Chapter Text
Roman felt physically ill at the sight of her. He could barely remember what it was like before—well, before everything went to shit. But he knew that there was a time when his face would have lit up to catch her gaze across the room, and he desperately wished he could go back to that feeling instead of whatever this was.
She was surprised Roman bothered to come to Frank Vernon’s retirement party. Then again, she wasn’t, because the minute she locked eyes with him, it occurred to her that he was probably there for her. It had nothing to do with Frank.
“Gerri, I almost didn’t recognize you without a martini in your hand,” Roman said, appearing out of nowhere when she was about to leave the restaurant.
“If that’s all you would have recognized, I can certainly see why you were so out of your depth at Waystar.”
“Oh, sick burn! I’m just a dipshit who’s too stupid to succeed, blah blah blah,” he mocked.
“You’re not just a dipshit, Roman, you’re criminally incurious.”
“Ooh big words,” he said, holding his hands up. “Be careful, you’re getting me hot and bothered.”
She rolled her eyes and pushed past him and out the door, onto the crowded sidewalk. Her heart pounded in her chest as she searched for her car. Checking the text from the driver, she quickly hurried around the corner to where he was parked. When she sank into the backseat of the car, she unclenched her fists. She hated that he still had the ability to affect her like this.
Back at the restaurant, Roman ran his hand over his face. It wasn’t at all how he wanted that interaction to go, but when she came at him, he couldn’t help himself. That was his problem all along, though. He never could help himself, and it always worked out poorly for him. Today was no different. Well, the one difference was that he could still feel the spot where she placed her hand on his chest when she shoved him aside.
He knew their relationship or whatever-you-call-it was completely and utterly fucked. Maybe for a time, between Argestes and The Dick Pic, there was hope for something positive—a friendship, partnership, romance, even? But then he threw it all away, as he did with anything good or decent in his life. If he thought too much about it, he’d start complaining that it wasn’t fair, that he never intended to throw that away, that it was just an accident. And then he’d hear his father yelling “Life’s not fair, Romulus!” or feel the sting of his hand across his face. As Ken once told him, “once a fuck up, always a fuck up.”
Despite being fucked, he saw something when their eyes met. It was just a flicker before her mask was back in place, but it was something, and he’d hold onto that. More than anything, he just wanted her back in his life.
Something was off with Gerri. After Frank’s party, she’d felt unmoored, adrift in a choppy sea with no destination and no anchor. She doubted it was a foreboding sense of her own retirement, as Frank was nearly a decade older than her, just like Baird. And it wasn’t like she was sad to no longer work with him; the reality was that they hadn’t really been working together at all since Logan’s death and the GoJo sale. Really, it was more like Waystar’s death. Nothing about the company was the same—not even the street address.
The more she thought about it, the more her thoughts kept circling back to Roman. She simply refused to admit that the brief exchange with him that evening could be causing this particular bout of ennui. Admitting that meant admitting he affected her, which meant admitting she cared, and that particular spiral was not of interest to her, no thank you. Though she was particularly impressed with her “criminally incurious” insult, it was that mocking tone he used that took residence in her mind.
It wasn’t about seeing him again, it was about being unaffected if she saw him again. Maybe an exposure therapy approach would be fitting here. She could force herself to learn how to ignore him if she just let herself exist in his presence a bit more.
On Tuesday, after work, she texted him.
GK: meet me at reverie on 7th in midtown?
He didn’t respond, but she doubted he was doing anything. Still, she wanted to avoid feeling like she’d been stood up, so she took a seat at the bar, ordered a drink, and waited. Over an hour later, he finally responded.
RR: still there?
GK: yes, leaving soon.
RR: kk, omw
She felt the air in the room shift as soon as he entered—and it wasn’t a good feeling. She asked the bartender for a ginger ale and lime, hoping it would settle her stomach, and barely got a sip down before he flopped down in the seat next to her.
“Vodka soda,” he told the bartender. He sighed heavily and folded his arms across his chest. “So?”
“So? So, I thought we could talk.” She fought back the urge to make a biting retort.
“About?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.” She took a sip of her drink. “I didn’t expect to see you at Frank’s.”
“Yeah.”
She sighed and turned to him. She didn’t love the one-word answers, but something told her there was more to this. He wasn’t being a dick, he was just quiet and closed off tonight. Fuck, this wasn’t exactly helping her feel unaffected. “Is everything okay?” she finale asked.
“Why the fuck do you care?”
“I invited you here to join me. I can tell something’s wrong.”
“If you can tell something’s wrong, why the fuck did you ask?”
She closed her eyes and took a sip of her ginger ale. “You didn’t have to come. You could have made an excuse if tonight wasn’t a good day. I don’t know.”
He put his head in his hands. “I’m here. Say what you want to me, beat me up, then leave so I can go home.”
“This is very unlike you. I’m,” she made a gesture with her hand as she tried to find the right word, “concerned.”
“Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”
She flagged the bartender for her check. “I’m not forcing you to be here. This is obviously not a good time.”
He shrugged as she got up and pushed in her chair. “I’d say it was nice to see you, but you’ll just call me a liar, so, adios,” he said.
Gerri stood there for a moment, debating whether it was even safe for her to leave him there. It wasn’t like after the funeral, yet there was a self-destructive aura around him. She shook her head and threw her purse strap over her shoulder. Her hand hovered over his shoulder, but she pulled away at the last minute. “We’ll talk again,” she said softly before walking out the door.
A short while later, Roman paid for the drink he never touched and left the bar. He was only a few blocks from home, so he didn’t call a car. When he walked into his building, Gerri was sitting on the bench in the elevator lobby. “The fuck are you doing here?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t like how I left you.” She paused. When he didn’t answer, she added, “Can I come up, or are we doing this here?”
He rolled his eyes and jabbed the elevator button. They rode up in silence, but when the doors opened into his unit, he sighed audibly and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s a fucking mess in here.”
She could see that, but was glad he acknowledged it, too. There were cups and bottles and pizza boxes on the counters and tables. Sweatshirts and socks and blankets were strewn everywhere. It looked like there were fruit flies hovering over his kitchen sink, which was overflowing with cups and forks and bowls. She desperately wanted to open the patio doors, open the windows, fill up some garbage bags, wipe everything with Lysol, run the dishwasher, and vacuum. In that order. She wondered what his bedroom looked like and hoped it was more of a sanctuary for him.
“I’d offer you a seat, but I don’t recommend anything in there,” he said, gesturing beyond the foyer. He took a seat on the stairs, and she joined him. After sitting in silence for a solid five minutes, he laid back. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t feel anything, ever.”
“It’s only been six months,” she said. She didn’t elaborate, but they both knew she was referring to Logan’s death.
“Yeah. It feels like six fucking years sometimes—and at other times, I’m still walking off the plane after seeing him for the last time, less than six hours after he was gone.”
She sighed. “May I offer some completely unsolicited advice? Something Baird actually said to me after my mother died?”
Roman looked over at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since the bar. “Sure.”
“He said that grief is always with you, your entire life, it just gets more prominent as more influential people in your life leave you—whether in death or otherwise. I was extremely defensive about that. I didn’t think he could ever relate to my complicated relationship with my mother—though, I will say, my version of complicated was much more garden variety mother/daughter struggles, nothing like you and Logan. I guess my point is that I refused to believe him, and then a year or so later, it hit me that he was right. Nothing prepares us to cope with grief, we all handle it in different ways, and it never goes away.”
“That’s advice?”
“I guess not. I just thought I’d share.”
“How did you handle it?”
“Grief?”
“Yeah.”
“I threw myself into work and pretended to ignore my emotions,” she said. As the words came from her mouth, she realized that was exactly what she was trying to do with Roman, right now.
“Yeah, that seems like you,” he said with a chuckle. “I, on the other hand, am on the other end of the spectrum.”
She offered him a little smile and put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing ever-so-gently before letting go. “A little depression is understandable.”
“Fuck, I need to get my shit together.”
“You don’t need to. You need to want to.”
“Yeah. I guess I want to.”
Before she could give it a second thought, she heard herself saying, “Would you like help?”
“With what?”
“I don’t know. Cleaning up this space? Having a real dinner? Helping you think about what you might want to do next?”
“Why would you do that for me? I was a fucking dick to you.”
“It’s a good question, and I don’t have a good answer. I just know I had someone to do that for me.”
He frowned. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
Gerri nodded and pushed herself up off the stairs. “Okay. I’m going to head home, but know that the offer remains open. I hope things get better—I mean, I’m sure they will, I just hope for your sake it’s sooner rather than later.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
She let herself out. It wasn’t at all how she wanted the night to go. She wanted to bitch at him, let him spew whatever he came up with back at her, and then leave. That was the point—to see him, engage with him, and leave unaffected. Not to be comforting a sad little boy who, against all odds, was finding his way to her heart.