Touch(37)

“Passing by? The street dead ends at the end of my block.”



He blinked. “Yeah. I guess it does.”



“You’re confusing me, Luca. I don’t know what you want. I can’t tell if you’re lying to me or what. I can’t deal with lies. I don’t have any place to put them.” Honesty was all she had. Without it, she was absolutely lost. And it felt like he wasn’t saying something. Or he was saying the wrong thing. Or she was asking the wrong thing.



She didn’t fucking know.



With that thought, her gears started to slip. “You know what? I can’t do this. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t do it.” She raked her hands through her hair, pulling sharply, which held off the crazy a little. “I’m starting to freak out. I want you to go.”



Again, he held his hands out in front of his chest. “Hey, easy. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to lie to you. But you’re asking questions I’m not sure I know how to answer.”



“Are you fucking girls?! That’s yes or no! How do you not know the answer?! You’re fucking lying! You are!” Shit. She was losing it. And so fast. This sucked. “GET OUT!”



She stormed past him into the kitchen and took a clean glass off the drainer. After pouring herself some juice, she grabbed her Xanax bottle from her encyclopedic drug cabinet and took a dose. She drank all the juice and then stood there, her eyes closed, leaning against the counter, counting backwards from five hundred.



At four hundred thirteen, she heard Luca say, “Manny.”



She opened her eyes; he was standing in the kitchen doorway. The Xanax bottle was still in her hand, so she threw it at him. He caught it one-handed, sweeping his arm through the air.



“I told you to get out.”



He walked into her kitchen and right up to her, setting the pills on the counter. He was maybe two inches away, but he didn’t touch her. She looked up at him. He was gorgeous, in a rough, he-man way that she really dug. He looked concerned. Maybe sorry. Not pissed or confused. “I want to talk. Straight up.”



Now that her gears had meshed again and the Xanax was just starting to leech into her blood, she didn’t think she wanted him to go, not if he would be straight with her. “No bullshit?”



“No bullshit. Straight talk.”



“Okay.” She set her glass in the sink and walked around him, back out into her living room. Sitting on one end of her sofa, she watched him follow her into the room. “Okay. Let’s talk.”



He sat down in the middle of the sofa, where he’d sat when they’d fucked. He was too close, but he didn’t try to touch her, so she made herself small and let him stay where he was.



Her head was down, and he dipped his own so he could meet her eyes. “You asked if I was fucking a lot of girls. I have. The past few months, not as much, but I’ve been seeing three women—not regular, but often enough. Not serious—just fun. If you saw me with somebody yesterday, that was Lynne. We grew up together. We hook up when she’s not with anybody serious. Yesterday, we met up for an early surf. We’d made that plan before I brought you and your brother home the other night.”



He stopped and just looked at her, and Manny realized that he was waiting for her to say something. She didn’t know what he expected her to say. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. It made her head feel fractured, this confusion. It was different, deeper, than the kind of confusion she normally felt in unfamiliar social situations. She actually felt nauseated.



“I know I’m not supposed to feel bad about that. My mom says you didn’t do anything wrong.”



He laughed, and she narrowed her eyes, trying to understand if he was mocking her. “Since we’re doing straight talk, I have to tell you—it freaks me out that you talked to your mom about me.”



That gave her something to latch onto, and she felt her shoulders loosen a little. She sat back and considered him. “Why?”



“Two reasons. One, telling the parents is not something that usually happens after the first date. I think that’s something that happens when things get serious. And two, I’m not really the kind of guy parents are thrilled their daughter is seeing. And it sounds like your mom already hates me.”



“I don’t think that’s true. My mom doesn’t hate people. And my dad wants to meet you.”



“Fuck, Manny. You told your dad, too? Christ!”



He’d snapped at her, and she shrank even smaller, unable to adapt to his sudden change of tone. “Don’t yell! And I didn’t tell him. Dottie did. And don’t yell!”