Romeo gave me his usual up-nod crossed with a slight snarl when he saw me. His hair had grown long like it always did over the summer, curling at the back of his neck and falling into his face, giving him an unruly curtain to skulk behind if he slouched just right.
“D’you have a good time at the lake?” I asked.
He mulled it over and said, “Not really, no. I found myself underwhelmed, to be honest.” He waved me into the house and down the hall. “Seen one big body of water, seen them all, I guess.”
I wasn’t particularly surprised by his response. Despite the fact that Glen Lake boasted translucent water and rolling dunes and was often regarded as the most beautiful lake in the whole state, at that time in our lives, Romeo was one of two things: underwhelmed or overwhelmed. And he generally reserved overwhelm for the school year.
“Brought you a sandwich,” I told him, “but I got hungry on the way over, so I ate it.”
That plunged him into the depths of despair. It didn’t take much, in those days, to do it, so that didn’t surprise me either.
“You ate my sandwich? Dammit, Jude, I haven’t had breakfast yet. Why would you do that? You know how I get when I’m hungry.”
I tried to change the subject as we tried in vain to find something decent to watch on TV, but he kept circling back to the sandwich. “What was on the sandwich?” “Did you make it, or did Carol?” “Was it the good mustard or the one I don’t like?”
He didn’t let up until I threatened to make him a sandwich myself.
“Oh, hell no. No way. You use far too much mayonnaise. There’s no way I’m eating a sandwich you made. You almost poisoned me last time.”
“Well, is your mom here then? Maybe she can make us a club,” I suggested hopefully.
Sally was the queen of snack food. While my mom’s catering focused on quantity, Sally’s was geared toward quality. She made her sandwiches with thickly sliced artisanal bread and never built one without at least four or five toppings. Finely sliced green apple, delicatessen cheeses with names I couldn’t pronounce, you name it, she’d put it on a sandwich. She used to serve them on a lap tray with a whole lot of little bowls scattered around the main plate. Each bowl contained something different. Nuts, jerky, fruit, that kind of thing.
God, I loved those little bowls. Sally once told me she used them because when Romeo was little, he hated when different types of food touched each other.
“Nah, she’s out. She has a work thing. Won’t be back till tonight.”
“Well then, the best I can do is offer you a grilled cheese.”
“Hmm, I guess I could go for a grilled cheese.”
He sat on a kitchen stool, swinging from side to side as I worked, back-seat driving my grilled cheese-making process for all he was worth.
“That slice is too thick.” “That slice is too thin.” “That’s too much cheese.”
“Romeo, come on. There’s no such thing as too much cheese. Everyone knows that.”
I took the grilled cheese off the stovetop, burning the knuckle on my thumb in the process, and served it to him along with three tiny bowls all filled with cashew nuts. I couldn’t be assed to put in the kind of effort Sally put in but felt wrong about making a snack in Romeo’s house that didn’t utilize a butt load of bowls.
“Happy now?” I asked as he took his first bite.
He chewed slowly and looked down at the tray on his lap, then he swallowed and took a sip of the homemade lemonade I’d found in the fridge. “I am, actually, yeah.”
“Whelmed?”
That amused him. Around that time, Romeo often said all he wanted was to experiencewhelmone time. He didn’twant to be over or under. He just wanted to know what the middle ground felt like.
“Almost.” He smiled when he said it.
Actually, it wasn’t a smile so much as a quirk of his top lip. Romeo did this thing where the rest of his face would remain neutral, but his lip would flare up on the right side. He’d show a flash of teeth and the slightest hint of gum. A barely-there sliver of pink that did something to me.
The lip thing wasn’t new. Romeo had done it for as long as I’d known him. He did it when he was happy. Or sad. Or angry. When he liked something. When he judged someone. He did it for lots of different reasons. He always had. What was new was that, for some reason, that summer, when he did it, I had an almost uncontrollable urge to lean in and put the tip of my tongue into the space created between his lips.
“Swim?” I suggested.
I swam a few lengths and stood chest deep in the water to cool down. It was a damn hot day. Romeo sat in the sun, skin glinting, reading a book, stopping once in a while to complain about something totally random.
His skin was pale in winter. So pale you could see blue-green tracks running up his arms if you looked hard enough. You’d think he’d be one of those people who wouldn’t hold a tan because of his fair coloring, you know,one of those people who burn and turn pink and then revert right back to their original color, but you’d be wrong. Every year, his skin changed as summer wore on. It turned darker, golden, and then almost dusky. His hair did too. It stayed dark at the roots, light ash brown, but turned blond at the tips by the time August rolled around.
