He was still looking at my wrist and wasn’t happy with what he saw. I could tell because he hummed softly and tutted unhappily. He started running one of his fingers over the bites. His touch was firm but gentle. He didn’t use his nail. Just his fingertip. He worked his way up my forearm to my elbow and then back down again. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. When he was done, I was swaying, soothed and burning in a totally different way.
His fingers were still curled around my wrist, not quite tightly enough to pinch, but close. He let my arm drop down to my side, but he didn’t let go. When I tried to move, his face changed. His eyes sparked and he gritted his teeth as a smile I hadn’t seen before spread across his face. It started at the corners of his mouth, curling his lips and gradually working its way up to his eyes. It was an unexpected, hard smile. There was something unusual about it. It was stronger than normal. Possessive, maybe? Maybe even a little domineering. He tightened his grip on my wrist and his lips began moving lazily around his new smile as he spoke.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said. In my love- and lust-addled recollection of the event, his eyes added a steely“’cause you’re mine” to the end of the sentence.
13
“Fire and powder”
Now
I feel worse thanhell. I look it too. My reflection in the mirror assures me of that. My eyes are bloodshot. Dark-brown orbs with squiggly red blood vessels swimming around them and puffy bags underneath. My skin looks sallow rather than olive and my hair is all over the place, thick dark swoops that fall into my face. I hardly got any sleep last night. I tossed and turned and jerked off so much after the whole midnight milk thing that my dick feels vaguely assaulted this morning.
Selby has left for work by the time I venture out of my room. I peek my head out to make sure the coast is clear and scurry to the guest bathroom. The guest bathroom is the only room in the house that hasn’t been done yet. Selby apologized to me at length when she showed me to my room last night. The fittings are dated and the walls are painted olive green. A primitive painting of a sacred heart hangs above the toilet. It’s in a large, ornate frame that dwarfs the painting. I remember Romeo calling it hismasterpiece as he carried it home after art one day. We must have been in the third or fourth grade at the time.
Sally was over the moon when he gave it to her. She didn’t exclaim or give Romeo grand, over-the-top compliments like most parents did, but I could tell she loved it because she undid the necklace around her neck and held her palm out to Romeo. The gold chain pooled in her hand and the spinel in her pendant caught the light and reflected like stained glass in an old church. It was her most prized possession. A sacred heart.
“Have I ever told you the story of how you got your name, Romeo?”
Romeo’s head tilted, and he flicked his eyes at the ceiling. It was clear he’d heard the story more than once, but I never had, so I moved closer. The pendant in Sally’s hand was beautiful. The stone was rich and dark. Blood red and well cut. The flame, lance, and thorns were high-karat gold and had been intricately engraved.
“Daddy and I were in Verona in Italy. We’d been traveling together for weeks and had been friends for a very long time.” As she spoke, images flitted around the kitchen. Cobbled streets, arched doorways. Stone buildings with a long, languid river meandering through them. Sandstone and ochre. Bottle-green windows with shutters that worked. A soft glow that radiated off the buildings. Theworld Sally wove wasn’t as clear to me as the ones Romeo did, but I was still enchanted. “We’d already visited Rome and Venice, and even though I loved them, to me, Verona was magical. Daddy and I recited lines fromRomeo and Julietto each other the whole time, and somewhere between the Arena de Verona and the Piazza delle Erbe, something between Daddy and me changed.”
“Oh, please don’t make this a gross story,” Romeo whispered under his breath.
Sal smiled. “I saw this necklace in an antique shop at the end of a quiet, narrow street. I loved it so much I asked to try it on even though I knew I couldn’t afford it.” She smiled again, and this time, she looked up at Mike, who was lying on the sofa in the living room with his feet up. “Five months later, Daddy gave me this necklace for my birthday. He’d bought it that day in Verona and carried it in his pocket every day since.” Mike had turned down the TV and pushed himself up on one elbow. He was watching Sal with a lax, love-struck expression.
“The second I saw it, my heart almost stopped.” Sal was looking back at Mike with exactly the same expression. “That was the moment I knew Daddy and I weren’t just friends anymore.”
“I loved you from the second I saw you,” said Mike.
“You did not.”
“I did too. I was helpless from the first day, Sal. Helpless.”
Sally giggled and continued, “Daddy put the necklace on for me. I held my hair up like this”—she gathered as much as she could of her hair in both hands to show us—“and he struggled with the clasp. It took him ages. I thought I would have to call a friend to help him. I don’t think he’d had a lot to do with jewelry until then.”
“It wasn’t that. I knew how to fix a clasp, Sal. I felt like I was going to faint from being close to you. That was my problem,” said Mike, strolling over to where we were.
Sally rolled her eyes, but they were as soft as I’d ever seen them.
“Later that night, I was in my bathroom,” she continued, “and I was admiring the way the pendant looked around my neck in the mirror, and for a second, I felt like I was back in Verona. Back on the cobbled streets, in the little antique shop surrounded by dust and treasures, with a young man in the back engraving rings and trophies. It was like I’d entered a portal.” Romeo’s eyes were wide and slightly glazed over. I realized Sal’s stories had the same effect on him as his on me. “One second, I was in Verona, and the next, I was back in front of the mirror, staring straight at my future.” Mike was standing behind her and had curled an arm around her waist. “I remember thinkingto myself, if Mike and I have a son, I’ll name him Romeo. Of course”—Sal turned around in Mike’s arms and fixed him with a pretend annoyed look—“youstilltook almost three months to ask me out.”
Mike laughed and kissed her lightly. “What can I tell you. I loved you so much I’d have been happy to be just friends for the rest of my life, as long as it meant I’d get to spend time with you.”
“Come on, Jude,” said Romeo, guiding me upstairs to his room. “We better go. You don’t want to see this.”
By the time I’m out of the shower and dressed, the smell of coffee wafts down the hall to greet me. The kitchen is deserted, but there’s coffee in the pot and a box of cereal has been left out. Lucky Charms. I haven’t eaten them in almost a decade, but they used to be my favorite before I started caring about things like sugar content and carbs. I feel a familiar tug of hope, that oldmaybe Romeo loves me back.
It’s bullshit, obviously. And maybe a bit of limerence?
I like the word but can’t remember exactly what it means, so I look it up on my phone. It’s a state of acute intensity. An obsessive infatuation with another, often littered with enough intrusive thoughts to make it impossible to think about anything other than one’s love interest.Hmm. That does sound like me.Ecstasy when feelings arereturned—wouldn’t know much about that—and a state of agony when they aren’t.Yeah, I’m all over that bad boy.
I read a little more, and Jesus, I have this limerence thing down pat. Might have to give Moira a call later and find out if it’s treatable.
God, imagine if it is.
Imagine if I could stop this.
