“It’s fucked,” Gary said. “You were better with those kids than half the staff we’ve got now.”
I gave him a look. “It’s not fucked. It’s reality. I’m a felon.”
“You’re not, though. Wrong place, wrong time doesn’t make you anything more than unlucky.”
I picked at the label of my bottle. Gary had visited me in prison all the way up until my release. In the beginning, I hadn’t been able to figure out his angle. He’d been good to me during our first visit, asking if I needed anything, when I would’ve expected him to be pissed that I’d drawn negative attention to the program. But I’d come to find out that for some reason, Gary thought I was all right. He believed I hadn’t committed this crime. For that reason, I felt a lot of guilt about lying to him. If he knew where I’d really been that night, he wouldn’t be so understanding.
“What if I did do it?” I asked. Sometimes I pictured Lake gliding on her back in the dark water, waiting for me. “What if I’d do it again? I’m not the same man I was when I went in.”
Gary drank some more. “I don’t know, man. Not sure why you’re always trying to convince me you’re no good.”
“Not trying to convince you about anything. Just stating facts. You get a chance to talk to Bucky?”
Gary inhaled a deep breath. “Yeah, and it’s like I told you. He’s an asshole but he’s not a rat. He had nothing to do with your arrest. Why would he?”
“I don’t know. Just to be a dick.”
“Let it go, Manning. Nobody’s out to get you. Well, nobody but Tiffany.” He grinned. “Didn’t I warn you she’d get her hooks in you?”
“You did.” I got out my pack of cigarettes. I was trying to smoke less to save money, but I couldn’t quit completely. It was still the best part of my day, most days. Not even the disappointment in Lake’s voice that night I’d gotten out was enough to scratch the surface of my cravings. She said she still had the bracelet she’d made me, but what could it do for me now, other than make me feel worse?
“You guys get along all right?” he asked.
“Tiffany? She gets on my case sometimes.” Truth be told, I didn’t mind it so much. Nobody had given a rat’s ass what I did with my life since I’d graduated high school. It was kind of nice, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Gary. “I look for work every day. It’s hard without a car, and my credit tanked while I was inside, so I can’t get a decent lease. My last resort is trucking. I don’t really want to go on the road if I don’t have to.”
“Doesn’t her dad pay the rent?”
“I give him as much as I can each month, and I’ve been getting Tiffany to contribute more and more. I’ve suggested we move to a more sensible place, but neither Tiff nor her dad want that.”
“How’d you two get hooked up again?”
“I was on the crew that built the house next her parents’.”
“And she just came over and introduced herself?”
My chest tightened the way it always did when I thought of those first days with Lake. Everyone on site had noticed the girls. The other men had only seen Tiffany, but not me. Lake had stood quietly by her sister’s side, absentmindedly playing with her bracelet, looking uncomfortable enough to make me notice, to make me wonder what was running through her head. I’d been ready to step in if there was trouble. I hated to be part of something that scared a young girl, but looking back, maybe she wasn’t so scared. I’d found the bracelet in the dirt and returned it to her, but she was the one who came back to talk to me.
“You know how Tiff is,” I said with a drag.
“Yeah, I do. She always been your type?”
“My type?”
Gary paused, seeming to choose his words carefully. “She’s got a big personality.”
Even after we’d moved in together, I’d sometimes wondered why she stayed. It was taking me time to trust that she meant it when she said she loved me. That I wasn’t still a way to get her dad’s attention. I had been, but somewhere along the way, her feelings had changed. Maybe she secretly craved the structure she’d always rebelled against.
“But I gotta say,” Gary continued, “I’ve seen a change in her. That first week at camp, I thought I had her pegged. Boy-crazy troublemaker. But Lydia tells me she’s not like that.”
Tiffany had gotten to know Gary’s girlfriend pretty well, mostly because Gary was the only friend I really hung around with. “She’s still got a little of that going on,” I said with a laugh.