Was there even a choice?
Of course I picked black. The colour of my father's heart. The colour of all of his lies. The colour of the bottomless pit that I was sinking in if it wasn't for the glimmer of hope that I wasn't truly alone in this world.
Passing my road exam was a breeze. It came as effortlessly as the wind combing through my hair while I drove my new convertible to school. The real test was to cope with living in a house where everything looked picture perfect on the outside, but was actually the breeding ground for an endless amount of dark secrets.
"And Miles... be sure to invite your, uh, boyfriend to dinner this weekend. Your mother and I would like to meet, uh, him."
His words looped in my head over and over again. Fine, I'll play Dad's game. But could such a gesture make up for the years of screaming and yelling? Could it be the balm to apply on the ugly bruise forming on my back? The answer was no. The answer will always be no. Why was I too blind to see it? Things will never be right at home, not after the last stunt that he pulled.
Completely bypassing the school's parking lot, I start to circle around the school until I find the blond head of hair belonging to the boy who I fell for a week ago, the only one who could make everything okay. I had only one card left to play and I could not screw this up.
Pulling up at the curb I could feel that all eyes were on me, but I didn't care because there was only one person who I was focused on. The one person who wasn't looking back at me. After some mindless chatter with Zoë and Maya, I decided to just go for it.
"He wants me to invite my boyfriend over for dinner. That is, if I still have one."
Tristan's eyes finally met mine and in that instant I knew I did something right. The soft look that he was giving me was one that I already knew by heart. It was the exact same way he was looking at me when I admitted that our kiss during the storm was a good weird.
Defining what we were was important to Tristan and now I understand why it was so important to talk and figure things out. Between the fling he had with that granola-cruncher he once mentioned in passing and Creepo Yates, Tristan had never had a real relationship where his partner would outright call him their boyfriend with pride. As I lean in to kiss him, I couldn't care less who was watching or what they were thinking.
He was mine and I was feeling good again.