Move the Stars

by Jessica Hawkins

  He leaned on the table, eyeing me. “Why not?”

  “I think back to that time you came to visit in New York. I was struggling and auditioning and bitching to my friends about the unfairness of the industry, but back then, when I got a part, it meant something. I miss that, even though I know, I know it sounds stupid.”

  “You have to give me more credit,” he said. “You know that not once in my life have your thoughts ever sounded stupid to me.”

  I did know that. It felt good to admit to him I’d taken some wrong turns over the years without worrying he’d blame himself or feel compelled to fix my problems. I’d already begun to fix them myself. I was more concerned about what it meant that he’d stopped eating halfway through a meal. “Your steak is getting cold,” I pointed out.

  He picked up his fork again. “And how do you feel now, on the show?” he asked.

  “A little like a wind-up doll. They point me in whatever direction they want and tell me to go.”

  “Well.” He chewed and swallowed his steak. “That won’t do.”

  “So many people told me it was the opportunity of a lifetime, but when I saw myself on TV, I didn’t feel good about it. I wasn’t proud.”

  “So you can be now. It takes a lot of guts to walk away from something like that.”

  I nodded. “As soon as I left the meeting it felt as though a weight had been lifted.”

  “Then it was the right decision.”

  I released a breath, relieved, as if I’d been waiting to hear what Manning would make of the situation. It was a good thing I’d already turned down the contract, because I would’ve hated for his last impression of me to be that I was doing something I didn’t care about. “Yes, it was.”

  “So what’ll you do now?”

  I stuck my chin in my hand. Val and I had been talking about a trip to Europe once she had some time off. “I have some money saved. I think I might travel a little.”

  With his last bite, he slid his plate away. “You should. We both should.”

  We could go together, I wanted to say. Remember architecture in Barcelona? Playhouses in London? Instead, I patted my mouth with my napkin. “We’ll see. I’ve actually made other plans that might interfere.”

  “Yeah?” He took a few uneven breaths. “What . . . plans?”

  It was hard to believe after all this time, Manning and I were just having dinner and conversation. We were the same people but different, in a place that was the same but different. Physically and emotionally. I was saying things I’d only just begun to discover about myself. “I wonder a lot about what it would’ve been like if I’d gone to USC. I think at the end, before I left, I’d convinced myself that being a doctor or lawyer or businesswoman was what Dad wanted, not me. But I actually didn’t know. I ran away to get back at all of you. I would’ve made a good doctor. Or lawyer. Or businesswoman.”

  “I agree,” he said. “But you’re great at whatever you set your mind to.”

  Manning truly believed that, and I thought the same of him. “I’ve been giving all that a lot of thought, and I think I decided what’s next.” I took another bite and smiled. “Are you ready for this?”

  “All my life.” He narrowed his eyes playfully. “Tell me what you’re meant to do.”

  “I’m going back to school.” My heart rate kicked up a notch anticipating his reaction. “To be a veterinarian.”

  He laughed. “Well, well. Lake Dolly Kaplan.”

  I scowled hearing my full name, but I couldn’t help the grin that broke through. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what? This is my unsurprised face.”

  “You knew all along?”

  “No,” he said, “but hearing you say it, it feels good. Feels right.”

  “I thought the same thing when you told me about the furniture.” I smiled, sticking my hands between my knees. “I don’t know where I’ll go to school yet, but at least it’s a start.”

  As he grew quiet, and I finished my wine, I sensed a shift in him. He’d just laughed, and that was kind of rare, so most likely, he was transitioning into Serious Manning now to overcompensate. After a few moments, he asked, “You wouldn’t stay here for school?”

  “I don’t know. I can go anywhere.” I looked over at the palace Manning had built. “I don’t have anything like this. It’s just me.”

  “Do you want all this?” he asked. “Would it make you happy? When you close your eyes like we did that night we made snow angels, where’s home?”

  I inhaled deeply through my nose, shut my eyes, and waited for home to reveal itself. But only the afterimage of the lit-up house glowed yellow behind my lids. I saw Manning’s home, and then I saw Manning.

  Manning was all I saw.

  All I’d ever seen.

  I kept it to myself. We weren’t in that place anymore. I’d learned a lot of things over the years, and one was that it wasn’t always fair to tell him how I felt. Another was that none of us were guaranteed anything in this life—especially true happiness. Why should I have it? Why had I thought, all those years ago, I deserved it? And at the expense of those who loved me? I opened my eyes.

  Manning, as always, was watching me closely. “You all right?” he asked.

  “That last day, in the hotel . . .” I said, turning the wineglass on the table. “Did I do the right thing, telling you to go back to her?”

  Poor Manning looked completely caught off guard by the question. He sat back on the bench. “I . . . yeah, Lake. Yeah, you did. I mean, I understood why.”

  “I’m so sorry about what happened, the . . .” I took a deep breath. Manning had to have been devastated over losing a baby, but it hadn’t been my time to be there for him. “The miscarriage.”

  He dropped his eyes to my hand, watching as I fidgeted with my drink. “I know you are.”

  “I wish I’d told you sooner, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t face you after we’d planned a life together that never happened. You’d been through so much heartache, and then the divorce—I didn’t know where I stood, or if you still believed we could work.”

  After a few moments, he reached across the table, covered my hand, and looked up at me. “You know what I believe?”

  I fought the urge to flip my palm up and braid our fingers together in such a way that it’d be impossible to undo before the night was over. “What?”

  “No matter how things had gone, you and I would still be sitting here tonight.”

  “Really?” I asked, my throat thick. “You think this is a kind of twisted destiny for us?”

  “I don’t know about all that,” he said, “but it’s what I believe. It’s what I know. We were both kids, Lake. We made mistakes, and choices, and it took us a while, but I think all paths lead to here.”

  Where was here? A fork in the road where we separated for good? A last goodbye? “You seem happy,” I said to him.

  He looked at his plate. “How so?”

  “You just have this calmness about you,” I said. “Not like in New York.”

  “You think I wasn’t happy in New York?” He ran his thumb over the clasp of my bracelet. “Those were the best days of my life.”

  My eyes watered remembering how he’d stood across a snowy street in the East Village, waiting for me to show up at my apartment. It’d been a whirlwind few days. Looking back, I could admit the red flags I’d willfully ignored along with Val’s warnings. Maybe Manning and I had each subconsciously known it wouldn’t last, and that had made us feverish. “This is different. It’s like you have it all figured out. I guess maybe it’s the business and the house.”

  “You like it?” he asked, and I detected a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

  “I love it. Everything about it. It’s a—” I wanted to say home, but it wasn’t that for me, and that made acknowledging it too hard. “It’s you. Masculine but comfortable. But, well, I think it could use a woman’s touch.”

  “It has a woman’s touch. You just ca
n’t see it.”

  It did? Whose? Reluctantly, I slipped my hand from his warmth and touched my napkin to the corner of my mouth, trying not to look as crushed as I felt that there might be someone in Manning’s life. Then again, maybe that was why fate had brought me here tonight, to make the final snip I needed to cut myself free of him. I stood.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I’ll help you clean up.” I stacked our dishes to carry them back inside. “Then I should probably get home. It’s a long drive, and it’s getting dark.”

  In the kitchen, I turned on the faucet and plugged the sink, watching it fill with soapy water, as if it were just another night after dinner. I couldn’t remember a recent time I’d been this comfortable somewhere. Not since New York. I didn’t want to leave. I’d just arrived. What was closure, anyway? How exactly did one get it? Had it been enough to come and see that he was happy, that he’d moved on?

  Once I’d started on the dishes, I felt Manning enter the room. “You don’t need to do that,” he said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Lake.” He came up behind me, put his arms around mine, and sunk his hands in the water, lacing our fingers together. “I used to think about doing this when we had Sunday dinners,” he said softly into my ear. “Holding your hand underwater for a few seconds, where no one could see.”

  My breathing shallowed as I stared at the fizzing suds. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I might’ve, if I’d thought either of us could handle it.”

  I inhaled, my back against his chest, our hands hidden by the foam. He massaged my palms, knuckles, wrists. “What are you doing?” I asked, suddenly aware of his breath on the back of my hair.

  “You promised me you wouldn’t bolt after dinner.”

  “What good would it do to stay? This . . . it’s too hard, Manning. Being around you will always be too hard.”

  “I know it is, Birdy. I wanted to ease us into this. I thought you could come here for a nice, simple dinner and tell me all about your life. But it really never was easy with us, was it?”

  Nobody could say we hadn’t tried. We’d been pushed, and we’d pushed back. We’d wanted love to be enough, but it wasn’t. I shook my head and whispered, “No.”

  “Nevertheless, I keep coming back to you. I can’t give you up.”

  As good as it felt to hear that, I knew the truth—it wasn’t that simple. If it had been, we’d have figured this out long ago. I took my hands from the water and turned to face him. “What about closure?”

  “Don’t want it,” he said, stepping back. “Don’t need it. Not even sure what it is.”

  Water dripped from our hands to our feet. I frowned. “But you said . . .”

  “I had to get you here, Lake.” He passed me a dishtowel. “I don’t know what that bullshit was earlier about being over me, but I’m not over you. No fucking way—not now, not ever.”

  My throat closed. I couldn’t breathe. He’d given me no warning, and now I was either going to choke or keel over, and all this would’ve been a waste. “It wasn’t bullshit,” I said, drying my hands. “I’ve been stuck in this place for over ten years. I’ve tried to be happy, to find myself, but I can’t while you’re in my way.”

  “Me?” His eyebrows wrinkled. “What are you talking about?”

  The backs of my eyes burned with hot tears. “I know you didn’t want this for me. All this pain. You wanted me to soar, and I can’t—because of you. I have to let go. I have to let you go.”

  “And what did I tell you all those years ago? I won’t be let go, Lake.”

  “It’s too hard, Manning. I thought we were meant to be, but maybe we’ve been fighting against fate, not alongside it.”

  “I never believed in fate,” he said. “You did. I want to fight, I’m ready, so let me do the fighting. I’ve made all of this for us.”

  I inhaled back a sob. “It’s time for us to face the truth.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “What truth?”

  “That maybe you and I . . . we were never meant to be. There’s no twisted destiny or fate or inevitable . . .” The next wave of tears was so painful to keep inside, I had to stop talking. I could hardly get the words out, but it had to be said if I had any shot at a satisfying life without him. “It’s written up there in the sky,” I said. “Our stars are permanently separated. There’re no birds to carry us across the Milky Way to each other. I’m sorry you ever told me that story.”

  “So am I. It’s a fantasy, but we’re a reality. Don’t you have any faith in me, Birdy? I don’t need anyone to carry you to me. You must’ve always known, when I was ready, I would come for you.”

  “Then why haven’t you?” I asked.

  “I’m here now, Lake. I’m here for you because I still love you. Always.”

  “It’s too late,” I said. “I couldn’t see a way to ever be happy without you, so I made the decision to move on.”

  “I don’t believe you.” He made two fists as he crossed his arms. “You may love him, I get that, it’s my own fault, but he will never be what I am to you. You know that.”

  This was the Manning I remembered from New York. I didn’t correct him. What was the point? If it wasn’t Corbin, it would be someone else. “You can fall in love with someone else if you’re willing to try,” I told him. It was the same thing Corbin had said to me on the patio. “We both can.”

  “Nah, I can’t,” he said simply. “You’re it for me.”

  My face warmed with all the hurt of the past few years. Was he not even going to try to let me go? Did he think this was easy for me? That I hadn’t suffered enough? “You’re it for me, too,” I said angrily, “but I don’t want to hurt anymore. I can’t handle the possibility of losing you again.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Lake. Do you really think I can ever move on from you? That if you give me your love, I won’t fight every day to keep it?”

  “What about the last four years? I asked. “You didn’t fight for me then.”

  “Look around you. Look at what I’ve built. Who do you think this is for?”

  My eyes went to the wine cooler, the state-of-the-art range, the painstakingly customized cabinetry. And back to Manning, where they stayed. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve spent the last few years away from you to become everything you needed me to be. I wasn’t going to fuck this up again. You wanted me to follow my passion, so I did. To show you I had faith in us. To create a life that makes me happy, to provide not just for you, but for others.”

  My heart beat in my stomach as I continued to fight my tears. He had faith? Since when? “But I always had hope in us,” I said. “I may have lost it, but you never had it.”

  “Look at this house and tell me I never had hope. I knew you might never see this—might not ever give me another chance—but I built it anyway.” He pushed his hair back and released it, imploring me with his eyes. “I know you can learn to love someone else, but I’ve tried that, and I can tell you it’ll never be what we’ve got. So I’m asking you to choose me. This, what you see around you, is our home. All I’ve done, and all I am is for this—for you.”

  Manning had built this for me? A house—a home? What scared me most about that was how much I wanted it to be true. I stood in the middle of a life I didn’t want to leave behind, and he was telling me I didn’t have to. I stood before the only man I’d ever loved and left and tried to forget as he offered me everything I’d ever wanted.

  I wanted to take it, and I could see how things were different now, but how could I not be afraid? I couldn’t fight my urge to cry anymore. I let the pain and fear and heartache of the past leak onto my cheeks.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” Manning said quietly. “I don’t want to scare you off, but I can’t let you leave without knowing how I feel. Give me one thing tonight. Believe in me long enough to see the house I built on faith, for a family I might never have.”

  I covered my mouth an
d sobbed into my hand. Manning might’ve broken my heart and made mistakes, but he was too good of a man not to be a father and husband. “Don’t say that.”

  “I might not get those things, Lake.” He backed away from me. “There’s only one person I’m meant to have a family with. If I can’t, I won’t.”

  He deserved a family more than anyone I knew, so I let that tether between us pull me along with him. As he left the kitchen, I followed—past empty bedrooms, through the darkened house, until we were at the end of a hallway.

  He opened a door for me, and I looked up at him as I walked into a room with walls painted midnight blue—or maybe it was the color of the ocean floor, or a starless New York night. By the enormous, honeyed-wood bedframe with matching nightstands, I could tell Manning had put thought into the master bedroom, just as he had the kitchen.

  I walked closer to the footboard, which had been carved with a large bear on all fours in a forest, looking over his shoulder at the trees. My great bear. I didn’t see much more than that because my vision blurred with more tears. If I could go back to that night where he’d shown me the constellations and then told me no when I’d tried to kiss him, would I change any of it? Would I have left it at that? I wasn’t sure. There’d been so much heartbreak and only just enough love to keep me going. Could I do it all again? Was he asking me to?

  I turned back to him. “It’s been so long,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if I meant his absence or the time that’d passed since this had all started. “Things are different for each of us. Do we even know each other anymore?”

  He came to me and wrapped an arm around my middle. My body locked up as he pulled me against him, but as I looked into his familiar, warm brown eyes, I thawed. It was like snapping together with my matching puzzle piece.

  “Do we?” he asked as he cupped my jaw. “Does this part feel different?”

  Ever since I’d left Manning’s hotel room in New York, nothing had been quite right. I’d accomplished a great deal since then, and there was more on my horizon, but still, Manning’s absence persisted in me. Even being here with him tonight had been so confusing—until now. I was no longer out of place. I was no longer just me. I was Manning’s. His arms around me brought everything into focus. This was still, after all these years, all that mattered. I wondered if he’d known that since he’d seen me on the studio lot, and that was why he seemed so calm tonight.