Page 5 of Romeo vs Romeo

“Please,” I said in an exaggerated voice.

“I don’t want to be the reason you leave every fucking time,” he said sulkily. “I’m sorry, alright? That’s all. I’m sorry I tried picking you up that one time. I thought you were cruising.”

I frowned, but then I put it out of my mind. It was unimportant. What mattered was this image, or a vague idea, of him intending to pick me up. I knew he had thought I was there for the same reason as everyone else. If my parents even suspected I had been here, they would…

I shuddered.

“It’s got nothing to do with you,” I said. “Don’t you get it? I don’t care about you, dude. I don’t even know you.”

He shrugged. “Name’s Roman Cross. And you?”

I shook my head.

“I’m not flirting with you,” he said, coming closer.

Hairs on the back of my neck stood stiffly.

“Whatever’s your deal, it’s not my business,” he said. “You obviously like the place. And everyone’s welcome, that’s what Mama Viv says, so who am I to question you, eh?” He reached over, and his hand briefly touched my bare biceps.

I moved swiftly and on an instinct I hadn’t even known existed in me. My arm jerked away, but my other one moved forward, my hand closing around his throat before I could stop myself. “Don’t touch me.” His back pressed against the brick wall, and he huffed, lifting his hands in defense.

“Alright, alright,” he struggled. “Jesus, fuck. You really like to play rough.”

My grip was loose instantly, and there was virtually no pressure at all. He could have slipped from my hold as easily as a fly could buzz out of an open jar. He just didn’t. And I didn’t let go.

I stared at him. He was lightly pinned against the wall, his chest rising and falling, his lips curling into that twisted smile of his, his arms hanging at his sides. As I stepped closer, our bodies were an inch apart. His breath smelled like strawberries. It was warm and sweet when he hissed and laughed.

“I told you already,” I whispered heatedly. “I’m not like you. I don’t want to be like you. And I don’t want to be around you. So, please, leave me the fuck alone.”

He grinned. “I lied. We do get straight guys there. Plenty. They come to see a drag show or to attend their gay friends’ engagement parties. We’ve had all sorts of people in there, but you…” He laughed, still not even trying to remove my hand from his throat, although my hand was less holding his throat and more hanging from it for my own support. “You, my friend, are a little fucked-up. You’re either a hypocrite or a liar.”

I licked my lips. This nasty feeling deep in me rose and rose; it sprouted and bloomed its rotten blossom until I realized it was guilt. And not the kind of guilt I felt at night when I was trying to sleep or at the church when a part of me knew I didn’t belong there. This was a raw and bitter guilt.

I snapped my hand away from him and took a pace back. Everything that had happened in the last three minutes was more than I had bargained for. Touching his bare skin with mine and watching his defiant chin-thrusts made my blood heat up, but hearing his words made me feel like precisely the person he thought I was.

“I thought I could help with whatever’s so fucked-up with you,” Roman Cross said.

I frowned, bewildered.

He scoffed a chuckle. “You can act as innocent as you want.” His pause filled me with terror. He glanced down between us. “Your dick’s hard.”

And then it hit me. It hit me with the power of a boulder rolling down the side of a hill before landing on me. My face was hot, my armpits sweaty, and my dick throbbed painfully. It was clearly outlined inside my gray sweatpants, bulging from the middle to the left.

Roman dusted himself off, although he hadn’t touched any dust. “And here’s a free tip. Next time you wanna play rough with a guy, have a talk first.” He turned on his heels and marched away from me. Two paces, three, four. He stopped and turned around with his shoulders slumped. “Feel free to say it’s not my business, but that thing you’re feeling right now, that guilt and sickness with yourself, denial, and all that hatred…” He stared into my eyes from a short distance as if he felt it, just like me. “We’ve all been there. Every single one of us.” Then, with a cooler tone, he added, “No reason to be a dick about it.”

If I had imagined the last time I had seen him was a disaster, this was an Armageddon. He had left me disintegrated. He had shredded me with nothing but a few jokes and a couple of well-aimed jabs. He had ruined me, and I felt treacherous tears rise into my eyes. But I forced them down and leaned against the exact spot where I had had him pinned.Fuck, I might have whispered.Fuck, fuck, fuck.

All I had wanted was to have my beer. I sure as hell didn’t mean to make a stranger feel like shit, and I hadn’t wanted the stitches in a badly healing wound to be prodded by an amateur.

Part of me wanted to run after him and apologize for acting out, but another part hated him for pointing out everything I fought so hard to keep in the shadows.

Why the fuck are you here?That small voice was relentless.

And the answer was too simple to keep locked up for too long.

Because it feels nice, I thought.It feels nice to see what they’re all up to when I don’t have the balls to do it.

For all my cherry-picking between the girls who hardly knew I existed, the truth was plain as day. I didn’t see myself with a girl. I had tried, and I had failed. I had tried so fucking hard that I knew for sure it was never going to work. So I came here to Neon Nights when my parents had too much to think aboutto notice me gone, and I watched all these people with a mix of joy at their freedom and jealousy at the same. I loved them and hated them.

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