Move the Stars (Something in the Way 3)

“I’m not here to check on you.”

“Yes you are. You want me to be exactly what I was, the way you used to know me. Well, I’m not, but I’ve got all my fingers and toes.” I held up my palms. “So what more do you want?”

His chest rose and fell as we stared at each other, his ears reddening. Seeing the way I still got under his skin gave me great pleasure.

“There’s nothing for you here,” I continued. “You wanted me to move on, so I did, and I no longer need you. You can’t have it both ways.”

“You didn’t need me,” he said through his teeth. “That was the whole point. Or so I thought.” The apartment was so small, he only had to turn around to see into my bedroom. “You had the world at your fingertips.” He stared at my unmade bed a few moments too long. “You were supposed to go to USC and excel, meet someone worthy of you, lead a fulfilling life, but this? This is—”

“This is my life,” I said, my throat thickening. Fuck, who was I kidding? He was the one getting under my skin. Fifteen minutes alone with him and this was what he did to me. I was losing my cool. “What makes you think I’m not fulfilled? What makes you think I haven’t met someone worthy?”

Working his jaw back and forth, he muttered something.

“What?” I demanded.

“You didn’t spend the night here.”

“Obviously not. As if that’s any of your b—”

“Where were you?” he asked.

“You know where.”

“I won’t believe it unless—”

“Corbin’s. I was with Corbin.”

The air in the room thinned. Manning had spent so much time hiding his emotions from me that it was unsettling to watch pain cross his face. He looked as though he didn’t quite believe what he was hearing, even though my mom must’ve mentioned Corbin some time over the past few years.

“Whose sweats do you think I’m wearing?” I asked. It wouldn’t help anything, but I wanted to inflict the same brand of pain on him that he had on me.

He curled his hands into two fists, as if he was physically holding words inside—the warnings he obviously wanted to give me, the demands he had no right to make. I took satisfaction in his obvious jealousy. “I didn’t know it would turn out this way, Lake. Your life, and mine, nothing is how I thought it would be.”

Surprised by the rawness in his voice and his confession, my confidence wavered. He wasn’t holding back like he normally did, and that was new territory for us. Four years apart had changed me—had it changed him, too? I had to turn away so he wouldn’t see my weakness. If he was trying to say he’d made a mistake, I didn’t trust how I might respond to that. For all the times I’d fantasized about hearing it, I realized now that it wouldn’t matter. I couldn’t just forgive him. It wouldn’t erase anything. Nothing could be done with an apology. So it was all better left unsaid. “I have somewhere to be, and I’m sure you do, too, so let’s leave it at that. You can show yourself out.”

The bathroom was five steps forward, and each one away from him was more difficult to take than the last—but it had to be done. Inside, I wrenched the handle to latch the door so it wouldn’t swing open. I leaned my hands on the sink and looked at my sloppy hair. Mascara clumped on my lashes, jet-black like a bottomless hole. The hollow of my neck quivered with my pulse. I didn’t want him to leave. Not ever. I wanted nothing more than to go to him. To ask him to stay. Sometimes, late at night, I could smell the briny, sawdust sweat I’d come to love on the construction site. I’d convince myself it was on my pillow, as if Manning and I had recently made love. It was one of many demented fantasies I’d had since moving here. Did Manning have a single clue how alone I’d felt since the day I’d met him and couldn’t touch him? Did he understand the agony of knowing I’d never call him mine?

He’d never realize how badly he’d hurt me when he’d walked down the aisle with Tiffany. I couldn’t move past that betrayal. I couldn’t pretend he hadn’t chosen her over me.

I took my hair down and brushed it out, then got makeup remover from a shelf behind the mirror. As I erased a night of good times with friends that had now been tarnished by Manning’s presence, I heard the click of a door outside the bathroom. I paused, concentrating on the rusty ring around the sink drain. I couldn’t go after him. I couldn’t . . .