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Before long, air blew ice cold on my face. I’d showered before leaving the facility, but I was already hot, horny, and sweating. I needed things—a cold beer, a monster burrito, and a good, solid, knock-me-out-cold fuck.
I shifted the rearview mirror again, envisioning Lake in the backseat, pretending she’d come to greet me at the gates. She hadn’t, though. Knowing how persistent she could be, maybe that meant she’d accepted the way things were between us. I was glad. She was too fragile, like a little bird. My little bird. I didn’t want her anywhere near here. Even so, I couldn’t stop thinking it—she hadn’t come.
“Manning,” Tiffany said gently.
I snapped out of it, looking over at her. “Yeah?”
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive? You’ve been sitting there staring out the windshield for five minutes.”
“Yeah.” Don’t think about Lake. Not like this, when I was feeling a little strung out. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “It’s a long drive.”
“I know. I’ve made it lots of times.” She wrinkled her nose. “Are you sure you’re okay? Should we stop for anything? Are you hungry? I’d want sushi first thing. Have you ever had sushi?” She paused. “Are you listening?”
“Yeah. I don’t want sushi. I think—I’m feeling a little zoned out.”
“You’re probably, like, overwhelmed. Let’s just go home. We shouldn’t eat anyway. We’re going to my parents’ for dinner, and we might spoil our appetites.”
It took a moment for her words to register. Sleep, food, sex. That was all I wanted. The necessities. I turned my head to Tiffany. “What?”
“My mom’s making ribeye for you. She wanted to welcome you home.”
If I knew Lake, she’d have a hand in that. My first meal as a free man, and Lake would be the one to make it. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It was almost too much to take. “I don’t know. I have to meet with my parole officer tomorrow, and I’m exhausted.”
“I know. That’s why we’re eating early.”
“What about your dad?”
“He’ll be there,” was all she said.
“I could eat right up until the steak was served and not spoil my appetite,” I said.
“Then should we stop for food?” Tiffany asked, sounding confused.
“No. You have some of my stuff at your place?”
“Mostly what I could move in by myself, like clothing.” She reached over to squeeze my bicep with a wink. “But I’m not sure it’ll fit anymore.”
After a three-hour drive, we hit a Target for the essentials, and then Tiffany directed me to her place. Palm trees lined the entrance to a complex of bi-level, standalone apartment buildings. Each cluster of beige stucco buildings had covered parking and access to a gated pool.
Tiffany’s place was on the ground floor, underneath an outdoor staircase for the neighbor above her. Reddish-pink bougainvillea grew around the entrance and over the brick wall of her back patio.
She let us into the apartment. From the doorway, I looked around my new home. Or, at least, the place I’d be staying until I figured out my next move.
“It’s nice, right?” she said, dropping her keys on the breakfast counter. “I mean, it’s nothing special now, but we’ll fix it up.” I stepped inside with my plastic Target bags of boxers, undershirts, some new clothes, and toiletries. She brushed the arm of a couch in the center of the room, the same dark brown as the front door, then fluffed some blue throw pillows. Her TV sat on the ground. “I can make a few dollars go a long way. I wanted to wait for you anyway, to see what you like.”
There was nothing too personal about the apartment, but it was bigger and nicer than mine had been before I’d gone away. For fuck’s sake, it had a second room. Even growing up, there’d been no spare space.
In any case, I had more pressing things on my mind. I set the bags on a glass-top kitchen table and turned to Tiffany. The last thing I’d wanted to do was a Target run, but now that it was out of the way, the first and only thing I wanted to do was sink myself into a woman. “Show me the bedroom.”
“Come.” She motioned for me to follow her across the apartment to a door at the end of the hall. The bed was good, white and fluffy, twice as large as the twin I’d had at my place, and flanked by light-wood nightstands. Compared to a jail cell, it was the Taj Mahal. My limbs wouldn’t hang off the edges of this one.
“I picked white for now,” she said, “but I figured we could get some blue in here. Think beachy but masculine. Maybe even an ocean theme with turquoise—you know about Tiffany blue, right? The color of a Tiffany’s box? That would be funny. Or if that’s too girly, there’s nautical with sailboats . . .”
