13
During a swim, we had a game of volleyball where I skinny-dipped and the boys made fun of me.
Rome stuck to the shallow end of the pool and assisted me as best as he could from there.
He wasn't much help though, as his phobia of the water made him slow, and he was overly cautious of every step.
We lost dreadfully. After we rinsed off and got dressed, I was determined to do something about it.
"Mate, that was shit. That can't happen again.”
He shrugged at me, standing across our bed.
"Don’t give me that! They'll never let uz live it down!"
At that, he lay back across the center of the mattress with a laugh. "I did my best, Rafe, what're you on about? I can't be as quick as you boys, you know that. I'm not drownin’ over some stupid game, mate."
"I know, I know..." I said, pacing back and forth and knocking the heel of my hand against my head. "What if I taught you to swim?! Like right now? Like today!"
"There's nothin’ you can teach me that the instructors haven't already, yeah? It's useless, man. Just forget about it."
I lay across the bed beside him, the opposite way. "Well, we have to do something, alright? We can't just give up, y'know? That's what they want uz to do. What if your life depended on it?"
"On us winnin’?"
"On you swimming, ya knob!"
He sat up and looked down at me like I had a point. He was tired though. His eyes always got dim and heavy this time of evening.
"Um, well I suppose I'd be fucked then, right?"
"Only if you give up and accept it."
"Then what do you want me to do, bro?" he smirked, humoring me like a petulant child.
"I say we go downstairs, find my old floaties, then tomorrow before we start filming, you and I go out and start from scratch."
He let out a tehehe sort of snicker, burying his face in the mattress. It was ridiculously adorable. I slapped his bum and started out the door.
"C’mon!"
“Where we goin’?”
“The cellar!”
"Why don't you go alone, bro, since you know so much?" He propped onto his elbows.
"You’re coming with me!"
"You scared or somethin'?"
"No..."
"Rafe..."
"Alright, look...there's bugs down there, and it's really dark since the sun's setting. I just need you to come with, ok?"
The cellar was as large as the house and filled with old furniture.
Suits hung about and looked like great men towering in the shadows.
The entire place had the off-putting smell of a thrift shop, peppered with decades-old mildew.
My dad had made narrow aisles to pass through to the opposite end of the house where things were a bit more orderly.
As we made our way through piles of old newsletters and boxes stacked as high as the ceiling, Rome grabbed ahold of my shirttail.
Instinctively, I reached back and held his hand a little.
No sense getting lost on this mission. He stroked my fingers absently, and instead of setting my nerves at ease, it made them feel frenzied.
Pushing forward through total darkness was frightening, but proved far less alarming than the heat swirling around my belly, elicited by his touch.
A touch he probably didn't think twice about, which I was now obsessing over.
He drew so much out of me without thought, and I couldn't help but wonder if I was capable of drawing anything out of him.
Halting beneath an unclad light fixture, my fingers slipped from within his, leaving me cold all over. When I pulled the cord, nothing happened. Not a single spark of electricity to illuminate the next few feet. That meant we had to make our way to the second fixture as the shadows deepened.
"You good?" Rome whispered, noticing I’d slowed.
"All good," I whispered back, trying to recall where the second switch was from memory. I could barely see my hand when I waved it before my face, but sensing his pressure behind—listening to him breathe—was reassuring.
"Got it!" I triumphed, pulling the chain.
A weak light filtered throughout the next few feet, right to the threshold we called the courtyard.
There, the cellar opened into what looked like a town square tiled in red.
It used to be a bar, and the stools still lined the outer side of the bar-top in cracked leather upholstery.
"Sickkk!" Rome laughed, slipping behind the counter and searching through the old glassware.
I heard him popping the top off an empty decanter while I rummaged.
Then I heard him sneeze a few times as he kicked up dust. After the third sneeze, I gave up blessing him and told him to get from over there.
He joined me at the boxes and we carefully took them down one at a time, searching for any sort of flotation device.
There were heaps of old postcards and Polaroids in each box, and when Rome found a camera, he watched me through the viewfinder with his signature half-grin.
"Can't believe he keeps all this stuff," I muttered, sitting in the center of the square with a box of old photo albums.
"Where's it from?" he kneeled on the floor across from me, rummaging without relent.
"Trips from his childhood. Stuff from his family and old jobs. This place used to belong to his father—"
"Haha check this out!" He handed me a photo of a brunette woman with big glasses and a poof of curly hair. "Tell me that's not you, Rafe!"
"It's not!" I laughed, stuffing the photo away. Then I self-consciously tucked my hair behind my ears. “I’m getting there. It’s weird now, sure, but once it gets past my shoulders the curls will smooth into waves and you’ll see the vision. It’s all about gravity, mate.”
I was at an awkward stage in my hair growth journey, where the only way to tamp my mane down, which fell just past the jawline, was to flatiron it and smooth it with product.
I was going for Orlando Bloom, early 2000s, but the result was unfortunately giving Lord Farquaad.
Or worse, Anton Chigurh. I was damned if I do, damned if I don’t, because if I didn’t straighten it, my curls could get quite voluminous, bordering on the absurd.
Plus, the other boys teased me relentlessly whenever the humidity hit.
Soon he found another photo of my dad at the beach smoking a cigar and called it "G-shit."
"We're gonna be here all night," I despaired.
"The other bois are probably like: 'where the hell did they run off to?’" he laughed, the tip of his tongue poking between his teeth. "We forgot to tell 'em, yeah?"
"They'll figure it out soon enough."
"Man, I love it here. I love explorin'."
It was the single most adorable, unguarded thing I’d ever heard.
I blushed as he delved deeper into the box, oblivious that I was doting on his every word.
When he glanced back up and looked me in the eye, brow furrowed, a warmth filled my core.
I was uneasy being this heartfelt with a mate. He eventually flushed and looked away.
"This place is cool..."
"Think so?" I toyed with the tape on the edge of the box. It reeked of old age and damp.
"Apart from the dust."
"Yeah..." I laughed. "Apart from that."
He looked at me again and we got quiet. His gaze drifted unhurriedly to my lips, and back up again to my eyes.
When he did it a second time, I could almost hear what he was thinking.
I clocked the languor in his gaze and the pulse of my own heart.
I licked my lips to moisten them, just in case he looked down again.
I wanted—no needed—him to like whatever he was seeing. No idea why.
Watching me relentlessly, he reached over and rubbed the back of his forefinger down my cheek, so tenderly I could barely tell he’d touched me at all. Now he stared at me through hazy slits, dragging the back of his finger along the underside of my bottom lip.
I pulled my lip into my mouth, biting it self-consciously.
My arms and legs began to tremble with anticipation.
Cocking his head with a curious smile, he pulled my lips apart with his thumb and let the fingertip stroke their pillowy warmth.
Before I knew it, he was leaning across the box and pressing his mouth to mine, sucking my bottom lip between his.
My stomach dropped. I nearly panicked, listening as he pulled away—our lips separating with a tiny smack. It was earth-shattering. It was raw. It was a sound I was only used to hearing with girls.
Roman. Rome. My mate. My older brother. Rome.
He’d kissed me. His lips were warm and softer than I imagined.
Somehow, I’d claimed the power. I stared at him with unearned confidence.
The self-assuredness bestowed when you realized you're desired. That he thought of me in that way demystified him for the first time since we’d met.
He looked down, fumbling with the box again.
I took the time to envision him in a new light.
One that made me recognize the luster of his dark hair, the curve of his nose, the sheen of his bottom lip—his gorgeous skin.
His fingers were long and unspeakably pretty.
The nailbeds smooth and unmarred. They looked rather adept, laying absently on the edges of the box that separated us.
I thought of him fingering girls with a lucidity that made my stomach drop.
Remembering the pressure of his kiss from earlier, I became jittery. I wanted it again, but he looked remorseful.
"I can't feel my legs," I muttered, trying to break the ice.
"M'sorry…"
"Don't be," I smiled softly. "Don't worry about it, alright? It was strange…but nice."
"Nice?"
"Yeah…and uh, look…things don't have to be weird between uz either. It was just a thing that happened, ok?"
He nodded.
And just like that, the magic was dispelled. Reality set in and we remembered we were sat in the middle of a dusty, bug-infested cellar. I got up when I saw a centipede, and after he killed it, we walked hand in hand back the way we'd come—floaties long forgotten.
***