Move the Stars by Jessica Hawkins

Author:Jessica Hawkins [Hawkins, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub

* * *

I held Lake until she eventually calmed and I could no longer ignore the voices coming from the next room. “What’s going on in there?” I asked.

“Val invited some people over,” Lake said. “Every time she and Julian break up, she has a party claiming to celebrate. Really, she wants an excuse to get drunk or high.”

With a heavy sigh, I dropped my forehead on Lake’s chest. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“We won’t be able to hide in here. They’re my friends, too. They’ll find us.”

“Lake.” I implored her. “I want time alone with you. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

There was a crash in the next room followed by laughter. Lake shrugged it off. “One of the kitchen chairs has a loose leg. People fall in it all the time.”

With a knock on the door came Val’s high-pitched voice. “Roger’s early,” she said. “Come say hi or we’re breaking in.”

“Roger?” I asked, covering us with the top sheet. “Does your door lock?”

“No.” She craned her neck out from under me to call, “Don’t come in here. Give us five minutes.”

“You have four!” a man yelled from the other side of the door.

Lake tried to get out from under me.

“I’m not done with you,” I said. She laughed, but I hadn’t meant it to be funny. I was dead serious.

“They’ll come in here, Manning. Believe me.”

I let her push me off. “Who’s Roger?”

She picked a shirt off the ground. “A friend from class.”

“What kind of friend?”

“A gay one.”

“Ah.” Relieved, I watched her dress. “You forgot your bra.”

“It’s fine.”

I sat up, grabbing my own clothes and searching the bed for her undergarments. When I didn’t find them, I lifted the frame a little. There was no bra, but I did pull out something familiar, something I hadn’t seen in probably six years. “Who do we have here?” I asked.

When she turned and saw the stuffed bird in my hand, she lunged at me. “Oh my God.”

I held it over my head, out of her grasp. “It’s Birdy,” I exclaimed.

“I tried to hide her,” Lake said, her cheeks pink.

Unable to contain my grin, I looked up at the blue and white toy I’d won for Lake at the Balboa Fun Zone since I couldn’t take her on the Ferris wheel. “Why would you hide her?”

“It’s embarrassing.” She bit her bottom lip, obviously anxious about the bird. “Did you know Birdy was a blue-footed booby, not a pelican?”

“’Course I did,” I said, setting it on her head to resume looking for her bra. “I don’t want to go out there and make nice, Lake. I want to be alone with you, talk to you, make love to you, and then sleep with you. Birdy can stay, but they’ve got to go.”

“We should at least say hi. Then we can, I don’t know, go for a walk.”

“Are you going to tell them who I am?”

She pretended not to hear me, busying herself by fixing her hair in the mirror above her dresser.

“Lake.”

She turned to me, still hugging the stuffed animal under one arm.

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