Somebody Else's Sky (Something in the Way 2)

One minute she was my innocent little girl, and overnight she started to change. You don’t know what it’s like to watch a girl become a woman.

Bile rose up my throat with my dad’s disgusting words, his self-righteous justification for the pain he’d inflicted.

I looked from Lake’s mouth to her eyes. Hope radiated from her, some kind of sweet, gentle plea for me to see her while my mind had gone straight to the gutter. She’d been eighteen less than a day. I was no better than my dad. I knew it like I knew my own hands—if I gave in, I would ruin her and everything I loved and cherished about her.

I took the cigarette from behind my ear. Knowing it was my way of telling her to go, Lake’s eyes darkened with hurt. My entire self responded, the need to take her pain away primal and strong.

Footsteps shuffled up behind us. “Wasn’t them,” Gary said. “How much longer you want to wait?”

The spell between Lake and me broke. “Happy birthday,” I told her.

She swallowed, looking like she wanted to speak, but she just got on her bike. With a final glance at me from under her lashes, she left.

I returned to the bed of the truck to wait with Gary.

“Did I tell you Lydia thinks she’s moving in with me?” he asked.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Why’s she think that?”

“Because I didn’t say no.”

“Huh. Congrats.” I leaned my elbows on my thighs and watched the water. “Tiffany and I just had a similar conversation.”

“How’d that go?”

“She brought up marriage already, man. You were right.”

“I’m not surprised.” He raised his sunglasses, appreciating a barreling surfer with a low-whistle. “What’d you say?”

“I . . . I didn’t say anything.” I opened my hands. “My parents had this bad marriage, and I never really thought I’d want that.”

“What was bad about it?”

“They fought all the fucking time. He was a piece of shit, but she’d forgive him, and then it would start all over.”

“From what I’ve seen, it’s the opposite for you and Tiffany. Maybe this is your chance to break the cycle.”

I looked back at him. “What cycle?”

“Remember what I said about parents passing on their bad habits?” He pulled his feet up onto the tailgate to sit cross-legged. “Let me ask you something. Are you a piece of shit?”

I laughed a little, but he didn’t. Was I? At times, I’d thought so. Like now, for instance—I wasn’t sure if I loved Tiffany, but here I was, talking about marrying her. Maybe I owed it to her to walk away, knowing I could never love her completely, but I’d be good to her. I’d step up to the plate and eventually, I’d be able to take care of her. I’d find a way to love her as much as I was capable. Did that make me a piece of shit? “Sometimes I’m not sure.”

“The answer to that was supposed to be no. And do you think Tiffany would let you get away with treating her like shit? You think she’d turn around and forgive you just like that?”

I had to smile. Based on the attitude I’d seen Tiffany give her dad, she wouldn’t put up with that from a partner. “More like she’d remind me how many other men were lined up to treat her well.”

He chuckled. “Exactly. You know how I felt in the beginning. I didn’t understand your interest in her. But I think you saw something the rest of us didn’t, and what’s more . . . now I see it. You brought that out in her.”

Just like my conversation with Tiffany last month, I got a sense of pride thinking I’d helped her. I’d improved her life. I’d done good.

There were things I wanted from the depths of my soul, but I understood how loving something too much could do irreparable damage. Because whether I wanted to or not, I did love Lake. Like my cigarette craving, it lived in me. I couldn’t cut that cancer out, couldn’t quit this addiction. It would’ve been easier to swim across the ocean.

Since the age of fifteen, I’d wanted to put on a uniform and stand up for those who couldn’t for themselves the way Henry had for me. I’d lost my family, so instead, I’d decided to lead a fulfilling life protecting other people. I thought that opportunity had been taken away with my felony charge, but perhaps it hadn’t. Maybe I could still make a difference, and maybe there was a way I could have both things.

I could help the ones I loved, and I could have a family of my own.

18

Manning

Tiffany stood in Gary’s doorway with her purse at her side. It must’ve looked to her as though I was living the life. At four in the afternoon, Gary and I were spread out in the living room, my arms and legs hanging off the couch, Gary slumped in a neon yellow beanbag while he strummed a guitar. On the coffee table sat a bong, an open pizza box, and a dozen empty beer bottles. Gary had muted the TV on The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill had been on repeat for two hours.