Move the Stars

by Jessica Hawkins

  “If what was easy?”

  “You and me.”

  “Can’t we talk about it tomorrow before you leave?” I asked, sighing. I wanted to go back to that day at the ice skating rink when we’d done nothing but wander, kiss and touch, eat and make love. “Watch this.” I turned to face him completely. With a sly smile, I walked backward a few steps and planed my arms. “Ready?”

  “What for?”

  I leaned back on my heels until my balance wavered, then fell into the snow with a crunch. Winging my arms and legs like jumping jacks, I grinned. “Look,” I said. “I’m making a snow angel.”

  “I see.”

  I froze right through my cheap coat, the ends of my hair wetted, but I got up on my elbows and smiled at him. “Come make one with me.”

  “I like watching you do it,” he said, pinching the butt of the cigarette, amusement in his eyes.

  “If you won’t make one, I’ll have to think of another way to get you over here.” I balled up some snow, packing it tightly while he raised his eyebrows at me—a warning I intended to ignore. When he didn’t make a move, I threw the snowball at him, narrowly missing his shoulder.

  He didn’t even flinch. “Have to work on your aim,” he said, winking.

  “Fine. You win.” I stood, bending at the waist, brushing snow off my pants. I pretended to fix my socks while stealthily forming more ammunition. Peeking to make sure he wasn’t looking, I straightened up, much better poised to hit him. I launched the snowball and it smacked against his chest so hard, his cigarette fell from his mouth onto the sidewalk.

  I stifled a laugh at the way his nostrils flared. We stared at each other a few tense seconds before we both broke into a run. Halfway down the block, he caught me by the waist and lifted me into the air. Even as I gave in to a fit of laughter, I struggled against him, making it as hard as I could for him to carry me.

  Right before the entrance to the W, he tossed me into another pile of snow and fell down beside me. “Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean you win,” he said, spreading out on his back like he had that night at the pool in Big Bear. I scooted over to make space for his impressive wingspan. Manning made what had to be the largest snow angel in history, then held his hand palm up for me. I took it, letting him pull me over to him.

  I rolled onto my stomach, resting my chin on his broad chest. Before Serious Manning could ruin the moment, I asked, “What’s your favorite color?”

  “That’s easy. Blue.”

  “I should’ve guessed,” I said. “All boys like blue.”

  “Not the shade I’m thinking of. It’s more of a baby blue, or turquoise water—”

  “The ocean. Why?” I asked. “Is that your favorite place in the world?”

  “Nah.”

  “Where would you be if you could be anywhere?”

  “Where would you be?”

  My instinct was to say the beach—it was my home, or it had been once. Was I even that girl anymore, though? Wasn’t it normal for tastes to change over the years? “Here, I guess.”

  “Don’t sound so sure,” he teased, reaching up to brush sleet from my hair. “It’s okay if it isn’t New York, Lake.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? My friends are here. I’m building a career. I even have a hairdresser I like.” I pursed my lips. “I’ve made a life here.”

  “But it’s not like you left Southern California because you didn’t like it there. If New York felt like the only option . . .”

  I wanted to argue just to prove him wrong, but the truth was, I sometimes felt out of place in the city. I’d grown up playing barefoot in sand and salt water, with the sun turning my gold hair white. Not that I didn’t love it here, but I sometimes wondered if the city would ever feel like my true home. “What about the mountains?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you as happy as you were in Big Bear. Is that where you want to be, somewhere with nature?”

  “I want to be where you are,” he said. “New York can be your dream home, but mine is you.”

  I shivered beneath a coat of goosebumps. Manning rubbed his hands over my back, but it was his words, not the cold, that got under my skin. I sat up, throwing a leg over his lap to straddle him. “I want to live on a mountain,” I said from above him, “just like this. With my great bear.”

  He grabbed me by the waist with a throaty growl. “So, Goldilocks thinks she can tame a wild animal?” he asked, shifting me on his lap so I could feel how untamed he was. “She should be careful what she wishes for.”

  “She wishes to try, even if it takes a lifetime.”

  “Close your eyes,” he said. “Picture a time you were happiest.”

  Maybe it was all the bear talk, but my mind went back in time, right to Young Cubs Camp, sneaking peeks at Manning across the cafeteria, or during counselor hour after the campers had gone to bed, or before breakfast, when we were supposed to have our eyes closed for Reflection. I’d forgotten that the morning Manning had been arrested, he and I had shared a moment right before the cops had shown up. After the night in the truck, our eyes had met during Reflection, electricity buzzing between us as if it were the beginning of something.

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s making you smile?”

  “Camp,” I said. “I loved being around you all week. And riding the horse. That was fun.”

  “It was.” He ran his hands up my thighs. “Is that your happy place? What about memories that don’t involve me?”

  I traveled back again, this time to playing board games at night during Christmas break, Tiffany screaming when she won, screaming when she lost, and my dad struggling not to lose his temper and ruin Christmas. One morning when I was seven and Tiffany was ten, we’d woken up and found a Labrador puppy under the tree. We’d named her after Daphne from Scooby-Doo, but she’d gotten sick within six months. Seeing how much Tiffany had loved that dog, Dad had shelled out thousands of dollars in vet bills, but it hadn’t saved her. Tiffany had been devastated. I opened my eyes and started to get up. “I don’t want to play this game anymore.”

  Manning sat up, watching as I brushed snow off my pants. “It’s not a game, Lake.”

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this. What’s the point of forcing me to look at what I’m giving up? Are you hoping I’ll change my mind and tell you not to leave her?”

  “No. I just want you to understand what lies ahead. Once I talk to Tiffany, there’s no turning back.” He held out his hand to me. “Come here.”

  “No.”

  “Then help me up.”

  I took his hand, but after a short-lived battle of strength, I found myself in the snow again, stubbornly holding in a laugh as he feathered his fingers up my waist. “What’s your middle name?” he asked. “You never told me that day on the wall, and I’ve wanted to know ever since.”

  “You could’ve asked any member of my family over the years,” I pointed out.

  “I wanted you to tell me.”

  “Dolly,” I said, “and I hate it.”

  “Dolly.” He kissed my cheek. “Lake Dolly Kaplan.”

  “Manning Raymond Sutter.”

  He looked surprised. “How do you know that?”

  “I saw it on some of the paperwork for your arrest.”

  “Come on, Lake Dolly Kaplan. My goldilocks, my little bird.” He stood, holding out a hand to pull me up. “Your locks of gold are all wet and your wings, too.”

  16

  Lake

  There wasn’t anything special about Manning’s hotel room—an oversized, stark white bed that hadn’t been slept in for four nights. A luggage stand with his open, organized suitcase next to a closet where he’d hung a garment bag. A desk with a logoed notepad and pen, which sat next to a phone with a flashing red light. “You have messages,” I said.

  “I know.” As if remembering his cell phone, he took it out, wiping it on his pants. “Fucking thing got wet.”

  He set it on the media console, and it lit up with missed calls from Tiffany. I too
k off my coat. The melting snow on my pants and in my hair suddenly felt less whimsical and more cold and sticky. “You were right,” I said, looking away from the blinking red light. “I don’t like it here.”

  Manning turned me by my shoulders, hugging me to his torso. “I know it’s hard, but I need you to be strong, Lake. We can’t get through this if we aren’t in it a hundred percent.”

  I glanced up quickly. By the way my stomach dropped thinking Manning might have doubts, there wasn’t a percent high enough to convey how badly I wanted this. “I’m in,” I promised.

  He thumbed the apple of my cheek, then kissed it. “You know why that shade of blue is my favorite? Why I’ve loved it since a warm summer day in 1993? I don’t really have to tell you it’s your eyes. My Lake. You are my favorite color.”

  I hugged him back, but I couldn’t help thinking how my eyes were simply a shade darker than my sister’s. Mine were a lake, still and shallow, but hers were the color of the endless, manic ocean.

  “You’re shivering,” he said. “Get in the shower. I’ll join you after I check the messages.”

  The red light continued to blink at me. It felt personal, like a judgment—as if Manning listening to his messages before showering was equivalent to choosing Tiffany over me.

  I went into the bathroom and turned the water on hot, standing under it with my eyes closed. How many times had Tiffany tried to reach Manning over the past few days? Had they spoken when I wasn’t around? He hadn’t mentioned it, but I hadn’t asked, either. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  When I turned, Manning was on the other side of the glass, wrestling his wet clothing off. He had dark circles under his eyes like the night I found him at the sink after a nightmare. He slept soundly with me, or so I’d thought. But maybe he didn’t sleep at all. All week, I’d been able to ignore the fact that Manning had another life, but had he? Of course not. It would’ve been impossible for me to expect him not to think of her at all, my sister, the woman with whom he’d spent day in and day out since I’d last seen him.

  “Were the messages from Tiffany?” I asked when he opened the door and stepped in.

  “Yeah.”

  I swallowed. For my own sanity, I wanted to keep on ignoring what I was doing to Tiffany, but not only was it unfair to her, it was unfair to Manning, too. “What did they say?”

  “You want to know?” He ducked to stand under the shower stream. He was so big that he took all the water, and I just stood there dripping.

  “I guess.”

  “Nothing at all,” he said. “She’s worried because she hasn’t been able to reach me. She wants me to call her.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  “When I arrived,” he admitted quietly. “But not since.”

  Tiffany was worried, and she had every right to be. Because of me, her own sister. I’d had her husband for days, and I had to face the truth—she probably knew what was happening here. “How can I do this to her?” I asked. “How can I have already done what I have—and still be doing it?”

  The hotel’s bar of soap looked even more miniature in his big hand as he began washing himself. “It’s too late to ask that,” he said, moving to let me have the water back. “It’s already done.”

  “Are you going to return her call?”

  “I don’t know if I can.” He shook his head. “She sounded tense. If I call her back, and she asks if you’re here, I can’t lie to her. But I won’t end my marriage over the phone.”

  I twisted my flea market ring as cold, hard reality wedged itself into what should’ve been a relaxing, steamy shower. “Do you think she knows?”

  “She has to. She’s been pouting ever since she found out I might come to New York. She knew years ago that she was hurting you, and she knows now to be worried that I’m here.” He lathered his chest. “I know Tiffany better than anyone, and I’m certain she made a deal with herself a long time ago to ignore my attraction to you. Like me, she thought it could stay hidden.”

  “I tried to tell you it couldn’t,” I said, my voice thick. I couldn’t avoid this anymore. Manning and Tiffany had a life together, and it was because of choices he had made. “You spent all those years planning never to be with me. Well, as hard as I tried to move on, to forget you, I never did. I never planned a life without you.”

  “I didn’t forget you, Lake. You think I’d be here if I had?”

  “How can your mind change so completely in a few days?”

  “It didn’t change, and it didn’t take a few days. I always wanted you, but I had to live through not having you for things to become clear. To come here after four years and see that what I feel for you hasn’t fucking lessened at all, to see that maybe I can actually be good for you, I can now admit the truth. You and I should be together, and we can, but you have to face the truth about the situation before I get on that plane tomorrow.”

  The truth was that Manning had wholeheartedly believed he would spend his life with Tiffany. And that hurt more than any of this. “You never would’ve married her if you’d had any hope for us.”

  “I had no hope,” he confirmed.

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I’d never given up on us. I’d held on to my virginity for him. I’d accepted my diploma with pride, hoping he’d feel the same when he heard. I’d kept the jewelry box he’d made me even though the corners cut into my skin when I clutched it. But the opposite was true for him. He’d given up hope—or maybe he’d never had it at all. “You told me you don’t love her,” I said. “What else do I need to know? Isn’t that enough?”

  “Your sister and me—we’ve had our ups and downs, but I don’t think she’ll see the divorce coming. She’s a pro at turning a blind eye. I’m working overtime to cover the remodel on top of a mortgage, which is fucking ridiculous because I could’ve done it myself if I’d had the time, but someone has to pay for it. And even though Tiffany constantly asks me to, I refused to take any more money from your dad after the wedding.”

  I forced myself to listen, not because I wanted to know, but because it was clearly important to Manning that I understand what his life was like. “Doesn’t she work?”

  “She’s a buyer for Nordstrom, and she’s really great at her job.” He stepped under the stream of water to rinse. “She moved up quickly once she got on the right track.”

  For some reason, that took me right back to being in her shadow. She’d always loved to shop, and now she got paid to do it. Well, after all the ways she’d complained about my relationship with Dad, it sounded like a great life she’d built for herself despite me. “Good for her.”

  He put the soap down. “She wants a family, though.”

  “Tiffany wants a family?” I asked. “I thought she hated kids.”

  “People change. She’s twenty-six now. Has it in her head she’s going to have a little girl she can dress up and pose with for Nordstrom’s kids’ catalogue.”

  “So she doesn’t actually want a kid. She just wants a way to get more attention.”

  He massaged his jaw, watching me. “She started talking about it after the honeymoon. So last year, before I knew I was coming on this trip, I told Tiffany once the remodel was paid off in spring of 2000, we’d start trying for a baby.”

  “That’s in a few months.” During my darkest moments over the years, I’d imagined the call from my mom that Tiffany was pregnant, but even then, I hadn’t been able to picture them having a family in anything more than a vague, abstract sense. I could, and had, vividly imagined getting that call, though. Tears built deep in my throat. “You wanted a family with her?” I asked.

  “I wanted a family, Lake. When I told her that over a year ago, I knew I’d come to New York when my parole ended. But back then, it never occurred to me that I’d give myself permission to do anything other than check on you.”

  We stared at each other. In my mind, Tiffany was still the cavalier teen girl I’d grown up with, giving our parents trouble, talki
ng casually about sex, concerned with only one thing—herself. How was I supposed to reconcile that with the woman Manning described? How was I supposed to face that fact that Tiffany wanted to be a mother, and Manning had wanted that, too—and that they’d been planning to start so soon? I was taking that from them. “I get it,” I said. “What we’re doing is wrong.” In the privacy of our shower, where nobody else heard us, knew us, understood what we’d been through, I said, “But it’s not enough to change my mind. Have you changed yours?”

  “I’ve stayed away so long,” he said. “I need you more than anything. Don’t you see how I need you?”

  I had eyes; I saw his need plain as day. We were naked in the shower and he’d been hard since he’d stripped down, but I didn’t think that was what he meant. I wanted to be angry for the things I couldn’t fix, to retreat, for a little bit, into the life I’d had before he’d come to New York. The life where I had permission to resent him and bitterly hope he was unhappy. More than that, though, I wanted his hands on me. I couldn’t remember anything ever feeling as good as being touched by him. So I went to him, and as soon as he enveloped me, I cried against his chest. I cried for Tiffany, and for what I was taking from her, and for the fact that even though she and I hadn’t been close in a long time, once Manning told her, I’d lose my sister. For good.

  “I’m sorry, Birdy,” he said. “You don’t know how sorry I am. I was blinded by fear, and I made mistakes.”

  I looked up at his face, blurred by my tears. It was the second time I’d heard him admit it, and by the way it looked painful for him to swallow, I thought maybe it was the hardest thing of all for him to say—that this was his fault. Stripped down to nothing, with nowhere for either of us to hide, we had to admit the terrible things we’d done, and those we were about to do.