Romeo & Juliet (of the 20th century)

Part 5: The Explanation

Tis torture, and not mercy.

Heaven is here

Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog

And little mouse, every unworthy thing,

Live here in heaven and may look on her,

But Romeo may not.

Attending school the next few days was the worst form of torture. Not only did I have to scrub toilets, clean out teacher’s offices, and listen to Bud the janitor’s tales of woe, but I didn’t know if any of these things I was voluntarily doing after school would improve my chances of becoming a student at Mississippi State in the fall.

To make matters worse, Devin told Jack about my little visit with Aiyden the day of the fight so he’s been digging through text messages and calls in my phone to make sure we’re not on speaking terms. I used to think my brother had nothing to worry about when it came to dishonesty between the two of us, but after many long conversations about how much he hates Aiyden, I’m almost glad he invades my privacy to make sure he’s not contacting me. Otherwise I’d be free to do something really dumb and totally uncalled for. Like talk to Aiyden.

“And so then I had sex with Jackson. I talked to your mom about it, while I wearing a really tight, leather thong, and now we’re engaged!” Devin said, trying to determine if I was paying attention.

I nodded. “Cool.”

He jumped in front of me on the walkway up to my front door.

“A-ha! I knew it! You weren’t paying attention to me were you?”

I crossed my arms, not wanting to admit he was right.

“Yes I was, I said it was cool.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You think me having raunchy sex with your brother is cool?”

“Since when were we talking about you doing my brother?! I thought we were talking about how much you miss football in the spring!”

I detoured around him and unlocked my front door. He followed shortly after me and politely took off his shoes before coming in. That’s another reason my whole family loved him: he was just so stinkin’ polite.

“We were talking about that like 10 minutes ago, but I could tell you weren’t paying attention to little ol’ me so I’ve been talking nonsense about armpit hair, hobbits, and, more recently, the topic of Jackson and I getting together some time in the near future. Oh, and I also discussed antelopes, but I bet you missed that too.”

I smirked at him as I tossed my bag on the couch.

“Antelopes? I didn’t realize you had such an interest in them. Sorry, I’ll pay more attention to you.”

Devin flopped himself on the recliner and leaned it all the way back, all the while maintaining eye contact with me as if he suspected something.

I looked back at him hard. “What now?”

“What were you thinking about? You know, when you weren’t listening to me.”

I looked down at my shoes out of habit. It was something I did every time I didn’t want to look someone in the eye and lie.

“Nothing really…” I mumbled.

Apparently, I wasn’t convincing.

“You’re the worst liar this side of the Mason Dixon line, Tenley. So just tell me.”

For some reason, I just blurted out the question that had been on my mind for the last four days since I left the hospital.

“Why does Jack hate that guy Aiyden so much?”