I’d just smoked three cigarettes in a row and felt a little woozy after my extended break. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see her, but when I did, I was glad she’d come. She’d dressed up for me, even more than usual. Hair, makeup, a velvety red dress, heels, the whole nine.
Tiffany’s mouth fell open as I approached. I leaned down to kiss her cheek, but she threw her arms around my neck and wouldn’t let go.
“Enough, inmate,” a guard called over the crowd.
She smelled of something sweet, some kind of berry, and she was soft. Everything had been so hard up until now, and she was so damn soft, but I couldn’t bring myself to put my arms around her. I didn’t know if she was still mine, if she ever really had been. After the past few months, nobody and nothing felt like it belonged to me. “Tiff.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered in my ear.
“Sutter.” The CO had gotten out the bullhorn so everyone turned to us. “Don’t make me come over there.”
I pulled back. Tiffany put her face in her hands and burst into tears.
“Jesus.” I wasn’t sure what to do. Tiffany had never cried in the year we’d been having these visits. Panic hit me in the chest. So much could go wrong. Was it Lake? Had Tiffany met someone else? “What happened?”
She shook her head.
Helplessly, I stared down at her. I couldn’t even comfort her without risking getting in trouble. I didn’t know how else to console her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, moving her hands to cover her mouth. Mascara had smudged at the outside corners of her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Manning.”
“Why?”
“You look—you look . . .”
I hadn’t bothered with a mirror since I’d gotten out of the hole. It’d been eleven weeks without sunlight, exercise, REM sleep, or decent portions of food. My nose had been broken by a boot in the fight, and I doubted Medical had bothered to set it straight. They’d barely stitched up my busted lip properly. I could only imagine how I looked.
When the guard wasn’t looking, I wiped her eye makeup away. “I’m fine.”
“What have they done to you?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“What was it like?”
“I can’t talk about it.” Based on our previous conversations, I was pretty sure she could handle at least the basics of what I’d been through—the fight, a slow descent into madness—but there wasn’t any way of putting it into words. I’d done my best when I’d written to her, but even then, I couldn’t help playing it down. “Did you get any of my letters?”
“Letters? No. I got nothing. Anything I heard came from Grimes and he made it sound like . . . he didn’t say that . . .” Her eyes scanned my face.
Afraid she might cry again, I gestured at the table. “Sit. We’re drawing attention.”
She dropped heavily onto the bench, and I sat across from her. “You have to tell me what happened, Manning. Please.”
“Tiff, the best thing you can do for me right now is talk. Just talk.” I waited for her to launch into it, whatever I’d missed over the last five or so visits we hadn’t gotten. Instead, she just sat and stared at me. I must’ve looked fuck-all bad. I couldn’t give a good goddamn about that, but what was going through her mind? Was it enough to turn her off me for good? Enough for her to walk away? And then what? I’d be alone, which I basically was anyway. So who gave a fuck what she thought?
I couldn’t control her. She could up and go at any moment, move on with another man, take Lake with her, and what the fuck could I do?
“You going to break up with me because I don’t look the same,” I said, “just fucking do it. I’m not going to sit through an hour of a Dear John pity visit.”
“No,” she whispered. She bit her thumbnail, slumping in her seat. She looked at me with a rare kind of vulnerability that reminded me of a young girl. Her as a young girl. And I had to admit, I didn’t want her to go. I was angry. I was scared. There was definitely something very wrong, and it didn’t have to do with my appearance. “What then?” I asked.
A few more tears slid over her cheeks. She shook her head hard. “Nothing. Sorry.”
“Not nothing. Just come out and say it.”
“I can’t. I don’t even know what it is, I just—”
“I’m not in the mood to play games.” I’d had enough of those for a lifetime, and my patience was shorter than ever. If there was something I needed to know, I didn’t want to sit and dig for it an hour. “Just say it.”
“I think . . .” She brushed at an invisible spot on the metal surface between us and avoided my eyes. “I don’t know.”