Page 40 of The Hopelessly Bromantic Duet

We swing into a nearby pub, order two beers, and grab a booth.

Jude lifts his glass, tips it to mine. “Here’s to you for saying that. I could tell it wasn’t easy.”

“Nope,” I say, then drink some of the brew.

When I set it down, he does the same, then waits patiently.

Might as well serve up the whole enchilada. “It’s officially Terry Jerome. For my mom’s dad and my dad’s dad. But they called me Terry when I was younger.”

“Terry’s a decent name for a bloke.”

“I suppose, but it’s not my favorite. It’s kind of like Larry or Bob.”

Jude arches a brow. “You mean, plain?”

“Yes, but when you put it together with Jerome, it’s a living hell for a ten-year-old.” The memory flashes bright and awful in my mind. “A couple of boys in fourth grade figured out thatJerome can be shortened to Jerry. And once that cat was out of the bag, it wasn’t going back in.”

He smiles sympathetically. “It was Terry Jerry all the way?”

“On the playground. In the halls. Every-fucking-where. All thanks to this punk—Robby Linden. And I think it goes back to the time our teacher praised me for writing a really creative poem, that, well, rhymed, since that was the assignment, and his did not.He liked to cough whisperTerry Jerryunder his breath whenever I walked into class.” I pause to drink some more beer for fuel, then say, “At the end of fourth grade, I asked my parents to change my name to TJ, since I said I liked my initials better. And they were super chill about it and told the school I was TJ. My brother asked me why I changed it, and I just said I preferred it.”

“He didn’t know what was going on?”

“No. He was an athlete by then, and I didn’t want to be known as the artsy twin who needed his sporty brother to defend him. But I hoped things would change for good in sixth grade when we moved to a different section of Seattle. That I’d start over in middle school with a new name. My brother had already done that long ago with his given name – Chauncey for our mom’s stepdad. But Chauncey was hard to say, so I started calling him Chance when I was two or three, apparently. And it stuck.”

“So, he had thecoolnamesooner,” Jude says, sketching air quotes.

“Exactly. But it was finally my turn. Except, guess who shows up at my school?”

“Robby the Wanker?”

“The one and only. And he decides to tell some of the other boys in sixth grade that my initials stood for Terry Jerry and that it would be fun to call me that, so he enlisted his dipshit friends in mocking my name.” Another drink, then I soldier on. “But Iignored them. That was my new strategy, and that’s why I never told my brother what was going on.”

The way I saw it, I was protecting Chance from trouble. He’d have been pissed off—probably have confronted them. Maybe that made it easier to keep other things from him later on, like the nitty-gritty details of our parents’ divorce. “Some things you have to handle on your own,” I add, explaining my choice to Jude.

“I get that completely. My brother is nine years older, so we’ve always had to figure things out on our own,” Jude supplies, and his reassurance that we’re on the same wavelength feels good. “But what was Robby’s deal?”

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a complete douche, but he didn’t like me because I was in the gifted track for after-school enrichment stuff, and he and his buddies weren’t. And he liked to say,Look,I can rhyme now too.”

“What lovely lines did the wanker devise?”

“All sorts of catchy phrases likeIt’s Terry Jerry the Cherry.Which was just dumb, so I didn’t care. Then it wasIt’s Terry Jerry Who’s So Hairy, which felt more personal because I was starting to get a baby beard,” I say, touching my chin. “I had to shave when I was twelve.”

Jude’s eyes pop. “That’s young.”

“It was. I don’t mind the beardability now, though.”

Jude gestures to my stubble and lets out an appreciative sigh. “I bet you’d grow a fantastic beard.”

“I bet I would too.” It’s a little cocky, but I don’t care—I earned this bit of cockiness the hard way. “But the name that bugged me the most was when they saidTerry Jerry the Fairy.”

Jude frowns. “Fucking pricks. Did they know?”

I shake my head. “I wasn’t out, and I don’t think they knew, especially since I didn’t even really know I was gay till I wasfourteen. But I was figuring it out in my head, and that’s why it stung—not least because Robby’s best friend was this really cute guy named Liam,” I say, then slump back in the booth.

“That’s such a classic cute-guy name,” Jude says.

“Right? Anyway, even though I knew on an intellectual level that they weren’t using a slur personally, I hated it.”

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