“And by then it was too late,” I said. “He’s such an asshole.”
He turned back to me. “He has a shitty way of going about things,” he agreed, “but he’s not a bad guy. Not really. His intentions are usually in line with mine.”
My head shot up. “You’re defending what he did? He pushed you and Tiffany together because he knew it would keep me away from you. Don’t you see that?”
“I saw it right away,” he said. “That first time he took me in his study and got me to agree to a summer wedding. I’ve spent a lot of time with him the past few years, though, Lake. You’ll be surprised to hear he and I are pretty close.”
I laid my head back down, concealing a scoff. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say any of that.”
“It bothers you?” he asked.
“Obviously. I would really rather you cut off all ties with him. Leave that dumb job and all of it behind.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” he said. “I’ve gotta sell my half-finished house and hire a lawyer and God knows what else. Fuck.” He pulled the sheet off of us, disentangling from me.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I need a cigarette.” Seated on the edge of the bed, he snatched his suit pants off the ground and dug through the pocket. “This is the longest I’ve gone without one since I went to jail.”
I curled up on my side, watching his back as he hit the top of a pack of cigarettes on the heel of his palm. He peeled off the plastic. “Don’t,” I said. I had no handmade bracelet to offer him anymore, just a plea. “Don’t smoke.”
He glanced back at me, eyebrows drawn, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth like the day we’d met. “I won’t be long.”
“You’re leaving?” As soon as I said it, I realized why. “You still won’t smoke in front of me. I’m old enough to fuck, but not for secondhand smoke?”
He reached back and slid his hand over the curve of my hip. “Fuck, Lake? You think it’s safe to say that around me?”
From the heated look that one word got me, I figured there was a way I could get him to stay. “Every time you crave nicotine, we can fuck instead,” I said.
“You wouldn’t survive it,” he said. “I’m afraid you won’t as it is.” He pulled the sheet up over me just under my neck. “Stay warm. I’ll be ten minutes, max.” He stood to get on his pants without even bothering with underwear.
As he started for the door, I stopped him. “Smoke here. You’ll freeze downstairs.”
“Look, Lake,” he said, turning back. “It’s not about your age or being too innocent. I don’t want to ruin your crystal-clean lungs.”
“You did it in front of Tiffany, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, so what’s that tell you about how I feel? Smoking is a part of me, and so are you. It’s not easy keeping the two separate.”
I sighed. I could see him getting frustrated, so I dropped it. “Anyway, that wasn’t what I meant. I was going to say, use the fire escape.”
He looked past the bed, out my window. The metal landing was situated halfway between my room the living room and was big enough for just a couple folding chairs and a stool. “Is Val home?” he asked.
“I doubt it. She sleeps at her boyfriend’s place almost every night.”
Manning rounded the bed, and I turned on my other side to watch him. It could take me up to a minute to work the window open, and I usually had to get Val to help, but Manning pulled it up with ease and climbed outside. He closed it almost all the way, then tilted the chair to dump snow over the edge before he sat. He took up as much space as Val and me put together, his bare feet nudging the metal edge, his head bowed to avoid hitting the frame.
I could hardly believe Manning was sitting half naked on my fire escape. He looked out over the side, frowning down to the street. He smoked faster than I remembered, taking a drag every few seconds. He had a lot on his mind. So did I. And our conversation had barely even scratched the surface. It was as if we were making up for lost time while gliding past the very real, very scary details of our situation. But this apartment felt like a safe haven from all that. I didn’t want to think about what was to come. I just wanted to live in here with Manning for as long as possible.
“Lake,” he called, ducking his head to see me through the window. He’d lit a second cigarette. “It’s fucking freezing. Come warm me up.”
I couldn’t help the smile that broke over my face. My first ever invitation to be around him while he smoked. I sprung up from the bed, tugged on panties and a t-shirt, and went straight for the window.
“Uh-uh,” he said, stopping me. “Put some clothes on.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m more used to this weather than you are.”
“It’s not that.” Switching his cigarette between hands, he lifted the window with just one. “You look good enough to eat, and I don’t want anyone’s mouth watering for you but mine. Understand?”
The hair on my legs prickled as my face warmed. I understood. I didn’t want anyone else looking at him, either, but after all this time apart, I just wanted to hear him say it. “Explain it to me.”
Licking his lips, he looked me up and down. “I’ve spent years keeping my hands and thoughts to myself. I know what runs through a man’s mind when he sees someone like you. I’m going to spend my lifetime making sure anyone who crosses your path knows you’re mine. So hurry up, Birdy, I’m fucking shivering out here.”
10
Lake
Wrapped up in a blanket like a human burrito, thrilled to finally be allowed around Manning while he smoked, I maneuvered onto my fire escape. I still didn’t trust the structure, even though Val and Corbin had coaxed me onto it plenty of times. It often shook when all three of us were on it, and despite not being a religious person, I’d send a quick prayer up to the heavens.
There was hardly enough room for both of us, but since Manning could practically fit two of me on his lap, that was where I sat. Still shielding myself, I opened the blanket, tucking it between us, trying to get him in it with me. He just watched me, one arm hanging over the side of the chair, the other hand delivering his cigarette to his mouth now and then.
It wasn’t perfect, but when I was satisfied, I drew up my knees and curled into a ball against his chest. He never took his eyes from me. “You scared?” he asked.
“Do I look scared?”
“No, but this thing probably doesn’t feel any more secure to you than a Ferris wheel or a horse. Don’t worry, though. It’s strong. I won’t let you fall.”
I looked over the edge. He was right. It wasn’t so much the height that scared me, but the fact that it didn’t feel sturdy. “Val and I play TLC albums and drink wine coolers out here in the summer.”
“Yeah? Tell me more about that life.”
“What you see is all of it. Work, auditions, friends, nights on the fire escape, and until recently, school.” Flurries snowed around us, either from the sky or the landing above. “You haven’t told me anything about yours.”
“You said you don’t want to hear about it.”
“So tell me something that has nothing to do with her. Just something about you.”
“About me?” He squinted out toward some buildings and took a long drag, exhaling with a sigh. “I’ve been getting into the hard stuff, thanks to your dad.”
I widened my eyes. “He’s driven you to drink?”
He chuckled. “No. After Sunday dinner, he and I will go in his study and drink expensive liquor. He’s teaching me all about it. We talk about guns and work and sometimes even art.”
This time, I laughed. “You’re lying.”
“Nah. He likes books and so do I. You know that. Once in a while we’ll put on a mob movie, Goodfellas or something, while your mom and sister bake dessert.”
Tiffany, baking? I couldn’t picture it so I didn’t. Anyway, I was more annoyed that Manning got along with my father, who hadn’t just kept me from Manning—he’d kept Manning
from me, too. How could he condone that? “What’re you reading now?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.
“You,” he said, slipping his free hand under the blanket. “I’m a blind man feeling his way around the story.” He tiptoed his fingers up my bare thigh. “Deaf, hearing a melody for the first time. A fool suffering to understand Tolstoy’s Russian.”
“You are a poet,” I said, my mouth dry. I’d trade all the letters I’d longed for from him and never received for the love story he now recited through smoke and snowfall.
“Here’s something you don’t know about me,” he said. “After I said my vows and walked down the aisle, I turned and looked at you, and you were in Corbin’s arms, crying.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. If he was trying to say he was jealous, he probably deserved a punch in the face for it. “You should be grateful someone was there for me,” I said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without him.”
“Oh yeah?” Manning said wryly. “Grateful. Let me just think on that.”
“Want me to tell you how things looked from my perspective right then?” I asked. He stayed silent so I said, “I didn’t think so.”
“I still can’t get those images out of my head,” he said, not looking at me. “You at the altar behind Tiffany. Just standing there sobbing. I was so worried you’d try to stop it. I couldn’t let you speak up in front of all those people. It wouldn’t have changed anything.” He cleared his throat. “That’s what I was thinking during the ceremony, start to finish—don’t say anything, Lake. Don’t say a word. I love you, I’m sorry, and please stay the fuck quiet.”
“That’s what you were thinking while you were getting married?” I asked. “That you loved me?”
“Yeah. I’m no good, huh?”
If I hadn’t been bundled in my blanket, I would’ve touched his face. For some reason, that seemed like the thing to do when he was being hard on himself. I needed to find some way to bring his eyes back. “Manning?”
It worked. He turned his head to me. “Yeah, Birdy.”
“Would you do anything differently?” I asked. “Would you have left my bracelet where you found it?”
“Do you wish I had?”
“Not fair.” I shook my head. “I asked first.”
He thought on it awhile, and I rose and fell with his chest as he breathed. “I can’t answer that. I wouldn’t put you through the last few years again. Through all that maid of honor bullshit, and having to leave your family behind, and everything that came after it.”
“But then we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“What if I told you I wouldn’t change any of it?” It wasn’t the easiest thing to admit, but I’d had to see the silver lining a lot since I’d left. Val had done a good job of making sure of that. I wasn’t always sure this was the right path for me, but if it ended with Manning, it had to be. My throat was dry from the frosty air and the smoke. I held in a cough so he wouldn’t get paranoid about the cigarette. “I never would’ve had this experience in L.A.”
“At the very bottom of it, Lake, I don’t think I could take it all back. We had to go through it.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Ten years from now, we’ll remember it as the beginning.”
“Ten years?” I asked. “You think that far ahead?”
“Ten, twenty, fifty. I don’t know if I can live in a city my whole life, but maybe we move upstate so you can stay close enough to perform.”
I blinked in disbelief. “You’d stay here on the east coast?”
“We can travel some of the time. I’ve always wanted to check out European architecture.” He held out his cigarette, drawing an invisible picture in the darkness. “Gaudí has this extravagant temple in Barcelona that would make you smile. It looks almost cartoonish. Then I’ll take my little actress to a show at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.” Dropping his hand, he squeezed my thigh over the blanket. “Then of course we’ll have to see the ocean. Maybe South of France or the Amalfi Coast. But no topless beaches. Or those little bikinis they wear. I want you all to myself.”
I cozied up to him, basking in the glow of our bright future. “I can just pack a muumuu.”
He nuzzled my ear. “Or I can find ways to keep you in the room the whole trip.”
I lifted my chin to give him better access to my neck. We were good at hiding away from the world—and from those who cared about us. I realized when Manning left California, he’d be saying goodbye to more than Tiffany. “Will you miss Henry when you move?” I asked.
“Nah. I don’t see him a ton as it is. He and I could talk on the phone once a year and it’d work for us.”
“What’d you say to him at the wedding?”
“Henry?” Manning sucked on his cigarette. “When?”
“Before the ceremony. I was watching from behind the arches. Henry looked at me from the altar like he knew . . . everything.”
“Huh.” Manning shook his head slowly. “I didn’t say anything to him. He congratulated me and asked how it felt to have found the love of my life. It was weird he’d chosen those words. Forgot about that until now.”
“How’d you answer?”
“I didn’t. I could never lie to Henry. If he’d asked me if I was happy, I could’ve said yes. I was. If I couldn’t have you, at least I was building a life with someone I cared about. If he’d asked me if I was doing the right thing, yes to that, too, because I thought I was at the time.” A flake fell on his nose, and he rubbed it away. “But was I marrying the love of my life? No. So I just stood there, sweating, hoping he’d leave it at that.”
“I don’t think he believed you. The way he looked at me, it was like he knew.”
“Maybe he did. He’s a smart guy, but as a cop, he gets responsibility and duty better than anyone. If he knew you were the love of my life, he also knew there was a reason you weren’t the one walking toward me.”
My heartrate kicked up just hearing Manning say that. “What if I’m not the love of your life?” I asked. “What if I never was? What if we’ve changed?”
He set his head back against the metal railing and laughed. “Of all the shit we need to worry about, it’s not that.”
“But how do you know?”
He looked down his nose at me. “Don’t you know you’re the love of my life?” he asked matter-of-factly. “Are you worried I’m not yours?”
“I wasn’t the one who needed six years to figure it out. I knew right away.”
“Right away, huh?” He shifted me on his lap, bringing his feet in so his knees cradled me. “I knew, too,” he said quietly against my ear, squeezing me to him. “Why do you think I’m here now? Why didn’t I just move on with my life? I was fucking confused. You were sixteen and heaven-sent and I just wanted to keep you in my dirty, dusty construction site. I felt like a fucking perv for the things I wanted to do to you.”
“What things?” I prompted.
“One day I’ll tell you, but I have to pace myself.” He nuzzled me with his day-old stubble, sending goosebumps down my arms. “I saw you before you saw me. You stuck out. I couldn’t take my eyes off you, because you personified a breath of fresh air. Certain things you did, like grabbing your backpack straps when you got nervous, reminded me of Maddy.” He glanced up. The mesh of the fire escape above us blocked most of the sky, but there wasn’t much to see anyway. “When I tried to give you your bracelet, you looked terrified. I thought you’d run away, but you didn’t. You came back to find me.”
I’d been so curious about the big man on the wall in the Pink Floyd shirt. I could still feel the heat of that summer day, but not even the California sun could warm me to the core like sitting under a blanket against Manning’s bare chest.
“You didn’t judge me the way your family and other people did,” he continued. “It wasn’t that I saw you and wanted to fuck you . . . it was just that I had this urge to be near you. To be good enough for someone like you. I wanted to b
e a better man for the first time since Maddy had passed. Since then, I’d just sort of been existing, living in the dark.”
He took a drag. Smoke floated over the railing, gray and wispy under the moonlight, gone in an instant. I closed my eyes to hold on to the vibrations of his voice against me. I knew that this moment would end, like they all did with him, but at least time for us would only be finite for a few more days. Then there’d be no rules, no withholding, nothing in the way.
“Those early days I met you,” he said, his gaze distant, “it was more like you were the light of my life. Maybe you knew right away that you loved me, but I had to resist it, or I would’ve caused us a lot of problems. The trouble with that, though, is that I fell in love with you anyway.” Finally, he met my eyes again. “And because I fought it so hard, that love is deep and unshakeable. That’s how I know you’re the love of my life. That love is a part of me.”
In drama class, that was what we called a monologue, and it was the best one I’d ever heard. I could’ve died right then knowing our love hadn’t all been in my head. That Manning had seen me that first day, really seen me. I put my palm on his chest. He was still much warmer than I was. He flicked his cigarette over the fire escape and covered my hand with his. “That love is a part of me, too,” I told him. “You were an adult when you met me, but I wasn’t. I was still growing up. My heart formed with you already in it.” I wanted to tell him I loved him. I had tried, earlier, but the only time I’d actually told him, he’d crushed me. As long as he was legally bound to Tiffany, there was still a chance I could lose him, so I kept it to myself.
And suddenly, just like that, we were kissing. I’d imagined it so many times, the freedom to touch my lips to his, especially curious about the flavor of cigarettes. “You have to quit smoking,” I murmured.
His chest rumbled underneath me. “Does the taste bother you?”
“It makes me think of all the times I watched you smoke or play with your cigarette. I wanted to know so bad what it would be like to kiss you. Cigarettes always make me think of you. I even let a classmate of mine kiss me at a party because he was a smoker, so I could imagine it was you. That way, I wouldn’t have to die wondering what a smoky mouth would be like. So no, it doesn’t bother me.”
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 65
