11. “O happy dagger, this is thy sheath”

11

"O happy dagger, this is thy sheath"

Then

When Romeo and I were kids, we usually had joint birthday parties. It made sense, seeing how we were born just a little over three weeks apart, him at the end of May, me in mid-June. The year we turned eighteen was no different, though my mom suggested we wait until early July for the party. She said it was so summer could set in, so we could bank on good weather. Romeo and I didn't say anything, not even to each other, but we both knew it was because she wanted to let the anniversary of Sal's death come and go and for the dust it stirred up to settle, so there was a fighting chance Romeo would have a good time at the party.

It had been a long, terrible year with way more lows than highs. I'd come to understand that even though the wound caused by losing his mother had stopped bleeding, it was only because it had grown over. Time was a skin graft that covered a deep gash that hadn't been stitched up or treated. The wound underneath was still open and hadn't come close to healing. Even though there were hours and even days when he seemed almost like his old self, inside, Romeo was hurt in a way I'd started to think would be part of him forever.

On bad days, he came through my window at night, and I held him as sobs wracked him. On those nights, I bargained with every deity I could think of. I begged them to take his pain from him and give it to me instead. I raged against God and life and death. I felt Romeo's pain in my chest. It hurt worse than anything I'd ever felt of my own. The pain of it was so deep and terrible I still felt the murmur of it in my joints when I let myself think about Romeo without bracing first.

On bad days, I'd wait until he'd cried himself out and his breathing started to lengthen and even out, and then I'd hold him tighter and whisper furiously into his ear. "I won't ever let anything bad happen to you again, Romeo. I won't. As long as I live, nothing bad will ever happen to you again. Do you hear me? I swear I won't let it."

I'd say it over and over.

I wouldn't stop until he chuckled and said, "Fine, I believe you."

Sometimes, he came to my room on good days too. He came the night after our eighteenth birthday party. We held the party in our garden and my dad hung strings of those multicolored bistro lights on the patio. It was nice. There weren't too many people, and there weren't too few. The food was great, and the vibe was chill. There were no speeches and the gifts were next level. All in all, it was a good day. It was as close to perfect a day as we'd had since Sally died.

My head had scarcely hit the pillow when I heard the soft clunk on the garage roof that had come to signal his arrival. That night, Romeo didn't cry. He lay on his back as I curled my body around him, mind racing as I tried to work out how much I could touch him without it being too much. He talked for hours. It was like the old days when dreams spilled out of him and leaked into me. I closed my eyes and let his imagination take me where he wanted. The story he told me was haunting and beautiful and so goddamn real that I was breathless, happy, angry, sad, and wired like someone who'd been on a psychedelic trip by the time it ended.

"You should write that one down, Romeo."

He laughed. "What for?"

"I don't know. Just so…I guess you should write it down so maybe someday other people can read it or something."

He rolled onto his side, facing away from me, waiting for me to move closer before speaking again. I tucked one hand under my head and wrapped the other around his waist, pulling him as close as I could without my boner digging into him.

"But, Tiger," he said dreamily, "you're the only one who matters."

"Write it down," I insisted until he dissolved into an uncharacteristic fit of giggles.

On nights like that, when he was more okay than he wasn't, he felt good in my arms. Good and right. I ached differently on those nights, the good nights. It was an ache so intense it left a sweet taste in my mouth. An ache that stretched and expanded until my skin felt too tight. An ache that sank so low and ran so deep that my balls felt bruised for the whole of the next day.

Looking back now, I can't quite remember how it came to be that Romeo and I went to different colleges. I mean, I do remember how it happened. I got a scholarship to study actuarial science at Ohio State and Romeo's dad wasn't doing very well without Sal. Romeo didn't want to leave him on his own, so he enrolled at our local college.

What I don't remember is how the hell anyone got me to agree to it. That's what I don't know. Seems very off-brand for me when I think of it now.

Maybe it was as simple as the fact that when I told Romeo I didn't want to leave him, he looked at me quizzically and said, "But, Jude, I'm going to be an English teacher, and New York is expensive. You're the one who's always saying it is. If one of us doesn't have a job that makes good money, how are we going to be able to live there?"

Could I really have been that dumb? Could I really have decided my entire future based on an off-hand comment made by a friend?

Ha!

What a question. Given that the friend in question was Romeo, I was exactly that dumb and then some.

We were at Romeo's house when he said it. On his front porch, waiting for my mom to pick us up and take us shopping for clothes. My mom had realized Romeo hadn't been shopping since Sal died, and she'd taken it upon herself to give his wardrobe "a spruce," as she called it.

It was hot and blustery that day, but Romeo looked cool. His hair was still ashy, and though his skin was turning golden, it hadn't quite taken on the full warmth of its summer glow.

There was no real weight or intention in his words. He didn't even look all that serious when he said it. Still, it felt as though someone had kicked my feet out from under me. It felt beyond belief. Unreal that a world existed where Romeo and I could live together, have our own place, do what we wanted, and I could be the one to take care of him. Not just with my words or my body like I'd always done. Like, really take care of him, financially and shit.

As summer wore on, my anxiety about leaving Alabaster in general and Romeo in particular kept climbing. Romeo seemed mellow and resigned about it, which was unlike him, but it could have been because he'd come out of the worst of the fog of grief and his dick had started bothering him with a vengeance.

"Fuck. I'm horny," replaced "Holy shit, why are my feet so big?" as his main complaint in life. He'd started banging on about it the same way he had a few years earlier about not being kissed. "I'm eighteen, and I'm the only person who's ever touched my dick. How sad is that?"

"Thought you said Jodie touched it that time you took her to Mo's for a milkshake."

He sighed heavily. I tried not to laugh. I knew exactly what was coming next.

"Yeah, and I've told you I'm not even sure she meant to do it. She, like, kind of tapped it but pulled her hand away real fast. Real fast, Jude."

"Was it hard? "

"No, it was a soft tap. She just brushed her hand against it. Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure it was just an accident."

"I meant your dick, you tool." It was probably wrong of me, but talking to Romeo about his dick did things for me that were out of this world, and I wanted more of it, even if it was crossing a line.

"Have you met me?" His head twitched with incredulity, and fuck, he looked adorable. "Of course it was hard. Don't waste my time with ridiculous questions, Tiger. Was it hard? What the fuck? When isn't it hard? I'm staring down the barrel of being the biggest loser ever to enroll in college, and you're making jokes. Nice one, bud. Real nice."

"If you think you're the biggest loser ever to enroll in college, something tells me you'll be pleasantly surprised when you get there."

"I really don't know why you're not more worried about this. We're virgins , Jude." He said it like it was an infectious disease. "Virgins who have never even had their cocks touched. If you think that's going to be a turn-on for some hot college girl, you've got it very wrong. Women have enough shit to deal with without having to tangle with guys who don't know what to do with their own dicks."

"I know what to do with my dick," I teased .

He pressed his lips together and shook his head sympathetically. "No, you don't. You think you do, but you really don't. You'll probably come the second someone who's not you touches it."

"Bet I won't."

The conversation was light. We were joking. Taking the piss. Having a laugh. But my words had grown barbs, and suddenly, I was two hundred feet in the air, walking a tightrope without anything close to the skill required to do so.

He cocked his head, and when he looked at me again, there was a glint in his eyes that was more sex than sweet. "Bet you will."

My laugh was strange, a hollow, clanking sound that rattled around the basement, bouncing off walls before finding a quiet place to land. We were sitting on the sofa, and Romeo got up to turn the Xbox on. He opened World War Z, his favorite game at the time.

Truth be told, I was a little bored of killing zombies and a lot more interested in our previous topic.

"Remember that time we kissed?" I asked, taking care to keep my voice low and spread my words out evenly.

He stopped what he was doing, his jaw dropping and mouth breaking into a huge grin that wasn't at all like him. "Yeah. "

It wasn't that we never spoke about it. We mentioned it a couple of times after it happened to check on each other. It was just that it had been a really long time since either of us had brought it up.

After a little while, I managed, "That was dumb, huh?"

He handed me a controller and traced his thumb along the seam of his lips before sitting. The bench seat of the sofa tilted as he sank into it, and I found myself more than a little off-kilter. There was space between us, but not much. Half a foot, maybe. We weren't touching, but we would have been if either of us moved. For me, that little bit of space was almost worse than no space.

"Not that dumb," he said matter-of-factly as he scrolled through locations in the game. "I handled the shit out of myself when I kissed Riley because I knew what I was doing. You were there. You saw me."

I hummed noncommittedly and started praying for a more sensible version of myself to take the reins. No one turned up. "We could jerk each other off. You know, just so we'd know what it's like. So we don't, like, embarrass ourselves in front of anyone else."

The attempt to keep my voice even failed spectacularly.

I felt myself color and burn from the horror and shame of what I'd just said. I died several deaths as I waited for Romeo to respond. I was about to take my words back and focus my full attention on finding the highest structure in Alabaster and throwing myself off it when Romeo said, "And you won't tell anyone?"

My head whipped to the side. His eyes were dusty blue. Wide open with nothing to hide. Pale, with no hint of storm clouds on the horizon.

There was no hesitation in them.

And there was no hesitation in my answer either. "Never."

"Just this one time, right?"

"Oh yeah. Definitely. One time."

My tongue had grown thick in my mouth and my heart was beating hard enough to crack bone. Romeo leaned back, lifting his T-shirt to expose a hint of his belly as he unbuckled his belt. His skin was paler there. Lighter than his face and arms. I watched, transfixed, as he did it.

There was no hint of a tremor in his hands.

Mine were shaking like dry autumn leaves in a strong breeze. I rubbed myself through my pants, a little ruse that impressed me at the time. I was rock solid simply from being close to Romeo, but I didn't want him to know that—I remember coming back to that moment later and feeling stupidly proud of myself for thinking to do it.

I was wearing athletic shorts, so thankfully, I didn't have to wrangle with anything as complex as buttons or zippers. When Romeo undid his fly, I shoved my shorts down and took my dick out.

His boxer briefs were salmon pink. A soft, faded color. I don't know why that surprised me so much, but it did. At the time, I had at least an entire persona dedicated to thinking about things like what color Romeo's underwear would be, and I'd always thought they'd be black or white. Maybe gray. Blue at a push.

But pink? Oof .

I loved that.

The air in the basement was heavy and hot. Stagnant. The feint generic rock of the World War Z theme played on repeat. Just the first part. Just the first few bars that play as you select your game.

I looked down and then up very fucking fast. Romeo had his dick in his hand. It was hard. Naked and swollen. The skin was smooth and darker on the head than on his shaft. It was perfect. The shock of seeing it in real life, not my hazy, lust-fueled dreams, knocked the stuffing out of me. I turned my gaze sharply to the TV and then to the ceiling, unsure where to look.

"Should we close our eyes?" suggested Romeo.

"Yeah," I mumbled. "Sure."

He reached down and circled my shaft and then let his eyelids slide shut. He was tentative at first, his touch too soft and then a little too hard, but his hand was hot. Hot and meaty and more intoxicating than anything I'd ever felt.

He shifted his hips, a subtle nudge to remind me what I was supposed to be doing. I acted immediately. I sprang into action without a second's pause. I reached down and took his dick in my hand, curling my fingers around him right near the base. I touched it as if it were mine. As if I knew exactly what to do. How to touch him. How to make him feel good.

I did make him feel good. I must have because his eyelids fluttered as if he were dreaming and his head rolled back, nestling into the sofa. He kept his eyes closed. I barely blinked. I watched as my hand slid slowly up and down his erection. He was uncut and beautiful. Solid steel sheathed in velvet. Dusty-pink velvet that moved with my hand. Up, then down.

He started moving his hand too. He matched his movements with mine exactly. For once, it was hard to say who was leading and who was following.

Our hands kept moving. Slow. Steady. His grip was a little softer than how I touched myself and it drove me crazy. It felt so good I thought I'd lose my mind. Too little. Too much. Too good. Good, so good. Everything felt good. Everything. My body. My mind. All of it was perfect. Our hands kept moving in a slow, slick rhythm. Now and again, I rolled my thumb over the swell of his head and worked the bead of precum I found there into his skin. He did the same to me and nearly turned me inside out from the effort. When it didn't provide quite enough lubrication, I brought my hand to my mouth and licked my palm.

When I touched him again, he moaned. It was a soft, helpless sound. The most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. A sound I caught and held to my chest. The most perfect, precious thing I'd ever owned.

Beside me, Romeo stiffened. Without looking, I could feel tension bleed into every part of his body. His abs clenched and he grabbed the sofa cushion with his free hand, fingernails digging into the soft fabric. His grip on my dick tightened, and I couldn't tell if he was pouring pleasure into me or dragging it out. The sofa rocked gently as his hips started to buck. The hand on my cock started moving faster. Mine moved faster too. Faster and faster until we lost our rhythm and our movements grew jerky as we both chased our pleasure.

Romeo's head tilted back. He clenched his teeth and bit his bottom lip hard, staining it red. "I'm gonna…"

That was all it took. Those words. That husky voice. Romeo's voice saying those words .

I exploded.

White-hot pleasure ripped through me. The room disappeared. The walls. The TV. Even the God-awful, half-manic sound of the World War Z theme fell silent. It all disappeared, and all that was left was Romeo and me. Our hands and our cocks. Our chests rising and falling. The twin strangled sounds of our orgasms.

"Holy shit," Romeo said after we'd shoved our dicks back into our pants and order had started returning to chaos. "If that's what a hand is like, imagine what a mouth feels like."

The night before I left for Ohio State, Romeo and I sixty-nined on that very same sofa in our basement. It was late and dark. The only light in the room came from the TV. It felt other. Like something that happened outside of me. Something bigger and better than anything that had happened to me in real life. It felt like a story Romeo had told me. One of those stories where his eyes would glaze over and go dreamy, and I'd feel like I'd been catapulted through the air and ravaged by the time it was over.