I glanced at my watch. I needed to leave soon for another sales meeting or I’d be late. I’d been in New York less than twenty-four hours, and I was ready to blow off everything to spend more time with Lake.
“You here for work?” Corbin asked, noticing I’d checked the time. “Man, my dad would’ve loved for me to go into pharma. So much money there, but then again, Wall Street’s got me doing all right.”
“Sure,” I said, chewing.
“You knew he worked with your dad?” Lake asked Corbin. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’re always saying you don’t want to know anything about home.” He sipped his coffee and shrugged at me. “Where’d they put you up?”
“The W. In Union Square.” I washed down my food with some coffee. “I think it’s new.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen it. Your schedule must be packed. I doubt you came all this way without lots to do.”
I ripped off part of a bacon strip with my teeth, looking between them. Corbin was right, but I was finding it hard to care about work. I couldn’t say that in front of him, though. “I’ve got a busy schedule,” I agreed, chewing. It’d been the only way I could prove to Charles I needed to be in New York. “I wanted to make sure I checked in on things, though. For Cathy.”
“For Cathy.” Corbin nodded, then glanced at Lake and laughed. “Lake, babe,” he said, “you already got ketchup on yourself.”
Lake pulled her sweater taut to see the stain. “Damn it.”
“At least you have time to go home and change before work . . . unlike the Upper East Side mixer incident.”
She rolled her eyes as she patted her top. “Only me.”
“I took her to a party hosted by my firm,” he said to me. “First time I introduced her to my colleagues, and she spilled champagne all down the front of her Versace dress. The one I’d just spent hundreds of dollars on.”
My patience was growing thin. I’d had enough of Corbin’s peacocking, his inside jokes and expensive taste, and his fucking hands all over her.
Like old times, Lake seemed to pick up on my irritation. She put down the napkin. “I have to get home and shower if I’m going to get to work on time.”
“I’ll walk you,” I said.
“Where’s your next meeting?” she asked.
“Not around here,” I said. “It’s in Manhasset.”
Corbin’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a drive.”
“Yeah, it’s not technically a sales call. I’m playing golf with a client of mine from Orange County, because he’s going to introduce me to . . .”
Lake looked at me as if she didn’t know me. I didn’t blame her. I’d had things to take care of the past few years, like a wife and a mortgage, and if golf was the answer to getting more clients, I had to play the game. I’d once told Tiffany I’d never become her dad, but the commission structure Charles had put in place for me made it impossible not to want more and more. Truth be told, I’d never dreamed of living the life I was now—owning my home, having a pool, surprising Tiffany with expensive gifts that she bragged about to her friends. This doctor I was meeting today could set me up with another three or four sales appointments while I was in town, and if I wasn’t letting Lake go again, that meant I had a divorce in my future, and knowing Tiff, that would get fucking pricey. “It could be pretty lucrative for me to hit a tiny ball around for a few hours,” I explained.
“Oh.” Lake frowned. “Well, if it’s lucrative.”
“Hope you’ve got a change of clothes,” Corbin said.
“I’ll pick something up at the club.”
Lake and I held each other’s gaze as Corbin signaled for the waitress. “Are you coming over tonight?” he asked Lake.
“I won’t be done at work until late.”
“What about after?”
She finally turned to him, her head tilted. “It’ll be close to midnight.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess.”
I removed my wallet, but Corbin waved me off. “I’ve got this,” he said, taking the bill up to the cashier.
I didn’t need to make a show of paying for the meal. If Corbin wanted to give me time alone with Lake, I wouldn’t argue. “The show’s at seven tonight,” I said to her.
“I already told you I have to work at the diner.”
“Then quit.” I hoped she’d say yes, but she didn’t seem as outraged about her graveyard shift as I was. “Or fake a stomachache. I thought you loved Broadway.”
“I do, but . . . I don’t see the point of spending time together when it’s only going to . . .” She swallowed down her words. She’d done that a few times already in the apartment, and all I could do was stand there and watch. It took every ounce of self-restraint not to take her in my arms and promise her the world just to ease the sadness in her eyes.
“Cathy made me promise I’d take you,” I said. “She had a whole plan to keep it from Charles and Tiffany, just so I could make sure you were okay—and show you a good time.”
Lake looked at the table. I didn’t want to make things harder on her, but we needed one-on-one time. If I had to play the Mom card, I would.
“Let me get you a cab, Manning,” Corbin said, calling us to the front of the restaurant. “Hailing one is kind of an art.”
Lake got up, so I followed. As we made our way outside, I lowered my voice. “I’ll pick you up at six. Unless you want dinner before rather than after.”
Lake met eyes with Corbin. “Will you get my coat from the check?” she asked him.
“Of course.”
As soon as he left, she turned her eyes on me. “I thought it was just a show.”
“You need to eat, don’t you? It would mean a lot to Cathy. She wonders all the time about how you’re eating.” I held open the door for Lake, but she only eyed me, skeptical. “One Sunday night, I found your mom crying into a roast. She worries nobody’s cooking for you. She worries a lot, Lake, and . . .” Corbin was headed back our way. “So do I. I need this, too. A few uninterrupted hours with you.”
Lake shot a glance in Corbin’s direction and lowered her voice. “Okay, fine.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m—it’s for my mom, all right? Don’t mention it to Corbin.”
I guessed maybe her boyfriend wouldn’t be too happy about our date tonight. That was fine by me. A weight lifted from my shoulders knowing I’d see her later. I was going to be late for golf, but it was worth it.
Outside, I took my Nokia from my suit pocket so I could call the client once I was in a cab.
“You have a cell phone?” Lake asked.
I gave it to her. I liked watching her turn it over in her hands. I didn’t have to ask if she owned one—they were expensive, and I only had it for work.
“It looks like Corbin’s,” she said with a smirk, handing it back to me. Although I hated hearing his name from her mouth, her sudden attitude was kind of cute. Very cute, actually. I was so engrossed with her that I didn’t hear a car pull up.
Lake looked behind me. “You’re taking a taxi all the way to Manhasset?” she asked. “How much does my dad pay you?”
I turned around. Corbin had already flagged down a cab. “Thoughtful of him,” I uttered. I couldn’t be too upset—I’d get Lake all to myself tonight—so I smiled and thanked him.
“No problem,” he said. “Hope you have a nice stay. I’ll keep trying to get Lake to come home with me for the holidays. Maybe next year.”
Lake blew hot air into her fists, and I wondered why she wasn’t wearing gloves. “Even if I were welcome,” she said, “I wouldn’t go.”
“You know you are,” he said. “Charles just needs some—”
“Corbin,” Lake gave him a look that’d shut me right up, “don’t.”
“All right.” He held up a hand to wave at me. “See you around, man.”
I hoped not, but in a few hours, Lake would be all mine. “Six o’clock,” I mouthed at her before forcing myself into the taxi.
4
Lake
At five in the evening, I stood on the balls of my feet in front of the bathroom mirror, doing my best to admire my floor-length, strappy black velvet Calvin Klein dress. I’d bought it secondhand under Val’s guidance last fall but hadn’t yet worn it. My first thought as I’d slipped it over my head was that Tiffany would say it was old and “so over.” I didn’t own many nice things, though. I’d left most of my clothing in California. Moving across country with two suitcases had been hard to do, but I’d also needed to shed that old life. Start over. Now, I didn’t have much. Corbin made good money even though he’d only held a paid position at his company a year, but it didn’t feel right when he tried to take me shopping. He always overspent. The two nice dresses I owned were gifts from him he hadn’t let me refuse. Tonight, I wanted to wear something I’d bought myself, even if it wasn’t new, even if it was a bit too fancy for where we were headed.
When the front door opened, I poked my head out of the bathroom, half-expecting Manning to have broken in again, but it was Val. My best friend and roommate hurried into the living room, her spiral curls bouncing around her ears in the odd, grow-out stage of a “do-not-mention” haircut. Since Felicity had aired on the WB a year earlier, Val had consistently been mistaken for the TV show’s star, Keri Russell. But Val needed to be her own person, so in an act of rebellion, she’d chopped off her beautiful, blonde ringlets over the summer. And then Felicity had debuted the same haircut in October. Now, not only did Val look even more like Felicity, but people thought she’d copied the show, which really got Val going.
“I’m on break from a double shift.” Val untied the waist apron she wore to wait tables at a chain restaurant in midtown. She blew by me, unbuttoning her starchy blouse. “Some brat threw a fucking bowl of mac and cheese at me.” Pinching the shirt by its collar, she made a face and dumped it into a hamper in the corner. “That shit is hot and yellow and—don’t you work tonight?”
Part of me wanted to tell her about my visit from the past, but the other part knew better. “I called in sick,” I said as she flurried around me.
“Yeah? Why?” She ran into the bathroom where her back-up uniform hung on the shower curtain bar. “Fuck. Of course it’s still damp.” She pulled it down, slipping it over her shoulders as she went to the mirror. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Buttoning up the blouse, she glanced at me in the reflection, then turned. “Holy shit. You’re wearing the CK dress! You look amazing.”
I smoothed my hands over my stomach. “Really?”
“Where are you headed dressed like that? One of Corbin’s functions?”
“I’m going to see a show, actually.” I left it at that and ducked around her to grab my hairbrush. When she didn’t respond, I continued, “I’m overdressed, but who knows when I’ll get a chance to wear this again?”
“Are you going with Corbin?” she asked.
“No.” I combed my hair, avoiding her eyes.
“Who then?”
Val was the only person who knew the whole truth about Manning and me. She wouldn’t like that I was seeing him tonight, but I didn’t want to lie to my best friend. After all she’d done for me since we’d moved here, I owed her the truth. “You remember Manning?”
She didn’t respond. I didn’t have to see Val’s face to know her reaction. Warmth crept up my neck as she made me stand there in silence that grew louder and louder.
“Hmm, Manning,” she said finally. “I think so. If you’re talking about the sorry, cowardly piece of shit who broke your heart . . . then yes, I recall.”
I set the hairbrush down. “That was years ago.”
“I remember. I was there as you basically fell apart at his wedding—to your sister. As you cried yourself to sleep every night for—I don’t even know how long. Maybe you still do. I was there when I spent my first Christmas away from my mom so you wouldn’t be alone during the holidays.”
“I know. I get it.” I turned and braced myself against the sink. “It’s not what it looks like. He’s in town for work, and my mom bought us tickets to—”
She grabbed my shoulders, stunning me into silence. “What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m going to see a Broadway show, it’s not a big deal,” I shot back, wiggling free from her grip to leave the bathroom.
“How can it not be a big deal? How did this even happen?” She followed me to the bedroom and stopped in the doorway, her shirt cockeyed and exposing her navel because she’d missed a button. “Who does he think he is, calling you out of the blue?”
“He came by this morning.”
“And you slammed the door in his face, right?” she asked. “Is that why the lock is fucked up?”
I found my stilettos where I’d dropped them earlier and sat on the edge of the bed to buckle the straps. “It’s just dinner and a show. That’s it.”
“Dinner? Are you insane, Lake?”
“Stop yelling at me.”
“No.”
The sharpness of the word forced me to look up at her. Her face, beet red, didn’t distract me from the sheen over her eyes. She barely knew Manning, and she was the one crying? “How could he do this again?” she asked.
I was tempted to defend Manning, and that was proof Val was right. He’d already begun to get to me. It wasn’t fair to myself, or to her, either—she’d been by my side since the night on the beach I’d told her I had feelings for my sister’s fiancé. “I know,” I said. “I turned him down at first, but then I changed my mind. I already agreed.”
“Because he knows you can’t say no to him. He knows how badly he hurt you, yet he has the balls to show his face here. He’s an asshole and a coward. A felon, a liar, and maybe even a cheat.” She put her hands on her hips. “If he shows up here, I’ll call Corbin to come take care of this.”
“Corbin already knows.”
“He knows you’re going out with Manning? That you’re getting all dolled up for him?”
“No.” My face burned hot with embarrassment that I’d gotten caught wanting to look nice for him. “Corbin knows Manning’s in town, and this is normal attire for Broadway—”
“Don’t give me that shit. You’re dressing up for him because you’re still in love with him.”
Still in love with him. I hid my shiver by crossing my arms. Neither Val nor I had said Manning’s name in months, because it saddened me and upset her, but that didn’t mean I was fooling either of us. Hearing her acknowledge my feelings for him for the first time in a while made me realize my love for Manning hadn’t lessened even a little. That was why I’d agreed to meet him. That was why I’d taken extra care to look good tonight. But that didn’t mean I forgot, even for a second, what he’d done to me. “He’s my sister’s husband,” I said. “That’s all. I think he and I can have a simple meal like civilized adults.”
“Really?” She stomped across the room toward my dresser.
“What are you doing?” I asked, standing.
“If you don’t have feelings for him, you won’t mind if I destroy this, right?” she asked, digging her hand into my underwear drawer.
“Wait!” I leaped toward her. “Don’t.”
She held up the small wooden box I thought nobody knew about. I tried to grab it from her, but she jumped back and showed it to me. “A few minutes in Corbin’s fancy fireplace should do the trick,” she said.
“Stop it.” The box might’ve been small, but it and its contents were some of the only sentimental things I owned anymore. “I only have it for the earrings, and they’re worth a lot.”
Val opened it and showed me the inside. There were no earrings, only the mood ring I’d found in Manning’s things at the courthouse so many years ago, right after he’d been arrested. “Funny,” she said. “Somehow these earrings turned into a cheap-ass ring Manning never technically gave you.”
“Tiffany didn’t even buy those earrings, my dad did, and it was
probably out of guilt for how he treated me.”
“Didn’t you pawn them for rent money?” Val asked.
Ashamed, I stopped trying to fight her, stopped fighting at all, and let the tears flood my eyes. “I don’t know what to say, Val. Do I still love him? How could I not? But he’s changed, and so have I. I’m smarter now. I’m not going to let him hurt me again. I promise. Please don’t ruin the box. Or the ring.”
“He chose your sister, Lake. He married her.” Val shook her head at me. “Four years, completely undone. We’ve been working through this for four years, and he’s going to unravel it in a night.”
“I won’t let that happen. You’re blowing an innocent dinner way out of proportion.”
“Does Tiffany know about it?”
I went quiet, and that was all the answer Val needed. Of course Tiffany didn’t know, because it wasn’t innocent. It wasn’t simple. Manning and I could never be either of those things, no matter how hard we pretended or how much time had passed. “No,” I admitted.
“Of course she doesn’t,” she said. “They are still married, right?”
“He wasn’t wearing a ring, so I’m not sure . . .”
“You didn’t even ask?” She tossed the wooden box at me. I jumped into action, catching it so it wouldn’t hit the ground.
“I didn’t ask because I was scared of the answer,” I said, “not because I don’t care about hurting her.”
Val left the room, and I followed. She gathered up her apron and purse from the coffee table. “You know something, Lake? I’ve hated him all this time. You were young, and so fucking optimistic, and I hated him for stealing some of that from you. But you’re an adult now.” Tying on her waist apron, she pinned me with a look. “If you go down this path, you have no one to blame but yourself.”
Move the Stars Page 5
