The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(129)

Without being aware he was doing it, Erik’s finger traced the line of Daisy’s pose.

Line, Kees had taught him, is the picture the body makes in the air.

Daisy’s long legs, feet arched and curved in their pointe shoes. Her black tights came down mid-shin, and Erik could see part of one scar along the top of her left calf. Her feet bare inside pointe shoes. Will’s hands at her waist, his left hand nearest the camera, with its two missing digits. Erik noticed he wore his gold wedding band on his index finger.

He continued the path of his own finger, up the song of Daisy’s neck and shoulders. Her hair pulled up with those same small curls falling out. Her face was more angular, her eyes a little circled. But beneath the twin arches of her brows, those impossibly blue-green irises blazed with a passion. She was in her element, vibrant and alive.

She was beautiful.

Erik traced her arms, slim and curved, reaching out and away from her, extended without break to the ends of her nails. Her left hand nearest the camera: a bracelet encircled her wrist but her fingers were bare.

“I said look at it. Don’t eat it.”

Erik looked up, blinked.

“You talk to her?” Kees asked.

Erik shook his head, closing the pages.

“Ever?”

“No.” Lightly he tossed the magazine back onto Kees’s desk. Kees stared back at him, calm, relaxed, arms crossed.

“Why not?”

Erik stood up. “I need a couple of beers for this conversation. Are you still buying?”

“What if I wasn’t?”

“Then I’d buy.”

Kees released an arm and gestured to the door.





Free Counseling


They went into town, got beers and burgers, sat and ate at the bar.

“Wat denk je, mijn vriend?”

“Did you know Daisy slept with David?”

“Of course I knew.”

“You did?”

“I’m the gay dance teacher. I know everything. Except, for the life of me I can’t figure out when you became such a stubborn, vindictive, unforgiving ass.”

Erik stared. Kees calmly chewed and swallowed, took a pull of beer and stared back. “Quite the déjà vu,” he said. “Day after the memorial ceremony I took Daisy to lunch. She’s made a beautiful life for herself but didn’t take a genius to see her guts are still shredded up over you. Then I had to take Opie out to dinner and hear his sob story. I tell you, Fish, if I keep up this free counseling, I’m going to end up broke and fat.”

Erik put his burger back down on the plate. “What’s your hourly fee?”

“You’re cute so I’ll take you on pro bono. Talk to me, Fish. What are you really doing here?”

Erik took a long sip of his beer. He was approaching a crossroads. Daisy occupying every waking and sleeping thought. Everything in him knew it was time to stop clutching his pearls and start living the truth. And yet he was frozen. He was waiting for a comet in the sky or the tea leaves in his mug to arrange themselves into a guide. He needed something. Someone to show him.

Or bless him.

“Lately, Kees, I’ve been thinking a lot about the first dance concert I worked. All those nights of tech week when I sat with you, and you taught me about dance. And about partnering.”

“You were like a sponge, I remember. Watching Daisy and Will, you were consumed with knowing the mechanics of everything, how they did it, how it worked. So why is it coming back to you now? What’s the grand lesson within the art of partnering, my friend?”

“I was watching lifts, and you told me going up was easy, coming down was hard.”

“True.”

“And you said Daisy was a generous and forgiving partner.”

“Also true.”

“And I’m not.”

Kees looked him up and down. “You’re better than this.”

“I don’t think I ever got over her,” Erik said.

“Of course you didn’t. You never finished it. You just left.”

“She—”

Kees pointed a long finger at him. “You left,” he said again. “You chose to leave. Just sit there and own it.”

“You sound like my ex-wife.”

“She sounds like a smart lady.”

“She’s black.”

Kees’s nostrils flared. “And? What, are we brothers now or something?”

Erik’s face burned. “Sorry.”

“You are still a kid. Jesus. A mature man would’ve fixed this with one phone call.”

“Hey, I made that call and Opie answered the phone.”

“When? Eight, nine years ago? Come on, enough with the excuses, Fish. You were hurt, it’s not up for debate. But your marriage fell apart, you look like death on a stick and you’re sitting here putting your heart on my plate. I’m not hungry for what went wrong. I wanna know what your next move is.”

“I don’t know what it is. I just know I can’t move, period.”

“What can’t you move on from—the infidelity? Or her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, from what I can put together, she didn’t cheat on you because she was an uncaring slut. Or hell, what do I know? She probably was a raving bitch in heat who would f*ck anything in pants.”