It was mostly dark in our corner of the backyard except for the glare of the moon and the lights from the patio. Just enough to see him. Manning’s beautiful, angular face was even better than I remembered but undoubtedly harder. When he narrowed his eyes toward the house, little wrinkles formed at the corners like he was thinking. Or maybe he was just looking. For Tiffany.
“Are you really going to live with her?” I asked when the silence became too much.
He took a long, long drag, then turned his head over his shoulder and blew smoke out. He coughed a little, then squatted to put out his cigarette in the dirt. He was going to walk away. Almost a-year-and-a-half he’d been kept from me, and he was just going to walk away when we finally had a moment alone?
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He shook his head up at me. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”
“I can’t help it.”
“You have so much ahead of you. Focus on that.”
“You don’t. And it’s my fault.”
He stood quickly and flicked the butt over the back wall, into the yard of the house he’d helped build. He stepped a little closer, looking down at me. “You did what I asked. You did good.”
“I want to do more. Tell me how to fix this. Can I go to the cops once I turn eighteen? Will they erase the charge if I give them your alibi?”
He hesitated, then raised my chin with his knuckle. “I don’t want to hear another word about it, Lake. You’re not going to the cops. You’re not going to ruin your life by trying to help me.”
“And what about you?” I asked. I wanted to be cool, to not care so much, but it was all I’d thought about since he’d left and the words wouldn’t stop coming out. “Things are already ruined. You can’t do what you love and you’re with her—it’s all ruined. Everything.”
He lowered his hand. “I chose this knowing what it would mean for me,” he said. “I’ve accepted that. You need to also.”
I shook my head hard as tears formed in my eyes. I didn’t like to be told no. Maybe Dad was hard on me, but I normally got just about anything I wanted. Anything I could think to ask for. Manning still belonged to me, even if I was still too young, even if Tiffany was still holding on to him. “You don’t understand,” I said.
“Yeah, I do. You have to trust me, Birdy.”
Hearing his nickname for me again, my façade cracked a little. I closed my lids, my lashes wet on my cheeks. He tried to pretend he didn’t care, but he did. He hadn’t forgotten. “I can’t live like this,” I said. “Knowing what I did. That you’re mad. That you blame me.”
“I don’t blame you.”
I blinked away the threat of tears. “Then why didn’t you answer my letters? Why couldn’t I visit you?”
“Lake—”
“You could’ve called or written to tell me you were okay. I thought about you every day.”
“Christ, Lake.” He ran a hand through his inky hair, and it stuck up, slowly easing back into place. “Don’t tell me that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want you thinking about what-if or why this, why that. It’s just the way it is.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“Doesn’t it?” he asked.
It was all he needed to say. What were our options? I was still seventeen, and he’d always be seven years older. He lived with my sister. My father hated him and would never let me be with him while I lived at home.
I launched forward, throwing my arms around his middle. He didn’t hug me back, but his smoky scent calmed me even more than the new t-shirt smell underneath it. This was exactly where I wanted to be. “I have to know what it was like in there. I can’t stop thinking about it. I tried to get in to see you. I borrowed my friend’s car and lied about where I was going. I checked out books from the library—”
“Lake, stop. Just stop.” His torso expanded with an inhale, and his voice wavered. “Please stop. You don’t know what it’s like . . . and you’re . . .” He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed out what sounded like, “fucking killing me.”
“I missed you so much.” I hugged him more tightly, hoping to wake him up, make him stop pretending this didn’t affect him. “I still do.”
He put a big hand on my forearm, a touch that put all my hairs on end, and turned it up a little. He ran a fingertip over my small scar. It was dark, but he looked almost longingly at it. “You miss the man I used to be.”
“That’s not true.”
“This is too hard. You gotta understand.”