He knows damn well I don’t have plans.
“I, er, lake. The lake. I’m going to take a drive to Glen Lake. Haven’t been there in years. I’m going to get lunch out there and won’t be back until dinner.”
Selby’s lost interest in my dumb, spluttery ass, so she turns her attention to Romeo. “Hey, what do you say we take the gallery pics down in the bedroom and get the wall ready for the new print?”
“Sure,” Romeo says. “Why not.”
“I just hope they deliver it tomorrow. I’m going to lose my mind if they don’t. It’s been two and a half weeks since we got back from the honeymoon redo already. Almost three, actually. I mean, Jesus, I know it’s a small town and all that, but surely there has to be a smidge of customer service, you know? Just like alittleattention to detail and effort.”
Romeo sighs, though I can tell he’s trying not to, and I hear my voice interject, clear as a bell. “Honeymoon redo? Why’d you have to have a redo? Didn’t you honeymoon in Hawaii?”
I know for a fact they did. Selby posted pics of beaches and palm trees with cliché romantic quotes on her social media the entire time she was there. Each post made me sicker than the last. At the time, I thought it would kill me.
Romeo’s face goes as hard as I’ve ever seen it. Selby’s comes to life.
“Well,” she says, widening her eyes in a way that lets me know she enjoys the hell out of telling this story. “We hadtheworst time on our first honeymoon.”
Huh? What now? Who has a bad time on their honeymoon?
“Seriously, it was a disaster. Can’t believe Rome didn’t tell you. Men. God, you really don’t tell each other anything. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so it started before the wedding even ended. We were still at the venue and Romeo took a bit of a turn. You know when he goes all quiet and spacey?” I nod. “Well, it was like that, but he was white as a sheet. Now, to my mind, it was the shrimp. What else could it have been? The hotel has sworn black and blue it wasn’t. Excellent suppliers, top-notch chefs, perfect food preparation practices, you name it, they threw it at me when I complained, butI knowit was that fucking shrimp. You know when you just know something?”
I nod again, or I think I do, at least. I’m not sure.
“We’d already paid for the hotel, and I figured, it’sfiiine, he’ll rally, but when I tell you he didn’t…I mean, he didn’tat all. He barely left the chalet the entire time we were there. He couldn’t eat. He could barely lift his head off the pillow. We didn’t consummate the marriage until three weeks after we got home.”
She laughs riotously, and Romeo says, “Jesus Christ, Selby.”
A chill runs down my spine. I remember that night. The wedding. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. I remember it as if it’s still happening now. As if part of me has lived there, in that parking lot, for half a decade.
I look at Romeo until he has no choice but to look back. When our eyes meet, his are haunted. There’s a truth in them. A terrible, vast, boundless truth.
23
“A sea nourished with lovers’ tears”
Then
The last weeks ofthat summer, the one Selby moved to Alabaster, were filled with a very unique blend of emotion. Oh, there was anger. So much anger. Anger and despair. Anger, despair, and a heaping serving of defeat. Anger because fuck him. Fuck him forever for walking away from me and going to talk to her that day. Fuck him for getting her number, and mostly, fuck him for choosing that summer, of all summers, to get over his crippling shyness around hot women. Despair because I knew, in my bones, in my soul, we were good together, even if he didn’t realize it, even if he didn’t know what we were or what it meant. Defeat, endless and rolling, because what it really boiled down to was the simple fact that I’m a man and he wanted a woman.
Anger, despair, and defeat because God had a truly sick sense of humor for making me love Romeo the way I loved him when he didn’t love me back.
I’d been offered a scholarship to do my master’s at Cambridge. I’d been on the fence about it, but by the end of that summer and a fucking truckload of exposure to seeing Romeo and Selby’s stupid faces pressed together, talking complete bullshit and smiling like the biggest idiots on the planet, I couldn’t get far enough away from Alabaster.
Perhaps it was more a reflection of my mood at the time than reality, but it rained the whole time I was in Cambridge. The entire time. Morning, noon, and night. All I saw were gray skies and clouds weeping. Romeo still called a lot, and because I had a terrible sickness when it came to him, I still answered most of the time. When I didn’t, he’d call over and over, finally resorting to messaging the words that rendered me completely defenseless.
Is your window open?
Those words became a knife to my heart. A cold steel blade that twisted and killed me over and over. It didn’t matter how broken I was. An oath was an oath, so when I saw them on my screen, my reply was the same.
Always
Sometimes, conversation between us flowed easily and things felt almost normal between us. On those nights,I felt better. Not quite happy, but not on death’s door. When we were talking and laughing, he was my friend, not my lover, and I could almost forget he was the one who wielded the knife still lodged in my chest. Sometimes, conversation didn’t flow well. It felt like we were fighting without drawing our swords, disagreeing about small things neither of us cared much about. Sometimes, most times, it was his fault. He’d become cagey and prickly. Quiet and hard to draw out.
Other times, it was my fault.
I guess I’m one of those people who likes picking at scabs. I can’t help it. I just can’t seem to allow a wound to grow closed without ripping nature’s Band-Aid off a few hundred times.
“So, how’s Selby?” I’d ask.
