Wyatt cocked his head, thought on it, then started to laugh. “Yup, I remember. Hm, guess bodyguard fantasies run in the family.”
“Guess so.”
“To be fair, I was being bullied pretty bad, and having you walking next to me in an oversized suit from Walmart and some cheap glasses really did the trick.”
Roman nodded, remembering some of the taunts they’d hurl at Wyatt. He was an easy target for them. Skinny, quiet, slightly awkward, swimming in great grades, and seemingly allergic to any sports.
Plus, him being openly gay didn’t help much. Not back then, when kids actively sought the biggest, brightest, most colorful targets to hit. Roman had found Wyatt to be one of the bravest people he’d ever met, and he inspired Roman to come out himself. At the time, Roman was a quarterback of a (very modestly) successful high school team and had a line of cheerleaders trying to get with him. When news spread that he was out and proud, the school was rocked.
More so when he showed up to first period holding the hand of a boy who’d had him fixated from the very first day he laid eyes on him.
“Now I’m the one rescuing you,” Wyatt teased, turning his honey-brown gaze out the window. The train entered a tunnel and created a mosaic of dark stone blurring past.
“You are,” Roman said. He wasn’t even joking about that. His sincerity carried on his tone, causing Wyatt to look over, curious. “There’s something you don’t know about, Salt. Something that happened to me in the time you were gone.”
Wyatt sat up, his thin brows furrowing. “What happened?”
Roman rubbed his forehead. This was heavy, much more so than anything he’d opened up about in the past. But he had to get it off his chest, lifted from his heart. He needed to tell Wyatt what happened.
“My uncle wasn’t the only important person I’ve lost. There was someone, a man. Harry ‘Torpedo’ Montenegro. We met working one of my uncle’s jobs and became inseparable. I started feeling things with him that I’d only ever felt once before, and that scared me. It really fucked scared me, because I also knew how much it hurt when things didn’t work out. Like a fucking stab directly through the rib cage, over and over again.
“But I let myself fall. Harry and I got together three months after my uncle passed and were together for two years. We were working a job in Brazil, having the time of our lives, when I decided to act on some bad intel. Walked us directly into a trap set up, and only one of us made it out alive.”
Wyatt blinked away some of the shock. Roman didn’t want to hurt Wyatt by telling him this, about him being with another man, but he couldn’t stay silent about it, either. It was a part of his history, molding his current actions; it was only fair for Wyatt to see the full picture.
“Damn, I’m sorry,” Wyatt said, his hands forming an anxious bundle in his lap. Was he upset? “Really, I am.”
“I don’t want to hurt you by telling you this, you know that, right?”
“I’m not hurt.” Wyatt shook his head, eyes locked with Roman’s. The train rode out of the tunnel, and the car filled with a warm glow from the setting sun, its rays slashing over the peaks of a verdant green hillside. “I’m completely aware of the fact that our lives kept going even after we weren’t together. I’m happy you told me, actually. I want to know, about everything. I feel like there are so many blank pages between us that need to be filled.”
Roman grinned, unable to stop himself from wrapping an arm around Wyatt’s shoulders. “Let’s fill them, then. What’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you since we’ve been apart?”
“The funniest thing… hmm. I guess when me and Julie were at the grocery store and someone thought I was Andrew Garfield. She started to relentlessly hit on me until she saw Julie and thought she was my girlfriend, to which Julie replied, ‘Absolutely the fuck not. He’s my brother, gay, and is more like Andrew Gar-meadow than Andrew Garfield.’ Yeah, I’d say that’s been one of the funniest things.”
Roman gave a hearty laugh at that. “I do see the resemblance, though.”
“Yeah, whatever. How about you? What’s the funniest thing that’s happened?”
Roman clicked his tongue and tossed around a couple of memories, landing on one of the most vivid ones. “Probably when Bang Bang and I were in Santorini, on a break between jobs. We were partying on a yacht when Bang Bang tells me he was disappearing to go hook up with someone he’s had his eyes on, so I give him the good-luck slap on the ass and send him on his merry way. Ten minutes later and I hear a commotion. Turns out someone brought a goat onto the yacht, and it ended up bursting into the room, causing him to run out naked and scared. I locked the goat in a bathroom, and we became best friends ever since.”