My true first love

by meerkat.panda

Rosaline was never my first love, and Juliet was never the second. Juliet was the third and Rosaline the second, because there was this one person who I'd loved before I'd loved either of them, and that person was still in my heart. They'd always be special to me. That one person was life and existence, and even though I knew we could never be together I still hoped, and I dreamed.

Juliet is, was, and will always be my third love. My second was Rosaline. My first love was unlike the other two in probably almost every way humanely possible. My first love wasn't even of the same gender as the other two. I still loved him, but I knew that we could never be together, not now, not ever, at least as lovers. However, I didn't love him as a lover anymore. Over time, I'd learned to love him a different way. I'd learned to love him as my best friend, my companion in times of need, and a strange friend who had a curious way with his words. My first love was still my constant companion these days, but he was different from me. He was my exact opposite personality-wise. When I was six years old, I met him and he stole my heart. Before I met Rosaline, nothing had cured me of my love for him. Rosaline never loved me back though, and then Juliet came along. She is that best thing that's happened to me, and she's the only one who can keep away the darkness gnawing its way through my heart.

-Fourteen years ago-

I was six, I was walking along my street humming a tune and listening to the birds and bees sing. That's when I bumped into another boy. He was ginger, with beautiful bright red hair, freckles, and the most gorgeous ocean blue eyes I'd ever seen before. His features were the opposites of mine, and where his hair was bright red like the color of a desert sunset, my hair was chocolate brown as were my dark eyes. My chocolate eyes looked into ocean blue eyes and I quickly mumbled my apology. The other boy cracked the widest grin I'd ever seen and laughed. "You're fine. It's my fault, really. I should've been watching where I was going." His white teeth gleamed in the moonlight and I wondered how anybody around this area had teeth that white. They were gorgeous. After a minute he stuck out his hand "Hi I'm Mercutio. I'm eight. Who are you?" After a moment's hesitation, I stood up and shook his hand. "Romeo Montague." I replied. "Nice to meet you. Do you want to play a game?" he asked. Since I didn't really have anything else to do then I nodded my head and asked what it was he wanted to play. His eyes twinkled as he said "Hide & Seek. You hide first."

He began counting and I started running my mind abuzz. Where could I hide? As I rounded a corner, I realized that there weren't really any ideal hiding places. So I kept running and turning corners, going down alleyways, and going around in circles. Soon I heard a shout come from some distance away. "Romeo Montague, I'm going to find you!" I heard Mercutio shout. A few seconds later another shout from the same voice broke through the usual bustle on the streets and reached my ears. "Dang it! Where are you!?" I heard him shout with slight traces of annoyance in his voice. He was getting closer, and the strange thing was that I wanted him to find me. He made hide and seek fun. "Romeo Montague I'm going to find you!" I heard his shout from just around the corner of the street I had turned onto to. He was going to find me, and strangely, I found that I wanted him to. His next words came from right behind me. "Found you." He whispered into my ear, and I turned around to face him. I was in the shade, while the sun was gleaming off of his bright red hair. We were on a deserted alleyway, and nobody else was around.

He leaned in and kissed me. My arms wrapped around him, and I kissed him back and he was the light and I was the dark and he was beautiful and I was plain and he was aggressive and I was not and he had an exciting personality and I did not, but in that moment I realized that I loved him. His arms wrapped around me hugging me closer to him and I was on fire, and it felt so good. He broke away first gasping for breath before pressing his lips to my cheek and whispering "I love you. Do you want to go eat some spaghetti with me?" So I wasn't the only one who thought that this was love at first sight. I breathlessly replied "Sure" and Mercutio's face lit up into the most beautiful thing I had ever seen before. I knew then that I would never be whole without Mercutio. I needed him and he needed me and we needed each other and we were perfect together. We shared another kiss of infinite bliss together before walking out of the alleyway into a spaghetti shop.

The spaghetti shop keeper knew my family well, as he and my father were friends. When he saw me he laughed aloud and gave me and Mercutio each a giant heaping plate of free spaghetti. We sat down outside the shop right on the beach coast and watched waves crash against our feet and the sandy coast while eating the delicious spaghetti the shopkeeper had so generously given us. There wasn't much activity at the shop, so the owner had said that we could enjoy our spaghetti down by the beach. My feet and his feet were both in the cool water and it lapped up to my ankles before sizzling away. Mercutio was wiggling his toes in the sand and he had his arm around my shoulders, and my arms were around his shoulders too. To anyone who hadn't known that we'd been kissing each other in the streets two minutes ago, we just seemed like best friends hanging out on the beach.

I was enjoying my spaghetti when I felt Mercutio next to me start choking on his spaghetti. "Ro-me-o" he choked out and I quickly put down my spaghetti and promptly proceeded to freak out. That's when a memory emerged from my mind and I used CPR to save his life. He looked up gratefully into my eyes and we made out once more. After a while he picked up the plate of spaghetti and threw it into the ocean. "Take that spaghetti!" He shouted as he watched it vanish. I laughed, giddy with happiness. "Oooh let's have a competition!" Mercutio declared. I shot him a puzzled look wondering what kind of competition he wanted to have. "Let's see who can make the better sand castle." I'd never liked building sandcastles, but when it was Mercutio declaring the competition, I couldn't help but feel a little competitive. "I'm going to win!" I said. He laughed at that and then abruptly stopped and said "No, lol." An evil gleam had entered his eyes that just made me want to skip into the sunset with him, but I had to win this competition with him first.

I started building mine, and he started building his, and every once in a while we'd shoot looks at each other and burst out laughing. The sun was shining down on both of us, and the waves crashed against the shore in a relaxing rhythm, almost like the ocean was laughing with us. After a while, I got so caught up with making mine that I forgot that I was competing against Mercutio. I head a whisper in my ear say "Romeo" and I jumped about seven feet in the air before saying "Good god Mercutio, did you really have to do that." He put on an angelic look and said "Darling, your face is red." I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks and I turned back to my castle, shot a look at his, and merely said "I'm winning." Mercutio replied with a shrug.

After another hour, both our castles were finished, and I had to say, they both looked grand. Mercutio looked at both of ours, and then declared that he had an idea. "Let's build a bridge between then, to show our friendship." I felt my anger rising at that. "Friends? Is that all we are?" Mercutio brushed a strand of hair away from my face and said "Lols don't take everything so seriously I mean gosh you're such a drama queen what the heck Romeo, of course you're more than a friend." I smiled shyly at that, and we built out bridge together.

Weeks and months passed, and I'd never been happier to be by anyone's side than by Mercutio's. We made sure that we were careful, and that everyone around us just saw us as two really good friends. We knew what happened to those who were considered different. We meet up in dark alleyways, and even though people came to know about the dark alleyways, they never questioned it, instead choosing to believe that we had a liking for cats and danger. We'd spend hours just talking, and I felt that if there was one person I could really be myself around, it was him.

One day, we were talking in a dark alleyway. "And can you believe it? Some random lady called me cute and pinched my cheek! It's so annoying when that happens!" I was venting out some random anger to him, and he looked at me and said "But you are cute! You're so cute I could kiss you." I looked at him and said "Then why don't you?" He did, and when I looked up, I looked straight into the eyes of the shocked Friar. My jaw dropped, and Mercutio looked at me and said "What is it?" I turned his face towards the friar, and within a millisecond, his jaw had dropped too. However, he was a lot better at regaining his composure than I was and before I could blink, he looked perfectly normal. The Friar spoke "What's going on here?"

Mercutio acted like nothing had gone wrong, and I took his lead, hoping it'd work. "Nothing, we're just talking." I seconded him by saying "Yeah." The Friar said "I know what I saw, and if you boys think you're covering it up by acting innocent, then you're wrong. I mean really can you be any more obvious? Puh-leez. I'm the freaking Friar of this freaking city of Verona do you really think you can fool me?" He said all of that with a derp face, so it was really hard to take him seriously. Then he continued without a derp face "Both of you need to come with me. I won't take you to or tell your families about this, or let them find out, but you both need to follow me now." Seeing as he was the friar, it wasn't like we could just refuse. Plus, he knew our secret, so we followed him.

He lead us to his house, and told us to sit down. We did, and he began pacing in front of us. "Gay marriage isn't legal yet. It's not going to be legal for, oh who knows another 500, or maybe even 600 years! What am I to do with you two? You're lucky I found you! If it had been someone else, they'd be shouting for your execution by now! What do you two think you're doing? Do you even know what love is? I'm pretty sure you just both love each other as friends. Nothing more. Two people of the same gender can't be anything more in this day and age. I'm sorry I had to be the one to break this to you, and at the same time, I'm the one grateful that I'm telling you this. You can't be lovers, you can only be friends, comrades, and brothers. Nothing more. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." As he finished speaking, I saw a tear out of the corner of his eye. "No. No you're wrong. You're breaking up love and you know it. You can't do this. YOU CAN'T DO THIS!" I was practically shouting, and Mercutio had gone white-faced. He looked up at me and it was like the fire in my heart spread to his, because he stood up too. "OF COURSE WE KNOW WHAT LOVE IS. WE LOVE EACH OTHER, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?" We were both practically shouting with rage, and the Friar quickly hushed us. "You know that you'll be executed if anyone finds out. You know that. I don't want to see either of you get hurt." He was crying in front of us, ashamed of having to break up our true love all because the society around us didn't accept it. I grabbed Mercutio's hand and ran out of the house.