“What do you think?”
“’Course you don’t.” He winked. “Probably never dated a man who could handle a manual transmission.”
I relaxed back in my seat with his teasing, staring up at him. I was sure I wore that old look on my face that always betrayed my feelings for him. I never seemed to be able to help that around him. “Did I get here too early?”
“Just a few months,” he said, “but I guess that’s life.”
“Months?” I asked. “You mean minutes. If dinner’s not ready, I can help.”
He opened the car door and checked me out. “Come on and help then, cowgirl.”
I couldn’t help blushing. I’d borrowed Val’s Steve Madden cowboy boots to pair with a denim skirt and light sweater. I took the keys from the ignition, got my purse, and slid out. “The house is beautiful.”
“Thing is, it’s not completely done yet,” he said as we walked up the drive. “I thought I’d have more time before you saw it. There’s a lot more I want to do.”
What he was saying didn’t quite make sense, but maybe he was just as edgy as I was. He’d never been all that great at small talk.
“Oh, wait,” I said, stopping. “I left the window down. I should lock up the car.”
“Nothing to worry about out here.” He placed a hand on my upper back, urging me along. “Well,” he added, squeezing my shoulder, “except maybe wildlife. I know you get a little nervous about those bears.”
Goosebumps slid down my spine, hardening my nipples. Manning’s hand on me had been many things over the years—restrained, curious, soothing, hungry. But it always elicited a reaction, no matter what.
Because he was looking at me, he almost stumbled on the first step to the porch. I reached out to steady him, smiling, and decided to just break the ice for us both. “Maybe the bear’s the one who’s nervous.”
He laughed a little, wiping his palms on his jeans. “Maybe I am.”
Now that I was closer to him, I smelled the soap and aftershave, the freshness of his laundry detergent. Even his hair looked trimmed since this morning. He’d gotten ready for me, and if I was honest, I’d known my cowgirl outfit wouldn’t go without comment from him.
We climbed the stairs to the porch, and by the door was a swing for two. “Did you make that?” I asked.
“Yep.”
It was charming and unexpected—and it could’ve probably used a cushion, but I kept that to myself and followed him inside. The entryway’s wood floors creaked under my boots. He hung my purse on a hook over a credenza.
“That’s the dining room,” he said, pointing into a large open space off the entry. A solid oak table with a live edge centered the room, while the iron chandelier overhead lit the swirl of the grain, the marbling of light and dark wood. Large windows showcased the front yard. Each piece looked perfectly placed, exhibiting an attention to detail Manning only gave the things he cared about. At the same time, the table wasn’t set, and between the bare walls and floor, he was missing a rug or some art to warm up the area.
I stepped in for a better look, but he called me away. “In here’s the kitchen,” he said, leading us in the opposite direction and bypassing the entrance to a hall.
I stopped in the doorway—I had to in order to take it all in. The kitchen had high ceilings, a sprawling center island, restaurant-style ranges flanked by prep and clean-up stations, and a farmhouse sink. Amber wood cabinets puzzled together, different shapes and sizes, as if they’d been crafted for certain things. I supposed maybe they had, since Manning had built this kitchen himself.
“Wow,” I said. “You really went all out.”
“I asked for the best.”
“But you don’t even cook.” Next to a French-door, stainless steel refrigerator was a small cooler just for wine. “And you don’t drink wine,” I added as my eyes landed on some steaks marinating in a dish on the counter. Then again, I didn’t know as much about him as I used to. “Do you?”
“No.”
“Then why all this?” I asked, opening the refrigerator. He’d stocked it with all kinds of things—most notably, a telling combination of deli meats, sauces, and cheeses. “Oh, Manning. You’re so busted.”
“Am I?” he asked, and I turned at the hopefulness in his voice. “Bust me, Lake.”
“You’ve been making the Lake Special.”
“Ah. Right.” He glanced away, scratching under his chin. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t. Not without you.”
I closed the refrigerator. “Why are there four steaks?” I asked. Maybe this kitchen wasn’t for him, because someone else had made her stamp here. Maybe she’d done the food shopping, made his sandwiches, picked out place settings. Was that who he’d installed the wine cooler for? And why he seemed nervous, because he had to tell me about her? “Is someone else coming tonight?”
“Someone else?” he asked. “Are you fucking kidding? It’s just you and me, Lake. I wanted to make sure we had enough to eat and steak is the only dinner I really know how to make all that well.”
I smiled to myself. I should’ve known. Always overly cautious. Always thinking of me. Well, I’d thought of him, too. “I brought a bottle of this really nice bourbon. I forget the name. It’s a housewarming gift, but I left it in the car.”
“I’ve got a fully stocked bar in the next room.” He went to a pantry and took out a bottle of red. “What’ve I told you? Don’t worry about me, Lake. Tonight is about you.” He passed me the wine. “The woman at the market said you might like Cabernet Sauvignon with the meal, but I bought others in case you don’t.”
I held the wine like a trophy. It was a stupid thing to get teary-eyed over, so I pretended to read the label. He’d bought me wine. Why should I be surprised? I’d brought him something special, too, after all. And I realized what he’d meant when he’d said tonight was about me. This was, in a way, a celebration of who we’d become. I was twenty-seven now, but it wasn’t just about numbers. Manning had clearly made a wonderful life for himself, and I was on my own path to the same. Tomorrow we’d go back to our lives, but tonight was about me, and him, too.
“Don’t cry, Birdy,” he said. “It’s just wine.”
I inhaled back the threat of tears, took a deep breath, and was about to ask for a corkscrew when my stomach grumbled. I put a hand over it. “Sorry. Is it too early to eat?”
“Depends on if you’re trying to rush things.” He took back the bottle. “I still have to give you the tour, but we can do that after dinner … long as you’re not planning to dine and dash on me.”
“You heard my stomach just now,” I said. “Let’s do the tour after.”
He got an opener from a drawer and worked the cork out while I tried not to stare at his flexing biceps. Eleven years after I’d met him, at thirty-four years old, Manning was stronger and more at ease with himself than I’d ever seen him. He’d obviously shaved for tonight, but this morning, he’d had enough scruff to make me wonder if he ever grew out his beard, which then made me wonder if he went and chopped the wood for his furniture himself. I could see my bear in the woods, an axe over his shoulder.
“Lake?” he said.
“Hmm?”
“I asked why you’re so hungry.” He got a wineglass from a cupboard. “You’re not a starving artist anymore, I wouldn’t think.”
“No, but I do have to watch my figure.”
He laughed, then looked over his shoulder at me. “That was a joke … wasn’t it?”
“I’m on TV, Manning. I don’t starve myself or anything, I just can’t pig out whenever I want.”
He turned to face me. “How would you feel if I said that?” he asked. “That I didn’t eat whenever I was hungry?”
Manning knew right where my mind would go with that question. He loved to eat. I loved to watch him eat. The times we’d been unable to communicate with words, it was one of the only ways I could satisfy him. Feed him. Fill him. Love him. I looked at my hands. “I didn’t say that. Believe me, I
’m better about my diet than other actresses I know—I eat three meals a day.”
He looked as though he wanted to say more, but he just picked up the plate of meat. “You want to make a salad while I fire up the grill?”
“Coming right up,” I said, grateful for the chance to help. I chose ingredients from the refrigerator. Manning had thought of everything; it was like shopping in a mini supermarket. I took my time making a salad that wasn’t too dry, something flavorful he’d like that would complement the steak. I sipped what turned out to be very good wine and poked around the kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets. Left to his own devices, what kind of things did Manning buy for himself? His dishes were white, but like his silverware, some mismatched pieces had snuck in and he had an odd number of drinking glasses. That didn’t surprise me too much. I had a hard time picturing him shopping around Target or Bed Bath and Beyond. Everything had its place. He only had what he needed; nothing had been crammed in. In one corner stood a beautiful, shoulder-high, standalone cabinet, but even that sat empty.
In the last drawer I opened, I found an Us Weekly with my picture on it. It opened directly to a page about my love life, as if Manning had read it more than once. He probably had—if our roles were reversed, those pages would be crinkled with dried tears.
I took the salad bowl and a Heineken out to the grill. He’d dragged the half-finished picnic table over, so I set everything down next to some dishes and silverware and handed him the beer. He popped the top on the corner of the barbeque.
“Can I help with anything else?” I asked.
“Yeah. Sit and drink your wine. It’ll help me relax. But careful for splinters,” he added quickly, avoiding my eyes. “Haven’t sealed that table yet and you’ve got on that … skirt.”
Suppressing a smile at his sudden bashfulness, I sat facing the wrong way on the bench so I could watch him cook. “This Cab is really good,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Don’t you celebrities get the best of the best, though?”
Knowing Manning had picked this out just for me made it the best. “I saw the Us Weekly in your kitchen,” I said.
“Someone gave it to me.” He shrugged, a beer in one hand, tongs in the other. “Not my favorite thing in the world, reading all that stuff about you, but I can’t seem to trash it. Were those your, ah, dogs?”
“My dogs? No. I wish.” I swirled my wine. “They were from the shelter.”
“Mutts,” he muttered.
I realized maybe he wasn’t asking about the dogs but the “pack,” as the press had idiotically labeled my suitors since I was often photographed around the shelter. “I can’t have pets. Some days I’m out of the house twelve hours, and I also have to be able to travel on short notice.”
“Sounds tiring,” he said.
“It is. L.A. exhausts me.”
“More than New York?”
“New York was tiring in a different way. Here in Los Angeles, I have to be ‘on’ all the time. I have to act. It’s so shiny and perfect, not at all like New York.”
“Not everywhere in L.A.’s like that,” he said. “Just what you’ve grown accustomed to. You showed me your New York, maybe sometime I’ll show you my L.A.”
I hadn’t forgotten that Manning had grown up in Pasadena. Sometimes at night, I’d try to convince myself he’d moved back there, close to me, except that he’d told me before he’d never go back. “But you hate it there.”
He flipped the steaks. “There are a lot of different parts to the city. I don’t hate all of it. But the truth is, I’d like to take you to Pasadena. Show you where I grew up … where Maddy and I grew up.”
I stared at his back, unsure how to respond. Returning to his childhood home wasn’t something I’d ever pictured him doing, let alone with me. “When’s the last time you were there?”
“My parents’ house? Fifteen.” He plated the meat and brought it to the table. “Enough about me. Tell me about you.”
I turned on the bench as he sat across from me. “What about me?”
He cut into the steak. “Just tell me about your life. Good and bad.”
I knew what he wanted to hear. Over a decade ago we’d sat at my parents’ kitchen table eating steak. All I’d wanted then was him, and all he’d wanted was for me to soar. I had the urge to tell Manning I was doing just that. Not to spite him, but because he wanted it so badly for me. It was almost as if some weight would be lifted from him if I’d just tell him that I was happy.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I said. “It’s a lot to cover in one night.”
Head cocked, he’d been about to finish off his beer. He seemed to think a moment before he said, “Start with your family.”
“I saw Tiffany last year, and it went okay. Not great, but she came to my job recently.”
He swigged the last of his drink and set the bottle down. “The reality show?”
“No. On the show, I have a job at a bar, so she came for a drink. She’ll probably be on an episode.”
He half-rolled his eyes. “She must be thrilled.”
“Yup.” I put my elbows on the table. “My mom and I talk, but there’s a still a distance between us that’ll always exist as long as I’m not speaking to Dad.”
“I saw you’re wearing your bracelet again. Does that mean you’re thinking of reconciling?”
Not that I wanted to make up with my father, but I did wish it could be another way. There was just too much anger and pride between us. “No,” I said. “Did you know about his affair?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Should I have told you in New York?”
If he had or hadn’t, I couldn’t imagine things would’ve turned out differently. It bothered me that Tiffany had compared me to our father, but knowing about my dad’s cheating would’ve only made me feel guiltier during my time with Manning. I scratched under my nose. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“Didn’t think so.” He nodded to my plate. “Eat, Lake.”
“Oh.” I picked up my fork and knife and finally took a juicy, flavorful bite. “I thought you said you couldn’t cook.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t grill.” He grinned. “How about work?”
I set down my silverware and took a moment to appreciate the taste of steak prepared just for me. Manning sat across from me, so real. If I was honest, this was one of the happiest moments I’d had in a really long time. Manning made me happy, but he’d made me unhappy more. “I quit,” I said.
“You quit the show?” he asked.
“Well, I still have a year left on my contract, but that’s what my meeting was about this morning. I don’t want to commit to a third season.”
He leaned on the table, eyeing me. “Why not?”
“I think back to that time you came to visit in New York. I was struggling and auditioning and bitching to my friends about the unfairness of the industry, but back then, when I got a part, it meant something. I miss that, even though I know, I know it sounds stupid.”
“You have to give me more credit,” he said. “You know that not once in my life have your thoughts ever sounded stupid to me.”
I did know that. It felt good to admit to him I’d taken some wrong turns over the years without worrying he’d blame himself or feel compelled to fix my problems. I’d already begun to fix them myself. I was more concerned about what it meant that he’d stopped eating halfway through a meal. “Your steak is getting cold,” I pointed out.
He picked up his fork again. “And how do you feel now, on the show?” he asked.
“A little like a wind-up doll. They point me in whatever direction they want and tell me to go.”
“Well.” He chewed and swallowed his steak. “That won’t do.”
“So many people told me it was the opportunity of a lifetime, but when I saw myself on TV, I didn’t feel good about it. I wasn’t proud.”
“So you can be now. It takes a lot of guts to walk away from something like that.”
I nodded. “
As soon as I left the meeting it felt as though a weight had been lifted.”
“Then it was the right decision.”
I released a breath, relieved, as if I’d been waiting to hear what Manning would make of the situation. It was a good thing I’d already turned down the contract, because I would’ve hated for his last impression of me to be that I was doing something I didn’t care about. “Yes, it was.”
“So what’ll you do now?”
I stuck my chin in my hand. Val and I had been talking about a trip to Europe once she had some time off. “I have some money saved. I think I might travel a little.”
With his last bite, he slid his plate away. “You should. We both should.”
We could go together, I wanted to say. Remember architecture in Barcelona? Playhouses in London? Instead, I patted my mouth with my napkin. “We’ll see. I’ve actually made other plans that might interfere.”
“Yeah?” He took a few uneven breaths. “What … plans?”
It was hard to believe after all this time, Manning and I were just having dinner and conversation. We were the same people but different, in a place that was the same but different. Physically and emotionally. I was saying things I’d only just begun to discover about myself. “I wonder a lot about what it would’ve been like if I’d gone to USC. I think at the end, before I left, I’d convinced myself that being a doctor or lawyer or businesswoman was what Dad wanted, not me. But I actually didn’t know. I ran away to get back at all of you. I would’ve made a good doctor. Or lawyer. Or businesswoman.”
“I agree,” he said. “But you’re great at whatever you set your mind to.”
Manning truly believed that, and I thought the same of him. “I’ve been giving all that a lot of thought, and I think I decided what’s next.” I took another bite and smiled. “Are you ready for this?”
“All my life.” He narrowed his eyes playfully. “Tell me what you’re meant to do.”
“I’m going back to school.” My heart rate kicked up a notch anticipating his reaction. “To be a veterinarian.”
He laughed. “Well, well. Lake Dolly Kaplan.”
I scowled hearing my full name, but I couldn’t help the grin that broke through. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
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