Rule #1

by T. A Richards Neville

  “You cold?” he asks, chasing it up with a wide, loud yawn.

  “Uh-huh.” Probably why I’m balled up like twine, no quilt or blanket to keep me warm.

  I remember everything about last night, sadly. Leaving Champ’s and finishing off the party at the house Booker shares with three of his teammates. I had one thing on my mind, and that was to erase it all. Clearly I didn’t drink nearly enough because I feel even worse this morning, and now I have to find my way home smelling like a brewery.

  Maddie’s New Year went off with an explosive bang and a kiss with Colin she’s been waiting two whole years for. They were still at Champ’s when I left with Booker, and I’m pleased her night sailed smoother than mine.

  My stomach aches as hard as my chest, the emptiness I usually crave excruciating now.

  “Do you wanna tell me about it?” Booker asks. He doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere for a while other than back to sleep.

  What the heck did I say last night? Not whining about Roman, please. I hate when I turn into that kind of drunk.

  My heart clenches and threatens to burst when I remember Roman leaving the bar with Jen hanging off him, and I bring my hand to my face when my eyes well up with tears and tumble free, dripping onto my legs in a soundless waterfall.

  “Ah, fuck.” Booker leaps off the couch to comfort me, sliding over the wide armrest to lean his head on mine and shush me in that really awkward way people do when they have no clue what they’re doing. “If he can make you cry, Torre, he isn’t worth it.”

  Yes, I’ve definitely been loose-lipped. Hopefully just with Booker, though. I feel weak enough as it is.

  The following night I’m at work, so I can’t help noticing on the big screen that Roman’s absent from the Warriors home game against Colorado. That never happens, and on my break, I text Kimberly and ask her why he isn’t playing. She texts back almost an hour later to tell me it’s Joe’s funeral on Friday and Roman’s already in New Hampshire.

  As desperately as I want to send him a message or speak to him on the phone, I give him the space he wanted, and I do neither of those things.

  Time stops for the duration of my shift, though, and I can’t get to sleep that night. I stay up until dawn, getting ahead on my comic and structuring upcoming scenes.

  I sleep most of the day, blaming my sleepless night for why I can’t bring myself to get out of bed and face the daylight when I feel as put together as a smelly bag of garbage.

  “Brooke?” Maddie knocks on my bedroom door, which is weird, because she always walks in here whether it’s closed or not.

  I put down my pencil and close my sketch book. “Come in.”

  The door pushes open, and Maddie walks in wearing her pajamas. She sits on my bed, folding her legs underneath her. “I’m telling you this because I’m genuinely convinced that bitch will have it posted on her Facebook page in a matter of hours.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “A girl from my English class is friends with Jennifer Dawson, and she DM’d me to tell me Roman was with Jen all night on New Year’s, and she even saw him leaving her apartment in the morning. Jen’s saying they slept together.”

  “Why’d this girl think she needed to tell you?”

  “She thought Roman was with you, and it’s not like Jen’s keeping it a secret. She’s spreading it like the plague, and I know you’re upset over this, Brooke. I know you liked him, and whatever you think or say now, he liked you, too.”

  I’m tempted to roll my eyes at that.

  “It’s my fault,” Maddie says. “I shouldn’t have opened my mouth and freaked him out.”

  I shake my head. “It’s not your fault. And we were never really anything, so if he has slept with Jen, then…” Then what? “He can. He can sleep with every girl on campus.”

  And that’s how the rest of my week goes. I sleep, draw, watch television mindlessly, and nibble on dry crackers every so often to keep my rumbling tummy quiet. My appetite is at its lowest, but I need this time to sink as deep as I can and then start to repair myself.

  I’m upset, but it won’t last forever. And that’s what I keep reminding myself.

  The days bleed into the same uneventful routine, each one reminiscent of the last, and I’m looking forward to the new semester starting, when I won’t have as much time alone with my own thoughts.

  I finish work Thursday night at ten p.m. It’s Maddie’s night off and she’s out seeing a movie with Colin O’Shae, a totally surreal date I never thought would happen but finally has.

  Because I’m a walking zombie lately, I don’t notice the person sitting at the top of the steps outside my apartment until I’m practically falling on top on him.

  Roman stands up, and time comes screeching to a standstill as I look into his eyes for the first time in nearly a week. It’s no amount of time at all to miss someone, but it’s all I’ve done and it’s all I’m still doing.

  He’s wearing a black suit and a white dress shirt, the jacket open and the knot in his black tie half undone. Disheveled and handsome in ways I can’t even begin to describe.

  “Your hair,” is the first thing he says. Even with the small amount of light from the wall lamps, he doesn’t miss the insignificant changes so many other people would. “The color’s gone.”

  “It wasn’t permanent.” I run my fingers through the butterscotch waves hanging loose over my shoulder. “And I haven’t made an appointment at the salon yet.”

  “It looks good,” Roman’s quick to say. “It’s nice.”

  “When did you get back?”

  “Not that long ago. I’ve been waiting here an hour for you.”

  “You slept with Jen two seconds after telling me we were done.” I had no intention of being so upfront this quickly, but now he’s here, I can’t hold it in. The wall’s too high to stay standing between us, and even though he doesn’t need my permission to get his leg over, he could have had a little more respect for me and waited longer than ten minutes.

  Roman’s eyebrows pull into a confused frown.

  “Are you going to lie to me and deny it?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Jen’s telling everyone that.”

  “Then I’ll call her right now and she can clear this up,” Roman says adamantly, like one phone call will solve everything. Like this is all Jen’s fault and he’s squeaky clean.

  “Don’t bother.” I walk around him, my hand unsteady as I push the key into the lock and open the door.

  Roman stops it from closing with his foot, pushing it open and letting himself inside my living room.

  “It’s not true, Brooke. Think I’d remember fucking someone, and I didn’t.”

  “You stayed the night at her place! People saw you. Explain your way out of that.”

  “Since when does crashing on a couch mean I automatically want in her pants?” Roman’s just as mad as I am, and he’s crowding me, snatching space like it’s his to steal. “When have I ever lied to you?”

  I toss my keys onto the couch. “When you said hooking up was fun and I was boring! This isn’t fun, Roman. Do I look like I’m having a good fucking time? I should never have listened to you.”

  There’s no hope of us ever being friends because one of us has gone and stupidly gotten herself too attached to the other, ruining all hope of any kind of relationship, platonic or sexual.

  “Does this look like a good fucking time for me? Is that what you see?” Roman grabs my shoulder as I turn away from him, forcing my gaze back to his. “Stop, Brooke. Just fucking stop and hear what I’m saying.”

  I haven’t even had time to turn a light on, Roman’s ambush frying the wires loose in my brain.

  “I heard what you said. You don’t need me anymore.” That hurts hearing it now, in my own voice, as much as it did when Roman said it. “All you did was swap one hookup for another.”

  Roman’s eyebrows slope over his eyes, a silent battle going on behind them. “You thought I’d chang
e who I was?”

  No. Maybe… yes.

  “I…” Roman’s hand glides down my arm, his fingers lacing between mine. “Maybe I have changed, because I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you. I thought I could stop it or get it under control, but it’s got control over me.”

  Roman knocks the wind right out of me. That’s what sent him running?

  “Do you want to know what that’s been like for me? What it feels like?”

  Something tells me I don’t, but Roman’s not looking for answers from me, and I’ve got none to give him. For all I’ve been trying to build my strength, he bulldozes in and I collapse right back to square one.

  He lowers his head and kisses me, his arms around my waist as my purse drops to the floor, leaving me no time to decide this is what I want. But I’m kissing him back, and that’s plenty to tell him he is what I want, and I never stopped wanting him. I want him more now, and I don’t resist when he picks me up and carries me into the hallway.

  “Which room’s yours?” he mumbles against my lips, barely breaking the kiss long enough to ask.

  “That one.” Glued to Roman’s mouth, I point to where the door to my room should be.

  It’s the right one, and Roman lies on top of me on the bed. Fights one-handed with his tie and pushes my jacket over my shoulders with his other hand. It’s one fight he can’t win alone, and I take over his tie, slipping the knot out and sliding the black silk from around his neck.

  I’ve got questions, so many of them, but Roman’s making it hard to process or remember a single one. And besides, I don’t want to talk, and neither does he. Nothing I have to say is more important than this, and Roman doesn’t need words to let me know exactly how he’s feeling. His hurried, impatient touch says it all, and my body obediently answers every kiss and caress.

  I’m angry and upset with him and how dare he ask me to give him up? He’s clueless and self-absorbed, funny and beautiful, and how could I ever feel this way around anyone when I only want to feel this way around him?

  I reach for the button on his pants and slip it through the hole. The ridge of him presses against the zip, the black fabric strained beneath my hand, and I’m feeling too much not to make a clumsy job of it.

  Roman shucks off his jacket as I help him with the sleeves, and then it drops to the floor, his shirt and mine following seconds after.

  He unbuttons my shorts, and I lift my hips so he can slide them down my legs, leaning on one arm to free them from my ankles and get rid of those also.

  “Tell me you’ve got protection around here somewhere, because I don’t,” Roman peels his mouth from mine to ask.

  Surprisingly, I do. A bag of safe-sex freebies I’ve been hoarding since freshman year. I’d forgotten about them until now.

  Roman lets me up to grab them from the box of random assortments I keep in the top drawer of my dresser under my makeup and hair accessories. I find the brown paper bag quickly, still not comfortable in my own skin without clothes to hide all the wobbly bits I hate the most about myself. I’m wearing underwear, but it’s scant and lacy, and I can feel Roman’s eyes on my back as hot as if he were touching me.

  With the foil packet in my hand, I walk back to the bed, nervous now the moment’s been interrupted by real life and all the dangers and imperfections that come with it.

  Roman sweeps his hand up my thigh. The goose bumps rising on my flesh are from him as well as the cold, and he pulls back the corner of my quilt for me to climb inside. He lies beside me, and for a while all we do is kiss, fingers and hands roaming over bare skin.

  My fingers brush over Roman’s erection through his pants, and I pull down the zipper as he half hovers over me, one side of my face in the crook of his elbow, his arm above my head and his hand on my hip.

  I push my hand into his boxers and take him out. He’s long, hard, and hot in my palm, and I watch myself touching him in the pale moonlight, running my thumb over the glistening tip, to the sensitive underside and back again. I hold him firmly, pumping slowly, running my palm over the slick, swollen head.

  He closes his eyes, arms and shoulders strapped with tension while I take my time with him. wrapping his fingers around the edge of my panties, he tugs down one side, working the thin lace over my hips. I take my hands off him to reach for the condom on the sheet and tear it open.

  My pesky nerves resurface, and Roman takes over, sheathing himself and taking the pressure off me.

  He evens out his weight and shifts on top of me, one arm cradling my head as he guides himself to the center of my thighs and I open my legs wider for him, my back sinking into the mattress under the pressure of his strong thighs and hips as he moves slowly inside of me, giving my body time to adjust to his size. This is my second time doing this and I’m just as tense as the first.

  Roman pauses, holding off from pushing in any farther. “Am I hurting you? I’ll stop.”

  Even if the ceiling caves in on us, I don’t want him to stop.

  Sliding one hand behind his neck, I bring his lips back to mine, a moan of painful pleasure catching in my throat as he stretches me wider and I relax every muscle, allowing him in even when my muscles burn to push him out.

  His restraint lasts all of a minute, and he showers my lips, my jaw, my neck with kisses, lifting my leg off the bed and hooking one arm behind my knee so he can drive in deeper, the length of our bodies pressed together, and it isn’t close enough.

  I hook my leg around his waist and he puts his forehead against mine, his eyes dark and wildly determined. My nails dig into the firm muscles in his ass, and I close my eyes as he presses his forearms into the mattress and pulls himself upward, the angle at which he’s inside me changing drastically, almost unbearable. A brittle border balancing torture and pleasure. Too much and not enough.

  Right when my body tries to tell me I can’t handle him or take any more, the vacillating pain ebbs into friction that weakens my stomach, the solid, hard length of him grazing that sensitive spot as he pulls out the smallest amount and then pushes back in, deeper now, his eyes on where his skin meets mine, a viciousness to his carefully controlled movements.

  I feel it the second he’s about to come, but he gets me there first, my muscles quivering around him, his invasion relentless. He sags against me and lowers his head to nuzzle my neck, groaning into my warm sweaty skin and spill of hair across the sheets. His breathing’s fast and uneven, his chest expanding on every breath. Still semi-hard, he gently thrusts and circles his hips, reawakening the friction that seconds ago had me blissed out of my mind.

  I close my eyes, but a tear still manages to slip past the corner.

  I tilt my face toward Roman’s when he says, “Hey, why are you crying?”

  I shake my head, my throat too thick to speak. I can barely breathe. Talking’s out of the question.

  Roman sighs loudly, and he wipes the tears from my cheeks with the pad of his thumb, sweeping away the dampness. After he pulls off the condom and gets rid of it, he pulls me into his arms against his warm body, running his fingers down the length of my hair.

  For now, finally, this is enough.

  Daylight paints a picture not nearly as serene as the night before. Roman’s awake before me, and he’s sitting at my desk, flicking through my sketchbook.

  My heart freezes on the next beat, because I know what’s in there, and I used it as part of my finals project without asking his permission, but it was with the understanding he would never find out.

  There’s plenty of pictures in that book I don’t want him to see, but it’s too late for that, and as I sit up in bed, sweeping my hair out of my face, I steal a guilt-stricken glimpse of what Roman’s looking at.

  His back’s to me, the lean, honed muscles in it rippling under his skin as he leans over the desk to read the inscriptions, running a finger over the charcoal shading that takes up most of the page.

  It’s a pocket watch, open to the time of Roman’s parents’ deaths, a detailed mirror i
mage to the plain, simple tattoo across his ribs. The top left section of the watch has eroded into a kaleidoscope of butterflies, tiny, intricate wings transforming into a the biggest, most beautiful butterfly taking off toward an invisible sky.

  I don’t know if Roman’s seen the others, and I’m sure they make me look undeniably creepy and obsessed with him, but I find art in everything, and even where there’s sadness there’s beauty. The hard, weathered planes of his Grandpa Joe’s face told a complicated story over revealing age, and the Warriors during a timeout told a different story altogether. Blood, sweat and tears paused in a suspended moment while the ice was still and the chaos was calm, when the tired looks on their faces said everything you couldn’t see, even with no one in motion.

  I smooth my fingers over the quilt in front of me. “As much as I hate to ask a question so offensively basic, how did the funeral go?”

  Roman doesn’t turn around. “To plan, I guess. Joe’s dead and cremated. I’ll scatter his ashes on his land when we get them back.”

  “That’s what he wanted?”

  Roman shrugs in answer. “He wouldn’t have wanted any fuss, and that includes a funeral. But that house was all he had left, my dad lived there, and one day it’ll be mine. He wouldn’t have willingly abandoned it, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t have to.”

  Roman shuts the book and leans back in the chair. “You lied to me too, Brooke.” My chest seizes as he turns his head to look at me, one hand on the cover of my sketchbook. “There’s something going on with you, and you’ve got everyone around you worried shitless. People don’t just collapse and shrink in size. Did I do or say anything… to make it worse?”

  My gaze falls to the edge of the quilt in my hands, and the glint of sunlight on my pink fingernails. “No, you didn’t. All my issues started in my own head.” How can I expect anyone else to like me when I don’t even like myself?

  Roman nods, not really in understanding, but acceptance that he’s way out of his depth with me.

  He puts on his shirt and dress shoes, carrying his tie and suit jacket to the front door with him. I change into a long T-shirt and see him out, leaning against the jamb as I watch him walk down the stairs.