The proper way to setup relationship models in Eloquent repository setup

I'm trying to figure out how to create user roles using model relationships when a user gets created from admin in my app.

I have the following tables:

users

The users table holds a list of users.

users_roles

The users_roles table is a pivot table that links roles to users.

roles

The roles table contains a list of roles.

I am trying to use a repository setup so that my controller has no mention of eloquent.

This is my controller:

class ContractorController extends Controller
{
    private $user;

    /**
     * Create a new instance.
     *
     * @return Middleware
     */
    public function __construct(UserRepoInterface $user, TimesheetRepoInterface $timesheet)
    {
        $this->middleware('actions');

        $this->user = $user;
        $this->timesheet = $timesheet;
    }

    /**
     * Store a newly created resource in storage.
     *
     * @param  Request  $request
     * @return Response
     */
    public function store(CreateUserRequest $request)
    {
        // create user
        $user = $this->user->createUser($request->except('_token'));

        // user was created above so we can use $user object
        $this->user->createUserRole($user);

        return Redirect::back()->withMessage('New user created.');
    }
}

My repository:

/**
 * Create new user role.
 *
 * @param $request
 * @return mixed
 */
public function createUserRole($user)
{
    return $this->user->roles()->attach($user);
}

My User model:

/**
 * Get the roles associated with the user.
 *
 * @return Object
 */
public function roles()
{
    return $this->belongsToMany('App\Models\User\UsersRoles', 'users_roles', 'role_id', 'user_id');
}

The above code results in a record getting created in the users_roles table which is correct, however I do not know how to associate the correct role_id in the table.

Here is the data that gets inserted into users_roles:

id    user_id    role_id
1     1          0

As you can see there is no role_id because i'm not sure how I can pass this in. I know that if I was phsically creating a new role in the roles table, then I coud use this object. But the role already exists so I just need to associate this new user with a role that I specify.

Please can someone point me in te direction of how I can do this or how would I have to adjust my code?

Thanks in advance.

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