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“Oh yeah?” Manning said wryly. “Grateful. Let me just think on that.”
“Want me to tell you how things looked from my perspective right then?” I asked. He stayed silent so I said, “I didn’t think so.”
“I still can’t get those images out of my head,” he said, not looking at me. “You at the altar behind Tiffany. Just standing there sobbing. I was so worried you’d try to stop it. I couldn’t let you speak up in front of all those people. It wouldn’t have changed anything.” He cleared his throat. “That’s what I was thinking during the ceremony, start to finish—don’t say anything, Lake. Don’t say a word. I love you, I’m sorry, and please stay the fuck quiet.”
“That’s what you were thinking while you were getting married?” I asked. “That you loved me?”
“Yeah. I’m no good, huh?”
If I hadn’t been bundled in my blanket, I would’ve touched his face. For some reason, that seemed like the thing to do when he was being hard on himself. I needed to find some way to bring his eyes back. “Manning?”
It worked. He turned his head to me. “Yeah, Birdy.”
“Would you do anything differently?” I asked. “Would you have left my bracelet where you found it?”
“Do you wish I had?”
“Not fair.” I shook my head. “I asked first.”
He thought on it awhile, and I rose and fell with his chest as he breathed. “I can’t answer that. I wouldn’t put you through the last few years again. Through all that maid of honor bullshit, and having to leave your family behind, and everything that came after it.”
“But then we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“What if I told you I wouldn’t change any of it?” It wasn’t the easiest thing to admit, but I’d had to see the silver lining a lot since I’d left. Val had done a good job of making sure of that. I wasn’t always sure this was the right path for me, but if it ended with Manning, it had to be. My throat was dry from the frosty air and the smoke. I held in a cough so he wouldn’t get paranoid about the cigarette. “I never would’ve had this experience in L.A.”
“At the very bottom of it, Lake, I don’t think I could take it all back. We had to go through it.” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Ten years from now, we’ll remember it as the beginning.”
“Ten years?” I asked. “You think that far ahead?”
“Ten, twenty, fifty. I don’t know if I can live in a city my whole life, but maybe we move upstate so you can stay close enough to perform.”
I blinked in disbelief. “You’d stay here on the east coast?”
“We can travel some of the time. I’ve always wanted to check out European architecture.” He held out his cigarette, drawing an invisible picture in the darkness. “Gaudí has this extravagant temple in Barcelona that would make you smile. It looks almost cartoonish. Then I’ll take my little actress to a show at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.” Dropping his hand, he squeezed my thigh over the blanket. “Then of course we’ll have to see the ocean. Maybe South of France or the Amalfi Coast. But no topless beaches. Or those little bikinis they wear. I want you all to myself.”
I cozied up to him, basking in the glow of our bright future. “I can just pack a muumuu.”
He nuzzled my ear. “Or I can find ways to keep you in the room the whole trip.”
I lifted my chin to give him better access to my neck. We were good at hiding away from the world—and from those who cared about us. I realized when Manning left California, he’d be saying goodbye to more than Tiffany. “Will you miss Henry when you move?” I asked.
“Nah. I don’t see him a ton as it is. He and I could talk on the phone once a year and it’d work for us.”
“What’d you say to him at the wedding?”
“Henry?” Manning sucked on his cigarette. “When?”
“Before the ceremony. I was watching from behind the arches. Henry looked at me from the altar like he knew . . . everything.”
“Huh.” Manning shook his head slowly. “I didn’t say anything to him. He congratulated me and asked how it felt to have found the love of my life. It was weird he’d chosen those words. Forgot about that until now.”
“How’d you answer?”
“I didn’t. I could never lie to Henry. If he’d asked me if I was happy, I could’ve said yes. I was. If I couldn’t have you, at least I was building a life with someone I cared about. If he’d asked me if I was doing the right thing, yes to that, too, because I thought I was at the time.” A flake fell on his nose, and he rubbed it away. “But was I marrying the love of my life? No. So I just stood there, sweating, hoping he’d leave it at that.”
