Romeo & Juliet (of the 20th century)

Part 4: No one quite like you

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

“You WHAT?!” Devin yelled in the coffee shop, disturbing several of its patrons.

“It wasn’t my fault, Dev, calm down,” I said, trying to calm him down.

I reached over the table to rub circles into the top of his hand.

“You stayed in the room with the same guy that just beat up your brother, Tenley?”

“I didn’t stay in the room with him, I fell asleep. It’s different.”

He rolled his eyes at me.

“You should be thankful honor roll has nothing to do with decisions you make outside of the classroom,” he shook his head in frustration, suddenly extremely focused on his coffee.

“Cheer up Charlie, I’m alive! You’re stuck with me for at least another, oh, 70 years I bet.”

He smiled at his coffee and I knew I was getting somewhere with him.

I continued, “Well, 50 good years probably. The last 20 I’ll most likely be senile and either not remember your name or mistake you for one of my cats.”

He snorted and looked at me again, eyes full of concern. He reached across the table and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear; I shivered at the action.

“What’s your issue with touching, Ten? You know soon one of these walnut-for-brains guys is going to want to touch you. Tuck hair behind your ear, give you a noogie, the usual.”

It didn’t sound like an accusation as it did when other people would point out my distaste for touching. I’m not sure what it was, Jack would always say it was because I spent too much time sniffing his sneakers when we were little and it messed up my brain, but I think it had more to do with my parent’s absence.

When my dad’s marketing business failed, my parents didn’t know what to do. We lost everything, just barely managing to keep the house. They never explained what happened that caused the business to do so bad, considering it had been around for 11 years prior to that, but my brother and I suspected it was a deal gone wrong and brushed it off.

Needless to say, that was the worst time of my life. My parents argued day in and day out, making divorce seem imminent. They didn’t want anything to do with Jack or I at the time, so Jack practically raised me for a few years playing the role of mother and father. A few weeks right after the business died, things became even worse when my mother had a miscarriage and was beside herself with grief. She tried to kill herself a few times, one attempt I actually walked into the middle of, and spent the majority of her days crying.

I never told anyone about this; it seems unnecessary to embarrass my family like that when everything appears to have patched up just fine with them, and I refuse to be the object of even the smallest amount of pity.

“Give me some credit, I’ll at least be smart enough to pick a guy who has pudding-for-brains instead of walnuts. And they’ll learn to work around my strange ways. I prefer nose picking to holding hands, though, that’s not weird is it?”

He was gently pinching little parts of my fingers now, probably waiting to see when it hurt enough for me to pull away.

“Nope, not at all,” He said simply, staring at my hands.

“And hey, I never told you the weirdest part of my little hospital date! He asked me for my name before I left, creepy, huh?”

I could see his eye visibly narrow.