Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) Read Free Page B

own thoughts. "Yeah, well." He smiled, a
crooked, tentative curve of his lips, then wrapped her in a quick
hug. She caught a whiff of his scent-clean, spicy, irrefutably
male-and felt the warmth of his embrace for a moment too brief
to measure. And then he released her. "Take care, Erika," he said.
    "You, too." She managed one more bright, cheery, utterly
phony old friends smile for him, then pivoted on her heel and
strolled down the sidewalk, weaving among the milling pedestrians, picking her way around the puddles, refusing to look back.
    She made it all the way around the corner with her head held
high and that fake smile frozen on her lips. Then, in the shadow
of a brownstone, her smile collapsed. The sky wept on her, big,
cool raindrops. And she started to sob.

    SIXTEEN YEARS EARLIER
    You think it's going to be just another day. It starts out normal:
pounding on the bathroom door because your sister Nancy is in
there and-hello!-she is not the only person in the family with a
bladder that needs emptying, but she sees nothing wrong in tying up
the room for what seems like hours while she fusses with her hair or
curls her eyelashes or whatever the hell she does when she's beaten
everyone else to the bathroom and locked herself inside. Then a hike
across the yard to the barn to feed the animals, who live there in
pairs like the creatures of Noah's Ark and who are fortunate enough
not to have an obnoxious younger sister hogging the bathroom, but
who instead use the barn as their bathroom, so there's inevitably a
mess or two to clean up. Back to the house to make your bed, which
is marginally easier now that a couple of your older brothers have
left home and you're no longer fighting for access to your berth in
one of the two bunk beds in the cramped bedroom all four of you
have shared for most of your childhood-and is also marginally
easier because said older brothers aren't thumping you on the head
or hauling you out of their way so they can gain access to the closet.
Then breakfast-invariably healthy, nutritious stuff, eggs or oatmeal, because when you're a wrestler you don't want to gain weight consuming the empty calories provided by doughnuts or sugary cereal.

    You check your watch, grab your jacket and your backpack, race
outside for the bus and wish you were one of the rich kids with a car
of your own, because riding the bus to school is dorky, especially
when you're a senior. You don't even want to be in school, but hey,
it's the law, and at least your friends are there, and no one dares to
thump you or shove you because everyone knows that, thanks to
your training as a wrestler, you can flip and pin them in no time flat.
And you've got art to look forward to, if you can manage to survive
trig and biology and health, which it's practically impossible to sit
through without snickering because the teacher acts as if no one
knows what a condom is and she's got to explain it to you four different ways. And after school, wrestling practice, and after that a
detour to Country Coffee Shop for a cheese steak with some of the
guys from the team.
    And then, while you're leaving Country Coffee Shop with the
taste of cheese and onions lingering on your tongue, and climbing
into your teammate Will's car, your old friend Laura Maher drives
across the parking lot, rolls down her window, and calls out to you,
"Hey, Ted-I know the perfect girl for you," and then drives away
before you can demand that she tell you who the perfect girl is.
    And suddenly your day isn't just like any other day.
    "Who?" Ted shouted after Laura, but she was long gone, leaving only the sour scent of her car's exhaust behind. "Who's this
perfect girl?"
    Will gave him a playful shove. Matt, who'd been about to get
into the backseat, muttered the name of a really creepy girl who'd
been in several of Ted's classes in elementary school and had the
habit of eating her own boogers, which, Ted supposed, was better