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She pressed her lips together, stifling a giggle, and nodded, gesturing for me to continue.
“Anyway, he was hooking up with one of the lady officers, and …” I pinched my lips and shook my head. “Yeah, that was one of those inappropriate ones. We all pretended not to know, but, I mean, it’s hard to ignore the people fucking in the dorm bathroom, you know? Not exactly the most private place on the planet.”
Ray sniffed a laugh as she propped her chin in the palm of her hand. With a serene look on her face, she listened like I was telling her about cherished Sundays in my childhood or something. And I didn’t care to wonder if that was weird or not. It was nice to be listened to. Like what I was saying mattered.
“Anyway, Harry became my inspiration to do even better. He’s a good guy—the best really. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”
“How did you meet?” she asked.
“Well, I mean, apart from me getting there and him being in charge of performing a very,verythorough search of my body?” I smirked and sniffed lightly at my own feeble attempt at making a joke, but she didn’t laugh, and I quickly cleared my throat and shiftedinmy chair. “Um … so, I had, of course, seen him around. I knew who he was, and he knew who I was … but we never really talked. I didn’t really talk much, you know? I was more focused on, like, keeping my head down and not pissing too many people off at first.
“But after a while, it was my birthday. And it was also the anniversary of Billy’s death. And I, uh …” I diverted my gaze toward a mounted deer head on the wall and shrugged at its lifeless gaze. “I didn’t handle it well, I guess. It was like … I’d always known what I had been arrested for, what I was convicted of, but it never really hit me until thatparticular day.”
It was an awkward moment for the waiter to step in and bring our drinks with a muttered apology. After assuring us the appetizers would be out soon and he’d take our dinner order, he scurried away again. I figured he just didn’t want to prolong his discomfort by hanging around longer, and I wondered if maybe this wasn’t the time to talk about this.
Hell, maybe I shouldn’t ever talk about it at all.
“So, what happened?” Ray asked, stirring the straw in her Coke.
I shook my head. “No, you … you don’t want to know this shit. I shouldn’t have—”
“Soldier,” she cut me off gently, “Idowant to know. I want to know everything about you.”
It seemed unlikely that someone like her—beautiful in an understated and plain sort of way, innocent to the things I had done and seen—would care to know this shit, let alone sit here with me with the knowledge that there was a good chance she would kiss me later, as she had done every night for a couple of weeks now. Yet I had to eventually acknowledge that this was my reality, as surreal and good as it was, and Ray wanted to know about me.
So, with a little hesitation and a heavy exhale of anxiety, I picked up where I’d left off. “Okay, um … well, I had gotten into some shit with this random guy. I didn’t really know him. He … Idunno… he had given me alookor something, so I made a stupid, nasty comment, and—in any case, I got thrown into the hole for a week, which was …”
It didn’t take much thinking to put my mind back in that deafening, maddening cell of dark despair. The soul-crushing silence and solitude were, in itself, enoughto drive a man toward insanity if he wasn’t already there.
I shook the thought away and continued, “Anyway, I was in a bad place, and when I got out of there, it was worse. I thought more about Billy than I ever had, which is saying a lot, considering I thought about himpretty constantly, and it was driving me out of my mind. I felt like whatever I got in there, I deserved, so I was intentionally trying to mess stuff up for myself. Got into fights, got more time in solitary, and after a few months of that went by, Harry finally confronted me and asked what the hell I was doing. He told me he’d seen some real pieces of shit in thatplaceand he had never thought of me as one, so it was about time I pulled my head out of my ass before I got myself more unnecessary time. So, I listened.”
Ray rewarded me with a warm smile. “And the rest is history.”
“The rest is history,” I concluded as the waiter brought our appetizers.
***
Later, she asked, “When you were a kid, what did you dream your life would be?”
I told her very plainly, albeit depressingly, “I didn’t dream of anything. I just hoped my grandparents would live forever, but they didn’t.”
A wave of melancholy washed over her as she slowly popped a piece of grilled chicken into her mouth.
Then, she asked, “Okay, one more for now. Who was your best friend, growing up?”
And I answered simply, “Billy.”
That startled her, and I bit back the urge to confirm that, yes, I had inadvertently killed my best friend.
“I’m so sorry,” she said instead of saying the obvious, and I appreciated her response so much more.
Nobody had ever been sorry before.
Nobody ever was for the villain.
“Okay, my turn.” I rubbed my hands together, determined to make this at least somewhat interesting. “Um … so, why did you move to River Canyon?”
The steady connection of her green eyes was suddenly broken as she dropped her gaze to the plates of stuffed mushrooms and crab cakes. The hard, heavy swallows, shifting the muscles in her throat, told me I had made a mistake by asking. She clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and I made the safe assumption that it had something to do with Seth and his pals over in our old stomping grounds.
