Page 18 of Made For Romeo
Family emergency just came up. I’ll call you in a couple of days.
I grab the bottle of tequila, blinking away the tears, bringing the bottle to my lips. “In the end, it was really my fault.” I look at him and see that he is looking at me with anguish, his face finally seeing what he did to me.
“None of this is your fault.” His voice comes out so heavy, his chest is rising and falling as if he is struggling to breathe.
“Oh, but it is because we never really did say what we were to each other.” I laugh through the lump in my throat.
“Don’t say that.” His voice breaks. “Don’t do that.”
“We were just friends, right?” I shrug, knowing in my heart I thought we were more. Knowing I was too stupid to think it was. Knowing, deep down inside, I never wanted to ask what we were for fear that it would be just a fling to him. Knowing in my heart I was in love with him. “With benefits, obviously.” I hold up the bottle of tequila at him. “Thank you, by the way, for that.” I bring the bottle to my lips. “I’ll never make the same mistake again, that’s for sure.” My lips find the bottle the same time as one tear escapes.
TWELVE
ROMEO
I knew coming here tonight would be a gamble, but I also knew I couldn’t not come. I waited for her until the end of the period, and her family members slowly left the suite.
Watching her in front of me, reliving the same night that I’ve been trying to erase for the past eight months, is a hell that I deserve. But she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve the hurt her face is filled with. She doesn’t deserve to have her heart broken like this. Seeing her hurting like this causes my heart to shatter in my chest.
“I have no excuse,” I start to say, “not one.” I want her to look at me, but she looks down at her hands instead. “Except.” She looks up when I say that, and I see the tears in her eyes. My strong, beautiful woman is broken, and I broke her. “I’m an asshole.” I want to go to her, to hold her, to take her in my arms and beg her to give me another chance. But my feet are stuck. “I was selfish.” My own tears come out now. “I was stupid. I was all those things. Which makes what I did even worse.” I hope she hears me. “I threw you away for a nobody.” My voice goes almost into a whisper. “Someone who, if we walked down the street today side by side, I wouldn’t even know who she was.” My voice breaks. “But I’ve changed.”
“A leopard doesn’t change his spots, Romeo,” she says. If only she knew how wrong she was. “You came here and did what you wanted to do.” She gets up from the couch. “We hashed it out, and you are forgiven,” she states. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I want…” I take a step forward to go to her, but her tone has me stopping in the middle of the room.
“What about what I want?” she asks, and I can see her trying not to break down. “What about what I want, Romeo?” Her voice doesn’t go up, and it doesn’t go down. It’s just defeated. “This whole time, you’ve thought about what you want. But did you think about me?”
“That’s the only thing I’ve been thinking of,” I cut her off. “The only thing I can think of is you.” I can’t hurt her more than I did. I won’t. “I’ll leave you be,” I tell her, turning and walking out of her house.
Closing the door softly behind me, the tears come down like a river on my face. The pain in my chest is even worse than when we ended it, when she ended it. I look back at her house, hoping to see her there, but I find nothing but darkness. The drive back to the hotel is a blur. I toss the valet guy the keys to the car before walking into the hotel with my head down.
Swiping my key and walking into the dark suite, I head over to the bar and grab the bottle of scotch. I sit down in the living room on the couch, unscrewing the top of the bottle and throwing it across the room as hard as I can. The sound of the tin cap hitting the wall and falling to the floor fills the empty room. I bring the bottle to my lips and take a gulp before I look back down at it in my hand.
“I broke her,” I admit to the empty room, “and for fucking what? Just so you could be all macho about banging girls. Just so you could have been, yeah, I banged someone that night. Stupid. Was it worth it?” I ask myself, taking the bottle and throwing it against the wall. The sound of the glass shattering is ironic since it sounds the way my heart did when I watched her tell me about walking in and seeing me. My eyes focus on the little brown beads of liquid that are now rolling down the wall, making me go back to that day again.
The last thing I wanted was to go out tonight, but my friends were all in my ear, telling me I was getting soft and boring. I never went out anymore, and truth be told, I didn’t because I was happy being at home. I regretted being there the minute I walked in. I went straight to the bar, and I was going to drink one beer and then be on my way. But then she walked in, and Shawn bet me a thousand bucks I couldn’t leave with her. I took the bet because I was dumb. She was wearing one of those dresses that looked like a mirror ball. It was slinky, and when she turned around, you knew she wasn’t wearing anything under it. She made eye contact with me, and ten minutes later, we were on the way to my house. I didn’t even turn on the lights as we attacked each other at the front door. I walked her backward into the living room, stopping to look at her. She had brown eyes and bleached blonde hair; my guess was in a matter of minutes, I was going to see her natural color. “What is this?” I laughed at her as I pulled the string that was around her neck, and just like that, she was naked in front of me. “Oops,” I said, and she tried to cover her fake tits, but then just jumped in my arms.
“Now it’s time to get you naked, too,” she said to me as I turned and sat on the couch. She attacked my neck. The smell of her perfume was turning my stomach, but I still kissed her. Her hands undid the buckle of my pants in one move. This was definitely not her first rodeo or mine. I didn’t even know who this girl was, but her hand was rubbing my cock, and my head was bending to suck her nipple.
It was the minute her hand actually touched my cock that I pulled back. “What the hell are you doing?” my head screamed at me at the same time that the phone pinged in my back pocket. My hand moved to the phone, and when I looked down, I saw her name.
Gabriella:
Family emergency just came up. I’ll call you in a couple of days.
It was as if you threw cold ice water on me. The girl on me started to make her way down to my cock, and I pushed her off me. “Um,” I said to her as I unwrapped myself from her and placed her beside me on the couch, naked with her legs open. I stood and walked over to where her dress fell when I pulled it off not too long ago. “I think you should get dressed.” My stomach tightened when I thought of Gabriella. I didn’t even know why I did this. My head screamed at me that it was all for my ego. I didn’t even try to argue with myself because I knew I did it just to say I could. How could I fucking do this? My thoughts swam around and around in my head, and I just needed this woman to get the fuck out of my house.
She just stared at me. “But I thought,” she moaned and pouted, and eight months ago before Gabriella, I would have fallen for it and said fuck it. But all I wanted to do was get her out of the fucking house and torch the thing to the ground.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, buttoning my pants back up.
“I won’t say anything,” the girl coaxed me. “We can fuck, and no one has to know.”
All I did was shake my head. “I’ll call you a cab,” I told her as I grabbed my phone. My hands shook when I saw her name still on the lock screen. I pushed it away before I got her an Uber. I looked back over at her and saw she was still sitting there naked. “You should really put your clothes on.”
“Wow.” She got up, her tone pissed as she grabbed her discarded dress off the floor and slipped it back on. “You are such an asshole.” She stormed out of the house, and all I could do was sit down, but the minute I did, I jumped up, thinking of her being on the couch naked. I either had to torch this room or replace all the shit in it.
I rubbed my hands over my face and all I could smell was her cheap perfume, so I turned and rushed upstairs to wash myself of her scent. I took the hottest shower of my life before stepping outside and making sure the woman left. I walked back upstairs and slid into bed, the dread of what I did tonight suddenly hit me, and I knew I’d have to tell Gabriella about it. How the fuck was I going to tell her that I caved under pressure like a schoolboy, instead of an adult who fucking knows better? How the fuck did I put myself in this position? I knew better. My parents raised me better. It was one thing to fuck and go, but a whole other thing when I had Gabriella who I was fucking with. The more I thought about it, the sicker it made me. I was that guy who I fucking hated, and I did it to myself.