The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(134)

“It had to. And I’m so sorry.”

“It haunted me. It still does.”

“What haunts you, tell me. Please tell me.”

He felt his eyes flare as he let the raw impact of the long-ago day back into his heart. “When I saw you with him,” he whispered. He had to be so careful with this grenade he had been carrying around. “Saw him where I was supposed to be. Where only I had been.”

“Yes.”

“It became all I saw.”

“It must have. I wanted to die. I can only imagine what it was like for you…”

Her voice was calm, humble. Above all, it was receptive. She was an empty cup, beckoning, and he gently let himself tip over and pour into it.

“It was like an earthquake. Inside my head.”

“A concussion,” she murmured.

“It was a concussion. It was shocking on so many levels. Both what it was, and who it was. It’s… It shattered me. I truly felt like I was losing my mind.”

“I know.”

“And it broke my heart. I felt useless.”

“After everything you did. I’m sorry.”

This wasn’t how he thought it would be. He’d imagined a more dramatic disposal of the grenade: pulling the pin with his teeth and lobbing it. Massive pyrotechnics, the earth going up in flames. Instead it was as if a battle-hardened, veteran soldier had approached with quiet authority and held out a rough but wise hand. Give it here, son. And as Erik gave it up, he didn’t weep, but he put his forehead on the rim of the table and let the moment wash over him.

The battle was over, he had surrendered his last weapon, and he was hunkered down in his foxhole amidst the smoke and rubble, shaken and spent. He ached all over. His skin hurt. Yet it was a leaching kind of pain, a detox. The poison was finally seeping out of his soul.

At her own kitchen table, four hundred miles away, she waited for him. He could feel her patience like a low current through the receiver. He took his time. The storm passed. The smoke cleared. He picked up his head. “I don’t even know if this is a valid question anymore but why did you do it?”

“Of course it’s a valid question.”

“Probably not easily answered.”

“Doesn’t dismiss it.”

He waited, but she was quiet.

“What happened, Dais?” he whispered, setting his empty cup on the table in front of her. “Please tell me.”

She spoke in disjointed sentences at first. Memories and emotions pried from the vaults of her own mind. She had, as Erik had suspected, gotten high with David.

“I was high, but I was conscious. I knew full well what was transpiring. I could have stopped it. I could have left. But I chose not to. Because I was done.”

“Done,” Erik said. “Done with me?”

“With me. I was sick of myself. Sick of who I had become. Sick of my head and my stomach. Sick of nightmares every other night, of anxiety every time you and I tried to make love. Tired of trying to be strong, tired of everything. I was just done.”

The emotions were difficult but the story she told was simple. She did a few lines with David. Her head turned chemical. Then the air turned chemical. She began to feel something coming from David. And it turned her on. Turned on something long shut off. “And when my body responded, I didn’t think. I just went with it. I wish I had something more justifiable, something deeper or more profound, but I don’t. I hit the wall. I didn’t care. I didn’t think about you or the consequences. I don’t think I even thought about David and what he was getting from it. It wasn’t about connecting to another person. It wasn’t making love. It was purely selfish. It was human cocaine, and I just did a huge line of it.”

“I see,” he whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy said. “I’m so sorry. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I broke your trust, I threw us away and it was… When I think of my worst moment, and I don’t mean the worst thing that happened to me, but the moment when I was at my worst. My most despicable moment. That was it. I’ve never topped it.”

“You were high.”

“So what.”

“You were weak.”

“Weak is accurate. I was weak.”

“And he preyed on it.”

“I can’t speak for him. I don’t know his side of the story and it’s irrelevant. I only know what I did, Fish.”

Erik was quiet, taking it in, taking her in as well. He knew the difference between I’m sorry I did it and I’m sorry I got caught doing it. He detected none of the latter here. She was remorseful, but not groveling. Dignity was in her self-awareness, her unflinching ownership of what she had done and her refusal to blame David for it.

“I can’t think what else I can say,” she said. “I’m trying to give reasons and not make excuses. I don’t know if it helps or just makes it hurt more but I don’t think it’s much more analyzable.”

“I’m just taking it in,” he said.

“I understand.”

“I imagined conversations with you too, you know.”

“Did I follow the script?”

“Dais,” he said, sighing. “I’ll be honest. Even in my head, in my made-up scenarios, I never addressed the issue.”