And I don't care if that makes me a dumbass
Romeo reads the message and drops heavily on the bed next to me. He rests his elbows on his knees, head bowed, as he reads it again. And again. I can practically hear the cogs of his mind grinding.“Bu…why…how?” He’s breathless and his hand is clamped over his mouth. “I feel sick,” he says when the realization hits him fully. “I feel so sick…my life. My whole life changed because of what he said.” He closes his eyes. It looks like he’s praying, but I know he doesn’t do that. “Your life too. And Selby’s. Oh God, Selby’s life too.”
When his hands start to tremble, I cover them with mine, holding them tightly. He’s shivering and is staring vacantly at the wall opposite my bed as tears roll down his cheeks. I pick up the blanket off the floor and drape it over his shoulders. When I pull him to me, he comes easily, going soft and melting into me as I hold him.
I hardly know what to say. I understand what’s just happened. I do. I understand it in words. It’s just that I can’t feel it. I can’t process it. I can’t believe it.
Romeo loved me back.
And Benji, a person I thought was a friend, lied to him. A person I knew for a few months and then cut out of mylife and never thought of again broke the best thing that ever happened to me.
And I hadn’t even known it had happened.
Of all the reasons I thought we ended, and believe me, I’ve made an exhaustive list or five hundred in my time, Benji never even entered my mind as a contender.
“We should have talked more about what was happening between us.” Romeo sniffs. “Don’t think I don’t know that. Don’t think I don’twishwe had because I do. I really, really fucking do. It’s just…I couldn’t. I didn’t have the words then. I was so confused. Not when I was with you. When I was with you, everything was crystal clear, but when I wasn’t with you, I didn’t know who I was. I needed my mom.” His voice cracks. “I needed to talk to her. She’d have known what to do. I didn’t. I didn’t know anything, not even who I liked. Or why I liked what I liked. And I’m sorry about that, okay. I’m really fucking sorry. I was twenty years old, and I was fucked up, and I didn’t have my shit worked out yet, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I know. You were ashamed of me, I get it.”
His brows curve up sharply. “Ashamed of…Jude, no. I was ashamed of me. I was ashamed of who I was and what I liked. Ashamed of you? Never. I hero-worshipped you. I loved you beyond reason.”
It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to hear, but I still can’t feel it. Years of pain and betrayal roar in my veins. “Why’d you go and marry Selby then?”
“You mean aside from the fact you told me to?”
My entire body goes cold from the chill that runs through me. I remember my dorm room in Cambridge. The Darth Vader poster I had on my wall. The photograph of Romeo and me framed on my desk. I remember him saying, “She’s dating to marry,” and I remember the thing I’ve tried so hard to stamp out of my mind it hardly feels like it really happened at all anymore. My words. My voice saying, “Guess you better put a ring on it then.”
“Yeah,” I breathe, “aside from that.”
“Selby was safe. That’s what she was. Steady. The same every damn day. She told me she wanted me. You made me guess. You made me wait until I felt like I was losing my mind. Remember that summer, the good one? I’d try to outwait you. I wanted you so much I felt like I was dying. I’d make these little deals with myself. I’d say,Don’t go tonight, stay home, and maybe tonight, he’ll come to you. I’d tell myself,if he comes tonight, it means he wants you as much as you want him. It means he loves you. Just relax. He’s Jude. He never lets you down. He’ll come.But you didn’t. You never came to me. Selby wasn’t like that. She told me what she wanted with no hesitation. Hell, she told mewhere she wanted me to be and what she wanted me to do while I was there as well. There was no uncertainty at all. You’d always been my safe place, and right when you stopped feeling safe, right when you started feeling uncertain and scary, you shoved me into her arms and smiled like you hated me when you did it.”
I don’t answer. I swear to God, I don’t know what to say. My chest aches, and I can’t swallow the lump in my throat no matter how hard I try. Romeo keeps talking.
“I was scared. Growing up, I was a scared kid. I was a scared teen too. If I cared enough about my life anymore, I guess I’d be a scared man as well. A Little Bit Afraid of Everything, that’s what my mom and I used to call it. We used to laugh about it together. She said that was how you rob fear of its power. Sometimes, it worked, but usually, I still had this gnawing feeling that something bad was about to happen. And then it did. You were there for me after she died. You were there for a lot of it, but you didn’t see all of it. You saw my grief, and that was bad, but you didn’t see my dad’s. That was bigger than me. It was so big it terrified me. I…I used to get home early sometimes when he wasn’t expecting me. You know, when a class or activity would end early…” His voice trails off as though he’s unsure whether he should be saying what he’s saying. “I’d get to the porch, and before I even opened the door, I’d hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“Hear him crying. I mean, I guess you’d call it crying, though that’s not what it sounded like. I don’t think that’s what it was. It was howling. It sounded like an animal that had been wounded. Nothing was normal and nothing was okay. We buried my mom, but my dad died that day too. I almost did as well. You were the one thing, Jude. The one good thing I had. The one thing keeping me together. When you came home with Benji, I was sick about it. I was so hurt it felt like I was being turned inside out, and as bad as that was, it wasn’t the worst thing… The worst thing was the fear. It was physical. I can still feel it when I let myself think about it. I was so scared of losing you that I thought if you wanted to date other people, I should let you do it. I thought it was better to keep you as a friend than lose you altogether.” He pauses for breath. “D’you remember the story of how my mom and dad met?”
I nod.
“Remember what my dad said about why he took so long to tell my mom he was in love with her?”
“Yeah.” I remember it like it was yesterday. “He said he’d have been happy to be just friends for the rest of his life if it meant he’d get to spend time with her.”
Romeo blows a tiny gust of air out of his nose and nods. “I thought that was what was being asked of me. I thought I had to choose between keeping you as a friend or losing you altogether. And I chose friend. I thought I was doing this big noble thing, setting you free even though it hurt me, so we could stay friends.”
“And then there was the wedding,” I say numbly.
He nods and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “And then there was the wedding.” He lets out a low, lost whistle. “And the reception. And you and me in the parking lot. I couldn’t understand it. I thought I’d done everything in my power to keep you, yet, somehow, I still lost you. When I got your message, that last message from you…”
I know the message he means all too well. One word. Two letters, not six. My greatest act of self-harm.
“I felt trapped. Boxed in. Buried alive. I’d just agreed to spend the rest of my life with Selby, and it turned out you wanted me. I’ve never felt anything like that. Everything around me closed in, walls, doors, everything closed in, and I kept thinking of my mom. We put her in a box in the ground, so in a weird way, I figured it made sense for me to be in one too. You have no idea how long it took me to realize that she was dead when we did it, and I was still alive.”
It kills me that he’s felt like this. It causes me physical pain that I feel in my bones.
For so many years, I tried to hate him. I’d think of him loving Selby and the pain of it nearly killed me. I thought there was nothing worse, but this is worse. Him loving me and thinking I’d betrayed him is worse.
