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“Okay, okay,” the cabbie said, pressing the on button. “It’s good.”
I slammed the door and relaxed back into the seat. Manning watched me for so many blocks, I finally asked, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“I told you you’d hate it here.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.” He slid his hand across the leather seat toward mine, then froze, as if remembering my hand wasn’t his to hold. I wanted to ask about his wedding ring, but how? And what would I do if he said he and Tiffany were ending their marriage? Did that have anything to do with why he was here?
Before I could decide how to ask, he beat me to it, nodding at my hand. “Is that from Corbin?”
I inspected my ring, a thin silver band I’d bought for a dollar at a flea market. “No.”
“Someone else?” he asked.
“No . . .”
“Did you end up telling him you’d be with me tonight?”
I paused for emphasis before answering, “Corbin knows everything about me.”
Even in the dark, I saw a shadow cross Manning’s face. “Everything? How about you and me?”
I crossed my legs toward the door. Corbin didn’t know about that. Or if he did, he’d turned a blind eye to it for too long for it to ever come up. I let Manning think what he wanted, though. “If you’re worried what he thinks of you, you should be satisfied that there’s nothing to tell where you and I are concerned. Just like you wanted.” The driver honked and swore at the car in front of us. “What would I say?” I continued. “That we kept our hands to ourselves those two years?”
“Do you still wish I hadn’t?” Manning asked. “Kept my hands to myself?”
My heart skipped with his unexpected question. Had he really said that, or was this bizarre day messing with my mind? Traffic forced the cab to slow, and I watched people walk along Third Avenue with shopping bags and warm drinks and scarves up to their eyes. I didn’t reply to Manning’s question. Surely he knew the answer.
“You were young and infatuated,” he said. “You would’ve given me anything I’d asked for. Do you think it would’ve been right for me to take it?”
“I was young.” I kept looking out the window. Maybe I was an idiot to be here like Val had said. “But I wasn’t just infatuated.”
As we drove in silence, I snuck glances at him. He wasn’t as reserved as I would’ve thought. I couldn’t decide if I was glad for it, to have access to him in a way I’d never had, or if it was cruel of him to finally treat me like an adult when it was too late to do anything about it. Wasn’t it?
Once in the theater, Manning removed my coat in the crowded lobby, lingering at my back. “I was hoping you’d wear your hair down,” he said, his breath near the top of my head. “I like it that way.”
“I know you do. That’s why I didn’t.”
He grunted. “Am I bringing out your feisty side tonight? Or is this the new you?”
“I’m not feisty,” I said. “I’m hurt. By you.” I wanted to ignore all of Val’s earlier warnings, even if only for tonight—I deserved this time with Manning that’d been taken from me—but how could I let myself forget? I slipped out of the coat completely, leaving it in his hands. “I’m not going to wear my hair down for you, because you aren’t my husband or boyfriend. You aren’t even my friend.”
“If you’re feisty, if you’re hurt, if you’re a New Yorker now, fine,” he said, his voice as firm as mine. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know you, Lake. I’ve always known who you were on the inside, where it counts.”
“I’m sure that’s one of the lies you’ve told yourself over the years.” I pulled my mittens off by the fingers. “You know best. You know me. You know everything. Well, you don’t.” Theatergoers milled around us, sipping wine from plastic cups during animated conversations. I hardly noticed them with the way Manning glowered at me. “There are people who know me better than you now,” I said.
“Because he orders you hash browns when you’re fucking hungover? That doesn’t mean shit.”
Admittedly, his jealousy over that tiny tidbit of information made my skin tingle with pleasure. Because of the backless dress, I hadn’t put on a bra, and my nipples hardened from the cold and Manning’s relentless gaze. “You’re making more of what you and I were, Manning. We never even kissed.” I barely managed to keep my voice steady. If we’d gone this long without being intimate, maybe what we had wasn’t as strong as either of us had thought. What two people could be this enamored and stay away from each other as long as we had? It was pathetic, really.
