He was slow and sensual about it. Unhurried. He held me in place and practiced on me. He played with my tongue and my lips. Nipping and licking. Soft, shallow kisses and hard, deep ones too. Learning. Exploring. Seeing how it felt when he did this and how it felt when he did that.
For my part, I let him.
God, I let him.
My arms found their way around his waist. His skin was cold, wet, and hot, and I couldn’t move or think or even feel where I wasn’t touching him. My head was above water, but I was drowning. Weightless. Floating, with no air in my lungs and nothing but Romeo to stop me from drifting off into space.
I didn’t realize it then, but that day in the pool was the first time he carved his name into my heart. He did it deeply. Deep enough to leave a fine, silvery thread of scar tissue. I didn’t mind or complain. Not at all. Hell, I cracked my own sternum and held my ribcage wide open, giving him the time and access he needed to cut as deeply as he wanted. I didn’t wince. I didn’t flinch or pull away. I stood still.
I was such a dumbass, I looked on and
A few weeks later, at school, Romeo was telling the guys that he’d made out with someone over the summer.
“Yeah, right,” said Dan. “Like hell you did.”
“I did!” Romeo replied with force. “Ask Jude. He was there.”
“It’s true,” I said, taking care to arrange my face right, though I could feel the corners of my mouth doing something weird. “He kissed a girl.”
“Oh yeah? What was her name?”
“Juliet,” Romeo and I said in near-perfect, unplanned unison.
“Ugh, you two are shitting me,” said Dan.
“We aren’t. It’s true. That’s how we got to talking. She found out my name is Romeo, and the rest, as they say, is history. She couldn’t recite a sonnet for shit, but she tried. It was actually pretty cute.” His lips parted in the tiniest hint of a grin. A little crack that let a memory seep through. “She was brunette with these big, dark eyes.” He flicked his gaze at me, paralyzing me briefly. “She was beautiful.”
And that was the second time he carved his name on my heart.
8
“Poison hath residence”
Now
I’m on the floorin my room, sitting directly under the window that faces the park. The light is out, but the curtains are open. I can’t tell if I feel sick from the two helpings of overly sweet cheesecake I let Selby serve me or the shock of seeing Romeo in a house that looks nothing like his home with a dog that looks like Buddy but isn’t and a lover who isn’t me at his side.
I keep my face forward and shift my hips so I’m able to scoot my hands under my ass cheeks and sit on them.
I will not open the window.
I will not look out the window.
I will not wait for Romeo.
Fine, maybe I will wait for him, but I willnotlet him see me waiting for him and the windowwillstay closed. I willnotopen the window. I’d rather die.
A long beam of moonlight enters my window, casting a ghostly blue light on my bed. I sit and sit and sit, watchingas the light slowly moves in a broad arc across my bed and my fingers throb and finally go numb.
I stay like that for ages, hours. My mind races, darting from the past to the present. From Romeo now to Romeo then. His face. His eyes. I don’t move until I’m shivering, despite the fact it’s late June and the weather is balmy.
It’s passed midnight, well into the early hours, when I finally accept defeat and raise a gnarled, cramping hand over my head and fumble with the window latch. I’m so weak and defeated by the time I do it that it takes both hands and my last reserve of energy to push the window open a crack.
9
“Under love’s heavy burden do I sink”
Then
