12
Muse's "Sing for Absolution" had been the soundtrack to my falling.
I could still feel the lyrics as potently as when I listened every night before drifting asleep.
In the days leading up to the week at the bungalow, Roman was just another mate.
Funny, obstinate—intellectual. Hands down the smartest among us, which meant sometimes his humor was more sophisticated than ours.
He was also misunderstood. Mostly I noticed how introverted he was.
What it meant to be an introverted person had escaped me before I met him.
I had been under the impression introverted people lacked personality.
I quickly discovered I was wrong, and that they simply withheld a great deal of themselves until they were around those they trusted.
It became my mission to always be that person for him.
Unlike the others, he would eventually need a moment alone to recharge.
Sometimes he fell into pensive silences that made him seem twice his age.
Only then did I realize how good he was at pretending.
I knew he was quiet from our time at the academy, but seeing him switch on and off for us, emulating the mood of the moment was fascinating.
Over time I learned he was not fond of being studied.
Sometimes he would leave a room because I or the others would stare at him whenever he became moody.
I could never tell what he was thinking from one minute to the next.
He liked to put his headphones on and zone out a lot, and this angered me.
I took it as a snub, assuming he felt superior to us, when in reality he just needed doses of solitude to feel balanced.
Then there were the things that made him seem exactly our age.
Like his phobias and vulnerabilities, all of which reminded me he was human.
Right away we learned he didn't know how to swim, so we looked after him whenever we used the pool.
Sometimes we tried to teach him, but he was always too paranoid to let us get close in the water.
Ultimately, he kept to the shallow end and had his fun there.
"Really, mate?" Alex had marveled, after Rome first informed us he couldn’t swim. "Didn't they bloody teach you that in P.E.?!"
Offended, Rome insisted that they had, but he couldn't catch on.
"What about when you drink it?" Alex persisted.
"I'm not scared of drinkin’ water..." Rome scoffed. "Just scared of like...loads of water."
From that moment on, each time his fear of swimming came up, we vowed to help him overcome it. It was brought up again at the bungalow when we planned to use the pool the first day.
"Then we'll teach ya, mate, don't yous worry," Levi assured him, slinging an arm over his shoulders. "I know how it is, being the odd man out, believe me. I’m scared of heights…and sporks, as it were. No one understands us."
"Fanks, bro."
"RJ, mêt, you can just sit on me shoulders! Alright, butt? " Nathan laughed, turning red in the face. "I'm only saying! Jesus, even babies can swim, mêt!"
"Easyyy..." Levi cautioned, watching Nathan double over. "Steady on, mate, before you give yourself a heart attack!"
Later we sat around the fire on the patio and discussed everything from aliens to food to music to the first time we ever met.
Nate started a farting experiment, trying to see if he could get one to explode over the fire.
His laughter rang crazily into the night and was so contagious I was doubled over wheezing before I knew it.
Rome snickered behind his sleeve. Levi moved his chair from downwind.
"Sometimes I can't believe our luck, yeah?" Rome piped up when we grew silent. There was nothing but the tranquil sound of the wind and the crackling of the fire, and now his soft, strange accent.
"Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I’d slept in y'know?"
"Off to uni, mate," Alex chuckled. "Simple as that."
"Yeah, I suppose. But afterwards, y'know? What would my life look like?"
"Didn't you say you liked English?" I asked. "Couldn't you have done something with that?"
"Yeah, probably…"
"But you didn't sleep in, lad, and that's what matters!" Alex concluded, trying to set a twig on fire. Levi got up and stoked the fire with a metal grill fork.
"The! Next! Big! Thing!" Nathan yelled, mimicking our vocal coach from the academy after he found out we’d stuck together. "Haha you 'member that?!"
"Mate, how can anyone forget?" I replied. “We heard it every week.”
"You 'member dem weird haircuts we had?" he continued, running his hand over his limp blonde hair. "Whose was the worst?"
Everybody piped up, arguing and debating, and finally we settled on Levi.
"Fookin’ helmet hair," Rome laughed until he coughed, remembering Levi's awful fringe. "You looked like...like a fookin’ woman, yeah?"
"Like a Karen..."
"Bieber hair," I added with a grin.
"Screw the lot of you!" Levi swore, launching marshmallows at us from the near-empty bag.
***
Rome didn't say much, but I clocked everything about him, because he intrigued me like no other.
Science fiction and poetry and philosophical works filled his luggage.
He even looked through my dad's shelves until he found something of interest, which was a book on Catholicism. According to him, the iconography was sick. I asked if he had read all the Harry Potters since he’d brought two with him to the house, and he said he had.
He gave me the first and third books to read, since they were the only ones he had on him at the time.
His musical tastes were vastly different from ours, which was exciting because I loved interrogating people about their favorite artists and top ten songs of all time.
I could recall sifting through a box of his old mixes and CDs at his mum's house just months before we headed to the bungalow in autumn.
Leeds. I was mad for that place. Mad for the boy it had birthed.
He and I had spent so many weekends exploring its old quarters and ethnic hubs, mapping every square mile of that place year after year.
For me, it was like a homecoming, and I longed to be there now.
I hadn't seen his parents or sisters since 2015, and that was a shame.
One of the best evenings of my life had been spent in their home in the dead of summer.
His place always smelled like hearty food, scented candles, and women's cologne.
Women ran that house. His mum, his sisters, tons of female cousins, and the army of aunts who he lovingly called his ziettas.
Everyone liked to accumulate in his yard after the band took off and Rome had become known around the neighborhood as ‘the one who made it out.’ Everyone gravitated toward him then, a local hero who quickly overshadowed the decorated WWII veteran down the road.
The old man who yelled at kids for bouncing basketballs on the pavement outside his window.
His family always treated me warmly, as if I were their own.
I was at ease among them, despite being miles from all familiarity and surrounded by peculiar accents that bordered on dialects.
To visit his home was to enter another world entirely, one of urban enchantment, new cultures, incredible cuisine, and religiosity.
I missed them dearly as the years flew by, almost as much as I missed the sound of his voice or his footsteps outside my hotel room door.
On my first visit in the summer of 2011, when we’d grown a bit closer, Rome took me around to all his favorite haunts, like the fish and chips spot around the corner, his favorite convenience store, the used bookstore he liked to get lost in, and finally the local gym where he’d learned to spar with pro-boxers.
They’d even given him a summer job before he got sucked into the world of music, never to be released again.
Later that day on my, we ventured back to his place through the golden hour; baptized by a light drizzle that darkened the streets.
We listened to music all night on the floor in his room, making up a coordinated dance to Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl" and staring nervously into each other's eyes.
Alternatively, he was teaching me to draw, or we were discussing our progress of learning the guitar.
Longing to stay the night, I said goodbye when my ride came and rode over an hour back home. He never once left my mind.
Staying at the bungalow with him and the others reminded me of our days at the academy, where he compulsively brushed his teeth before every show and was self-conscious about using the toilet with us nearby.
In those days, he smiled a lot with his entire face—cheeks, chin, eyes.
Sometimes accompanied by a breathy, mellifluous laugh.
But he was also notoriously moody, and we learned straightaway he was not to be tested.
The bungalow only offered two bedrooms. The master housed a king-sized bed that could fit two, with room enough for an air mattress for a third body.
The second room held a double bed which would fit two, although it was a tight squeeze, and no additional room for an inflatable mattress.
Since all of us were too chicken shit to sleep alone in the living room on the ground floor, we decided to make do, meaning two of us would have to share the smaller bed.
There were major pros and cons to sleeping in each room.
The master suite had the only other working telly in the house, apart from the one in the lounge, but the second room offered the more tranquil sleeping arrangement.
I settled for sleeping in the second bedroom since I was used to rooming there whenever I visited, and the boys decided to play rock-paper-scissors to see who’d get stuck with me in the room with no telly.
Nathan lost, so we spent one night together before he got fed up and said I fidgeted too much in my sleep.
He forfeited his spot the next morning, rattling off a long list of protests against rooming with the likes of me.
Without hesitation, Rome stepped up to replace him.
"I won’t mind," he volunteered, ignoring Nathan who cautioned him against what he was getting himself into.
I was shocked, since I thought I’d annoyed him on the trip. He had barely spoken two words to me.
“Sure about that?” I asked.
"Yeah, no big deal. I'm used to your snorin’ by now anyway, Rafe."
I grimaced. The thought of sharing a room with him alone made my stomach knot for reasons I couldn't understand. We’d never been alone together overnight before.
Sure, he had come to hang out in in my hometown a few times and I’d likewise gone to Leeds, but we never stayed the night.
Back in London at the shared apartment building, we all had our own flats; but now he and I would be totally alone together all night.
Separate from the others. A lot could go wrong.
The first night we spent together went off without a hitch.
We watched videos on his phone and he later slept like a rock, fully clothed and facing away from me.
I thought he smelled like toothpaste and fresh laundry, which was better than Nathan who smelled like the brick of garlic cheese he’d scarfed down after brushing his teeth for the night.
He also slept with his mouth open and snored like me, whereas Rome was the total opposite.
Had I not felt his warmth, I wouldn’t have known he was there.
He slept so soundlessly I could hardly tell if he was breathing at all.
And I didn't want to annoy him, so I kept as still as possible, even when I needed to shift to get more comfortable.
I took extra caution not to brush his body in any way, not wanting to weird him out.
The next morning when I woke, he was still asleep, so I left the room and joined the others upstairs.
They were still in bed but had gotten tea and were watching cartoons.
Later when Rome joined us, he stood by the edge of the bed and ruffled Levi's hair. A strange sensation came over me. He called him ‘curly sue number two,’ both because it rhymed and because I was ‘curly sue number one.’ I was so used to him absently petting and admiring my hair that to see him do the same to Levi made my blood boil with a sense of betrayal. I didn't realize I was glaring until he glanced my way with one of his squinty-eyed smiles. It was an unspoken ‘good morning’ since I’d left the room early. Now I felt bad I’d been thinking ill of him.
Later we all gathered downstairs, and breakfast was served by the film crew.
McDonald's Egg McMuffins and Hot Cakes aplenty. My mum stopped by and made sure we had everything we needed, and played a game of Monopoly with us between shoots. She also made us clean up the messes we’d made earlier, and ensured we kept our shoes off the furniture.
The second night of our stay, Rome was less aloof.
We ended up chatting for a while in the dark, staring at the ceiling until he dozed.
This was the night I realized he sometimes mumbled in his sleep.
Little indecipherable sighs that bled from his dreams whenever he didn't have his thumb jammed between his lips.
I stayed up to listen a while, slowly dozing as well.
The third night was when it all changed.