Chestnut brown.
The eyes from my dream.
I was stunned into silence, frozen on the porch as the boy approached.
“Ray? Ray is that really you?” he asked, looking right at me.
I looked up at King whose expression had completely changed from troubled and weary to angry and vengeful. He was staring daggers at the boy. His jaw tensed so hard I swear I could hear his teeth grinding.
“Who is Ray?” I asked King.
“Don’t fucking do this,” Bear snapped from the doorway.
“Go the fuck back inside,” King barked.
“Fine. It’s your fucking life. Fuck it up more than it already is. Preppy would’ve kicked your fucking ass for this. I’m going to visit my sister. I can’t stick around and witness this shit.” Bear stepped out onto the porch and pecked me on the cheek. “Love you, pretty girl,” he said before disappearing around the side of the house. A moment later, his bike whizzed by, kicking up dust in its wake.
“You,” King finally answered. “You are Ramie Price.”
“Ray, don’t you remember me?” the boy asked. “I’m Tanner. Don’t you know who I am?”
I turned to King. “What is this? Who is he? Why is he here?”
“He’s your…boyfriend.” He forced the words off his tongue like they were stabbing him in his mouth.
“My what?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “You knew he was coming?” Then, it hit me, and I sucked in a strangled breath. “You knew who I was?”
King didn’t say anything, but most importantly, he didn’t deny it.
“How long have you known?” I whispered.
King looked down at his shoes.
“How long have you fucking known?” I shouted.
“Since the very beginning,” he admitted. “Since before I came for you again after you escaped.”
“Escaped?” Tanner asked, reminding me of his presence.
“The entire time?” I asked, feeling as if he just stabbed me in my chest. “You knew who I was this entire fucking time?”
“What the fuck do you want me to say? I’m a shit person, and I do shitty things. You knew that. I fucking told you that, but you went and fell for me anyway.” He ran his hand over his head in frustration. “Well, it’s over now. Welcome to your new life. Or I should say your old life,” King spat.
He lowered his eyes. “You deserve better than all this shit anyway.” He waved his hand toward the house. “You deserve better than me. You’ve got a family. Go be with them, and forget I exist.”
His eyes darted down to Tanner who stood in the front yard with confusion marring his face. He glanced back and forth between me and King.
“What’s going—” Tanner started to ask.
“Shut the fuck up,” King snapped, effectively silencing the boy.
“That is NOT your decision to make,” I told him. “You don’t get to say where I go or who I go with.”
“Actually, it is,” King argued.
“What the fuck does that mean? What the fuck did you do?”
“Ray!” the boy shouted over our argument.
King looked down at him as if he were going to leap down the steps and crush his skull with his hands.
“Come down here,” Tanner said in a gentle voice. “Just for a second. I just want to see you. Talk to you.”
I looked back at King, and it dawned on me. It wasn’t my decision to make because he was giving me away.
That’s what last night and this morning were all about. He was saying his goodbyes.
King nodded to me as if to say I had his approval to go talk to Tanner. I rolled my eyes at him. I didn’t need his fucking approval.
I tentatively descended the stairs one at a time. When I got to the bottom, I sat on the bottom step. “Do you know who I am?” Tanner asked, crouching down and resting his hands on his knees.
I shook my head. “I recognize your eyes, but nothing else,” I admitted.
“As I said, my name is Tanner. We’ve known each other our entire lives. We were homecoming king and queen all four years of high school,” he said with a chuckle. Then his face grew serious. “I love you. You love me. Always have.” Tanner blushed and rocked back on his heels. “It feels weird to introduce myself to you when we’ve known each other since we were in diapers.”
“Who am I?” I asked hesitantly.
Tanner took a seat on the step next to me, careful to keep some distance between us. I didn’t need to look back at King to know he was watching Tanner’s every move. I felt his gaze on my back as if they were rays of the sun singing my skin. Tanner smelled like the beach. His unruly hair fell into his eyes. He brushed it out of the way as he spoke. A huge smile spread across his face, revealing a dimple in his left cheek.