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“And?”
“I earned a ‘B’. After taking the class twice I was hoping for an ‘A’, but at least it was enough to move on.”
He craned his neck to kiss my forehead, and I felt his smile against my skin. “I still love you if you’re a ‘B’ student.” He snickered before I could protest. One single “B” did not a “B” student make. “So what changed after that?” he asked. “Or did it?”
“The next teacher I had worked one-on-one with me. She said she could see my pain when I was off stage, but for some reason I was holding back. She coached me to tap into that.”
“Into the pain,” he murmured, passing his hand over the top of my head.
“It helped. Sometimes I think of you, and her, and all that I’ve missed out on, and I put it into the craft. I’m still not great, but at least I’m learning not to hold back.”
“Lake . . .”
“It’s okay,” I said to his chest. “I needed something, and I had that.”
“Now you have me, too.”
I nodded slowly, unsure of when it would start to feel like that was true. Like Manning was mine. With him by my side, I thought I could work in the city’s sanitation department with a smile on my face.
“I’d like to meet your friends when I get back from California,” he said.
“They’re my family.” I looked up at him again. Family. That was one thing I’d been without for years and wouldn’t get back. My dad and I were at the bottom of a mountain neither of us seemed willing to climb.
“Does he ever talk about me?” I asked.
Manning knew exactly who I meant. He moved his hand to cup my face. “He misses you.”
“He said that?”
“He doesn’t have to. We all know he does.”
I guess Manning’s hand on my cheek was meant to soften the blow. I’d gone from being constantly under my dad’s thumb to not speaking to him once in over four years. Whenever Mom and I were on the phone, Dad was either “swamped with work,” “not feeling well,” or “on his way out the door.” Mom must’ve told those lies for herself, because the truth was obvious.
“You were the apple of his eye, Lake—of course he misses you. Pride is a fucked-up thing and you hurt his.”
“I had to go. I couldn’t stay there after that night.”
His arm underneath me tensed. “I know it isn’t fair to say, but it was hard for me, too,” he said.
“It didn’t seem that way to me.” I fell quiet remembering those moments at the altar, the way Manning had shaken Gary’s hand and smiled. “You looked happy.”
“That was intentional.” He stroked my hair. “I was terrified if you thought I wasn’t, or that I had a single doubt, you’d stop the wedding. I felt so sick that I could barely focus on what was happening around me. Even when I wasn’t looking at you, all I saw was you . . . and then I did look. You were crying, and I worried I’d made a huge mistake.”
Warmth prickled my scalp and finally, I felt not a bit of cold anywhere on my body. I was even sweating a little. “I would’ve stopped it,” I said. “I wish I had. All this could’ve been avoided.”
He shook his head. “I had to go through with it, Lake. I wanted it back then. Wanted a family, and to be accepted, and to do good and be good. I didn’t believe there was another way for me. I knew for sure I couldn’t be the man for you.”
He paused, gauging my reaction. It hurt to hear him say he’d actually wanted those things, but there was something to the idea that we wouldn’t be here otherwise.
“I figured once I married Tiffany,” he continued, “you’d go off to USC, graduate with a great job, meet someone smarter than me, more deserving, someone with the means to give you a great life. Never in my wildest dreams did I think, even for a second, I could be that man for you.”
“You were,” I said. “You are.” I angled up toward his mouth for a kiss, but he didn’t give it to me.
“Am I?” he asked against my lips.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I have a good life here, one that finally feels like my own. I’m doing what I want and having fun. That’s how I know I still need you. Without you, I could have all this and way more, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
Finally, he let our lips meet, kissing me softly at first, and then with a little more urgency. Again, the stiffness between us begged for my attention. I went to reach for him, but he caught my hand and kissed my palm. “That can wait. I’ve been dying to know everything about the last four and a half years. I want to hear all of it.”
