The First Last Boy(4)

Chapter Two

TANA



I walked back inside the house with my lips still tingling from Ryan's  kiss. Kisses that gave a girl butterflies and caused her heart to race  were things that happened in movies, not in reality. Yet, here I was, no  doubt with a stupid grin on my face, dealing with butterflies and a  racing heart. When I'd put my hand on his chest, I'd felt the solidness  of his muscles and the strength there. My legs had quivered and I'd been  surprised at how I'd pushed up against him without even thinking about  it. It was a little surreal that we were going to cross the line of  friendship to lovers.         

     



 

When I'd first met him, I'd been caught up in such a dark, heavy space  in my head and I couldn't see a way out. After Dad supposedly lost all  the money, I'd foolishly thought nothing would change. I'd assumed that  I'd still be at the private school I'd attended with all my friends and  my boyfriend, Tristan. I'd thought I had people in my life that I could  count on.

But after my family's fall from grace and the ensuing scandal and  humiliation that followed in the wake, all my friends except for Shelby  had stopped hanging with me. Then the phone calls had ended. They were  busy going from one party to another. Shopping. Gossiping. Ruling high  school. And I was officially the poor outcast, emphasis on the poor. My  social standing took a nosedive and Tristan had broken up with me on  social media. After neglecting to clue me in first. I'd seen pictures of  him and his new girlfriend trying to swallow each other's tonsils on  Instagram.

Reeling from the all-guy's-suck pain ripping through my heart, my  parents splitting up, losing our home, and the worry about how we were  going to survive without money, I'd gone to the park. I'd tried to get  rid of the gnawing hurt in me by pounding my hands over and over onto  the ground until my skin cracked and blood oozed out. What I'd hated was  that I couldn't make things better for my mom or for Mark. I was used  to always making things better for them, often running interference when  Dad was in one of his tear-everyone-down moods. I was helpless to ease  Mom or Mark's heartache. I could handle struggle if it was only me doing  the struggling. But I hated seeing them suffer. Hated seeing the  wounded, little boy hurt in Mark's eyes when he'd asked to live with Dad  and been told that he wasn't wanted. The whole awful mess had played  over and over in my head and that's when Ryan had found me.

His eyes had held concern and a banked anger as he'd crouched down  beside me and gently placed his hand on my shoulder. I'd jumped at the  sudden contact and gasped when I'd seen him. With the fierce look of a  warrior and the darkness in his eyes, he'd scared me at first. But then  he'd told me that I was safe, that he wouldn't let anyone hurt me. I  knew what he'd mistakenly thought and I'd wanted to correct that. I'd  ended up pouring my heart out to him, thinking he was a guy I'd never  see again. But then I'd run into him at school a few days later.

"Better?" was all that he'd quietly said and I know it sounds stupid,  but I'd recognized in that breathless moment that we were meant to meet,  meant to become friends. We'd sort of stuck together since then.

Ryan was more than my anchor. He was the missing piece that I didn't  know had been missing until my life had intersected with his. Maybe I  did just want to lose my virginity so I could experiment in college  without that hanging over me. And maybe, deep down in an area of my  heart that held the kind of secrets I lied to myself about, I wanted my  first time to be with Ryan, the guy who made me feel protected, who'd  given me hope when I'd lost mine. I still couldn't believe that he'd  said yes. Though I'd asked, I don't know that I really believed he'd  agree to it. I didn't think there was any way he'd want me. Kissing me  on the porch had disproved that when I'd felt the hard length of his  erection pushing against me.

Walking into my room, I noticed that everything suddenly looked  brighter, better. Beside the bed, I had a photo in a frame. Picking it  up, I traced the swirling designs around the picture. Ryan and me.  Smiling. The world at our feet. Taken on the unsanctioned-by-the-school  Senior Cut Day, we'd blown out of town with a group of our friends and  gone to see an indie rock band playing at a club just over the line in  Indiana.

It was the first time that Ryan and I had danced together. And when our  bodies had touched off and on throughout the dance, I'd felt something  different, something sharper, edgier than friendship that made my mouth  go dry. But Ryan being Ryan I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I'd  been too chicken to act on the urge to kiss him.

I was glad later that I hadn't. When we left the club in the wee hours  of the morning to head home, we'd brought an extra passenger. One of the  girls from the band who couldn't keep her hands off him. I'd known that  Ryan had a reputation but I hadn't ever had to ride side by side with  one of his sexual partners before. She'd kept her tongue in his ear and  her hand inching up his thigh and I'd felt knots in my stomach. He  hadn't even noticed that I'd disappeared into my shell and there was no  way that I could have told him why I'd gone quiet.         

     



 

Shaking off the memory, I stripped down to get ready for bed, wondering  if tonight Ryan would be thinking about what it would be like to be with  me.







RYAN



It took an hour to get home after I left Montana's house. Normally, it  was a fifteen to twenty minute drive, but I needed the call of the road  to clear my head. Four wheels, the sweet night air blowing in my window,  and an empty stretch of asphalt calmed my churning thoughts, fooling  the demons waiting to drag me back to who I'd once been into thinking I  had a handle on my life.

Sometimes, those demons were ones others set on me. The foster mom who'd  locked me in the trunk of her car every weekend while she got drunk at  bars gave me the demon of drinking to forget. The foster dad who liked  to heat spoons up on the stove and then stick them to my back gave me  the demon of rage. Those demons made me feel like I was bits and pieces  of a puzzle that others had put together. Sometimes, they were demons I  unleashed on myself. Those were the hardest ones to live with because  they made me hate the guy I saw in the mirror. I exhaled, blowing away  the thoughts. I didn't like thinking about the guy I'd been. The way  he'd treated people, the things he'd done to stay alive wasn't who I  wanted to be.

Eventually, I turned around and headed home. In my neighborhood, on the  wrong side of Southtown Freeway, empty lots intermingled with the  occasional abandoned home wearing plywood in place of windows and doors  that had become Caldwell, Michigan's trademark.

I lived with three other foster boys in Mama Leena's two-story house.  The house, built in the late 1800s, had blue-gray siding and was one of  the better homes in the area. Everyone in the neighborhood referred to  it as "that house with all those kids." Over the years, the home had  seen dozens of kids come and go.

Leena owned a successful temp service helping companies find employees.  The Michigan Chronicle did a story on her for one of their Who's Who  features several years ago when she'd run for county council. She was  known to take in foster kids who didn't have any other place to go and  she didn't give a damn what our skin color or story was. She had two  rules. Don't break the law and don't mess with her teenage daughter,  Destiny.

When I pulled past the crooked tree and into the driveway, Juvante, the  foster brother I was closest to yelled my name from his spot on the  porch. Cooper was beside him and raised his chin my direction. From the  time he'd been born, Cooper had only been known by the name Bastard. He  was six before he'd learned it wasn't his real name. He'd been found  living in a closet in a house that had made Mama cry when the social  worker had shown her the photos. By the time Mama Leena adopted him when  he was a teenager, the hardness of the street had taken almost  everything that was good in him the same way it had me.

Cooper, Juvante, and I ended up on the wrong side of the law for shit I  didn't get involved with anymore. Not since I'd seen a friend bleed out  right in front of me and learned that while blood washes out of clothes,  it never washes out of the soul.

Juvante made a dash for me, grabbed me around the shoulders and screamed  in a falsetto. "The boy is home from chasing girls. Knock anyone up  today?"

I gave him a hard elbow jab to the ribs. "That's your life story, not mine."

He shook his head and grimaced, rubbing his side, looking sheepishly  between Cooper and me. "I told y'all she's lying. There's a reason they  call that girl Gym. She's so loose she can take in the whole damn team  plus all the spectators." Laughing, he sobered up quickly when the  screen door flung open and Destiny yelled out that he had a phone call  from a girl. Juvante had girls chasing him like he was a rock star.