Food. They weren’t feeding me enough.
Shelter. I had a roof over my head, four dank walls, a shitter, and one-hour-a-day access to a window too small to see out of.
Survival. I was angrier than I’d ever been, but I’d have to check my temper going forward, or I’d end up back in here. I’d already bloodied my knuckles on a wall a few times reliving the days before I’d been herded here.
Sex.
I hadn’t fucked in over a year, and I was certain it was killing me from the inside out. I needed a raw, animalistic fuck, and the last person I’d touched and kissed and felt was Tiffany, so I’d fantasize about what I’d do to her if they let her in here for an hour. I’d take her from every angle, in every way a man could think of.
I’d jerk off and then the guilt would hit. Tiffany didn’t deserve to be treated like that, even in my head. When my heart stopped pounding and my thoughts had cleared, it was just Lake. Her spun-gold hair, eyes like fresh mountain water on a summer afternoon, light shining from within. My fantasies about her were different. Over and over, I thought about the moment I’d see her again. How it would feel to hug her, to smell her strawberry-scented hair again. Did she use the same shampoo she had back then? Would she dress the same, look the same?
Sometimes, out of nowhere, I tasted watermelon. I’d be in the middle of the most disgusting meal of my life and the watermelon had my mouth tingling. It made everything worse. I’d rather eat chalky meatloaf than be reminded of what I’d never have again. Nothing seemed to erase it. It was sweet, harmless, youthful.
When I got worked up over Ludwig and the injustice of being where I was, I’d lie on the cell floor like I had on the concrete deck of the camp pool and force stars onto the mottled ceiling. It was my most cherished memory, both when I’d done it with Maddy and later with Lake. I’d close my eyes and get back on the horse, Lake clutching me out of a childish yet grown-up fear. There was that awkward and wonderful kiss she’d pressed on the corner of my mouth, a nothing kiss behind my ear, then near my lips for only a second and yet . . .
What if I’d just done it? Just taken her in the lake like she’d wanted to? In the truck? Maybe it wasn’t romantic, but I’d have been good to her. Gentle. I’d have gotten to know all the curves and lines of her body for a night. I’d have pushed her shorts down and eased into her, my rough hands greedy for her softness. I’d have taken the one thing I’d wanted more than anything else in years—Lake.
And I would think about that, my heart rate settling, eyes closed, my head back against the concrete. In my mind, I’d be in the truck with Lake in my arms, hands wandering over the silky, downy hair at the very top of her thigh. I’d open her shorts, kiss the peaks of her breasts, bury my cock in her until I’d spent myself to the point I could no longer get hard.
Her innocence and simplicity defied the chaos in my head . . .
I’d open my eyes to the four walls around me and realize I’d come again, thinking of Lake, like the piece of shit I was for wanting to strip away more of her innocence than I already had. I would cry for her, for Maddy, for the monster I’d allowed to hurt my sister, for the monster I’d become. I’d never been or be anything else. It was in my blood. Thinking of Lake that way was wrong, but I’d done it, and not just once, and maybe I should’ve just given in to her watermelon kisses. Then I’d be in here for a real reason and at least I would’ve had those moments of bliss in my life.
After breakfast, I drifted in and out of sleep until a guard opened the door, cuffs in hand. “Let’s go, inmate.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Bermuda. Don’t forget your bathing suit, motherfucker.”
Back in gen pop, Wills had moved to the bottom bunk and a man I didn’t recognize sat on a bed across from ours. I went to my locker. Most of my letters were there but not all. Anything I’d had from commissary was gone. I looked from Wills to the new guy. “Where’s my stuff?”
Wills got up. “Welcome back, asshole.” He nodded across the cell. “That’s Javier. He doesn’t speak English.”
I slammed the door shut. I had to let it go. Some of Lake’s letters were out there, but I’d at least been smart enough to rip her return address off of them the night I’d been tempted to read them. I couldn’t afford to let it get it to me. It wasn’t her, just some words on a paper.
“Bad in the hole, ain’t it?” Wills asked. “No time in there. Nothing. Three hots and a cot.” Wills’ shiny head reflected the too-bright overhead lights. “Lemme see, what’d you miss. . .” Wills said. “Warden cracking down, made the guards send Puentes to SHU for taking some high-profile chester off the count and now they’re all pissing themselves thinking Puentes’s men on the outside will retaliate . . .”
Wills was talking too much, too fast. A prisoner banged on the bars of a cell and others joined in, hollering. Javier shouted something at me in Spanish. “You mind shutting the fuck up?” I asked both of them. “And move your shit off my bed.”
Wills raised his palms but got to work. “Just trying to catch you up.”
“What day is it?”
“Let me check my agenda and get back to you.”
“Go to hell. When’s the next visitation?”
“Two days, but you’ve been gone months, brother. You think your girl will remember?”
Two-and-a-half months was a lifetime to a twenty-year-old. I ran my hand back and forth over my hair. It was getting down to my ears. I needed a cut, a fresh shave, and about thirty hours of sleep. But first, I needed to call Tiffany to let her know I was out.
Javier stared at me and made the sign of the cross.
“What’s his problem?” I asked.
“I think he thinks this place is haunted. Something about the prison being built on a cemetery.”
I went to look through the bars of the window. I needed to see something other than gray concrete. But then, I thought better of it, turning to lean my back against a wall so I could see the whole room. So I could see Wills.
“Why you looking at me like that?” he asked.
A guard came down our aisle, tapping his baton against bars and walls. My heart beat unnaturally hard. “You knew I’d lose my shit,” I said to Wills. “You pushed me anyway.”
“I had no idea you’d go that far. Swear on my life. Swear on Kaya’s life.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You think I’d tell a lie on my daughter’s life, you piece of shit?”
“Yeah, I do. You’re the piece of shit here, not me.”
Wills got quiet. That was a first. Normally, he’d step up, accuse me of being a pussy or of showing disrespect. “You would’ve killed Ludwig,” he said. “Over nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing.”
“I saw it in your eyes, some kinda . . .” He hovered his hand over his face, up and down. “This blankness, man. We all saw it. He’d be dead if Jameson hadn’t been there.”
I knew the look he was talking about. Unfortunately, it’d been passed down. Now that it’d happened once, had I broken some kind of seal? Would it happen again? How careful did I need to be? I was suddenly exhausted. Maybe this was my nighttime, I wasn’t sure. I’d lost track of when and how many hours I’d slept in isolation. My temples pounded with the heat and incessant noise. There was only one way to calm myself down quickly. “You better put a cigarette in my hand right fucking now, and I want a carton by the end of the day.”
“A carton? Are you mental?”
“I don’t know. Try me.”
Wills looked at me like he didn’t know me, like I hadn’t been his cellmate the past year. And then he got me a cigarette. Yeah, well, fuck him. He seemed different to me, too.
In the cafeteria later, men stepped aside to let me get my food first. Some kid I didn’t recognize gave me his seat at a table. I didn’t take it. I sat alone with my back to the wall, watching inmates and guards.
A group of men passed me. “Respect,” one of them said. That was what almost ki
lling a CO had earned me. I forked green beans into my mouth, watching the guys until they sat. Wills kept his distance. Something had changed. I was one of the bigger guys in the prison, but that wasn’t news. There were men in here who’d done more heinous things than nearly strangle a man to death. The difference now, I guessed, was that I’d gone blank in the face, as Wills had put it. I was unpredictable. At any moment, I could snap for no reason. I could hurt someone.
The thing that got me through was the fact that I had a court date. That was a good thing. It was the first step to my release. I would’ve been fine to work and smoke and sleep until then, but when Friday came around, Tiffany showed.
I’d just smoked three cigarettes in a row and felt a little woozy after my extended break. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see her, but when I did, I was glad she’d come. She’d dressed up for me, even more than usual. Hair, makeup, a velvety red dress, heels, the whole nine.
Tiffany’s mouth fell open as I approached. I leaned down to kiss her cheek, but she threw her arms around my neck and wouldn’t let go.
“Enough, inmate,” a guard called over the crowd.
She smelled of something sweet, some kind of berry, and she was soft. Everything had been so hard up until now, and she was so damn soft, but I couldn’t bring myself to put my arms around her. I didn’t know if she was still mine, if she ever really had been. After the past few months, nobody and nothing felt like it belonged to me. “Tiff.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered in my ear.
“Sutter.” The CO had gotten out the bullhorn so everyone turned to us. “Don’t make me come over there.”
I pulled back. Tiffany put her face in her hands and burst into tears.
“Jesus.” I wasn’t sure what to do. Tiffany had never cried in the year we’d been having these visits. Panic hit me in the chest. So much could go wrong. Was it Lake? Had Tiffany met someone else? “What happened?”
She shook her head.
Helplessly, I stared down at her. I couldn’t even comfort her without risking getting in trouble. I didn’t know how else to console her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, moving her hands to cover her mouth. Mascara had smudged at the outside corners of her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Manning.”
“Why?”
“You look—you look . . .”
I hadn’t bothered with a mirror since I’d gotten out of the hole. It’d been eleven weeks without sunlight, exercise, REM sleep, or decent portions of food. My nose had been broken by a boot in the fight, and I doubted Medical had bothered to set it straight. They’d barely stitched up my busted lip properly. I could only imagine how I looked.
When the guard wasn’t looking, I wiped her eye makeup away. “I’m fine.”
“What have they done to you?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“What was it like?”
“I can’t talk about it.” Based on our previous conversations, I was pretty sure she could handle at least the basics of what I’d been through—the fight, a slow descent into madness—but there wasn’t any way of putting it into words. I’d done my best when I’d written to her, but even then, I couldn’t help playing it down. “Did you get any of my letters?”
“Letters? No. I got nothing. Anything I heard came from Grimes and he made it sound like . . . he didn’t say that . . .” Her eyes scanned my face.
Afraid she might cry again, I gestured at the table. “Sit. We’re drawing attention.”
She dropped heavily onto the bench, and I sat across from her. “You have to tell me what happened, Manning. Please.”
“Tiff, the best thing you can do for me right now is talk. Just talk.” I waited for her to launch into it, whatever I’d missed over the last five or so visits we hadn’t gotten. Instead, she just sat and stared at me. I must’ve looked fuck-all bad. I couldn’t give a good goddamn about that, but what was going through her mind? Was it enough to turn her off me for good? Enough for her to walk away? And then what? I’d be alone, which I basically was anyway. So who gave a fuck what she thought?
I didn’t control her. She might up and go at any moment, move on with another man, take Lake with her, and what could I do?
“You going to break up with me because I don’t look the same,” I said, “just fucking do it. I’m not going to sit through an hour of a Dear John pity visit.”
“No,” she whispered. She bit her thumbnail, slumping in her seat. She looked at me with a rare kind of vulnerability that reminded me of a young girl. Her as a young girl. And I had to admit, I didn’t want her to go. I was angry. I was scared. There was definitely something very wrong, and it didn’t have to do with my appearance. “What then?” I asked.
A few more tears slid over her cheeks. She shook her head hard. “Nothing. Sorry.”
“Not nothing. Just come out and say it.”
“I can’t. I don’t even know what it is, I just—”
“I’m not in the mood to play games.” I’d had enough of those for a lifetime, and my patience was shorter than ever. If there was something I needed to know, I didn’t want to sit and dig for it an hour. “Just say it.”
“I think . . .” She brushed at an invisible spot on the metal surface between us and avoided my eyes. “I don’t know.”
Whatever she had to say, it wasn’t going to be good. “Goddamn it, Tiffany.”
“Fine.” She studied my face again like it was a math equation. “I think I, like, love you.”
6
Manning
My alone time with Tiffany had just begun, but the damn clock ticked on behind my head. I couldn’t just relax in this shithole.
“I think I, like, love you.”
I sat, staring dumbly at her, as it sank in. It was the last thing I’d expected her to say. We’d been technically dating over a year. For any other couple, the “I love yous” would’ve been dealt already. “You think what?”
She fidgeted in the silence that followed, looking around the room. She didn’t seem happy about it, just uncomfortable. This was the Tiffany I’d come to know the past year. Her natural response when she was nervous or embarrassed was to lash out, but sometimes, with me, her youth and insecurity surfaced.
“I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even know I did until just now . . .”
“Now?” I asked. Couldn’t she see I was different now? That the reasons to leave had only grown? My early release had been revoked, and I’d seen and done things I didn’t know what to do with. I’d snapped.
She put her elbows on the table and cried again. “You don’t have to say it back,” she said, sniffling. “I just . . .” She peeked through her fingers at me. “I know you’ve been through a lot, and it hurts me. I want to kill that piece of shit Ludwig for—”
“Not the place to make death threats.” I reached out and took her hand. “This is a prison. They might lock you up.”
She offered me a watery little smile. “I’m angry.”
Over the past thirteen months, I’d been plenty angry, but having someone get angry for me, cry for me, express emotions I couldn’t . . . it made my frustration with the system feel justified. “Me too.”
As if that’d flicked on a switch in her, she sat up straighter and inhaled. “Is there anything we can do about him? File a grievance, or maybe even a lawsuit—”
“It’s done. I screwed up, and I paid the price. I’m lucky to be out. Some guys stay in solitary for years, lose their minds. I just want to leave it.”
She nodded and pulled my hand to her chest, and my knuckles brushed the mound of her tits.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I know you’re strong, but are you?”
“I’m horny.”
She half-laughed, half-shuddered, as if she was still forcing back tears. “Seriously? You spent over two months in a room by yourself and that’s what you have to say?”
“What else would I say?”
“I wish we could . . . just a few minutes alone.”
She shrugged. “I would, if it were allowed.”
“Yeah?” I squirmed in my seat. I wanted to hear her say it. I’d been in my head too much, gone untouched longer than a man should. I needed to know she wasn’t scared to want me. “If what were allowed?”
She blushed a little, a slow smile spreading on her face. “Whatever. You know.” She bit her bottom lip. “A conjugal visit.”
I’d taught her that word her second time here. After what I’d been through, just hearing the word conjugal made me half-hard.
“What happened with that guard?” she asked. My erection died, which was for the best. “Why’d you get into it when you knew you’d lose?”
I didn’t know how to put it into words, and I wasn’t going to risk reliving those moments while I was outside a cage. In solitary, with nothing to do, I couldn’t avoid eventually going down that path, but at least I’d taken it out on the walls instead of a person. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You should,” she pressed.
I squeezed her hand, then released it to lean onto my forearms. “The only thing that’ll help me right now is hearing about you.”
She sighed a little. “Well, I came to tell you good news. I found an apartment.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“It’s a two-bedroom in Costa Mesa.”
I raised my eyebrows. Costa Mesa was still Newport Beach and not so far from the water. “How can you afford that?”
“It was Dad’s idea. He wanted me to stay close to them and work. It’s less than fifteen minutes from Nordstrom.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I thought about what you said, getting the roommate or moving inland, but I just . . . it’s not me. I can’t not be at the beach.”
“So he’s going to help you out,” I concluded.
“He’s co-signing the lease and he’ll pay part of the rent.” She rushed her words out. “Well, most of it, so I can, like, eat. I’m not sure why he’s doing it. I guess maybe he just wants me out of the house. But I’m not going to say no.” After a breath, she asked, “Are you disappointed? That I’m not doing it on my own?”
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 33