Page 62 of Teaching Roman

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Lillian Stone might not bean idiot, but she wasn’t exactly a free ride either. Something she reminded me of as soon as I jumped into the passenger side of her Lexus. She was still dressed for the hearing in her tailored, black dress suit, but she’d added a blue tooth headset. Instead of getting a two-hour lecture about following Roman to Mexico, she spent most of the trip, taking phone calls and setting up appointments. When she finally pulled the headset off, she stared me down for at least a full minute, never once swerving, even as she drove.

“Do I need to repeat myself about not getting pregnant?” She’d given me that advice nearly six months ago on my first trip to Mexico.

“I’ve learned my lesson there,” I promised her. “I’m only going for moral support. Aba is like a mother to Roman, and she’ll expect me to be with him.”

“Did he ask you to come?” Lillian asked me.

I shook my head no. I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell her that he didn’t even know I was going.

“So why are you doing this?”

“I told you. For moral support,” I repeated.

“When my ex’s grandma died, I sent him a card—in the mail,” she said. “You’re running off to Mexico.”

I practically bit my tongue off trying to hold back what I wanted to say about that. The operative word in Lillian’s example was ex. I didn’t say it, but not because I wasn’t feeling bitchy or defensive. I didn’t say it because I had no business being judgmental about my sister’s relationship with her ex-boyfriend. Not at the moment. My own relationship was a mess. It might even be nonexistent. But I knew exactly where I needed to be.

“You don’t want me to go,” I said.

“It doesn’t really matter. I can’t stop you. If I wanted to stop you, I would never have agreed to pick you up and take you to the airport. You have to make your own decisions.”

I knew that. Just like I knew that jumping on a plane to be with my possibly ex-boyfriend when his Aba died sounded crazy. If I had heard someone else say they were doing this, I would have rolled my eyes. If it had been Jillian or Cassie, I would have tried to talk them out of it, but this made sense in a way I couldn’t explain.

“You’re a grown-up, Jess,” my sister continued. Her fingers drummed on the leather steering wheel. It was abnormally nervous of her. “I’m trying very hard to keep that in mind, because part of me wants to tell you no and send you to the corner.”

“But you can’t.”

“No, I can’t.” She took a deep breath. “Promise me one thing, okay?”

I nodded slowly, unsure what I was getting myself into and hoping she wasn’t going to lecture me on sex again.

“Listen to your heart.” Her voice cracked.

It was the last thing I expected her to make me promise. Lillian wasn’t exactly a follow-your-heart type unless you counted following your heart to a ‘not guilty’ verdict in the courtroom. Even then, practicing law didn’t seem to make her very happy. She was simply good at it.

“This is going to sound like the beginning of a sad romance novel,” she said, “but I gave up love for my career.”

“You’re only twenty-six,” I reminded her. She acted like she’d never have another chance. I didn’t believe that, but it seems she did.

She shrugged, her eyes now glued to the road as though she didn’t dare look at me. “Believe me, I threw away my one chance at love. At a family. If your heart tells you to go after Roman, then I want you to trust yourself. If you don’t, you’ll wind up working every waking moment of the day so you can cope with the loneliness.”

I couldn’t find the words to soothe her. She’d never revealed this part of her life to me. Comforting people was supposed to be my specialty. After all, I was the one with the bedside manner. When it came to my big sister, the thought of her not being in control of her life scared me too much. I had joked about Lillian being married to her work before, but I’d never considered why.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I managed to push the question out despite the awkward silence hanging between us in the car.

“You don’t need to hear my sad story,” she said, forcing a smile across tight lips. “Just don’t make the mistake I did. You care about Roman. The big sister in me wants to protect you from getting hurt, but as a woman I know what you might be giving up if you don’t go after him.”

Reaching over she grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Trust me on this.”

“I will,” I said. I’d pushed him away before. I thought it was for the best. Now I wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know if it will work out. I told myself I should move on, but…”

“Some guys you never get over,” she said. “If you get a second chance, take it.”

I readjusted my ponytail along with my perspective. If I really believed that Lillian might find love again, maybe I needed to open myself up to that possibility, too. “I’ve made a list of all the reasons I should stay away from him.”

“Your heart doesn’t care about pro and con lists.”