A modern, gay retelling of the star crossed lovers, Romeo & Juliet, about two boys falling in love despite the burden the world and their families put on their shoulders.
[Extended synopsis inside]
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Chapter One | Home Sweet Home
It's going to be weird coming back home after living abroad for the past six years. These past few years at St Paul's all boys school in London really seem to fly by. It seemed like I just arrived not too long ago, and now I'm leaving just as quickly as I came, heading back to home to finish my senior year.
A part of me wants to be excited because I finally get to be with my family again, and not just during the stupid school holiday breaks, but then there's another part of me that's numb, because I'll be around my family again. The last time I was living at home things weren't exactly the best for me or my parents.
In entire life I don't think I can ever recall hearing my father say a bad word to or about my mother, but at her funeral he said, "My wife is dead, and everything is worse now."
I was only twelve at the time so I didn't really know what he meant by that. "My wife is dead, and everything is worse now." I didn't know why he said that. I thought maybe that's just the kind of thing you're supposed to say at a funeral. His words didn't really hit me until a couple of months after the funeral though. The house was more quiet, and not the calming kind of quiet, but the kind that's eerie and makes you sad, because you know you'll never hear that familiar voice in the morning that you've grown so accustomed to.
Without my mother around to lighten the mood with her pearly smile, and cheesy but laughable jokes, the entire house became trapped in this pool of somber energy. I barely came out my room anymore, and my dad just seemed to walk around like a ghost, only ever acknowledging my presence at the dinner table— that's even if he bothered to show up for dinner.
Eventually, alcoholism came as escape for him. He never had a sober day if he could help it. He did everything drunk. He drove, shopped and went to work drunk. He never had less than four full bottles of Gin and a case of beer in the house. That was his emergency rations and he immediately went shopping if he reached that level. Yet he would never describe himself as an alcoholic. He figured he could quit anytime he wanted to.
As much he'd hate to admit it, he was an alcoholic. Months of alcohol abuse had left his cheeks rosy and his mind dull-witted. He knew drying out would be a painful process and he had no intention of ever going through it. He was determined to stay drunk until he died, and that's why when the offer of me attending St Paul came up after getting kicked out of Stanford middle school, I couldn't refuse. I couldn't bare to lose another parent before my very eyes so I left him before things could get worse. It was then that I realized what he had meant all those years ago.
My mother is dead, and everything is worse now.
They say a bad parent was a traumatised child, caught in the fires of their own suffering, their thoughts more hurricane than poetry or soul. I guess that's right, and is part of the reason why I left. I didn't want to be one of those people that carries on their parents trauma. I've seen it happen too many times and I didn't want it to happen to me, so I left.
