips. He tucks a wet curl behind my ear. “The main thing I wanted to tell you is that it’s always been you,” he says softly. “You’re the reason why it never worked with anyone else. I could never manage to get you out of my head.”

I’m struck by the steady intensity of his words, momentarily speechless. While these feelings are brand new to me, Wyatt has been dealing with them for years. A whisper of insecurity tugs at the back of my mind. Do I really deserve to be on the receiving end of his affection? What if the best part about me is that I was always out of reach, and now that nothing is standing in his way, he loses interest?

I don’t want this to be a fleeting summer fling, and that scares me. Because wanting it to be real means putting my heart into Wyatt’s hands and trusting him not to crush it between his palms.

I search my mind for something to say to alleviate the negative thoughts swirling around in my brain. It’s like Noor said—I should give him a chance. “So, that girl you’ve been obsessed with for ages. . .” I settle on, teasing him with a tilt of my head. “Who might that be?”

He winks, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “I’ll never tell.” But he kisses his way from my cheek to my lips, betraying his answer.

“Well, she can’t have you.”

“She already does.”

I can’t stop the smile that blooms across my face in response. “Mm,” I hum into his mouth as he kisses me again. “Why didn’t we start doing this days ago?”

Wyatt laughs shortly. “Because I didn’t even think to try until I thought there was a chance you might reciprocate. And then when I did try, you quite literally ran away. You didn’t exactly make it easy for me. Not to mention that time you acquaintance -zoned me.”

“Well, you didn’t want to be my friend!” I accuse, laughter in my voice.

“You’re right,” he admits with a chuckle. “I should’ve told you that I’d take whatever you could give me. ”

I loop my finger around one of his damp locks, and he keeps his gaze on mine, eyes soft. “I can’t believe you’ve felt this way all this time, that you watched me with someone else for years and never said anything.”

He lets out a bitter grunt. “What was I supposed to say? You were dating my best friend.”

“You could’ve at least tried to make me like you,” I tease. “You spent so much time trying to get on my nerves instead.”

A wicked look takes over his features. “Why wouldn’t I want to make you flustered and get under your skin? See that hint of pink in your cheeks?” Warmth spreads to my face, and his lips pull into a satisfied smirk. “There it is.” He kisses the apples of my cheeks, as if trying to taste the blush. “Besides, annoying the shit out of you seemed to be the only way to get you to talk to me. I’ll take hatred over indifference any day.”

I’m hit with a pang of guilt. He’s not wrong. Due to Roman’s description of his best friend, I didn’t hold him in very high regard. I wonder if things would’ve been different if we’d gotten along better. Maybe we would’ve been friends.

The framework of our past is quickly shifting in my mind—the way we could never manage to have a civil conversation, and yet Wyatt would still gravitate toward me without fail whenever we were in the same room. The way talking to him made my blood boil, but I always felt alive with adrenaline after our arguments. I've probably spent hours complaining about him to Noor, but the thing I hated most about Wyatt was how made me feel, because I knew that I sure as hell should not have been feeling that level of attraction to my boyfriend’s best friend.

It all feels different now. I refused to see things how they actually were.

“I wish I’d met you first,” I murmur.

Wyatt gives me a strange look. “You did.”

I frown in confusion, studying his face. “What?”

“You don’t remember?” he presses, surprised. “We met at that café on campus. I bumped into you, made you spill your coffee. You instantly hated my guts, and you were just as bitey and flustered as usual.” He smiles at the memory. “I thought you were a huge pain in the ass.”

My mouth hangs open in offense. “Okay, that is not what I thought you were going to say.” I think for a moment. “But I do remember that. For some reason, I thought that was after I was with Roman.”

“It wasn’t,” he says. “I remember it clear as day. I was completely obsessed with you. I thought you were incredible. When I saw you again across the quad, I pointed you out to Roman, told him I wanted to find a way to get to know you better.” He pauses, watching me carefully. “By the end of the day, he’d already started his crusade to win you over.”

“Hold on,” I say slowly, mind whirring. I pull out of his grasp. “What are you saying?”

Wyatt is silent, eyes cast downward.

The final piece of the puzzle slides into place.

“Are you telling me that Roman was only ever interested in me because you were?” I let out a humourless laugh. “Oh my god.”

Wyatt’s expression twists in anguish. “It may have started like that for him. But I have to believe that it changed into something real. I mean, look at how long you were together. I was pissed, but it wasn’t unlike Roman to go after girls I liked. When I confronted him about it, he said you two had an actual connection, so I backed off and accepted it for what it was.”

All the lies make sense now. Roman was trying his hardest to make Wyatt look bad, knowing he had feelings for me. He fabricated Wyatt’s dating habits to be worse than they were, made me think he was a chauvinistic pig.

“What an absolute prick,” I spit. I don’t know if he pursued me out of a need to be better than Wyatt, or some weird form of jealousy, but it doesn’t matter. “What kind of person does that to their best friend?”

Wyatt sees the look on my face, tucking some more of my waterlogged curls behind my ear. “I’m sorry, Stella. I haven’t wanted to say anything.”

“No, I’m glad you did,” I say, anger roiling through my gut. It feels like the final nail in Roman’s coffin, the thing I needed to finally put our relationship to rest. None of it was real. Not even in the beginning.

He doesn’t look placated by my words, his eyebrows creasing. “I don’t want him to ruin this moment.”

I place my hand on the back of his neck, and he closes his eyes beneath my touch. “He can’t,” I murmur, pushing all thoughts of Roman aside. “I won’t let him ruin anything else.”

The words are true, but my desire for payback still simmers beneath the surface, stronger than ever.

?

This time, when I wake up curled against Wyatt’s side, I don’t panic.

Sunlight streams into the hotel room, stirring me from my best sleep in weeks. Wyatt retrieved his things last night, and his room remained unused. Thankfully, I had enough sense to clean up all of our waterlogged clothes before going to bed, hanging them up to dry, despite how much I would’ve liked to leave everything where it was and pretend reality didn’t exist for a little while longer.

Wyatt is still sleeping, his chest rising and falling with his deep breaths, and I take a moment to admire him, lifting my head to get a better vantage point. It’s surreal to be with him like this—to know that my feelings are reciprocated.

Despite Roman’s grandeur, poetry, and flair for the dramatic, being with him felt less exciting and more inevitable. Like it was expected of me. Like all his grand gestures were things I should be grateful for, excited for, so I’d play that role for him, the one he’d created for me. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Wyatt is a wild card. Bold, adventurous, and fiery. I can’t believe I used to see all those traits as negative.

I smile as I watch him dream and reach out to delicately sweep his hair out of his face. He doesn’t stir.

My mind wanders to our conversation about Roman last night, much to my chagrin, causing a burn of irritation to rise beneath my skin. What the fuck is wrong with him? Why did he have to swoop in before Wyatt had the chance to do it himself?

A memory comes to the forefront of my mind. The first time Roman read me a poem he wrote for me. He’d set up a picnic for us in Trinity Bellwoods Park, in view of the CN Tower, and we huddled together while he read aloud, shaded by an oak tree, accompanied by soft music floating from his Bluetooth speaker.

I watched his lips as he spoke, mesmerized by their movement. We hadn’t kissed yet—I’d been adamant that we take things slow—but as he’d recited the poem, it was the first time I’d realized I wanted to. I was so distracted that I barely registered what he was saying. It wasn’t until he’d finished and told me the title that I snapped out of my reverie.

“ The Girl from the Coffee Shop ,” I’d repeated, mulling it over in my head. The title wasn’t winning any points for originality, and the poem seemed fine, but not spectacular. But then again, I wasn’t into poetry, so I hadn’t really known. It detailed a first encounter with a beautiful woman, surrounded by the whir of steam wands and the smell of espresso. “And it’s about me?”

Roman had laughed, brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “Of course it is.”

I’d narrowed my eyes, giving him a playful look, still suspicious about his intentions. “But we didn’t meet in a coffee shop. You came up to me at school.”

Something unreadable had flickered across his face, but he smothered it with a knowing smile, reaching up a hand to ruffle it through his chocolate-coloured curls. “Yes, but I used to see you around a lot. The first time I ever saw you was in a coffee shop. I took some creative liberties.”

I hadn’t thought much of it, filing it away as unimportant, but the memory is sharp now, poking the edges of my brain. I bite the inside of my lip, teeth gritting together. He even stole the way Wyatt and I met.

Fuelled by anger, I grab my phone off the nightstand, unplugging it from the charger, careful not to disturb Wyatt. My mind races as I open Google, typing The Girl from the Coffee Shop . I scroll through the results, lips pursing. Too vague. Despite how much I would like to erase the moment from my memory, I concentrate, fighting through my former self’s lovestruck haze, trying to concentrate on the movement of Roman’s lips, to read the words he was saying.

I try out a line that sounds right— her thoughts were like coffee —but receive no results. Exhaling, I lean back against my pillows. I squeeze my eyes shut, willing something, anything , to come back to me. Espresso. I distinctly remember a line about espresso and. . . hair? Eyebrows pulling together, I test out a few combinations in the search bar to no avail.

And then it hits me like I’ve been struck by lightning.

The smell of espresso clings to her hair, tangled in the thoughts that linger there .

I remember that line sticking out because it was confusing. Women don’t store their thoughts in their hair. Obviously.

I’m confident this was the line from Roman’s poem, verbatim, so I type it into the search bar. Immediately, I’m disappointed by the lack of results, but I keep searching, unwilling to give up. It takes me until the third page of results to find a hit. A link to a poem. But this one wasn’t written by Roman.

The Girl in the Grocery Store was written five years ago by Marcus Matson. It’s the same fucking poem. Sure, he uploaded it to an obscure poetry website, and never received much recognition, but that doesn’t change the fact that Roman has totally plagiarized it, swapping out words to make his coffee shop setting work. In the original, the line is, the smell of laundry soap clings to her hair, tangled in the curls that linger there . Which, granted, isn’t that great either, but at least it makes a bit more sense.

The entire poem is like this. I think back to the other ones he read to me, gifted me, hung up around the apartment. There’s one in particular called Supernova that used to be my favourite. I do some digging, and it turns out that one was written by Veronica Carrington. He didn’t even bother to change the name.

I huff in disbelief, lowering my phone and staring at the wall across from me. He’s always been a thief.

Never trust a man who writes you fucking poetry.

A new thought zaps me, and my fingers can barely keep up with my brain as I hurry to Instagram. The poetry magazine. Roman’s feature.

My heart pounds as I navigate to the profile for Blue Sky . It appears to be a large publication, as their account has over three hundred thousand followers. They have a carousel post announcing the authors for next month’s issue, and I swipe through until I find Roman’s picture. It’s a photo I took of him in front of the bookshelf in our apartment. He’d selected a black turtleneck and some round gold frames—even though he didn’t actually wear glasses—and perched his chin on his hand, looking solemn. I remember teasing him about looking like Steve Jobs, something that seemed to irk him greatly. It was the photo he used any time he needed a headshot.

Then, I find what I’m looking for—the title of the poem they’ll be showcasing. Celestial . It takes everything in me to hold in my bark of disbelieving laughter. I wonder how Margot would feel if she knew that one was supposedly about me.

Roman had written it for my twenty-fourth birthday, presented it to me in a gift box. Another poem? I’d thought, and then felt guilty about it. Now, though, it’s very comical. When you’re mostly surviving on other people’s incomes, buying your girlfriend a nice gift is hard, so you have to get creative. Celestial was one of those poems that was heavy-handed with the space metaphors, but I couldn’t deny that the words were romantic. Or maybe I just felt like I should be grateful to have a “sensitive” boyfriend to write romantic poetry about me at all.

I look up the first line I remember: she breathes like stardust and kisses like the moon . I suppress a snort. Still don’t know what the fuck that means.

It takes me until the twenty-second page of Google results, but I find a match. Like Stardust was originally written—in a way that made more sense—by Poppy Hallowell in 2007. At this point, I would think there would be nothing else about Roman Prescott that could surprise me, but I am genuinely floored to discover that this man has never had an original thought in his life.

This time, I can’t keep my hysterical giggle to myself, which is what finally rouses Wyatt from his sleep. Mumbling, he drags himself closer to me, securing an arm around my waist. Seeing his sleepy, boyish face tugs on my heartstrings, softening my irritation. His eyelids threaten to flutter open, but he’s clearly not willing to give up on sleep just yet.

I reach out a tentative hand to touch his cheek. With a contented sigh, he moves his face toward my touch until my palm rests against his skin. Moments later, he forces his eyelids open, and then I’m staring into deep brown eyes, watching as they clear, then soften.

It doesn’t take him long to process our intimate position, and he turns his face a little more to press a gentle kiss to my hand. My heartbeat stutters, briefly distracted from my anger. He hums under his breath with a smile.

“What a way to wake up,” he murmurs, the rasp in his voice reawakening some of my more impure desires.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” I return.

He scrutinizes my face, eyes narrowing as they dart over every inch of it. “You look like you’ve been scheming.”

How can he always read me so easily? It doesn’t seem fair. “Not quite scheming,” I say slowly. “Stewing, maybe.”

At that, a flicker of insecurity flashes across his features, so quickly I almost miss it. “What about?”

I press my lips together. I don’t want to make a habit out of bringing Roman up and sucking the good energy out of the room. But I don’t have a choice, because I don’t want Wyatt thinking I have regrets about last night. Taking a deep breath, I settle on, “I have news.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about. . .” I trail off.

“Roman,” Wyatt finishes for me, face losing all humour. He rolls over onto his back. “All right, hit me with it.”

“It’s not exactly earth-shattering or surprising in any way, but he’s never actually written a poem in his life,” I say blandly, pushing myself into a sitting position. “He’s stolen all of them. Plagiarized every last one. He’s always been a thief. ”

I watch the myriad of emotions play out on Wyatt’s face: bewilderment, then disgust, then annoyance. “Doesn’t surprise me. He’s never been able to think for himself. What an ass.”

“But,” I say, straightening out my posture. A solution occurs to me that’s so obvious I’m shocked I didn’t think of it until now. “I actually have been doing some scheming.”

“Have you?” Wyatt props himself up on his elbow with a look of intrigue.

I go back to Blue Sky’s post and flash him my phone screen. “I have an idea.”

He squints at my screen. And then I see the idea take shape in his brain too, a grin stretching across his face.

“Moore,” he remarks. “You are a fucking genius.”