It was true that I’d thought of him every day, wished to see him just once, even from afar, wished for a phone call to tell me it’d all been an elaborate nightmare, wished for him. Now that he’d come, I’d sent him away. Any way I sliced it, it hurt.
I couldn’t let him stay after what he’d done, and I couldn’t bear to see him go, so I stayed right where I was, listening to the deafening silence of an empty apartment.
2
Lake
In my bathroom, a space I could barely do the splits in, the aftershocks of Manning’s visit reverberated through me. I was sixteen again, so giddy I was sick to my stomach, unsure of anything but my reaction to him. How could so many years of progress evaporate in under half an hour?
I finished fixing myself up. Corbin and I had breakfast plans, and I’d only come home from his place to change. I was supposed to be at the restaurant already.
I opened the bathroom door to throw on some jeans, but when I stepped out, I nearly tripped over a body. Manning was splayed on his back, a wrench in his hand as he worked under the radiator. “Hall closet,” he muttered. “I found the tools.”
The floor was as clean as it could get—I’d vacuumed and mopped the day before, all six-hundred square feet of it—but he was still on the ground of a New York City apartment. “You’ll get dirty.” Why did I care? I didn’t. I shouldn’t. “Why are you wearing that anyway?”
“What? A suit?” His eyebrows cinched together as he either tightened or loosened something, I couldn’t tell. He flicked his tongue over his lower lip. “I work for your dad now, out of the Costa Mesa office, selling pharmaceuticals.”
I let the information sink in. I hadn’t spoken to my father since I’d told him I wasn’t going to USC and he’d exploded with enough force to shift tectonic plates. It was a wonder he hadn’t caused the state of California an earthquake. Mom rarely mentioned Manning to me, but then again, that would’ve been hard to do in conversations that didn’t even last ten minutes. Tiffany had called me more in the beginning, but we were always interrupted before things could get too deep. I made sure of that. I’d assumed Manning was still doing some form of construction for my dad. Instead, he was pushing drugs at doctors’ offices on behalf of Ainsley-Bushner, a company my father had worked his way to the top of. “You’re . . . a salesman?”
“Pretty much.” His muscles strained his dress shirt as he worked. “You didn’t know?”
“No.” A tiny bit of my resentment fizzled. The job was all wrong for him. Manning needed to build things, if not literally, then in the sense that he was creating something to improve lives. He’d wanted to be a cop to help others, but since he could no longer do that with a record, I would’ve thought he’d have stayed in construction or tried some kind of social work. Even I could admit that despite how Manning had hurt me, his intentions had been good. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d suffered the past few years. “Why?” I asked. “That suit . . . it’s . . . I hate it.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “Doesn’t Corbin wear one?”
“How do you know that?”
“Your mom.” I rarely talked to my mom about Corbin, and because of that, she seemed to have fabricated some vision of our lives here. Or maybe it was Corbin who’d exaggerated things to his parents. He was always trying to convince me to visit home, to call or write, as if it was his duty. Our dads worked together, and although I doubted my father gave much thought to me or Corbin, it occurred to me that Manning might know Mr. Swenson from the office. “You work with Corbin’s dad,” I said.
“Yeah, but I don’t see him much.”
“Do you see my dad a lot?”
“Some days of the week. And Sundays for dinner.”
So they still had family dinner. Why shouldn’t they, just because I wasn’t there? “Oh.”
“He misses you,” Manning added.
Instinctively, I tensed, but I tried to calm my voice before answering. “He said that?”
“No, but I can tell.”
Of course Dad hadn’t said that. If he missed me, he had a funny way of showing it. He’d never once reached out. He’d probably removed all traces of me from the house. I assumed he’d taken down anything that reminded him of USC and turned my room into a gym or entertainment room or something.
“Do they know you’re here?” I asked. By they, I really meant Tiffany, but I didn’t want to talk about her at all.
“In New York?” Metal clinked against metal. “Yes.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
I waited while he continued to do whatever the hell he was doing. His silence said everything. Tiffany didn’t know he’d come to my apartment. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Neither was I for that matter—now I was really late for breakfast—but I had so many more questions for Manning. Why had he come? What would he tell them when he got home? How long was he in town for? Asking meant I cared, and Manning already held enough power over me. I couldn’t go back to that time in my life, when I thought I’d never move past him. When I’d spent what should’ve been my first semester of college trying to pick up the pieces of my life. The times Val had held me on the couch in the middle of the day, Ricki Lake in the background, a box of Kleenex clutched in her hand. She’d since banned any mention of Manning’s name in this apartment. If she were to walk in and find him here, she’d dropkick him all the way back to California, which was probably what I should’ve done by now.
“Your mom knows I’m seeing you,” he said finally. “But she’s the only one. She wanted me to take you to a show.”
“A show?” I asked.
“Broadway.”
Oh, how I loved my theater. It was a safe topic for conversation and one of the only things my mom knew about my life here—I went to the theater whenever I got the chance. Sometimes that meant skipping a few meals or letting Corbin spend money on me even though I hated to let him. For musicals and bright, flashing lights and once-in-a-lifetime performances, I tended to let my excitement get the best of me.
Not now, though. I made myself stand there not asking which show, waiting for him to finish.
Eventually Manning got up and brushed off his slacks. My eyes rose with him. “The whole unit really needs to be replaced,” he said as he fixed his tie in the reflection of the window.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll tell the super.” We’d told him plenty of times that our heat was broken, but I needed Manning to leave or I’d revert back to one of two people—the child I was before the wedding, or the shell of myself I’d been right afterward.
“What else—” He turned and stopped as his eyes landed on my hair, which was no longer pulled back. Aside from a trim and some highlights, I hadn’t changed it much since I’d left, even though Val always threatened to shave it off while I was sleeping to get me to shed my beachy image. I blushed a little as Manning followed the length of it, down to my breasts. “I . . .”
I had to tilt my head back to see him. It reminded me of all the times I’d looked up at him, hoping for any sign that he’d noticed me, salivating for breadcrumbs, convincing myself our secret glances and touches meant something. I wasn’t that girl anymore, but in only half an hour, that was what he’d turned me into.
He cleared his throat, blinking back up to my face. “What else around here needs repairing?”
“Nothing. Just leave it, Manning. Please.”
He flinched as I said his name, then reached behind me to check the lock to the bathroom—which was also busted. “I guess the question is, what isn’t broken?” he said.
A flush worked its way up my chest. My apartment wasn’t much, but it was mine. I’d flown across the country, despite a fear of airplanes, all by myself. I hadn’t even had Corbin to hold my hand since he’d returned to New York ahead of me. I’d done everything on my own—gotten jobs, apartments, student loans, and I’d enrolled in NYU with nothing but a couple hundred dollars I’d saved from a part-time summer job back home. I’d become a pro at keep
ing plants and goldfish alive and sometimes Val, too. “I’m sorry things aren’t up to your standards,” I said, letting the sarcasm drip.
“My standards?” he asked. “This place isn’t fit for the mice it definitely has. This neighborhood—no, this city isn’t you.”
“You might find it hard to believe, but I like my life. I’m free now. Nobody tells me how to live. Nobody puts me in a box. I drink, I smoke, I-I have s—” I stopped as his knuckles whitened around the wrench. As much as I wanted to rub sex in his face, I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “I’m not the golden child here, and my friends don’t expect me to be. Corbin doesn’t put me on a fucking pedestal and expect me to stay there to keep him happy.”
“That’s not fair,” Manning said. “All I ever wanted was to see you happy, to see you become everything you were supposed to, even if it meant shutting off my own wants . . . and needs.”
“Oh, right,” I said wryly, stepping back and nearly stumbling over Val’s rollerblades. I kicked them away with the heel of my boot. “Safe, cared for, happy. You wanted me to stay the sixteen-year-old girl you knew. You wanted me to go on living the life you thought was right—to stay close to my family. To be the prodigal child and live a sunny life in sunny California, and huh, that worked out well for you, didn’t it?”
He stared hard at me. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen.” He ran his hand over his face. “I didn’t . . . the choices I made . . . I never thought you’d end up worse off, that you’d leave home—”
“That isn’t my home. It hasn’t been for a long time. You made sure of that. You chose her, and you took that life away from me.”
“I didn’t choose her.”
“Then you chose yourself,” I said, my voice rising. “Either way, you didn’t choose me. You’ve lost any right to care or have an opinion. So don’t come in here and judge my life and say I’m worse off. How dare you talk about wants and needs when you went to someone else to satisfy them.”
He set the tool on my windowsill, his movements measured, his response slow, as if he were picking his words carefully. “My wants and needs were taken care of but never satisfied.”
“And what about mine?” I shot back. “I needed you, Manning. I felt like nothing and nobody without you.”
The radiator groaned, shuddering to life suddenly before it shut down. Manning also seemed to kick on, his face reddening as the muscles in his jaw ticked. “Does it make me happy to see you living like this? No.” He looked around the room for what must’ve been the tenth time, as if committing all the details to memory. Only now his brown eyes were full of something I couldn’t quite place. Pain? Regret? “I worried all the time, and apparently, I was right to.”
“It could’ve all been different. I would’ve done anything you’d asked.” I swallowed the lump in my throat in the silence that followed. “I would’ve stayed at USC and waited for you and loved you. It might’ve cost me my family, but look around. I lost them anyway. They don’t feel like home anymore. I don’t have a home. All I have is what you see here. Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why didn’t you stop it?”
“You know why,” he said.
“No I don’t. You kept telling me it was for the best. That it was to protect me from you. But when you married her, you shattered my world.” I gestured around at my things. The textbooks I’d worked overtime to afford, which sat on the bottom shelf of an IKEA bookcase I’d built myself. In the sink were wineglasses that’d seen many parties with friends I’d made when I’d just wanted to live under the covers and give up on people altogether. “These are the pieces, and they might not look like much to you, but they’re all I have. I’ve found a way to be happy. You can’t come back into my life and tell me it’s a mess when you’re the one who created it.”
“I knew it would hurt you,” he said, his posture sagging, “but I thought you’d pick up and move on and experience everything I would’ve held you back from.”
“I did. This is everything,” I said, shrugging with as much nonchalance as I could muster. “Look around. This is what you wanted for me.”
He pursed his lips. “You have to know I never thought you’d leave. That everything I do is because I . . . because—”
“Because what?” I got in his face. “If you still can’t say it after all these years, then get the fuck out of my life. You treated me like glass, but I’m made of more, Manning. You missed out.” My downstairs neighbor’s dogs barked, as if cheering me on. “You really missed out.”
“I know that.” He took a step and ducked to avoid hitting the ceiling lamp, the wood floor creaking under his massive frame. “Why do you think I’m here?”
I hesitated, caught off guard by the question and his nearness. “For work.”
“Wrong.” He towered over me. The intensity in his eyes bordered on heat, the kind I’d seen before, the kind I’d tried—and failed—to convince myself I’d imagined. “Work was an excuse to get to New York.”
No part of me thought Manning would come to New York and not check on me—but was he saying he’d come just for me?
I struggled for a deep breath I couldn’t seem to get. I’d pushed Manning many times over the years, but only that night on the beach had he ever let his emotions get the best of him. If I asked, would he really tell me what I’d wanted to hear back then? I’d figured out what I was made of over the years, but my heart hadn’t turned to stone. Could I even handle it? “You have a wife,” I said. “Go home to her, and don’t ever come back.”
“That’s what you want?” he asked.
My heart raced from being close to him again, all my instincts telling me to flee. “Actually, part of me wants you to stay . . . so I can call Corbin and give him the pleasure of kicking your ass.”
He winced. “Don’t say his name to me.”
“Corbin, Corbin, Corbin. You must be thrilled such a worthy man was my first kiss, my first love, my first . . .” I chickened out. “Do you get off on it, Manning? Do you fantasize about pushing me right into his arms, about all the ways he touches me, kisses me?”
As Manning’s eyes darkened, the room seemed to as well. He took up enough space to make it feel as if the apartment’s walls were closing in. “You act like I wanted this for myself,” he said. “I wanted it for you, but you don’t have to rub it in my face—”
“Why not? You forced me to stand there and watch you with her.” I pushed past him and started gathering up the assortment of tools, tossing them back in their cardboard box. I grabbed his blazer and coat from the loveseat and held them out to him. “Here.”
With his eyes on mine, he came toward me. In what felt like slow motion, he took his things, but I didn’t let go. He splayed his hand, and his fingertips accidentally brushed mine—except that he didn’t pull away.
Maybe it wasn’t an accident.
Goosebumps traveled up my arm. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m leaving, like you told me to.”
It wasn’t what I’d meant. Why are you touching me, I wanted to ask, but I was scared if I acknowledged it, I’d be unable to resist touching him back. “Where will you go?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He paused. “My hotel. For now.”
I held on—to his things, to his warm presence in the cold room, to the love rising inside me. He was standing in front of me again, as I’d often hoped for, but I didn’t know if I was allowed to want him here.
He tried to take his coat again. I clung to it. My chin wobbled. It wasn’t fair that she got him, that I had to kick him out when I wanted to get closer to him. After a few tense seconds of tug-of-war, he pulled the coat hard enough to bring me with it. “Lake.” The warmth of his presence turned to undeniable body heat. “You don’t really want me to go.”
“You can’t tell me what I want,” I said, my voice hitching as I stared up at him. “You can’t tell me what to do. I’m not sixteen anymore.”
“No, you’re not, are you?”
; I froze, caught off guard by the way his voice noticeably deepened.
His pulse quickened at the base of his neck. “All the ugliness I tried to spare you was for nothing. You’re not safe. You’re not loved, not the way you should be. Your family is gone. You’re not soaring.”
“I am, though.” It was a pathetic protest, but it was true. It’d taken me a long time to get to this place, and things were finally going well. A few days earlier, I’d graduated quietly with Corbin and Val and some other friends in the audience. They’d taken me out to an expensive dinner and we’d brought home cheap champagne. “I’m starting my career. I’ve got good friends, an apartment, and most importantly, a life of my own. I’m happy, Manning.”
We were face to face now, just the coat between us. He frowned. “Then tell me there’s not one thing in the world that can make you happier,” he said, “and I’ll go. Tell me you are truly content with all this. With him.”
I needed to lie. I needed Manning to go and stay gone if I had any chance of making it through this life. There was no point in dragging everything back into the light. What could it serve, except to break me again?
I couldn’t lie, though. Not to him. “I’m as happy as I’m capable of being,” I said.
“That’s not good enough.”
“It’s all I can do. It’s what you left me with. Maybe one day down the line, ten years, twenty, I can be truly happy, but without you . . . I don’t think . . .” His expensive shoes touched the tips of my ragged boots. We were closer than we’d been in more time than I could measure. My heart pounded in rhythm with an ache between my legs I hadn’t been sure I’d ever feel again. No part of my body wanted him to go.
Now, I could read the emotions in his soda-pop brown eyes—regret, pain, anguish. But under it all, I recognized something else that turned my legs weak. The day Manning had been released from jail and I’d stumbled into the foyer in front of him, the heat in his eyes, the hunger, had haunted me. I hadn’t understood it then, but I did now.
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 54
