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“Don’t worry, Parrish, I’ll tell you all about it at the playground tomorrow,” a voice that sounded like Ava Siegel assured him. “I’m sure everyone will be talking about it.”
The whispers rose to a crescendo, and the weight of so many eyes on me made me want to jump out of my skin.
Christ on a cracker. What had I done?
Amos Nutter stepped toward the front of the stage and shielded his eyes from the lights so he could see me. “Dang, Hunter! I didn’t even have a chance to read the part of Junior’s bio that says he’s gay. Do you have gold-star gaydar, or do you gay folks just recognize each other or somethin’? Either way… sold! Junior’s all yours.”
Wait. Wait. Junior was gay? So then everyone must be thinking I’d bid on him because…?
“Holy cannoli,” Alana leaned over to murmur in my ear. “I was just teasing you about bidding on Junior… and I guess you were teasing when you said you wouldn’t, huh? You just became a Biddin’ legend, Hunter, and snagged yourself a date with a hot, rich, gay Nutter to boot! The ladies of the Thicket will be talking about this for weeks.” She grinned and knocked her shoulder into mine. “You gave Mom her Christmas present a little early this year.”
Oh, shit.
My breath started coming faster and faster, and I turned away. I needed space. I needed fresh air. I needed—
I turned on my heel and bolted straight out of the community barn into the dark, cold night.
I needed to puke.
Chapter Three
CHARLTON
I stared at the double doors Hunter Jackson—a very grown-up and apparently gay Hunter Jackson—had just slammed through.
What the hell was happening?
Emmaline, who was working the donations table at the front of the room, waved a hand at Hunter’s retreating form. “Thanks for your winning bid, sweetie! Don’t forget to send your payment to [email protected]!”
The same lady who’d nudged me into the center of the stage only a minute ago now nudged me toward the steps. “Move along, darlin’. Your cousin Kandi’s up next, and she always goes for a pretty penny.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “Sings like a songbird, she does. Men are suckers for a lovely voice.”
I glanced at Kandi, one of the five billion Nutter cousins, who was all done up in a skintight cocktail dress that hugged her generous figure, plus full Marilyn Monroe hair and makeup. “Right. Definitely her voice.”
Kandi and I had never been close, but as I passed her, she shot me a knowing wink and tilted her head toward the doors where Hunter had disappeared. “Good luck, sugar. That one’s always been a handful, hasn’t he?”
I nodded vaguely as I made my way down the stage steps. Hunter Briggs Jackson, pride of the Jackson clan, heir to one of the largest landholdings in Middle Tennessee, beloved child of a fiercely protective mother whose eyeliner would be forever seared into my brain, had always been a handful.
We’d started out as friends in the way that all boys in the Thicket of the same age start out as casual friends, but something about Hunter had always drawn me to him. He’d been what Thicketeers would call a “boy’s boy”: confident and protective, hardheaded and competitive, hot-tempered and kindhearted, the kid everyone wanted on their team. I remembered being absurdly happy that he often seemed to pick me as his partner in crime, especially since I’d been on the shorter side back then, and I (or at least my dad) tended to be the butt of a lot of middle school jokes. In fact, if I were being honest, I’d idolized Hunter Jackson, in a classic “Do I want to be him or to be with him?” kind of way.
I’d solved that riddle pretty comprehensively in the spring of eighth grade after Hunter had bulked up from all the landscaping work he’d been doing around town to earn extra money after his family had a few hard seasons on their farm, and my heart had started beating double time every time I caught a glimpse of him. All that summer, I’d been a heart-eyed mess, pining over my friend’s string-bean biceps and peach-fuzz facial hair, hanging on every story he told me, stammering out my own confusion about my dad’s remarriage and soaking up the comfort he gave me, desperately wanting him to know how I felt about him while praying he never would.
Eighth grade, man. Fucking awful.
But worse than that was what happened that autumn when we’d finally started high school—the mortifying, misguided, misunderstood clusterfuckery that locals had apparently dubbed the Great Thicket Turkey Incident but which I privately thought of as “The Time I Learned That No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.” After that, there were no more heart-eyes, no more friendship, only disillusionment and dislike—hatred, really—until my mom and I moved away after Christmas.
