It was one of those things that wasn’t supposed to happen. You know, one of those things you hear about, but they don’t happen to real people and definitely not to people you know and love.
It was twice as rare as getting hit by a car while walking your dog.
An allergic reaction to anesthesia.
Sally went to sleep and didn’t wake up.
A low, ringing sound screeched in my brain as the words landed, and I couldn’t swallow. My hands felt hot and my face felt cold. For the longest time, I didn’t move or react. I watched my parents moving around me like they were skating on rails. My mom fetched tissues. My dad blew his nose. The sound was so loud I started to shake.
“Romeo,” I said after I don’t know how long. “Romeo.” As I said it, time started to speed up. There was an urgency, a franticness. I needed to get to him. I needed to be with him. “Romeo!”
It took both my parents to hold me back. Two sets of arms. Two faces and two voices saying the same thing.
“Wait, baby, wait. You’re very upset. You’re in shock. You won’t be able to help Romeo now. He’s with his dad. They’re at the hospital. Sal’s mom and sister are on their way. You can see him tomorrow.” There were hands on my face and hands on my back. “You can see him tomorrow.”
I locked myself in my room and paced from the door to the bed. I must have done it for hours. I had my phone in my hand the whole time, checking incessantly for messages from Romeo.
I didn’t know what to say or where to start. Eventually, out of desperation, I sent him a message.
My window is open
I don’t know what time it was when he came, but it was late. Or rather, it was early. I was in bed, but I hadn’t fallen asleep. I couldn’t. I heard his footsteps on the flat roof of the garage and a soft crash as he pushed my window open fully. His silhouette was ink black, a carbon cutout of my Romeo with a wall of moonlight behind him.
I opened the covers and he got into my bed with his shoes on. Grief clung to his clothes and his hair. It was everywhere. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. I held on as tightly as I could as Romeo’s tears ran down my neck and onto my chest.
His cry was ragged and broken. Great, wracking sobs followed by alternating splinters of the voices he had as a boy and then as a teen. His words were garbled and mostly inaudible, but when I could make them out, he said the same thing over and over.
“I want my mom.”
If there were any parts of me that didn’t already love Romeo, they died that night.
For the rest of that summer and well into the next school year, I sent him the same text every night before I went to sleep.
My window is open.
He didn’t come over every night, but he came often. After that first time, he took his shoes off before he got into my bed. I don’t remember him setting an alarm or anything like that, but he was always gone by the time I woke up in the morning.
My family had planned to go to Florida that year for Thanksgiving. The plan had been made before Sally died, and I’d been looking forward to it for ages. My parents had to physically wrangle me to get in the car. I invited Romeo, obviously, but he didn’t want to leave his dad alone over the holidays.
“Come on, honey,” said my mom. “It won’t be so bad, and I think you could usea little break.”
I almost blacked out from rage when she said it.Icould use a break? What about Romeo? He was the one who was hurt, and I was being dragged off for a vacation. For a holiday. I was furious. I was as sullen and difficult as only a seventeen-year-old boy could be for the entire journey and then some.
It wasn’t until I got into the too-small twin bed in my gran’s guestroom that night and saw a message from Romeo that anything felt close to normal again.
Is your window open?
I couldn’t help smiling. It was ridiculous, and it was Romeo.
I was more than a thousand miles from Alabaster, and there was no way in hell he could come over, but I got out of bed anyway, threw my window open wide, took a photograph of it, and sent it to him along with a single word. It was a word I meant with my whole heart and soul. A word that was more than a word. A word that was a vow. An oath.
Always
10
“Be but sworn my love”
Now
