Chapter Text
I wish we could wipe the whole fucking slate clean, like we never met each other, and try again. Take it from the top. I’d do better the second time around, I think.
Roman groans into his martini as he re-reads his last text to Gerri for the sixth time since sending it earlier tonight. It’s so cringe. His entire life is just so fucking cringe.
His dad’s dead. The company his dad took a lifetime to build? Effectively dead, too – at least in spirit. The new owners’ll keep it on life support, so it can wave weakly at worried shareholders, Weekend at Bernie’s-style, until the whole thing ignites in a mushroom cloud of A.I. takeovers and rape allegations. Everything Roman has ever really loved with his whole heart is dead now, except Shiv and the baby in her belly.
And Gerri, too. Always Gerri.
He scrolls to the top of his latest cavalcade of texts to her, sent over the past few hours and the past few drinks.
5:23 p.m.: Hey, are you around? Can we talk?
5:48 p.m.: I’m serious, I really wanna talk to you. I’m not gonna fire you again, I don’t even have the power to do that anymore, lol. Call me?
6:14 p.m.: Okay, well, fuck you too, I guess
6:18 p.m.: You really don’t care if I fucking die, huh?
6:20 p.m.: ???????
6:39 p.m.: I’m being an asshole. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m like this. Just really want to talk to you. Text me back plz.
6:40 p.m.: Or if you’d rather talk IRL, I’m at that bar by the Alamo. The one that uses the olives you like
6:57 p.m.: I guess you don’t want to hear from me, which makes sense. Mainly I just want to say that I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry. The whole dad thing really threw me for a loop, obviously, and so did the GoJo thing, and all the other shit, and I handled it badly because I am a fucking moron who needs a lot more therapy. I know that. Trust me, I know. I should’ve never fired you. I should’ve never let you go. I fucked up. That’s not who I want to be.
7:12 p.m.: I wish we could wipe the whole fucking slate clean, like we never met each other, and try again. Take it from the top. I’d do better the second time around, I think.
Even on a seventh re-read, that last one still makes him shudder with embarrassment. The utter debasement of it. He might as well have crawled across shattered glass, kissed her toes, and begged for forgiveness.
He’d do that too, if she wanted, of course. But otherwise, it seems a bit much. Unsolicited dick pics are one thing. Unsolicited feelings? Stupid beyond belief.
He’s considering ordering a fourth martini when the bell over the bar’s door rings.
At first, he thinks he’s hallucinating her. Every time that bell has rung while he’s been here, his hackles have gone up, his prickly lizard-brain on high alert for the scent of Gerri’s perfume, the authoritative click of her heels. So he can’t quite believe it when she seems to show up, in the flesh.
The spectre of Gerri sits on a barstool a few seats down from him, greets the bartender, and orders the same drink she always does. She’s dressed down, like she went home to change after work, and he’s reminded of Waystar inner-circle beach parties in the Hamptons, the way she’d always show up in jeans and a blouse, similar to what she has on now, like she was a normal, middle-America mom, and not a brilliant goddess with enough legal know-how to ruin a man’s life. Multiple men’s lives, actually.
He doesn’t remotely know how to begin a conversation with her, not when gin and vermouth and dumb fucking feelings have blurred his brain like this. But fortunately, she does it for him.
“Hello there,” she says, turning to look at him for the first time since she sat down. “Nice night we’re having, isn’t it?”
Roman glances out the window, where the almost-sunset sky is as grey and hazy and oppressive as his mood, and laughs. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Nice fucking night.”
She flashes him a half-smirk, and then, to his great surprise, extends a hand toward him. “I’m Gerri. And you are?”
Internally, it feels like he stares stunned at her for a thousand years before figuring out what she’s doing. But externally, it’s a blip, just a confused expression that passes over his face for a moment before drifting away like a cloud. You don’t grow up in a household headed by Logan Roy without learning to hide your feelings like your life depends on it.
“I'm Roman,” he manages, and takes the hand she’s offered, shaking it firmly the way his dad first taught him at age eleven. Has he ever shaken her hand before? They’ve shaken other people’s hands together, certainly – Japanese execs, Russian investors. But they’ve always been on the same team, for as long as he’s been alive. They’ve never not known each other. They’ve never needed to greet each other as if they were strangers.
She settles back on her barstool, just as her martini arrives. “Tough day at work?” she asks, too coolly. “You look… wrung out.”
He laughs, because he’s too drunk to care about concealing anything. “Basically lost my job today,” he explains. Then, seeing her brows knit together in concern: “I mean, it’s fine. I’m not, like, hurting for money or anything. But, you know. The gig meant a lot to me. The people there, they were like my family.”
“Were they?” Gerri asks innocently over the rim of her drink.
He chuckles and shrugs. “I mean, some of them were,” he says, “whereas some others, I desperately wanted to fuck, which is not a feeling I particularly associate with family. But hey, that’s enough about me; let’s talk about you. What do you do, Gerri?”
Her cheeks are pink, but she doesn’t miss a beat. “I work in the legal department of a large corporation,” she says.
“Ooh, mysterious,” he replies. “Apple? Meta? Something else I would’ve heard of?”
She smiles, eyes gleaming. “Somewhere in that ballpark, yes.”
He whistles appreciatively. “Damn. Well, kudos.” He raises his glass in a toast. “Here’s to boss bitches in positions of power.”
He thinks she’ll protest, but all she does is raise her own glass and tilt her head toward him in acknowledgment. “Hear hear.” They each take a gulp of their martini.
A companionable silence passes before she asks him, “Is that all that’s troubling you? Work? Why worry about that, if money’s no object?”
He sighs, and nibbles on the edge of an olive. “No, it’s more than that,” he concedes. “Lot of fucked-up shit’s been happening to poor little Romey these last few months. Like my dad dying.”
He knows she’s not actually surprised by this information – hell, she was there with him the day it happened – but he sees something new on her face now anyway, an openness. On that day, she had closed herself off to Roman, and no matter how deeply he stared into her eyes searching for help or support or love, she’d never really seen him, because she was refusing to look. But now, she looks. She really does.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, in a soft, bruised tone that makes Roman’s chest hurt. “That must have been so hard. I remember when my dad died.”
“Do you?” he asks.
“Oh, sure.” Her eyes wander up to the ceiling as she recalls it. “He’d been sick a while, so I saw it coming. Still hurt like hell when it happened, though. Felt like the pain would never end.”
Roman laughs humorlessly with recognition. “Uh-huh,” he says. “Sounds about right.”
She waits until he meets her eye again, and then says, “But it did end, eventually. Well, mostly. It got easier. I was okay.”
He nods sadly and swigs from his drink. “I know, I know, time heals all wounds, blah-blah-fuckin’-blah,” he mutters into his glass. Something in his belly has turned sour. He can’t stand the pity in her tone, can’t tolerate being the sick sad half-orphan she nurses back to health with her trite Chicken Soup for the Grieving Billionaire bullshit. “You know what really heals all wounds?” he jeers. “Fucking… obliteration by alcohol.”
She doesn’t say anything while he chugs the rest of his martini, but he can feel judgment radiating off her.
As he lays down some cash on the bar, Gerri watches him warily and says, “Will you text me when you’re home safe, Roman? I’m worried about you.”
He stumbles past her on his way to the door, and takes a moment to lay a hand on her shoulder. “With all due respect, ma’am, we just met,” he reminds her. “I don’t even have your number.” And then he ambles off into the night, head starting to pound.
But he does have her number, obviously. Which is why, five interminably long days later, he’s able to text her:
🍸?
She thumbs-ups his message, and he sighs and goes to his closet to pick an outfit for his second date with Gerri.