Somebody Else's Sky (Something in the Way #2)(34)

I wouldn't be able to wait much longer.





9





Lake





I'd misjudged my measurements.

In Tiffany's mirrored closet, I turned, inspecting the results of my afternoon. I'd taken a ruler and a pair of scissors to the corduroy skirt, but it had come out shorter than I was comfortable with. Tiffany wouldn't think twice about exposing so much leg, and Val probably wouldn't, either. They knew about boys, and tonight was too important to mess up.

Mom had bought me a pink bra from Nordstrom with Tiffany's discount she'd thought was "so cute." Well, cute wouldn't cut it, so I put it under a skin-tight, white baby tee I'd found in the back of Tiffany's dresser. The hem stopped where the skirt started, a sliver of skin between the two. 

As the steaks marinated downstairs, I sat on the bathroom counter and slathered my tanned legs in lotion. I plucked any stray eyebrow hairs and inspected my pores. When two car doors slammed out front, I straightened. They were early. Given Tiffany's track record for tardiness, I hadn't expected that. But could I complain about that? I hopped down and quickly swiped on mascara. I heard voices in the foyer. Damn it. I didn't want to miss a second, especially not watching him come into the house, see the dining table set for him, smell the steak. The only heels I had were from the Homecoming dance and barely two inches. They didn't match my outfit, but there wasn't time to raid my mom's closet. I tried to buckle them on so quickly, I kept fumbling, convinced I heard Manning's sturdy footsteps moving to the kitchen.

I got the shoes on and flew down the stairs faster than I thought possible. The heels were low, but I must not've completely secured the left one, because it came loose, and I stumbled on the last step, blowing into the entryway, nearly falling on my face. I took a balancing step and stopped short.

Manning stared at me from the open doorway. His gaze slid down my top to my skirt, my legs, and shoes. He paused on the unbuckled clasp, then began to make his way back up.

He was ten times bigger than I remembered, ten times at least, and how was that possible when he was already the biggest man I'd ever met? He was taller, broader, more imposing. I'd expected him to look worn and weary, but his black hair, while longer than I remembered it, was cut, and his jaw shaved clean. He'd rolled up the sleeves of his crisp, white t-shirt and paired it with blue jeans and tennis shoes, also brand-new white. His muscles didn't overpower him, but they were real. Solid.

Manning was still looking at my body like it was a piece of chocolate cake, and I figured that was a good thing. People turned down chocolate cake all the time, but nobody ever wanted to.

Our eyes met. His expression remained smooth, but my face flushed with the undeniable heat in his stare, so intense that he almost looked angry. Maybe he was, because he curled one hand into a fist. Was he seeing me, finally, not as a kid, but as a woman? There was more there I didn't understand. A hardness in his eyes, frustration in his tensed arms. As I looked closer, I saw the visible signs of his time away-a scar on his upper lip, the way his nose now crooked a little to the right.

Tiffany came through the door, holding up a bottle of wine. "Got it. It rolled under the seat." She looked at me at the mouth of the stairs and burst into laughter. "Why are you dressed like that?"

Her fingernails were the color of a firetruck.

"Red makes men horny."

She'd one-upped me. Again.

"You mean like you?" I asked. "You wear slutty stuff all the time."

Tiffany balked. "You look like you got dressed in the dark."

"Half of it is yours."

"Girls," Mom said.

I turned, startled. I hadn't heard my parents come in. Dad stood in the doorway of his study, staring at Manning, who hadn't noticed him, either. He followed Manning's line of sight to me. I saw the same anger in Dad's face I'd just seen in Manning's, but there was nothing exciting about it.

"Go put some clothes on," he said. "Now."

"I'm wearing clothes." I sounded more confident than I felt-but it wasn't fair! I did everything I was told, even if I didn't want to. I'd waited so long for tonight, seventeen months to be exact. This was my time.



       
         
       
        

"You are so obvious," Tiffany muttered, storming past Mom into the kitchen.

"It wasn't a request," Dad said. "Get upstairs, take off that ridiculous outfit, and put on some goddamn clothing."

The back of my neck tingled, heat creeping up to my cheeks. Oh my God. This couldn't be happening. There was nothing more childlike than being sent to your room by your father. It was so unfair and so typical of him to ruin anything important to me. "No. I'm not sixteen anymore," I said, glancing at Manning. "I-"