“What then? Not pretty enough? Too fat?”
Nobody in the Kaplan family could be considered fat. “Definitely not.”
“You already told me you don’t have a girlfriend. Were you lying?”
She asked it casually, as if it were nothing to lie about that. I urged myself to say yes. It’d be easier to be a cheater than admit I felt protective enough of Lake that I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Tiffany yet. Then I could wash my hands of this and drive off. Tiffany would go inside and tell her dad. He’d be thrilled.
And Lake would think I’d lied to her.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said.
Tiffany pushed off the truck. “Then you must be, like, gay. Or mentally unstable. I’m here offering you sex. If you’re not just going to come out and tell me why you don’t want it, then bye. Don’t call me again.”
She turned and walked up the grass. I couldn’t breathe—it was an unwelcome and unfamiliar feeling. I didn’t let shit like this get to me. Where girls were concerned, I’d generally not found them worth the trouble. But as Tiffany got farther away, so did Lake. I wouldn’t be invited back. How would that look, a grown man trying to hang around her? If I saw it, I’d put a stop to it.
Without Tiffany, there was no Lake. No monster sandwiches, no blueberry pie. But what’d I done to deserve that sweetness in my life? Nothing. And who’s to say I wouldn’t spoil it? I might. So probably, I should just walk away.
But it wasn’t just Lake I’d been watching tonight. Tiffany was right when she’d said she was a disappointment to her dad. He put her in a box, then got mad she was in it. Not that Tiffany didn’t provoke him. She did. But she was just looking for someone to pay attention to her.
“Wait.”
Tiffany turned around. “What?”
“It’s none of that,” I said. “I’m just old-fashioned.”
“What do you mean?”
I climbed the grassy incline until I stood in front of her. I took her shoulders as if bracing us both. Maybe I didn’t deserve sweetness, but Tiffany, yes. She was a decent match for me. She could use someone on her side. And she came with Lake. I leaned in and kissed Tiffany on the lips. “It means I like to take things slow,” I said. “I’m old-fashioned.”
Tiffany blinked up at me. “Well, that’s a first.”
Yeah, it was. “I gotta go. But I’ll call you.”
She nodded at the ground. For a minute, I wondered if she even wanted me to. “Okay,” she said. “Goodnight.”
She turned and went back inside. I would’ve expected any girl to swoon after that. Maybe Tiffany wasn’t fast because she was desperate to be loved. Maybe she was fast because she liked it that way. She might actually leave me in the dust if I didn’t make my move. I could lose my chance with her.
I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to fight to hold onto Tiffany.
But I did know, that was the only way to remain a part of Lake’s life.
11
Lake
I didn’t move away from the window until the front door slammed and Tiffany pounded up the staircase.
I couldn’t be sure what I’d seen. If Manning had kissed her just now on the front lawn, it’d looked innocent enough, a peck on the lips. What did that mean? There was no connection between them. I knew that, but did Tiffany?
I went into our adjoining bathroom and made some noise, hoping Tiffany would invite me into her room. When she didn’t, I knocked.
“What?” Tiffany asked.
“Can I come in?”
“What do you want?”
I opened the door. Tiffany sat on her bed with her address book open and the receiver of her see-through, touchtone phone in her hand. “I’m trying to find something to do tonight.”
“I thought you were going out with Manning?”
“Does it look like I am?”
“What happened?”
At this point, the conversation could go two ways. Either she’d kick me out and accuse me of being nosy, or she’d spill her guts. I was hoping for the guts. Did Manning ask her the kinds of questions he asked me? About music, books, fancy dishware? I couldn’t picture them talking about those things. When I had Manning’s attention, there was no room for anyone else.
The dial tone began to beep. With a sigh, Tiffany hung up the phone and flopped backward onto the bed. “He wanted to hang out. We almost went back to his place, but he has to work early.”
My face warmed. What I wouldn’t give to see where he lived, what kinds of things he thought important enough to put on his shelves. What color were his sheets? What other books were on his shelves? Did he put photos on his nightstand? If Tiffany went there, she’d get to see all that before me. I walked a little more into the room. “Are you going to see him again?”
She reached up and flicked the corner of her Nirvana poster. “I don’t know.”