Page 43 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
“But how?” A wail escapes from my mouth, and the fight leaves me. I crumple. The friar catches me before I fall.
“You will find a way,” Friar Lawrence says, “as all men do to survive. But quick, you must flee Verona now. The noise of your duel with Paris has alerted the night watch, and the Montagues and Capulets are on their way as we speak. Go far, far away, Romeo, change your name, and never return.”
I am drowning in grief, and I want to die. And yet there’s a traitorous part of me that latches on to the friar’s suggestion, a part of me that selfishly wants to live.
Guilt hangs around my neck like a millstone.
In the distance, I hear shouts and the pounding of horses’ hooves.
“It is time to go,” Friar Lawrence says gently.
“But Juliet—”
“Is truly dead.”
The finality knifes through me as if it were a blade itself. I collapse over her body, weeping as I kiss her farewell. “My Juliet, my Juliet, forgive me…”
Forgive me for our star-crossed marriage.
Forgive me for the dagger meant for another.
Forgive me for living without you.
SEBASTIEN
Helene looks at me likeI’m delusional. It isn’t a bad outcome, is it? If Helene doubts me, she’ll want to put as much distance between us as she can.
And yet, now that we’re in this gallery together, surrounded by the paintings of all her past reincarnations that I’ve loved, I desperately want her to believe me. I’ve lived too long without my Juliet, and the pain of missing her is a living, sharp-toothed thing inside me that gnaws at me every day I’m alone. With Helene standing before me, all I want to do is bow down at her feet and beg forgiveness for what will happen if she decides to stay.
But I have to remind myself that Helene doesn’t fully understand yet that she’s Juliet. So far, I’ve only explained the part about me.
Helene shakes her head, still processing my story. At least she’s not panicking anymore, now that she has a problem to puzzle over. “That’s not how Shakespeare told it,” she says. “Romeo and Juliet both died in that tomb.”
“Shakespeare wrote the story about two centuries after ithappened,” I say. “He took some artistic license to convey his own literary motifs. But it wasn’t fact.”
She studies the oil painting beside her, thinking through my version again.
Meanwhile, I think on our past as well. I still remember the rush of calling to my original Juliet from the base of her balcony, and the moment she parted the curtains and answered my call. It was as if everything around her shifted to black and white and she was the only burst of color in its center. Even that early in our love, I knew she was my destiny.
Here in the gallery, it happens once more. The color seems to seep from all the paintings, and Helene is the only thing worth gazing upon. How could I have thought I could bear to be without her in yet another lifetime?
Juliet is the sun,Shakespeare said.
Indeed she is. And now again, I fall for her as if she is gravity itself.
Helene is the one to break the silence.
“If what you’re saying is true, then you’re…what? Claiming to be immortal?” She wrinkles her nose, just a barely perceptible scrunch that I’ve seen a thousand times across past lives. It is so dear a motion to me, but I have to restrain myself from crossing the gallery and kissing her where her nose wrinkles.
Instead, I ask, “Is immortality any more preposterous than you making up an imaginary friend, only to discover that he’s a real person?”
“Yes, it is.”
I consider this, then nod in concession. “Probably. But still in the same category of unlikely.”
She chews on her lip, thinking again. “Okay, let’s assume for a minute that I believe you’re the same Montague from Romeo and Juliet’s time.” Helene fixes me with a firm look, to make sure I understand this is only an assumption for the sake of discussion, not that she truly believes. “It still doesn’t explain howIknow the stories behind some of the paintings or how I’m even a part of all this.”
I steeple my fingers, because this is the most far-fetched part ofthe story. I take several deep breaths, and even then, the truth sticks in my throat. The only other time I told a reincarnated Juliet who she was, it ended disastrously.
