"You won't even smoke in front of me," she accused. "I'm old enough to buy cigarettes, but I'm still a child in your eyes."
I looked up. The night sky spread out behind her. The stars weren't as clear as they'd been up in Big Bear, but it didn't matter. She was the only star I saw. No, she wasn't a child in my eyes, because if she was, that'd make me the same monster as my dad. I saw her naked underneath me. I saw her as a woman opening up for a man. I saw her soft parts giving way to my hard ones. And it sent my heart racing. "One day-"
"Don't tell me 'one day,'" she said.
Her beauty fucking radiated when she hurt like this. She couldn't control her pain, so it just seeped out of her. I wanted to tell her it'd go away soon. She'd meet someone at school who'd do far better for her than I could. Some rich, California asshole who'd go on to run a Fortune 500 company or produce movies or something. Some finance guy like Corbin, maybe. She'd be his star, not mine. She'd forget about me in no time. If I had the smallest doubt about it being the right thing, I would've taken her somewhere right now. I'd have made her mine for real, even knowing there was a large chance she'd figure me out one day, and I'd end up the one with a broken heart.
"There's only now," she said. "There's no more time. You have to be selfish, even if people get hurt."
"Selfish?" I stood abruptly, training my eyes on her so she'd understand I wasn't fucking around. I gestured toward the parking lot. "This is me being selfish. I stayed when I should've gone. For you. Now, I have a life here. A family. Now, I'm not sure I could leave if I wanted to. And I don't want to."
She turned away from me, toward the ocean, her chin wobbling. "Whatever you say, whatever she says, I know the truth. I saw it."
I had to crane my neck to hear her over the waves. "What are you talking about?"
"Your tattoo," she said. "That night at your apartment in the kitchen. I know what it is."
Hands on my hips, I hung my head. What could I say? I'd been desperate. Locked up, unable to talk or even think too hard about the things that mattered most to me. Trying to forget the memories I'd made just months earlier. A lifer had been trading tattoos for cigarettes and I'd asked for the stars. It'd cost me three packs and a little bit of my bad-boy image, but having those three stars on my body had bought me some peace.
"It's for Madison," I said, which was partly true, and easier to swallow than the whole truth.
"No, it's not." Her long hair blew into her face with a breeze, and I had to cross my hands under my pits to keep from brushing it away. She took a breath, the words floating out on her exhale. "It's for me. It's Summer Triangle."
She fucking knew I'd put her star on my body, even though it didn't belong to me and never would. Wasn't that enough? I couldn't tell her I loved her. I couldn't tell her I didn't. It killed me, but that was how it was. It wasn't going to be any other way, no matter how many times she put me in this goddamn position.
"I love you," she said.
Hearing it aloud, from her mouth, made my throat thick. I allowed a second for the pleasure to sink in, for that euphoric warmth to spread from my chest to my face, to the lower half of my body. She loved me, and those words alone were doing things to me. She was going to get me hard with one sentence? Goddamn it. I was a grown man who thought with his head, not his dick. I had to get ahold of myself. "Don't do this, Lake."
"I can't just sit back and watch. I have to say something." Her face, open and sweet, pleaded with me. "You know it's true, Manning, you have to. You've always known that my heart doesn't function right without you, that food doesn't taste the same and air is too thick, and my mind is always wandering back to that night on the lake, because I'm all wrong without you, because I'm in love with you."
23
Lake
Manning hardly moved an inch, arms at his sides. His gray hoodie hugged his biceps but opened as a breeze came off the water. My confession hung in the air between us, and then slowly, pieces of it caught on the wind, scattering away from us.
I'm all . . . wrong . . . without you.
Meeting Manning had taken me apart, and he hadn't been around to put me back together properly. My limbs had been stitched on, my heart cut out of red construction paper, my cloth outside wearing thin. I wanted to be a real girl, but without him, I was just a bundle of body parts.
I'm in love with you.
I needed to hear it back.