"SO WHAT ALL places have you been to?" I asked, watching him turn over burgers and hot dogs over the grill.
Royce was—surprisingly—very easy to talk to. He was polite, affable, every word in the dictionary to describe the perfect gentleman. I had some thought in my mind, wondering why Juliet wasn't openly dating Royce instead of Mason. Mason was fine, sure, but his charm mainly lay in how tactile and brash he was, laughing and half-punching and snorting and cracking jokes every other second. A loud all-American charm that seemed a direct contrast to Juliet's slightly foreign way of carrying herself. Like she was always in half-dream, just on the verge of delicate.
Royce seemed a better fit for her. He had a very easy way about him, graceful, almost. Every movement and gesture careful and deliberate. And even when he was fidgeting, rolling his weight back and forth on his heels, it didn't detract from the fact that looked like if a tornado came about all you'd have to do was hold onto him and you'd be fine. Rock solid to Juliet's liquid grace.
"Let's see," he said, frowning at the grill. "Rome, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Uruguay, Karachi, Goa, St. Petersburg—"
"Holy hell."
"—Algiers, Paris that one time I had to see family, and of course," he said, offering me a smoking piece of a burger, "Makkah."
I liked the way he said the word. Most people—Ayah and Hyun excluded—said it like Mecca, may-keh. He said it right.
"You really are Muslim."
"No, I'm Zoroastrian. Of course I'm Muslim," he said. He smiled, and I saw that he had a dimple on his right cheek. He picked up a near-charred burger and put it onto a paper plate. "Do you want this?"
"I'm fasting."
"What a coincidence," he said. He leaned towards me, angling his head so that he was eye-level with me. And in a whisper, he said, "I am too."
The sun was slowly, slowly starting to sink into the horizon. We were nearly done grilling everything, and near the end, a bunch of guys came by to help—and I resented them a little for it. Where were they, before nearly all the work was done? Now they were swooping in to take the credit for our hard work. There was a metaphor here, but I was beginning to feel a little woozy and nauseated and cranky, and my throat was dry, and every part of my body was beginning to shake, but I smiled and grinned through it all. Royce was muttering to me about how if this were a real barbeque, we'd be eating real food—kababs, shish tawook, stuff like that—but here we were, trying to make do with veggie burgers and sausages and beef patties.
I let him talk. A pleasant background noise to my nausea. A very, very, very irrational part of me wanted to lie down on the glass and fall asleep to the sound of Royce's voice.
Someone cracked open a cooler. Beer cans and soft drinks inside, a treasure chest with tin and aluminum jewels. I was handing out paper plates and plastic cutlery and Juliet told me that I would have made an excellent maid and I was feeling irritated enough that I flipped her off.
Her face, lovely even though I felt like I was barely hanging onto consciousness, twisted into an expression of such hurt that I felt every shred of anger I had melt away. Did she know, what she'd done to me? How she'd nearly ruined me? I don't know how she couldn't know—I felt like everything was written on my face, laid bare for her to see. If she didn't, she was more of an airhead than I thought she was. If she did, she was being unnecessarily cruel. I don't know which one I would have preferred.
"Sorry," I muttered, passing her a paper plate.
Our hands brushed against each other. Briefly, my lungs seized up.
"It's fine," Juliet said. "I deserved that." She gave me a shy smile, and it disgusted me, almost, how much my heart leapt up my throat.
Hyun had all but abandoned me to go canoodle with a girl—Rachel, I think? By this time I'd begun to breathe out of my mouth more than my nose—and he had spared fifteen solid seconds to give me some words of encouragement as he took a paper plate from me.
"Look at you," he said, "being a gracious host at a party you didn't even host."
"I hate her," I said, morosely. "I hate Juliet."
"Sure you do," he said, and he glanced over at Royce, who was patiently listening to some girl babble his mouth off at him. "Hey, look out. Your new boyfriend might get stolen from under your nose."
"Fuck you."
"I'll pass," he said, amicably. "Try to stay on your feet. You don't look too good."
"I'm feeling peachy."
I wasn't feeling peachy. I felt like I wanted to sit down and have a cool drink of water and some of this weird blood red sugary drink my mother used to make with this syrup she bought from the Pakistani store out of town. I loved that drink. It made me feel like a vampire. My older sister used to have this joke that all Muslims, in Ramadan, turned into vampires. Sleeping all day, staying up all night. When she used to be home and my mother made that red drink—why couldn't I remember the fucking name? I had that drink every year of my miserable life—she used to swirl it around in her glass and affect a Transylvanian accent and Jesus, how badly I wished I was at home, not here, never here, not sitting next to a bunch of people I didn't particularly care for with the muggy air making a film of sweat on my skin and me holding a can of lukewarm Pepsi to my head.
"You okay there?" Royce asked, sitting on the grass next to me.
I sat out in her backyard because the noise—people talking, girls laughing, somebody had pulled out their phone and a speaker and started blasting obnoxious music and some of the guys had started dancing and girls started laughing harder—from the porch was beginning to make my head hurt. Everything about me felt sticky. What did I break my fast with? A charred veggie burger and a Pepsi. I could have thrown up.
"I'm fine," I said. "Why are you here?"
"I feel like throwing up."
I laughed, surprised. "Hey, what a coincidence."
I was feeling woozy enough that I knocked his shoulder, but he wasn't paying attention to me. He was looking at Juliet and Mason, who wore both dancing around each other, laughing. Was he jealous?
"No, no, I'm not—" he snorted, hard—"I'm not jealous." His jaw went tense, and he started threading his fingers through the grass. "Why would I be?"
"Why are you really here?"
"Like I said, I feel like throwing—"
"No," I said, and I shook my head and I regretted it immediately because my brain felt like it was slushing around in my skull. I put up a hand to my temple. "I meant like, here, barbeque. You don't know any of these people, do you?"
"Not really." His shoulders sagged a little. "No."
"So," I said, "why?"
He was looking at Juliet, and so was I. She was laughing, and under the shadow of her house and dusky sunset, she looked like a study in chiaroscuro. Light and dark, dark and light. Not quite real. Her hand was on Mason's shoulder.
"She asked," Royce said, softly.
I wanted to ask if he wasn't Juliet's boyfriend, what were they doing at the lake, skinny dipping in the dark? What game was she playing with him? What game was she playing with Mason? With me?
How arrogant of me to assume that she was ever playing a game with me.
The music had gone down from its usual obnoxious overtone to something more mellow. Jazz, harp music, Dorothy Ashby, Louis Armstrong? Black musicians for a party full of white teenagers. Some people had left. Hyun and Rachel—or was it Olivia? Again, I was dangerously close to passing out, just about then—were starting to slow dance, and so were Mason and Juliet. They looked like they fit together. Her in his arms, slowly swaying to the music. It was hard to feel jealous—just a sense of hopelessness, which was more my problem than anything—when they looked so right together.
Every part of my body was aching. And still I couldn't look away. Hopelessness gave way to longing—I didn't just want Juliet. I didn't want to just hold her the way Mason was holding her. I wanted to be held. To be looked at. To be wanted. To want, and to have that desire reciprocated, if not tenfold, then equally. To be Juliet, to be Hyun, to be Mason, to be Royce, Rachel, Olivia—I don't care who. Just someone who was comfortable in their own skin, unafraid of acting out desire, unafraid of believing in it.
I don't know at what point I started resting my head on Royce's shoulder, but he didn't say anything until I started dozing off.
He shook me, gently, as if waking me up. "Hey."
I realized what I was doing and lurched away from him, nearly falling over myself. "Sorry, sorry," I said. "Shit. Sorry. Didn't mean to."
"It's fine," he said. Such a soft, quiet voice. Juliet was mad, fucking insane, to not date Royce. To pick Mason over him. "Are you alright?"
I felt like crying. "I'm fine."
"You don't look like it. Listen, you look like a stiff wind could knock you over. You should probably go home, and I mean that in a nice way." His hand was still on my arm. "Maybe next time we meet we can lament over the fact that the object of our affections doesn't like us the same way we like her."
I stared at him, dumbstruck. Fearful.
"I won't tell," he said, getting rid of my fears before I had a chance to voice them. "You're very obvious about it. Be careful where you show your heart."
He offered me a hand, I took it, and he pulled me up to my feet. Suddenly, I was afraid—what if anybody else had noticed, what if someone else caught on, just like Royce did?
"Don't worry," Royce said, guiding me to the porch—which had only about three or four people on it right now, scrolling through their phone, come pick me up?—"I don't think anybody else noticed. Too busy looking at other things. Brown kid like you is of little interest to people like them."
The only thing I could say was, "I'm not a kid."
"When someone says that, they sound like a baby."
"Shut up. Where's Hyun?" I asked him, blearily.
He sat me down on the bench, made me lie down, and I felt more like a child than ever. He was babying me. In another world—in a world where I was a man—he would've been my rival. But in this one, he was babysitting me.
"Who the hell is Hyun?"
"Korean guy. Guy with the green tank top and beach sandals." Without my knowing it, Royce had set me down on one of the patio benches Juliet had out on the porch, and I was already lying down. "Can't miss him. He's—wait, let me just—" I fumbled in my pocket for a bit, handed him my phone—"call him. Tell him I'm here and I'm going to die in five minutes if he doesn't get his douchebag ass here."
He called Hyun and conveyed my message perfectly, and then he handed me back my phone.
"I punched in my phone number in there," he said, "so call me if your friend doesn't show up."
"Thank you," I said, and I closed my eyes. "Thank you for being such a fucking charmer."
"I'm not a charmer," he said, "you've just got real low expectations."
"God, I wish you were my friend."
"Careful what you wish for," he said, and he patted my forehead. "I'm going to go now. Pressing matters. Take care, R."
How nice of him to shorten my name to one single initial—made me feel like the sidekick spy to his dashing detective—and the fact that we both had the same first letter to our first names just struck me, and I was about to point this out, make a joke (R2D2, like Star Wars, ha ha) but when I opened my eyes, he'd already disappeared.
So I closed my eyes and I was about to drift off into sleep, when suddenly someone shook me awake.
"God, you look so bad," Hyun said, cheerily. "Get up. Your mom's going to kill me, your father's probably going to think you and I had some sexy times, and I'd rather avoid all of that. Come on. We're getting you back home, E.T."
"That's not how the quote goes," I said, letting him help me to my feet.
"Isn't it? I don't care."
I started burping again. "I'm going to throw up."
"Did you drink any water?"
The question alarmed me, especially seeing as how it sounded so serious, and also because it was Hyun asking a serious question. He was frowning at me, and I was only now aware of the fact that he was holding me up.
"Oh," I said. "No. I don't—I don't think I did?"
"Jesus fucking Christ. You've been fasting for thirteen fucking hours, and you haven't had any water?" He looked seriously concerned. It was touching.
"I had a Pepsi."
"You absolute fucking cretin. There's a bathroom, here. Right here." He took his arm out from under my shoulders, and gently pushed me towards the door. "Drink some water."
"It's the baaathroom. I can't drink from the bathroom."
"I don't know where the fucking kitchen is, and I'm not going to fucking hobble around this house with you on my back to search for it and have you die by the time I get you to the kitchen sink. Get in there and get a drink. Use your hands."
I grumbled a little but stepped into the bathroom. Turned open the door, stepped inside, closed the door, locked it for good measure, and by the time I got to the sink and cupped some water into my hands, I realized that there were two other people in the room with me.
Juliet. Royce. Hands under each other's shirts, their eyes wide with shock as they looked at me. Frozen in the act. Scandal for the ages.
I was right when I thought that they suited each other. They did. I had to marvel at it. I didn't feel shock or anger, just a sense of inevitability. Of course. This made so much sense. What an idiot I was, to feel sorry for Royce. An even bigger idiot to compare myself to Royce, who stood there, his body pressed against Juliet's.
"Huh," I said, and I felt a grin creep onto my face. "Would you look at that. I thought you weren't her boyfriend. I thought you—" this I said to Juliet—"had a boyfriend."
Juliet pushed Royce away from her, and started buttoning up her shirt again, and regained her composure with remarkable speed. She did this often, I thought. Sneaking into little corners to fuck or make out with Royce real fast, and just as quickly, putting herself together fast enough so nobody suspected a thing. A real professional at this.
"It's complicated," she said, her voice high and colorless.
"Is it? It doesn't look complicated from where I'm standing."
She flinched, and it made me feel satisfied in a sick, perverse way.
"It's not like that," she said, as if my words stung her.
"Isn't it," I said. I stooped my head over my hands, drank in a large gulp of water, and instantly everything was clearer. The room, the situation, Royce looking at me—not with outrage, or confusion, not like Juliet—but curiosity. Waiting to see how I'd act.
"You know," I said to him, "I didn't really expect this of you."
"You have low expectations," he said, and with the barest hint of amusement in his voice, he added, "you should have kept them lower."
"Apparently." He wasn't mocking me or making fun of me as far as I could tell. The way he said it seemed more hey-now-isn't-this-a-situation rather than oh-shit-I'm-an-asshole-and-I'm-going-to-be-smug-about-it. I hated him for it. I wanted him to be angry, to be upset, to have any reaction that didn't make me feel like I was part of this.
"You won't—you won't tell anyone," Juliet said, "will you?"
"Why on earth would I give a shit?" I asked, and Juliet flinched again. I took one long last gulp of water from my hands and I turned off the faucet, stepped away from the sink.
I didn't care as much as I should have. This wasn't my place, or where I was supposed to be. This was stupid high-school romance drama, and as much as I would watch it or talk about it, I'd never meddle in something as stupid and needlessly complicated as this. Maybe I would care, when I'd slept, or rested, or drank more water. But standing there, under the light of the bathroom and the stares of two people I knew next to nothing about but now had extreme dirt on, I couldn't find it in me to feel anything that wasn't bone-deep exhaustion.
"You guys can get back to your like, making out or whatever the fuck you were doing," I said. "I say this from the bottom of my heart, and I mean it, but I could care less about this. You're lucky it was me."
Juliet glanced at Royce: can you believe this?
But he didn't glance at her. He was looking at me. Still with the same air of humor, like this was an inside joke between us. Fuck you, I thought.
"Lock the door next time," I said, and I heard Royce snort as I left the bathroom.
***
i've been sitting on this bad boy for quite sometime now :P idk if anyone still reads this shit but this stuffs mad fun