Wherefore Art Thou Romeo? ✓

epilogue

EPILOGUE
i hope you enjoy. thank you for being here.

Winter 2019
(1.5 years after twenty three)

THE SNOW HAD stopped. Outside the diner window, the sky was black and almost starless, and the ground was coated in a thickening layer of moonlit, grey snow. It brought to the world a kind of stillness, a kind of quietude that could never be found, only realised. Everything outside was more distant than it had been when he'd entered some hour before.

After staring into the darkness, the stillness, for some time, Romeo turned away from the window and returned his attention to his copy of Maurice, occasionally jotting down slow, cursive notes around the page. He took a sip of his latte, set it back down, continued to read and continued to write annotations in his smooth, loopy handwriting.

It was quiet inside. The diner was almost completely empty. The only other customers were seated at the back of the restaurant, too far back to be heard properly. Other than the waitress occasionally breezing around and Romeo's pencil against his book, there was no sound. It was a surreal kind of experience. It was like being inside a dream.

That was the feeling that had first washed over him when he'd walked in. The last time he'd been to the diner, it had been with Rodney. He was almost surprised to find that it still existed, that it had continued to live on in the exact same way as it had when they were still together. Back then, it had seemed impossible that the world could keep turning, that everywhere that was significant to them hadn't collapsed in on itself like they had. When he entered the world again, he had almost expected to find a supernova.

But the diner was unchanged. The same star was still burning. The only difference was that he was not watching it with Rodney.

It hadn't been a long time since he'd thought of him. He didn't think of him frequently, but he still sometimes thought of him when he saw certain movies, certain books, certain animals; when he saw boys that looked more like wolves than boys, boys that he'd expect to have cut knuckles and blood in their teeth. He didn't think of Rodney nearly as much as he used to think he would, but still thought of him when he was home from college and had thought of him while he was driving to the diner. Choosing to come to the diner seemed to him like a kind of morbid curiosity, to see what kind of effect it would have on him.

He thought of Rodney because of course he did, but it didn't hurt the way it used to. He wasn't overwhelmed with the sudden urge to sleep for a long time or to cry until he couldn't breathe. Most of the time, his attention and interest were seized by his book and his notes, but when he looked out of the window, a memory struck him. Like one dream crashing into another.

He was reminded of the first night that Rodney had taken him to the flower garden. When they'd come to the diner for something to eat in early winter and the night had been dark and still, and the diner had been quiet and almost empty, and the ground had been coated in that silver snow, muffled crunching beneath their shoes when they walked along together, frozen hand in frozen hand. When he really thought about it, he could still feel the ache in his bones, could still feel the cold in his feet from when they'd trekked in the snow and climbed over the fence. It was the first memory he had of Rodney's tenderness. He realised with a start that that memory was two years old and felt a vague ache in his chest. He returned to his book again without hurry.

There was a kind of tranquillity that he'd been carrying inside of his chest ever since he'd arrived home. He'd dawdled idly through every day, unhurried and relaxed no matter where he went. There was a kind of objectivity, a kind of ease that had possessed him, that didn't have the same cold removal of detachment. It wasn't like not being able to feel anything, it wasn't like emptiness or grief. It was the first time in his life that he'd felt that he was finally in sync with the world. It was the first year in his life that he'd lived without trying to define himself through somebody else. It was the first year in his life that he'd allowed himself to be single, that he hadn't ached for love in every desperate corner, that he hadn't felt the loneliness in his ribs.