Romeo Falling, page 16
He kisses me hard, teeth scraping my lips and colliding with his. He tears at my skin, my arms, and my back, slamming his hips against mine, grinding our cocks together until I’m blind with desire.
Reality shrieks my name, hitting me like a splash of ice water to the face, and I push him back so hard I hear the hollow sound of air leaving his lungs as he hits the wall behind him. I step back, too, gasping for breath and hoping like hell the rush of oxygen will bring a strong dose of common sense.
“Romeo! What the fuck are you doing? You’re married.” He looks dulled, removed, struck dumb. He fingers his bruised bottom lip, stroking it and pushing it into his mouth, running his tongue slowly across it as if he’s savoring the taste of my kiss. When he releases it, I say, “You’re married.” This time, I say it for my own benefit more than his. It’s a hiss. An accusation. A demand for an explanation.
“You’re hard,” he says as if that's an answer.
“Fuck you, asshole,” I spit. “Hard? You think this is hard?” I drag the heel of my palm over my raging erection, expelling a rushed groan through my teeth from the storm of sensation it wakes. My anger dissipates, dissolving and scattering as he watches. “This isn’t hard. I’m not hard. It’s more than hard, Romeo. It’s pain. I’m in pain.”
His eyes cloud and his Adam’s apple rides up and down his throat as he swallows something that doesn’t go down easily. Regret, I’d say if I still had any faith in my ability to read Romeo, but I don’t, so I’m stunned when he whispers, “Let me help you.”
“Don’t,” I warn, but instead of staying where I am, I find my body moving toward him again, dragged closer by a gravitational force I’m powerless to resist. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
He presses his lips together, stifling a whimper, and nods, taking hold of the tip of the tie of my pants while taking care not to touch my body, and pulls at it gently. I tied it tightly in my earlier stupor so it doesn’t come undone without some convincing, but he doesn’t give up. He works it, pulling carefully but hard, still not touching my skin, until, at last, the thing keeping us apart unravels.
For all he’s done, for all the misery he’s caused me, he has the decency to respect what I’ve asked of him. He doesn’t touch me. He sinks to his knees at my feet, fully dressed but undone, looking up at me with stars in his eyes as he inches my pants over my hips slowly. I buck and writhe, blinking frantically in an attempt to wake up.
If this is a dream, I need to wake up.
Now.
I need to wake up now because it will kill me to wake up later and find that it didn’t happen.
It’s no dream, though, because when the throbbing heat of my cock is exposed, he inhales like he’s been holding his breath, mouth open, eyes wild, and I feel the air he expels like a soft caress on my naked balls.
That doesn’t happen in dreams. Believe me, I know. I’ve dreamed dreams like this more times than I can count. I know how they start and how they end. He holds his right hand out near his head, palm open in surrender, as if that’s meant to set me at ease. The left drifts toward my cock, clenching into a fist that he digs his teeth into when it gets too close to me.
“Please, Jude,” he whines against his knuckles. I can’t tell if it’s the sound he makes, or the way he looks up at me, or maybe it’s the fact I wasn’t lying. I am in pain. I’m so hard, there’s a high, whirring sound in my ears and my heart is beating like it means to harm me. Either way, my hand clamps around my dick without a single thought in my head, and I jack it like a man possessed. Pleasure and pain engulf me. Visions of Romeo then and Romeo now taunt me. Laughing and lapping at me until I’m leaking. Long strokes, short strokes, then quick frenzied tugs that make my eyes roll back in my head. Romeo doesn’t blink. He doesn’t move other than to let both hands fall to his thighs and open his mouth, showing me the soft, pink wetness inside. I almost black out from the sight of Romeo. My Romeo. My lover, my enemy, my life, on his knees at my feet.
There’s a pause in pleasure, a full second or more when everything falls silent, when all that’s left is a quiet certainty. An unshakable inevitability. A promise of gratification that can’t be undone. It’s already been written. There’s a beat, and then my orgasm rips through the walls and the floor. Through me and through time.
Despite the force and brutality, I have time to decide, to weigh my options. Do I aim for the floor, or do I blast my seed all over Romeo’s perfect face?
To my surprise, I go with neither.
Instead, I grab him by the hair and fuck hard and deep into his open mouth, unloading a lifetime of heartbreak and resentment, choking him on the pain that’s defined my adult life.
He doesn’t falter. He swallows everything I give him and, for good measure, wipes the last drops off his lips with his thumb, then raises it to his lips and licks what’s there too.
And to think I thought I was a mess before last night. Comparatively, I had my shit together big time. Back then, I was just a heartbroken fool. Now, I’m a man who messaged his sister thirty-four times and the guy managing the renovation at our house nine times last night. Each message grew more desperate and more unhinged, urging him to grout the family bathroom upstairs and turn the water back on so I can move back into my house tomorrow or the next day. Added to that, I jerked off to Romeo on his knees so many times I still feel a little drunk this morning.
I am very hungover, though, so I don’t think I am drunk-drunk, just cum-drunk, which, when you think about it, is way worse, given that I’m now also a cheater. An adulterer.
Wait. Am I the adulterer, or is Romeo?
Or is it one of those works-both-ways kinds of things?
Fuck. I don’t know.
Maybe I should call Lexi and ask her? Seems like the kind of thing she’d know.
But no. Obviously not. No, I’m not going to call her. I can’t. After the messages I sent her last night, I might have to drown my SIM card and torch my phone. Might have to change my name legally and leave the country all together.
“Jude!” Selby calls brightly. She’s mixing pancake batter with fervor and her mood is that of a person impervious to hangovers. “Morning! How did you sleep?” Before I can answer, she gives Romeo a knowing smile and cocks a brow at my sleep shorts. “See, I told you he wouldn’t like the pants.”
The pants in question are currently covered in so much semen I’ve rolled them into a ball and shoved them into the bottom of my luggage because I’m not sure what else to do with them. I don’t think there’s a wash cycle in the US that can bring them back from what they've been through.
Romeo gives me a look. A smile with his eyes, not his lips. “Oh, he likes them just fine.”
My hand shakes so much as they bicker that coffee runs down the side of my mug. After breakfast, I offer to clean up. “And thanks again for having me,” I say to Selby, guilt stabbing at my side so hard my eyes water. “Really, it’s, uh, a lot, and I-I appreciate it.”
“Oh, it’s nothing.” She waves me off and looks in Romeo’s direction. “It’s been nice to see that one with a smile on his face for once.”
I keep my eyes firmly down to avoid looking at “that one” and say, “I’m going to get out of your hair today, you know, give you guys a little time to yourselves.”
My attempt not to look at Romeo has failed. He’s watching me with an intensity that could cut glass. His eyes are hooded and dark. Unreadable except to tell me I’m playing with fire.
“Yeah?” he says, taking care to keep his tone light. “What are you going to get up to?”
Asshole!
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 a little attention 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 had the worst 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, but I know it 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’s fiiine, he’ll rally, but when I tell you he didn’t…I mean, he didn’t at 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 of that 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.
“Fine.”
Fine? That wasn’t enough. I needed more.
“Are you happy with her? Is she happy with you? Is it serious?”
Pick, pick, pick.
Rip, rip, rip.
“I don’t know. She’s great, and I guess it’s serious. I guess it has to be. She’s not like the other girls I’ve been with. It’s different dating someone older, Jude. I can tell you that much. She knows what she wants, like, all the time. She’s sure of herself. She says she’s dating to marry, not fuck around.”
Turns out, he was right. Selby did know what she wanted and she was dating to marry, and not only that, she was someone who knew how to get what she wanted.
I hated her more than I’d ever hated anyone. More than I thought I could hate anyone.
I remember them calling to tell me he’d proposed. It was a video call. Selby looked radiant and Romeo looked like a prop on a well-lit stage. I remember the words and the sound of his voice. I remember that when he stopped talking, I said, “Cool.”
I don’t remember anything that happened for a full week after that.
Life took on a strange quality. It was an eerie dreamscape where things were tilted on their side, nothing made sense, and everything hurt all the time. A dark trance that had a distinct beginning and no end. The same snippets of conversations long past played over and over in my mind.
“You’re the best person I know, Tiger.”
“…the best person…”
“…best person…”
“Why the fuck are my feet so fucking big?”
“Is it me, or do they look like boats in these shoes?”
“I’ll kiss you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I will. I’ll kiss you for sure.”
“I was underwhelmed, to be honest.”
“And you won’t tell anyone?”
"…won't tell anyone…"
“…tell anyone…”
“Feels good. Don’t stop.”
“If I have a son, I’ll name him Romeo.”
Drinking to blackout was the only way I could escape them.
Sometimes it worked.
Sometimes it didn’t.
It was that man, the one occupying that mind, who left Cambridge at the end of the year and flew home to attend his friend’s wedding. The best man, they called me.
Time was the strangest it had ever been. A freight train with the wind behind it. It thundered toward me, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do to stop it. Selby was in a wedding planning frenzy, sending Romeo and me around left, right, and center, throwing her father’s money around like it was nothing. Like it was confetti.
“Are you sure we need doves and butterflies?” Romeo asked.
“Babe.” She smiled, but there was a clear warning in her eyes. “Of course I’m sure.”
When the wedding talk reached a fever pitch, Romeo would zone out for a second. Not for long, just a quick dreamy wander to reset himself. Selby didn’t get it at all.
“Romeo!” she’d say, clapping her hands together with a loud crack to jolt him out of it.
Have I mentioned that I hated her?
Because holy crap, did I ever.
I prayed for bad things to happen to her. Terrible things. When they didn’t, I prayed for them to happen to Romeo. When that didn’t work either, I prayed for them to happen to me.
It didn’t help. Time marched on. Days blended into nights and cherries ripened on trees. I woke at two in the morning on the day of their wedding. I found myself sitting bolt upright in the dark, sweating, clutching at my throat and chest, fighting for breath.
It was a blue-sky day. Not too hot and not too cold. Selby looked resplendent in a white tea-length dress. She’d told me about it in confidence before the wedding, so I knew not to expect a floor-length gown. She said it was meant to be playful, to remind Romeo of the sundress she’d been wearing the day they met. She wore white gloves and a pearl choker, and overall, much as I hate to admit it, she gave Audry Hepburn a run for her money in the style stakes.
Romeo was heartbreakingly handsome in his suit and completely wrong at the same time. His hair was neat as a pin, which made me feel violent. His shirt was so starched it stayed up when he lifted his arms, making him look like he was wearing a straight jacket.
I felt like I was walking through quicksand.
