Page 5 of Romeo

I opened the door, and waiting outside stood Dante leaning on the wall across from the restroom. Damn, if he wasn’t handsome. “What took you so long?” he said. “Let’s go. I’m getting behind fucking around with you.” He stepped forward and looked at his large expensive watch.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” I questioned once I strolled near him. I’d been feeling sorry for myself. Feeling sorry that I was so dumb and stupid that I would allow myself to be in this kind of situation. It had been a bad year and it was getting worse, because nothing was working with Dante the way I thought. Nothing had been working in my favor for so long that I felt this could be the worst year of my life as the year was coming to an end.

Maybe the next year will be better, I thought.

“Keep it positive,” my mother would say. Yeah that was easy for her to say. No one was trying to kill her if you didn’t count my father. Because living with him had been a death sentence, but people of her generation thought it was their duty to stay together.

I brought that thinking into my relationship with Dante. But as he’d said, “What relationship?”

“The only thing I have to say to you, Romeo, is keep your mouth shut and you might live longer.”

“Well, fuck you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’d planned on doing the moment we arrived at my cabin, but it appears that I can’t trust you.”

“You can’t trust me,” I snapped. Who was he kidding? If he thinks I’m going to fall for that again, he’s in for a big surprise. Although I could indulge him one more time, and if he was as exhausted as I thought, and looking for something to take the tension off, then we’d see. We’d see.

I glared at Dante with his dreamy eyes and drop-dead gorgeous face and that body that wore clothes like a model, and I hoped for something I knew would never happen. How many times would I fall for a man who had threatened to kill me, had my hands bound, and had my mouth duct-taped to shut me up.

This looked like an ending to a bad movie where after I’d been fucked from ear to ear, I was lying in bed waiting for my Prince Charming to return and fuck me again. Instead, he dumped a shovel on the bed, and told me to dig a hole in the basement.

I’d seen too many of those movies and I was not falling for that shit again. He couldn’t screw me again because he pretended to want me, and I fell for it. It was a good thing my mother didn’t raise a fool. Well, not quite a fool. On a scale of one to ten I’d say I was a three. Somewhere between an idiot and halfwit, I thought.

How could you maintain all your senses when you fell for a man who was so handsome and had the biggest satisfying cock you’d ever come across, and you were strangely attracted to him, because he’d threatened your life, and every time he did that you got hard for him, then you were an idiot like I’d said.

When I came to my senses, Dante had said something to me that I completely ignored and caught the last two vowels of my name... “Romeo.”

When I heard him, I stopped and narrowed my eyes. “Well, make other plans, because the moment I can run away from you, I’ll take it.” I didn’t mean to let him know what I was thinking, but what the fuck did it matter? Where he was taking me, I’d probably die in the woods before he found me, if I managed to escape from him.

I’d resigned myself to my fate. I deserved whatever I got for being so stupid. I thought that was the last thing my father had said when I told him I was going to New York.

We marched on to the car and Dante stopped and opened the door, then glanced at me. “Did you hear what I said. No you didn’t.” I’d heard him, but I didn’t give a flying fuck. Was I supposed to be happy because he wanted my body? Was I supposed to kiss his ass because he was going to fuck me before he took care of me? I didn’t think so. What did I have to lose by telling him what I thought of him, or anything for that matter?

Nothing.

“I don’t want to talk to you. I never want to talk to you, you cold-hearted bastard. Now leave me alone to enjoy my last moments of seeing this beautiful sunset.”

I thought as Dante entered the car and we drove off headed west. “You know you are a drama queen.”

“Don’t call me that either. You’ll probably be a queen before I am. Now, leave me the fuck alone and don’t talk to me or expect an answer from me until we get where we’re going.” He didn’t smile at me again, but continued driving, and I stared ahead, angry at myself and wondering how this could have been so different if I had walked out when Dante warned me, and I could have met him under different circumstances.

Chapter 4

Romeo

When I entered the car, I hopped into the front seat and Dante drove for a few miles when Willie Nelson’s song played on the radio, “There’s so much to do since you’re gone,” he sang, but I didn’t recognize that song. My father was a fan of Willie and when he drank there was never an ending to him playing “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” I thought he played that song for my mother, and my benefit. For his to let her know that he had a life before her and to torture my mother because he wasn’t her first choice.

Some dude in the next town had been the love of her life and my father came in second. I didn’t think my mother got over that dude, and who knew I would have been his son, I thought. I was an afterthought when I’d stroll in late at night and that same CD was playing and he’d glare at me with his drink in his hand, and said, “Do you hear that? You could be loving a girl, but you had to find some man to...” And he never finished the sentence, but turned and sang with Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias.

When my mind fell on those nights I caught myself before I fell down that rabbit hole and looked at Dante before I reached and changed the station.

“It’s enough of this shit,” I yelled. “Who wants to hear there’s so much to do since you’re gone.” And I hit a button changed the station, and Taylor Swift’s smooth voice rang throughout the car, “You’re Losing Me,” Dante stared ahead, then furrowed his brow, until I began singing over her song, putting special emphasis on, “You’re losing me.”

Dante turned to me after hours of not talking, and miles of grunts and displeasured moans. “What do you call that shit? I think that’s depressing.”

“What kind of man are you? Who could find anything about her songs depressing? You don’t understand them, because you’re too—”

“Old. Is that what you want to say?”

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