I parted my lips, expecting his, but he only stared. “What’s wrong now?” I asked.
“I’m remembering your mouth on me last night on the fire escape.”
Despite the fact that I could see my breath, I warmed at the memory. After all the ways Manning had fought me over the years, I couldn’t believe he’d finally given in. “We can go home and do all that stuff again right now.”
“No, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Tempt me, when all I want is to spend a normal day with you. Even being allowed to fantasize about you is a whole new world to me.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him. “But you did, right? Even if you weren’t allowed?”
His expression sobered as he squinted over my head a moment, then took my coat. “Do you have a plan for us?” he asked, opening it for me.
I wasn’t sure why he couldn’t answer that. After all the things we’d said and done the day before, I didn’t believe for a moment he’d never thought about fucking me. Maybe he wouldn’t admit it to others, but to me, it was welcome. I turned to put one arm in my coat and then the other. “Not a plan so much as some places to hit,” I said.
He turned me around, buttoning up the coat. “Where are we headed?”
“It’s no fun if I tell you. Let it be a surprise.”
When he’d finished, my collar nearly choked me. He fixed the lapels, his eyebrows wrinkled. “I don’t like surprises.”
“I’ll remember that for the future.” I tilted my head up. We were face to face and still hadn’t kissed.
“Lead the way,” he said.
“Okay.” I didn’t move.
“Was there something else?”
I rolled my lips together. I had, in my mind, made it very clear what I wanted. To ask for it was a completely different thing than hinting at it. It wasn’t some easy thing to just kiss him, considering he towered almost a foot over me. I would have to rise onto the tips of my toes, and I would have to put my heart on the line again. No, it wasn’t easy at all.
“You can touch or kiss me when you want,” he said. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
I shifted. For the briefest of moments, I thought—no, I can’t. You don’t belong to me. I would be kissing and touching someone else’s husband.
Maybe sensing my unrest, Manning put his hands under my jaw, lifting my face to his. I rose onto my tiptoes, and he nuzzled his nose against mine a few slow seconds before Hurricane Manning made landfall. Nothing felt more exhilarating than being whipped into a frenzy by his kiss, but his anxiety about being in public belatedly hit me. It almost felt gratuitous to be intimate outside the privacy of my apartment.
I ended the kiss but smiled. “Let’s go while it’s still early. Daylight is precious this time of year.”
“It’s only noon.”
“I know. I hope you have comfortable shoes on.”
We started in the theater district, zigzagging through streets, alleys, and avenues. We’d been here the other night, but this time I pointed out the plays I’d been to, those I still wanted to see, and the ones I’d give my left leg to score a part in.
“Do you sing and dance?” he asked.
“I’ve taken lessons for both, and I’m all right on the piano, but I don’t typically try out for musicals, which can be limiting. I like speaking parts, dramas mostly. It’s thrilling to be up in front of all those people.”
He looked up as we passed Carnegie Hall. “Have you done it a lot?”
“We had performances in school. Some of my friends are writers and have cast me in small productions. And then there’s auditioning, which is basically baring your soul on a stage so they can judge and reject you.”
He brought my hand in his pocket, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles. “What moron would reject you?”
I laughed. According to my more experienced peers, the brutality I’d experienced was simply a preview of what was to come. “You’d be surprised.”
“Have you tried out for any of these?” he asked about the flashing billboards around us.
Rejection wasn’t the easiest thing to admit when Manning had always known me as a type-A overachiever. “A couple, but I’ve never gotten a callback.”
“What about other kinds of acting, like in front of a camera?”
“Some of my friends are interested in that, but most of us, like me, want the stage.” I squeezed closer to Manning to let a dog walker by. I smiled at the fact that his hands and arms were tangled with leashes, yet he seemed in complete control of the five or six pups in his care.
“Should I be jealous of the guy or the dogs?” Manning asked.
I wrinkled my nose at him, and he kissed my forehead. “Dogs,” I said. “Always be jealous of the dogs.”