The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(18)

Lucky gave a little catcall under her breath.

“I always knew you batted for both sides,” David said.

“Sure,” Will said, looking around the table. “I’ll f*ck any one of you.”

“Not in front of the children,” David said, as Daisy returned to the table.

“Not what in front of the children,” she said, sliding in next to Lucky, across from Erik.

“Talking about Will’s bisexual tendencies.”

“He’s double the lay,” Daisy said.

“Thank you, darling.” Will kissed the air at her.

David laughed. “Look at Fish’s face, he’s about to shit.”

Fighting the heat rising up his neck, Erik looked coolly around the table. “Clearly I’m not in Kansas anymore.”

“So,” David said. “Marge is the only one keeping herself pure for marriage.”

“Dave, give it a rest,” Will said.

“I’m not waiting for marriage,” Daisy said, chewing a french fry. Both her body language and her expression were smolderingly serene. She was calm and gorgeous. And a virgin. It was an effort for Erik to look away from her, a struggle not to imagine her beautiful stillness in his arms. To turn it wild. Could he do it?

“What are you waiting for then? True love?” David’s tone took on an edge of cruelness. This teasing was just short of nasty. It actually seemed irrational. Erik caught Will’s eye, silently asking if this was what he meant yesterday. Will lifted his chin in confirmation.

Daisy wasn’t taking any of his bait. “I’m just waiting for the one.”

“The one?”

“The One,” she said again, and then slowly began to sing, “singular sensation…every little step he—”

The table erupted in moans and fries being pelted at Daisy.

“Let me know how that goes, honey,” David said.

“For that, honey, you’ll be the first,” Daisy said. She looked over at Will, who was offering her his pack of cigarettes. She reached for one, glanced quickly at Erik, then took her hand back. “No, I’m good.”

“You have a girlfriend, Erik?” Lucky asked casually, shaking the ice cubes in her cup.

He looked up, shook his head.

“Fishy, fishy, in the brook,” David said, “at what young age were you took?”

Silence at the table. Unnerved, Erik looked sideways at David, then across the table. “Ask Will.”

They all laughed and threw more fries. Will held his palm out to Erik, who smacked his against it.

Thankfully the subject then turned to the concert and shop talk. After another ten minutes, David departed, leaving his tray of trash on the table and the cue sheets for Erik to transpose. Daisy had gotten herself a cup of tea and taken a book out of her bag.

His pup-tent safely dismantled, Erik went and got a cup of his own. Back at the table, he worked slowly, harboring the hope Daisy was hanging around because of him, and the greater hope Will and Lucky might take off soon and give him a few minutes alone with her.

Miracle of miracles, they did. “You’ll see my partner home?” Will said, shrugging on his jacket. Erik glanced at Daisy who smiled. Erik looked back at Will and nodded.

Lucky was pulling on her gloves. She bent and put her cheek next to Daisy’s. “Don’t wait up, dear,” she said.

Daisy kissed the air. “I never do, dear.” She watched them walk away, then looked back to Erik, giving him a quick smile before returning to her book.

Erik looked left and right before speaking. “Was David coked up?”

Daisy looked up. Her eyes flared bright blue for a split second, then mellowed. “Probably,” she said slowly. “I know he does it. But I’m not good at detecting that kind of thing. Lucky knows better.”

“She was the one who said.”

“Then he probably was. Poor David.”

“Poor?”

“Sometimes I think he’s homesick,” she said. “For Belgium, I mean.”

Erik knew the story. David’s parents had died in a car accident when he was eleven, leaving him with only elderly grandparents who could not care for him. His mother’s sister, Helen, had flown from the States to Brussels and collected her nephew, bringing him to her home in New York and becoming his legal guardian.

“He wears his father’s wedding band,” she said. “On his index finger. Funny. It just occurred to me you’re both fatherless.”

And we both want you, Erik thought. He flipped his pencil around a few times, and then tried to sound nonchalant as he asked, “Is Will really bisexual?”

Daisy put her tea down and leaned toward him a little. “I don’t know,” she mouthed, as if confessing.

“You don’t know?” he mouthed back with exaggeration.

Her smile was infectious. “I certainly couldn’t go to court with anything on him but it would not surprise me. At all.”

“Huh,” Erik said thoughtfully, staring at the faint lipstick mark on the rim of Daisy’s cup. She was staring at his cup as well, which was bothersome because he already took a lot of shit for drinking tea. Apparently it wasn’t the manly thing to do. But he had never liked coffee and tea had sentimental roots in his heart. His mother brewed tea every night, making cups for her sons while they did homework. Erik’s first independent act in the kitchen was learning to light the burner under the kettle. And he liked how it tasted, especially when it was brewed strong. He used two bags and barely any sugar.