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He set his lips in a line. He understood what I was asking. “Nothing,” he said.
“I turn eighteen.”
“I know.”
“And then I’ll go to college. I’ll be away from all of them.”
He wiped his upper lip with his sleeve and turned on the air conditioning. I tried not to shiver. “I’m sorry you think I don’t care about you,” he said, “but it couldn’t be further from the truth. I care too much.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just leave it, Lake. It is what it is.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. If you care about me at all, you’d break up with her before—”
He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. “This isn’t about her, it’s not even about me. It’s about you going off and accomplishing everything you’re supposed to. Do you want to end up like your sister? No education, in a job she hates, living with a felon who can’t even take care of her?”
I mashed my teeth together. Tiffany might not have much in everyone else’s eyes, but she had Manning, so she had everything. I’d take that life in a heartbeat just to be with him.
“Forget about me. Go to ’SC. Do something meaningful with your life and I promise you, one day . . .”
I waited, hopeful, as he turned on his blinker and took a left into the apartment complex. “One day?”
“You’ll find the man who’s right for you. Who’s good for you. Who brings out the best in you. Like I do for your sister. You deserve someone who can take care of you.”
“I don’t want to be taken care of. I want to be loved the way you love me.”
He looked away, out the driver’s side window. His throat rippled as he swallowed. “You don’t want me to love you, Lake.”
The words were too absurd to even hurt me. “I know why you’re acting like you don’t, and I know that you do.”
He didn’t argue. “If you believe that,” he said, “then you know I only want what’s best for you—and it isn’t me.”
He was already parking the car, our time together over before it had begun. A fiery rage burned up my chest. This went beyond being overprotective. Manning refused to see what was right in front of him. Everything he wanted. Everything I wanted. It made no sense to keep pretending it wasn’t there. “Take me back to the hotel.”
“What?”
“Take me back to Corbin. If you honestly feel nothing for me, nothing at all, then I want him.”
He stayed where he was, the car idling.
“I mean it,” I said. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to let him take my virginity since you don’t want it.”
Manning winced. “Stop.”
“You don’t want me, but nobody else can have me? Fine. If you feel nothing, turn on the car and drive me back—”
He tore his gaze from the windshield to look at me. “I feel it,” he said through gritted teeth. “Of course I fucking feel it.”
The night expanded around us, the world, the universe.
“That doesn’t mean anything. You’re a kid, and don’t tell me you’re not, because if you weren’t, you’d understand—people don’t just end up together for love.”
That hurt. Him pretending he didn’t love me was a lie, but this, he really believed. That it might not last. That it wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t enough. “Yes, they do—”
“They don’t,” he yelled, his voice too big for the small car. “Damn it, Lake. This is exactly what I’m talking about. You get under my skin like nobody else does. I have a temper. I get so fucking frustrated with you sometimes. You don’t listen, you keep pushing me, you act like an adult when you’re . . .”
“You’re frustrated with me for acting like an adult?” I asked. “I’ll be eighteen next month.”
“It’s not about your age.” He shook his head. “It’s not.”
If that was true, then I didn’t know how to fight him. I wasn’t equipped for this. If there was some fundamental reason he didn’t want to be with me, how could I change it without knowing what it was?
“Your sister loves me, Lake.” He shut off the car. “I’m sorry if it hurts you, but it’s the truth. The sooner you accept it, the better.”
“But do you love her?”
We sat in silence for a few moments. When he didn’t answer, I grabbed my bag, got out of the car, and slammed the door. My entire body shook. Rum and orange juice burned its way up my throat. I was going to puke. The door to Tiffany’s apartment was unlocked, so I ran into the bathroom and dry-heaved until I was certain nothing was going to come up. I slid down against the bathroom wall to the floor and put my head between my knees.
Why? Why couldn’t he just admit he loved me so we could start our life together? I’d waited long enough, spent almost two years keeping my distance. We were so close to the finish line, or so I’d thought. What did everything else matter once I turned eighteen? What was more important than this fiery, all-consuming love I felt for him?
