romeo ford | capitol ; fin — d1 escort

"I'm your manager, Romey... You do what I say, and what I say is that reality television is the next big thing."

He scoffed and rolled his eyes at the all-too familiar whispery voice on the other end of the phone. He held the receiver between his shoulder and his ear while he smelled different candles in some warehouse store.

"Um, first of all, you aren't my manager. You're barely my mom at this point."

Harsh, but true. He hadn’t meant it in a mean-spirited way, just… He had a tendency of being a bit too direct. They'd both come a long way since his Junie days. He didn't act anymore and his mother had spent the last, oh, fifteen years behind bars because, in the height of her barbiturates-and-white-wine phase, she decided to pull off a fucking bank heist.

She'd always been rather... delusional, he guessed. He didn't think she ever expected him to actually book any of the auditions she threw him into, but then he actually had, and she'd been in way over her head. That was the truth. She was a cosmetologist whose entire clientele were divorcees looking to get the dreaded karen-chop. She didn't know what she was doing then, and he suspected that her fear of being the reason Romeo's life fell apart is the reason she started taking those pills in the first place. But it didn't mean she knew anymore what she was doing now than she did then.

He could hear his mother's signature lilting scoff-sigh just as soon as he'd finished saying the words. He flinched against her reply, maybe expecting her to start shouting, or to say he acted like his dad- which meant nothing to him since she wouldn't fucking tell him who his dad even was- but instead there was a pause.

"Romey, this is the last offer they're gonna make. You've been off the scene for too long. We both have."

He smiled into the receiver, because he knew the last part was meant as a drag but he genuinely didn't want to have a reality show. There were too many of them, and they were always the same, and it was always boring as fuck. Plus why would anyone care to tune in and see what an ex-child star was up to in the first place?

"I told you, I have news for another job anyway. I'm gonna announce it at dinner tonight with Gigi. You're still welcome to c-"

"Oh, I don't know about that, Romey... Mother and I... Well... How do I say this politely?"

He knew what was coming.

"My mother... is... evil. She was an awful mother, she was... just... so rude. And-"

"And she's the only one who took me in when you got arrested, remember that?"

It had only been like three months since her release, give him a break. He still had some processing to get through.

"Look, come if you want, or wait until I go public tomorrow and find out with everyone else- up to you. I gotta go, though."

"Okay, well I'll think about it. You think about that offer some more, too."

He groaned, and decided lying seemed easier.

"Fine, I will."

Once he heard the satisfying click of the phone's connection, he slid it back into his pocket. Normally, there would be no need for him to buy a gift for tonight. It was a family dinner, and though it was entirely foreign to their family, that's about as normal as it could be. Except Gigi's only way of expressing her love was via something expensive. At first he thought she was just trying to overcompensate for the misdeeds of her daughter, but over time he saw that actually it was just a habitual need for her to give and give and give to him. Maybe because she felt like she didn't give his mother enough, maybe because she gave his mother too much, or maybe she just truly thought that, at her base, she was only worth her money. Listen, she was his hero, but she wasn't a hero, and he recognized that there was a lot going on with her, and with the way she'd taken over his raising, but she really did have a lot of good to her, too. And even as ridiculous as the gifts sometimes were- she bought him a seven bedroom mansion for his eighteenth, then bought it back from him two months later because she missed him around home- she really was trying.

And he was there shopping for gifts, because he was trying to prove to her that he got that, and that he loved her too, with... He sighed. A fifteen-dollar candle that smelled like mint chocolate. Whatever. The news was the important part of the evening anyway but before he turned for the checkout, he grabbed a second candle... just in case.