The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(12)

Will cocked his head. “You looked her in the eye, didn’t you?”

Erik smiled, feeling the heat rise up in his face as he nodded.

“See, it’s weird, everyone has a thing about her eyes. Her eyes freak me out.”

“Her eyes are beautiful,” Erik said.

“I don’t know. Something about them isn’t right. It took me like two weeks to be comfortable looking at her when we were partnering.”

Erik had to laugh. “Why?”

Will blew a few smoke rings. “Dais doesn’t talk a lot but she watches everything. She comes off aloof at first, but when you get to know her, it’s… She’s insanely passionate but it’s all behind this thoughtful exterior. She doesn’t miss anything with those eyes. They look through you. It was like she was going to put the juju on me, I don’t know. I’d be, like, ‘Bianco, cut it out. You’re looking at my soul.’”

Which may have been the most accurate description of what Erik had experienced when Daisy first put eyes on him in the lighting booth. Still, he said nothing, firmly in his home base mode, which was watching, taking apart and figuring out.

Will formed another ring in the air. “You want me to say something to her?”

Erik shook his head vehemently. Though he’d never been particularly bold with girls, he hadn’t ever felt the need to work with a wingman. “No. I mean, I just met her. I’m still feeling it out.”

“You got a funny look on your face, my friend.”

“When I met her it…felt like finding something I didn’t know I was looking for. My head’s kind of spinning so I think I’ll just go about this in my own inept way.”

Will stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. “Well for all your ineptness you’ve definitely made an impression. Bunch of the guys already asking me who the fresh meat is in the lighting booth. It’s always the guys. The girls are more discreet.”

“Shut up.”

“Hand to God.” Will stretched, cracking his neck and grinning. “Wait, how did Matt Lombardi put it, it was funny… Oh yeah, he said you were the love child of Bryan Adams and Sting. Not bad for a first conquest.” Will wrinkled his eyebrows and touched Erik’s shoulder. “It is your first conquest, right?”

“Please stop talking.”

Will laughed and gave Erik a shove. As they left the lounge, his touch lingered, easy and fraternal. Like fragrant smoke from a tobacco pipe.

Halfway up the stairs Will stopped. “Oh. Word to the wise. Entre nous? David Alto set rather a large cap for Dais in the beginning of the year. And he took it rather badly when she rejected him.”

“I kind of picked up on that.”

“She wasn’t mean to him. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. But he took it hard and the way he deals with it is by teasing her.”

“Teasing her.”

“Sometimes it can be just short of nasty. She can handle it, but I didn’t want you to see it and feel you had to come to the rescue. Really he’s just licking his wounds.”

“He’s an interesting guy,” Erik said carefully.

Will shrugged and started up the stairs again. “I can only take him in small doses. You don’t get many genuine moments with Dave and the sad thing is he only wants what he can’t have. If Dais had accepted him, he’d have chewed her up and spit her out.”

“You think?”

“I’m positive. She’s a novelty to him. I think he just wanted to bust her cherry for the experience.”

Erik winced and stopped walking. “What?”

Will turned around and for once, looked sheepish. “Nothing.”

Erik looked at him a long moment. “What does entre nous mean?”

“Between you and me.”

He nodded. “I’m glad we had this little chat.”

“Welcome to the jungle.”



*



After one more run-through, the ballet dancers were excused. The contemporary dancers had arrived and were getting ready for their focus session, the whole mess to repeat all over again. Erik was exhausted, sitting in the back row yawning and rubbing his face. The rest of the evening stretched before him like a desert, parched and barren without the entertainment of Daisy’s presence. He was getting hungry again. And a ton of homework was waiting for him later.

A hand brushed his shoulder. Daisy smiled at him as she passed, trim and pretty in a silver-grey down jacket. “Goodnight, Fish. See you tomorrow.”

“Night, Dais,” he said, turning in his seat, watching her walk out the auditorium doors. Pleased she had learned and used his nickname. Bereft she was gone.

He turned back in his seat, and now David was coming up the aisle. “Fishy, fishy in the brook,” he sang to the ceiling, “into Fish, she put her hook.”

An hour later, Erik was up on the ladder rearranging one of the booms, when, once again, a soft touch settled on his calf, but this time she called his name. He twisted around and from the foot of the ladder she gazed up at him, holding a paper bag.

“I brought you a snack.”

“I still owe you for the sandwich,” he said, his heart splashing against the wall of his chest.

“Oh, and coffee, do you drink coffee?”