CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - FACING THE MUSIC

Dearest Nurse, I give you the final twist.

“Well, you were right in a lot of what you wrote… about what’s going on.” Romeo said, his voice coming in matter-of-fact through the phone, yet not as strong as I expected.

“I know.” I said, referring to the fact that he was still, obviously with Rosaline.

“But there’s something you don’t know,” He said, “and it’s why I wanted to talk to you. I put all of this in an e-mail… I was going to send it to you—“

“That’s okay. We’re talking now. Just say it.” It’s not that I didn’t have time for Romeo, but I did want to get this conversation over with. I had already moved on from my romantic attachment to who I thought this person was, and because he had read the project, he knew that too. I didn’t need to talk, but for some reason he did. And call it morbid curiosity, but I kinda wanted to know what this crazy, unexpected thing was that he kept alluding to.

“I’m an addict.” He said.

Silence.

He had said multiple times in multiple e-mails that there were “things I needed to know” and that whatever I thought was going on, I was wrong. At the time, I scoffed. It’s tough to shock a New Yorker. Anyone will tell you that. In spite of the fact that I wanted whatever his revelation was to be interesting - perhaps more for the purposes of this project than anything else - my expectations were pretty low. Gotta hand it to Romeo this time, though, because I did not see this coming.

“What kind of addict?” I asked, spinning.

My favorite half-hour episode of television is Panic in Central Park. It’s season 5 episode 6 of Girls, where Marnie’s marriage is going to shit. She desperately wants to be free of her husband, when she runs into the one-time love of her life. The boyfriend she had in season 1, that we had all come to love. The chemistry was still there. It seemed like magic, and they had an incredible whirlwind night together… only for Marnie to realize he was now a heroin user. In spite of how hard she had tried, she realized in that moment, no man could save her from herself. Her fantasies would never be reality, and all she could do was go home to her shitty husband and face the fucking music.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as gripped or moved by a TV show, and yet, I had never experienced anything like that. But who knows, maybe a part of me knew I’d need it some day, and so I never forgot it. That feeling of realizing that the only person who can truly bring you happiness, love, and security, is yourself.

“Pills and alcohol.” He said.

Yikes.

“I finally told [Rosaline] about it, and she was cool. Much cooler than I thought she’d be. And she’s willing to help me work through it.”

Ah. Okay. So, Rosaline was a lifeline. Great. But did she know what she was getting into?

“So, did you tell her about us?” I asked, thinking this had to be an obvious yes. I mean, even a narcissist couldn’t expect a woman to nurse them back to health without admitting they'd cheated on her… right?

“No… I haven’t.” He said.

B-wah?

“Are you going to?” I more or less demanded.

“Maybe… I don’t know.” He stammered. “All I ask, is that if I’m going to, I do so on my own terms.”

Own terms? Wait a minute… he didn’t think— he couldn’t—

“[Romeo], I don’t do the Jerry Springer shit.” I said, almost offended he could hazard a thought to the contrary. “I will never contact [Rosaline] for anything.”

“I know, I know…” He stammered again.

“But there is something you need to think about if you keep this from her.” I said, keeping my voice as calm as possible. “You exposed yourself to me. Now, I can’t imagine you’re suddenly having protected sex with her. If she gets herpes, not only are you going to have some explaining to do, you’re going to feel much worse than you already do.”

“No, no.” He said, prepared for this one somehow. “I have it, too. Remember? I told her about that already, and she’s fine with it.”

Wait, WHAT!?

My head was swimming. I couldn’t believe this. All those insecurities I had, all the times over the past month I thought Romeo would reject me because I had herpes, and this whole time he had it too? But how could this be?

“Wait. Then why didn’t you tell me that? In my bedroom, when you were inside me, and I stopped you. I told you I had herpes. Why didn’t you just say you had it, too?”

“I did tell you! Like sixteen years ago. I called and I told you!” He said, now sounding erratic.

“Yes, I know. But [Romeo], you had just gotten over shingles, remember? I called you back, I told you those antibodies can trip a test. We talked after that. You said you didn’t have it.”

“Well, I don’t know!” He shouted.

This just wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. I remember the look on his face when he was inside me, unprotected. The way his eyes went wide when I weirdly shouted I had herpes. I had told him years ago, but he had forgotten. It was not the look of a man who also has herpes. It just wasn’t. And if he did - if he knew he did - wouldn’t he have just said so? Right then and there? Yes. Yes. The answer is yes, because that's what humans do. If I was perceptive enough to sense Romeo had gotten back together with Rosaline by chapter four of this project, I could damn well figure this out. Plus, the time he came over after that, he bagged that shit up faster than you can say “Where’s the fucking condom?” Romeo was lying to me. But he wasn’t just lying to me, he was also lying to himself, and the reason why hit me in the head like a ton of bricks.

Romeo will do anything to convince himself that it’s okay to get Rosaline to take care of him.

Before this moment, I had some suspicions. Romeo didn’t want to break things off with Rosaline, but he felt like he had to make excuses for that. In fact, the whole beginning of the phone conversation had consisted of Romeo listing the many reasons he and I are incompatible. From his decision to never get vaccinated to the fact that he wants to try and have children.

“I don’t see what the point of this is.” I said to him, “You made your choice.”

“Yeah… but I want you to understand.”

I laughed.

“I understood a long time ago.” I said. “You’re not doing this for me, right now. You’re doing this for you.”

I was fed up. He was asking me questions like this was a dating show and he was the fucking Bachelor. Like I was auditioning for him, and when I made the mistake of actually giving him a deeply emotional, well thought-out answer, I distinctly heard the sound of him unzipping a bag, shoving things inside, and zipping it up again. He wasn’t even listening.

“Yeah… whenever you’re done with your bag… that would be great.”

“Sorry.”

Dude. Me too. Me. too.

Aside from the fact that he had read my post about burying him, he still found it necessary to lay out all the reasons why Rosaline was a better match for him. As if running through this would somehow provide me with a softer landing…? I couldn’t really tell. So, when he said the thing about being an addict, a small part of me thought maybe he was just making that up as a way to deter me. See, lady? You thought you did, but you don’t really want any part of me.

But when I realized his willingness to lie to Rosaline, to potentially give her a life-long, humiliating virus, and even try and have children with her under such false pretenses, my heart sank. It could be true.

My father was an alcoholic. Had been since I was in middle school, but he was so high functioning that I never caught on. Also, he had his habits. Habits I thought were normal, until Paris brought them to my attention.

“You know, your dad has vodka in that orange juice.”

“So what?”

“[Juliet], it’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

Yeah… in retrospect, the signs were all there. And those weren’t the only ones either.

By the time I was a teenager, my father started pulling away from me. If I was the least bit emotional about anything, a boy who dumped me, or a shitty test score, he would concoct a reason to walk away. When I started finding empty bottles under his bed, or in his backpack, he would lie. Tell me it wasn’t an issue, or that they had been there for a long time. He got mean. Finding ways to make me feel less than for no reason. Telling me I was of average intelligence next to my private school peers. That the TV shows I wrote on were bad. And whenever I would confront him about being drunk, even if I was trying to tell him I was there for him, it was all deny, deny, justify. It didn’t matter that he was talking to his only daughter. One that loved him more than anything. He did whatever it took to convince himself that what he was doing was okay. That he was still a good person, even though he threw the end of his career away, alienated his amazing girlfriend, and was losing me because of it.

I had given up on my dad when he called me one day to tell me he was an alcoholic, and was now in recovery. It has taken years to repair the damage alcohol caused in our relationship. To untangle truth from lies, and I still run up against that defensive part of him. That part that so desperately wants to feel moral, right, and deserving. He’s been in AA for four years and still hasn’t made amends to me. It’s too hard for him to face the fact that he wasn’t a perfect father. And it kills me, because I deserve that apology. I deserve it, and I deserve the truth… and I never thought I’d say this in a million years, but so does Rosaline.

Looking back, the signs were all there with Romeo, too.

I noticed something strange about him the first night we met up at that rooftop bar. The grayness of his skin and the slightness in the shoulders. The fact that the had aged more than I had expected. Certainly more than I have. I even wrote about it. At the time I thought perhaps it was a result of having gone through chemo, but I know better now. And that’s not the only weird thing he did that night.

“Where’s your drink?” I asked him when he came back from the bar with my second glass of wine.

“Oh, I took a shot at the bar.” He answered.

I cocked my head. A shot at the bar? Who takes a shot at the bar by yourself when you’re having drinks with someone? I mean, if you’re going to do a shot, you do it with the person you’re hanging out with, right? But also, what loony toon past the age of 30 does shots anyway? They’re fucking gross.

And then there was all the very un-Romeo-like “confusion”, hesitation, and general shadiness. He looked me dead in the eye and told me he didn’t want to have children with Rosaline, and that he was leaving her… and yet, the minute she caught on to something between us, he lied like a maniac and blocked me from his phone and social media. Pleaded with me to aid in his deception, handed me a bunch of vague, half truths about what was going on in his life, and then ultimately went crawling back.

I think there's probably more going on, here, but Romeo isn’t lying about being an addict. All the dots line up. And addicts are liars, every single one of them.

“I don’t know. Maybe the guilt will eat me alive.” He said, toward the end of our conversation.

“No, it won’t.” I said, because addicts don’t feel real guilt. I’ve loved one long enough to know that. “But those pills might.”

Because what I wanted to say to Romeo, but didn’t, is that as the child of an addict, I know his plan isn’t going to work. He is desperate and he is lost, and he feels he needs Rosaline to guide him out of the forest. She’s safe. She feels like home. And based on her crazy ass reaction to me texting Romeo, I’m guessing she probably loves him. A lot. But the truth is, Romeo doesn’t need Rosaline right now, or anyone else for that matter. Because what Romeo needs is a treatment program.

“I’m sorry, [Jules],” my dad said to me several times during his first year of sobriety, “but I can’t be there for you right now. Everything has to be about my sobriety. Everything. And I just have to trust that you’ll be there when I come out of this.”

It was like a stake in my heart. When he told me he was in recovery, I was so happy. My dad was back. The dad I loved like you can’t imagine, but vanished decades ago. The dad I thought was gone forever… but I still had to wait. I had to wait an indefinite amount of time, and just hope against hope, that I would get to see him again. That he would be able to hold me again, and unafraid of my tears, console me. See me without putting me down or lying to me. Love me. Truly love me again.

I have gotten my dad back, but it took a lot of time. A lot of time and work on his part, because no one else can bring you back from the brink. Those types of dependencies are unhealthy, and just add more toxicity to an already bad situation. If you really want to get sober without tearing an even bigger hole in your life, you have to do it alone. Go to meetings every day. Get a sponsor. And do it the right way.

Otherwise, Romeo, you are going to drown. And don’t you dare take that girl down with you. As fucked up as you are right now, you’re better than that. I know it, and so do you.

“Well, listen, I wish you all the best. I do.” I said.

“You too.” He said with a sigh. “And no more blocking.”

“No more blocking.” I agreed. “But you have to know… you can’t talk to me again.”

“Not for a while.” He said. “No.”

“Alright, well…” I hesitated, but something in me said fuck it, Juliet. He deserves it. “I was resisting saying this before, but… sorry about the recall.” I sang tauntingly, referring to the great big bust that was the republican attempt to remove Governor Gavin Newsom.

It was the first time in this whole, bonkers adventure I actually heard him laugh. A real, honest, belly laugh.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I bet you are.” Silly California republicans. Recalls are for kids. “Well, goodbye [Romeo].”

“Bye, [Juliet].”

And that was that.

Probably not the ending you were hoping for. Shit, it’s not the ending I was hoping for. At one point I honestly fantasized about Romeo showing up on Friday afternoon with a boombox over his head blasting In Your Eyes.

I’m not kidding. I’m a total goof.

But it’s the ending we got, and you know what? I’m not sorry. Not even a little. Everything turned out exactly the way it was supposed to for me. Romeo is in a world of hurt, but that’s his cross to bear.

And I know there’s still one chapter left to go. And you’ll get it, because this story deserves an epilogue. I’m going to take some time before I write it, though. I need to process everything. And honestly, I really need to get back to work. This project has taken over my life!

But before I do that, I am going to treat myself to a nice, long walk, and then I’m going to get myself all gussied up for my date with Plays Scrabble tonight. He’s bringing wine and his very own Onyx Edition Scrabble board over. Such a geek, and I’ll tell you something, dearest Nurse, I am totally into it.

Sincerely yours,

Juliet