Chapter 14 – Cruel death hath catch’d it from my sight (Romeo)

My mother had days when she would drink her coffee, sigh, and say, “Another day. Just another day.” I always thought those days to her were equivalent to the days when I wake up and the first word to flash through my mind is fuck.

Today was one of those days.

Staring at myself in the mirror, it was almost too easy to believe that yesterday had all been a dream. In the clear early morning light, it didn’t seem possible that everything had fallen to pieces the day before.

So, okay, yeah, I was being a bit melodramatic. Actually, extremely melodramatic, but I was trying here.

I spit the toothpaste in the sink, and turned on the faucet. For some inexplicable reason, I always loved watching the toothpaste get swept away by the water. I may in fact be insane.

As I pondered my sanity and the beauty of toothpaste, Chris stuck his head around the bathroom door.

“Hey.”

“You’re up early.” And he was. Normally, I wouldn’t see Chris until Carson and Juliet showed up.

Chris shrugged. “I woke up and didn’t feel like going back to sleep.”

I watched his reflection on the mirror – he was leaning against the door frame, playing with the hem of his shirt – and I was again struck by the weirdness of Chris’s behavior. As I gurgled water, I contemplated probing, but I didn’t really want to. As much as I loved Chris, a guy can only take so many revelations in one week.

And fuck, yesterday’s should count as five. At least.

So I chalked it up to repercussions from yesterday and finished my morning ablations. Chris stayed in the bathroom, not watching me, but not waiting either. He was just there, and I’ve never met anyone who can do just there as well as Chris.

“Hey, Ro?” he finally said as I passed him to leave the bathroom. “I think we need to talk.”

There was something wrong. Now what to say? “About what?” Way to go, Romeo. I mentally slapped myself. You are such a fantastic older brother. You should win an award or something. The sensitivity of that last question. Killer.

“About Juliet.” I froze. Shit. Not this again. I turned away and starting walking back to my room, knowing Chris would follow. I needed time to think.

We’d talked about Juliet, or more specifically the kiss. I’d dealt with it and now I was fine. Absolutely perfect. Completely over it.

I was also a really, really bad liar.

But the one thing I was sure about was that I wasn’t mad at Chris. I wasn’t mad at my brother. What was left was my own not so little problem with girls, which was not something Chris and I needed to discuss.

“What about Juliet?” I finally asked, when the silence had gone on too long and I couldn’t realistically take any more think-time.

Chris watched me silently for a moment as I stuff my work from last night back into my backpack, most of it undone. “I think you should ask her to Homecoming.”

My mouth fell open and I stared at Chris in shock. That came out of left field. Okay sure, it wasn’t the first time he had brought it up, but considering yesterday’s events, a conversation about Homecoming was the last thing I expected when he said he wanted to talk about Juliet.

As I stood mouth wide open, unable to form a coherent sentence, Chris shook his head impatiently. “This isn’t anything that I haven’t said before.”

“Yeah, well, when you said you wanted to talk about Juliet, this wasn’t what I was expecting,” I muttered, finally turning away to stuff the last book in my backpack. I was ignoring him and I knew that he knew it, but I didn’t really care. This was my problem and not his. And maybe I didn’t have the best method of getting over things, but as much as it could hurt sometimes, this was better than the alternative.

Hope.

I walked out of my room and headed down the stairs, Chris hard on my heels. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

“You sound like Mom,” I said, grabbing a granola bar from the pantry and sticking it in my pocket. I didn’t much feel like breakfast.

Chris grabbed my arm. “Ro, I’m being serious.”

“And I heard you.” I sighed and closed my eyes. Shit, Chris was being persistent. A measurement of how much he cared most likely, but as strange as it sounds, I couldn’t help but wish he cared a little less.

“Look, Chris,” I said, turning around to face him. “You are right. I am a coward. I should ask Juliet to Homecoming, but I’m not going to and you are just going to have to live with that because it isn’t really your problem.”

Chris rolled his eyes at me. “But it is my problem, Romeo. You are my brother and that automatically makes your problems my problems, just like it makes my problems yours.”

There was nothing that I could say to that. Nothing that I could deny, and while part of me was cursing my brother for being so goddamn intelligent, the other part of me was realizing why Chris and I were so close in the first place.

“Fine,” I relented. “I’m leaving for school now, and you have till we get there to tell me why I should ask Juliet to Homecoming.” A grin spread across Chris’s face, the widest I had seen in a couple of days and he dashed up the stairs to grab his stuff.

This had to be the sixth time this morning that the word fuck ran through my mind. I was not a happy camper. This hadn’t been my plan when I woke up this morning. Well, leaving early had to avoid a certain somebody, but Chris coming along and telling me all the different ways I was being a dumb ass was definitely not in the plans at all. Anywhere in the same solar system as the plan.

Fuck. What had I gotten myself into? While I knew nothing Chris said was going to change anything I may or may not do as the case may be, but that didn’t mean that I enjoyed listening to it. Who enjoys being told the various ways they are being stupid anyway?

Chris clattered down the stairs. “I told Bi that we were leaving.” I simply nodded my acknowledgement and headed out the door.

“So talk,” I said to Chris when we were both outside.

“Why don’t you want to ask her to Homecoming?” he started, and I looked at him in surprise. Chris was just full of surprises today, for that was not a tactic I was expecting and I wasn’t sure where it would get him. It was a question with an obvious answer that only deserved a question back.

“Why do you think?”

“Stephanie.” I didn’t answer.

“That’s a stupid reason,” Chris said.

“Yes.”

“Juliet isn’t like Stephanie.”

“Yes.”

“So why are you treating her like Stephanie?”

I looked at Chris for a second, before going back to staring at the road in front of us. “I’m not.” And I wasn’t lying. I actually talk to Juliet and I don’t go completely out of my way to avoid her, just a little out of my way.

“Then ask her to Homecoming.”

I shook my head. “Chris, my not asking Juliet to Homecoming isn’t about Stephanie.”

Chris looked at me in confusion. “Then why did you say it did?”

“I didn’t. You did.”

Chris looked at me first in surprise before glaring at me. “Then why the hell won’t you ask Juliet to Homecoming?”

“Because,” I replied, knowing I was being petulant.

“Fuck you.” Chris said. “You said you’d talk to me.”

“I said that I’d let you try to convince me, not that I’d help.” I could see the school now and my salvation. In a couple of minutes, I’d be free from my obligation with the only cost being a very pissed off little brother, but I knew he’d get over it.

Eventually anyway.

Chris said nothing, no doubt knowing that in the last minute or so before we reached school, he wouldn’t be able to say anything that would convince me to do something I obviously didn’t want to do.

“Look, Chris,” I relented as we reached the steps to the school, taking pity on my brother for screwing with him, which is exactly what I did. I am an asshole when it comes to talking about my love life, or lack thereof. “What’s wrong with me can’t be fixed in a five minute walk. And it isn’t about Stephanie. It’s about being scared. Being scared of being hurt, falling in love, losing people. It’s like you said, Chris, I’m a coward, but it keeps me safe and that’s the only thing that matters to me right now, being safe.”

Chris said nothing. “I’ll see you after school,” I said before starting up the steps.

“I misspoke,” he said when I was halfway up the stairs. I turned back to look at him.

“What?”

“I misspoke before when I said you were a coward. I was angry and frustrated with you and I wanted to piss you off so you’d do something, but obviously that didn’t work.”

Chris walked up the stairs till he was level with me and then paused, obviously deep in thought and I waited, because somehow I knew that what was coming next would be worth hearing.

“Being scared doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you normal. And it’s only when you do something in spite of being scared that you do something extraordinary.”

I stared at Chris, not believing what he just said. He only smiled softly at me before giving me a hug. “I love you, Romeo, and I think you are extraordinary.”

I wrapped my arms around Chris and hugged him back fiercely. “I love you too, Chris.”

He pulled away and grinned at me. “See you later.” And with that he was up the stairs and into the school before I had time to collect myself.

I sat on the steps not ready to go in yet. I was still reeling from what Chris had said.

Of all the things I could have imagined him saying, that was not one of them. Shit. I didn’t think either one of us would ever say it again, even though the words were carved onto all of our hearts – me, Chris and Bi.

The first time Dad ever said that to me I was six years old and I was supposed to fly all by myself to go visit an aunt and uncle in New York. Chris and Bi had gone up earlier with Mom but I stayed behind for school. I had never flown before and I was terrified.

I had my boarding pass and everything and I was standing in front of the gate, clutching my father’s hand as tightly as I could. Near tears, there was no way I was going on the plane without him.

But my dad crouched down and put his hands on my shoulders.

“Ro, I know you are scared,” he said. “I’m scared too, but being scared doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you normal. And it’s only when you do something in spite of being scared that you do something extraordinary. Do you think you can do something extraordinary?”

And what did you expect a teary six year old to say to such a statement? I relinquished my dad’s hand for the flight attendant’s, and I did something extraordinary.

That was hardly the last time I heard that, and Chris and Bi soon learned to live by the mantra of extraordinariness – my dad’s own unique spin on bravery – but watching him die had been hard. Cancer didn’t just eat away at my dad, but at me too. At all of us.

Dad had been brave. The bravest man I have ever known, and somehow after I, after we, lost him, I forgot what it was to be extraordinary. Chris, on the other hand, Chris hadn’t.

After what happened with Stephanie, I wanted more than anything for my dad to be there because I knew that he would make it better. Somehow he’d make it hurt less and I’d be alright. But it was only now that I realized what he would have said, what I had to do.

I bounded up the steps and headed down the hall to Juliet’s locker and it wasn’t till I got there that I realized the problem with my plan. I was at school ridiculously early and Juliet wouldn’t show up for at least five minutes, just long enough for me to lose what resolution and nerve I had managed to dredge up.

Just long enough for me to again forget my father.

I leaned back against the lockers, feeling too depressed to cry and too tired to be pissed. My life was becoming a series of lost opportunities. Every time I think I’ve work up the nerve to move forward, I end up moving backwards.

But as Chris so wisely pointed out, changing that was my prerogative. I could do something or I could do nothing, it was up to me. The only thing I had to realize and had to accept was that I could do something. I had a choice.

Now I just had to make a decision.

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A/N: Yeah, so I’ve got some bad news and some good news. The bad new is you won’t hear from me again probably, at the earliest, mid-December. Good new is when you do hear from me again, it will be an entire story, 50,000 words. I’m taking part in National Novel Writing Month in November if you are interested) and so I’m going to be busy with that. So Romeo and Juliet are going on a short hiatus. Now you can squirm as you wait to find out if he ever asks her out. Hee Hee Hee.

dark alleys and cable cars: Luckily for you, I just finished my first round of mid-terms, did well, and have a four day weekend. My exam gift to you. Hope you do well.

strawberry-starburst: Not that much Shakespeare actually. I’ve only read 5 or six of his plays. I just really like him, and surprisingly, I actually am not that fond of Romeo and Juliet. I enjoy Macbeth a great deal more, though the Tempest is my favorite.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for reviewing and reading.