Page 8 of Romeo vs Romeo

We can’t keep wasting electricity on your artificial intelligence.

You profit while we drown.

Car horns filled the air.

Adrenaline rushed into my bloodstream. My chest rose and fell swiftly, and I held on to the bare, hot street like letting go meant I would fall off the face of the Earth. The protesters around me seemed just as excited and frightened. None of us were new at this. You didn’t join an effort you believed in and got sent to do a die-in on your first day. We were seasoned environmentalists with a long list of peaceful protests behind us. Failed, all of them. Failed whenever we pressured for change because they could always squeeze one more quick profit and let the Earth pay the price.

Minutes stretched out indefinitely. They felt like each carried an eternity of suspense and torment.

“Get your fucking asses off the street,” someone shouted from a car.

“I’m going to be late for my meeting,” someone else said.

“…fucking bunch of crybabies…”

Martha lay next to me and laughed. “We struck a nerve, I think.”

I turned my face to her and grinned.

She was a forty-year-old lesbian who had been doing this for over twenty years with her partner. I’d met her at Neon Nights, and our fates collided almost like it was some grand platonic romance. She had been my ticket in.

“Are you coming tonight?” I asked.

“If we don’t get arrested,” Martha said.

I snorted. I could outrun the cops any day. Cops weren’t my problem. That honor went to the beefy buttheads that liked to stir shit and make our protests look less peaceful. Whenever we staged a march or a picket line, these jocks with their mothers’socks pulled over their round faces came and started smashing things. More than once, I’d gotten my lip split or my torso bruised.

It didn’t matter. My body would recover. I was not so important to stay away out of fear of getting kicked around. What mattered was that someone had to stand up to the spoiled assholes who cared nothing about the future generations. They would long be dead, in their silk bedsheets and on their mile-long superyachts, by the time our society disintegrated.

For them, it was all great because those who suffered the consequences right now were halfway across the world. Well, it wasn’t great for me. I denounced them. Even if I had to spend a night in jail or get a black eye.

A few more minutes of commotion produced an outpouring of security personnel guarding the stock exchange. I found it hilarious that the traders and bankers weren’t worried about hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, deforestation, deep-sea mining, and the ever-increasing emissions, but they feared a bunch of protesters lying on the street, blocking traffic. Not that they were afraid we might do something, I supposed. They feared the unthinkable. They feared the stocks ticking downward for a hot minute.

When the sirens announced the NYPD’s prompt response to our die-in, protestors scattered. I was among the last to pick up and run, hot on Martha’s heels.

“Don’t forget about tonight,” I shouted after Martha in a fit of laughter because we had gotten away. A moment later, we separated, slipping into different alleys and running for a good hiding place.

A mere few minutes later, the police were far behind me, so I blended in with the crowd. I walked for a while, then slipped underground to wait for the next train home. The financial district was overcrowded with people in suits. It made mesquirm. I didn’t like being such a fish out of the water. Even the subway was full of aspiring bankers.

So when I left the subway and emerged at the edge of Hudson Burrow, it felt like home in all the right ways. This was where I belonged. Sure, it had a coat of grunge to it, but home wasn’t just something where all the bricks were intact. It was the people you knew, the places you went, the habits you developed. As I passed Rashid’s grocery store, I waved at Mr. Rashid’s son, Zain, who delivered fresh produce to Mama Viv’s place. He was a black-haired youth with equal parts Middle Eastern and Latino genes shaping a handsome, unforgettable face. And just around the corner, my hairdresser was standing in front of his tiny parlor, smoking a joint, laughing at something on his phone. Three stores down, a new tattoo parlor was being prepared, and a moving truck had delivered some wall decorations. I lingered around for a few moments when I realized all the paintings that were unpacked and scattered around the parlor were male nude portraits. Whistling to myself, I wondered if all this queerness in Hudson Burrow would drive my rent up.

With the exception of the Rashids, I was pretty damn sure everyone here was gay. At least a little gay, I figured.Even those who act like they come around just to observe. The thought was only partially amusing. That handsome fuckup belonged precisely where I had been keeping him this entire week: out of my mind.

Few people managed to return to me so stubbornly as that one. And not because he was hot as hell in a jockstrap. Well, that was part of the reason, to be fair. But the real reason I couldn’t shake off that sour sneer of his and the hungry look in his eyes was because he clearly needed something he could only get in Neon Nights.

Hungry didn’t begin to describe it. It was starved, that empty gaze of his.

It was really annoying, truth be told, that I was still thinking about it. I didn’t know the guy’s name or his story, but I knew I had handled it all wrong the first time we’d crossed paths. I had just been in a fight with Tristan, who had run off from Mama Viv and the neighborhood. I had been lonely, hurt, slightly horny, and I saw a sexy stranger brooding by the door. What was the boy supposed to do? I tried to flirt with the guy, but he freaked out, threatened me, and ran away. Not exactly the kind of response I was used to when I flirted.

I tried to fix that nasty mess. I tried to offer a hand of friendship, but my touch seemed to disgust him as much as he disgusted himself. Oh, it was clear to me then. It was clear because I had lived through that particular hazing. Not everyone did, but I’d survived the years it had taken me to accept my sexuality. I hadn’t always been a hoe. There was a time when I had been a timid creature with nobody I could talk to. A family in the Midwest that cared little and less about what I had to say so long as I did my chores and not another queer person in a hundred-mile radius was all I had growing up.

And I’d hated myself. I was sick of myself every time I daydreamed about boys skinny-dipping in the local lake or classmates changing in the locker room. The older I got, the more disgusted I was with myself until, one night, I cried into my pillow for what felt like hours, and my parents simply went quiet downstairs as if not to disturb me. They never checked in on me, never asked. And I knew then that I was on my own.

It didn’t matter if they knew, suspected, or cared. It didn’t matter if it hurt them or anyone else that I was besties with all the girls and daydreamed about guys instead of things being the other way around. Who I was didn’t matter to anyone but me.

And that was why I had tried to speak to him the second time. That was why I couldn’t get him out of my head.

Lane was seething in the living room when I entered the apartment. “’Sup?” I greeted him.

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