I wouldn’t stop until he chuckled and said, “Fine, I believe you.”
Sometimes, he came to my room on good days too. He came the night after our eighteenth birthday party. We held the party in our garden and my dad hung strings ofthose multicolored bistro lights on the patio. It was nice. There weren’t too many people, and there weren’t too few. The food was great, and the vibe was chill. There were no speeches and the gifts were next level. All in all, it was a good day. It was as close to perfect a day as we’d had since Sally died.
My head had scarcely hit the pillow when I heard the soft clunk on the garage roof that had come to signal his arrival. That night, Romeo didn’t cry. He lay on his back as I curled my body around him, mind racing as I tried to work out how much I could touch him without it being too much. He talked for hours. It was like the old days when dreams spilled out of him and leaked into me. I closed my eyes and let his imagination take me where he wanted. The story he told me was haunting and beautiful and so goddamn real that I was breathless, happy, angry, sad, and wired like someone who’d been on a psychedelic trip by the time it ended.
“You should write that one down, Romeo.”
He laughed. “What for?”
“I don’t know. Just so…I guess you should write it down so maybe someday other people can read it or something.”
He rolled onto his side, facing away from me, waiting for me to move closer before speaking again. I tucked one hand under my head and wrapped the other around hiswaist, pulling him as close as I could without my boner digging into him.
“But, Tiger,” he said dreamily, “you’re the only one who matters.”
“Write it down,” I insisted until he dissolved into an uncharacteristic fit of giggles.
On nights like that, when he was more okay than he wasn’t, he felt good in my arms. Good and right. I ached differently on those nights, the good nights. It was an ache so intense it left a sweet taste in my mouth. An ache that stretched and expanded until my skin felt too tight. An ache that sank so low and ran so deep that my balls felt bruised for the whole of the next day.
Looking back now, I can’t quite remember how it came to be that Romeo and I went to different colleges. I mean, I do remember how it happened. I got a scholarship to study actuarial science at Ohio State and Romeo’s dad wasn’t doing very well without Sal. Romeo didn’t want to leave him on his own, so he enrolled at our local college.
What I don’t remember is how the hell anyone got me to agree to it. That’s what I don’t know. Seems very off-brand for me when I think of it now.
Maybe it was as simple as the fact that when I told Romeo I didn’t want to leave him, he looked at me quizzically and said, “But, Jude, I’m going to be an Englishteacher, and New York is expensive. You’re the one who’s always saying it is. If one of us doesn’t have a job that makes good money, how are we going to be able to live there?”
Could I really have been that dumb? Could I really have decided my entire future based on an off-hand comment made by a friend?
Ha!
What a question. Given that the friend in question was Romeo, I was exactly that dumb and then some.
We were at Romeo’s house when he said it. On his front porch, waiting for my mom to pick us up and take us shopping for clothes. My mom had realized Romeo hadn’t been shopping since Sal died, and she’d taken it upon herself to give his wardrobe “a spruce,” as she called it.
It was hot and blustery that day, but Romeo looked cool. His hair was still ashy, and though his skin was turning golden, it hadn’t quite taken on the full warmth of its summer glow.
There was no real weight or intention in his words. He didn’t even look all that serious when he said it. Still, it felt as though someone had kicked my feet out from under me. It felt beyond belief. Unreal that a world existed where Romeo and I could live together, have our own place, do what we wanted, and I could be the one to take care of him.Not just with my words or my body like I’d always done. Like, really take care of him, financially and shit.
As summer wore on, my anxiety about leaving Alabaster in general and Romeo in particular kept climbing. Romeo seemed mellow and resigned about it, which was unlike him, but it could have been because he’d come out of the worst of the fog of grief and his dick had started bothering him with a vengeance.
“Fuck. I’m horny,” replaced “Holy shit, why are my feet so big?” as his main complaint in life. He’d started banging on about it the same way he had a few years earlier about not being kissed. “I’m eighteen, and I’m the only person who’s ever touched my dick. How sad is that?”
“Thought you said Jodie touched it that time you took her to Mo’s for a milkshake.”
He sighed heavily. I tried not to laugh. I knew exactly what was coming next.
“Yeah, and I’ve told you I’m not even sure she meant to do it. She, like, kind of tapped it but pulled her hand away real fast.Realfast, Jude.”
“Was it hard?”
“No, it was a soft tap. She just brushed her hand against it. Yeah, no, I’m pretty sure it was just an accident.”
“I meant your dick, you tool.” It was probably wrong of me, but talking to Romeo about his dick did things for me that were out of this world, and I wanted more of it, even if it was crossing a line.
“Have you met me?” His head twitched with incredulity, and fuck, he looked adorable. “Of course it was hard. Don’t waste my time with ridiculous questions, Tiger. Was it hard? What the fuck? When isn’t it hard? I’m staring down the barrel of being the biggest loser ever to enroll in college, and you’re making jokes. Nice one, bud. Real nice.”
“If you think you’re the biggest loser ever to enroll in college, something tells me you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you get there.”
“I really don’t know why you’re not more worried about this. We’revirgins, Jude.” He said it like it was an infectious disease. “Virgins who have never even had their cocks touched. If you think that’s going to be a turn-on for some hot college girl, you’ve got it very wrong. Women have enough shit to deal with without having to tangle with guys who don’t know what to do with their own dicks.”
