“Oh yeah, that’s right,” he says softly. “You wouldn’t. I ate your sandwich for you so you wouldn’t have to.”
For the rest of the afternoon, I lie on the sofa reading while Romeo writes. There’s something so intensely right about being in his presence that I find myself mentally rehearsing long conversations with Lexi.
Hear me out, Lex, here’s what I’m thinking—I give up my apartment in New York and move back toAlabaster. I can do a ton of what I do at work remotely. I’d probably only have to fly out once or twice a month and then I could stay with you for a couple of nights, or in a hotel, or something. I could rent our house from Mom and Dad. It would actually be perfect if you think about it. I could pay what they earn from renting it out through Airbnb, which would still be less than what I currently pay for my place. Plus, I’d take much better care of the house than Airbnb guests. You know I would. I’d do maintenance, and we could finally get the basement sorted out. It’s a win-win situation.
Personally, I like this plan a lot. I have a feeling Lexi won’t be a fan though. I think she’ll probably poke holes in it, but I like it, and I’m getting more and more committed to it the more I think about it. Maybe I won’t tell her about it after all. Maybe I’ll just move back here and tell her after I’ve done it.
Being back in Alabaster has reminded me of something I lost sight of during the years of tears. Yes, I love Romeo more than reason. That’s true. I’min lovewith him, and I’ll never love anyone the way I love him. That’s not going to change. I’ve tried to change it. I spent five years trying, and I’ve had a ton of counseling. I’ve tried hating him, not thinking about him, and dating other people. I can conclusively say I don’t love him less when I don’t see him. Not even a little bit.
So, really, when you think about it, it doesn’t make any difference if I’m here or on the other side of the world, does it?
But here’s the thing I lost sight of while I was away. I love Romeo as a friend too. He’s my best friend, and I miss him as a friend so much my entire body aches and I’m tired all the time. Maybe I forgot that from the shock and pain of everything that happened between us, but now that I’m back and near him again, I remember. Now that I see him like this, with a soft smile and daydreams written all over his face, I remember what it was like to have a friend like him. A friend who makes me laugh like no one else does at things that aren’t funny when you explain them to other people. A friend who makes me feel like I know who and where I am simply because of my proximity to him. A friend who would happily eat a revolting sandwich so I don’t have to.
I need that in my life.
I need it and I want it.
I think I can learn to live with the fact he’s married. I mean, when you think about it, him being married won’t hurt more if I live here than it does when I live in New York, and I’m used to that pain. I’m super experienced in dealing with it. I can survive it.
What I can’t survive is a life without Romeo in it.
20
“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes”
Then
I’d been back atcollege for two weeks, and instead of fading, the memory of Romeo’s face when he thought my mom had caught us grew louder. More intrusive. More upsetting. I felt like a wild animal that was caged. I paced my room, and when that wasn’t enough, I took to walking the streets late at night. There was an LGBTQ+ center on campus, and most nights, that’s where I walked. I didn’t go in. I just stood in the shadows and looked at the door, but that’s where I ended up night after night.
At the end of my second year I’d applied for an exchange program on a whim. I had no expectation of actually getting it, and I didn’t, but in the third week of my third year, I got a call from the head of my department saying the person who’d been successful was no longer able to take the placement and that if I wanted it, it was mine.
I said yes on the spot, and a week later, I’d given up my room in the dorm and was on a plane to England. Destination: Cambridge. I was as shocked by my impulsiveness as Iwas by the person I became while I was there. Not became, that’s the wrong way of putting it. I was shocked by the fact I allowed myself to be who I really was. The first Friday night in Cambridge, a group of people in my class invited me to a pub just off campus. We were having a chill time, drinking pints and cracking jokes. I was scrambling to keep up with the witty British banter when someone asked me if I had a girlfriend back home. I didn’t skip a beat. I said, “No. I have a boyfriend.”
I held my head high as I said it and took in each of the faces around me as I spoke. Reactions ranged from mild ambivalence to total acceptance. It was like I’d disclosed nothing more important than my favorite color.
There was a freedom in having said it that made me realize there was part of my lungs I hadn’t used before. A small pocket that had never been filled with air before. There, in a tiny, timber-clad pub with freakishly low ceilings, on a rainy as fuck night in a country that wasn’t mine, I finally felt like I could breathe.
After the initial exhilarated shock of finding myself in a foreign country, reality set in. I felt the miles between Romeo and me. There were three thousand seven hundred and forty-four of them, and I felt every one. I felt them all in a way that was so real and visceral that it upsetmy balance. I felt off-kilter like I was leaning a little more to the left than I should have been.
The time difference was a bitch. At first, it was almost the same as it always was. Romeo would call and our conversations would be profound or completely random.
“Tiger, wait,” he said just as I was about to hang up a call that had been totally news-based. “Don’t go. I realized this morning I don’t know what your least favorite emotion is.”
I mean honestly, what kind of question is that? Only Romeo would think to ask something like that, especially out of the blue. “Ummm…” I hummed as I mulled it over. “Guilt, I guess.”
“Ah, guilt’s a good one. D’you know my mom always used to say that when it comes to guilt, a little goes a long way? I never really understood what she meant. She said I’d get it when I was older, but so far, no dice.”
I chuckled and asked, “What’s yours?” forgetting for a second that I didn’t need to. I knew what it was.
“Grief,” he said simply.
As weeks passed, Romeo and I talked less frequently. At first, it was a day here or there that was missed, and we’d make up for it by catching up in a long call the next time we spoke. It was awful. I’d wake up in the morning, head full of things to tell him, and have to wait all day for himto wake up. Then he’d be in class when it was still early enough for me to call. I counted his missed calls and kept a tally of them in my head. The more there were, the happier I was. I saw it as proof. Of what, I couldn’t really say, but I liked it. I liked thinking of him at home in his room, sitting on his bed with his phone in his hands and my name on the screen. I liked that it meant he was thinking of me. Pining for me. Maybe not in the same way I pined for him, but it was something.
Maybe it was wrong of me to like it, but I did.
Initially, Romeo and I had lofty plans of him coming over for Thanksgiving break, but it didn’t pan out because no one celebrates Thanksgiving in the UK, so I didn’t get time off or anything like that. I was bleak about it, but Lex and my parents came out to spend Christmas with me, and that was great. We spent Christmas and Boxing Day in a charming rented stone cottage in Dorset and spent the better part of the next week driving around Wales. It was a blast. Lexi and I did most of the driving, and our parents sat in the back seat of the tiny Ford Fiesta we’d rented and behaved like kids, constantly whining, “Are we there yet?” and laughing uproariously at their dumb joke.
After the trip, I flew straight into Columbus for the start of the second semester. When I’d packed up my room in Cambridge, I was surprised to find myself feeling astomach-dropping sense of defeat, sure that as I folded my clothes and bundled them into my bag, I was all but folding myself up and cramming myself back into the closet.
