The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(21)

He wanted to make love with her, to partner her and create something together, to find their own dance.

And he wanted it badly enough to wait for it.

So rapt was his attention he missed his cue at the end of the pas de deux. David reached over him to slide the levers, bringing the lights down. Erik snapped back to the present, his face burning. “My bad,” he mumbled.

David gazed at him, smiling, his expression neither reproachful nor teasing. “Love will do that to a guy,” he whispered.

Erik nodded, not looking away. He felt caught between declaring his love, and apologizing for it. Such a strong urge to say to David, “I’m sorry.” But for what? Not for loving Daisy, he wouldn’t back down.

David looked away then, still smiling. Chin on his hand, staring at the stage. It was dimmed down to the lowest beams on the boom stands, illuminating the hushed interval between pieces. “Fishy, fishy in the brook,” he said under his breath, “many things, but not a crook.”





Sax


A bag of Swedish Fish was no problem, but Friday night, Erik had to go to three different convenience stores and a gas station before he could find a bouquet of daisies. He separated two from the bunch and taped them to the candy, leaned paper and pen against the wall backstage and wrote a note:



The library had a Swedish-English dictionary.

Sax = scissors.



He almost wrote “good luck,” then remembered it was bad luck to say it in the theater.

He stopped Aisha Johnson, one of the contemporary girls. “You wouldn’t say ‘break a leg’ to a dancer,” he said. “How do you wish good luck before a show?”

Aisha raised her eyebrows and held out an expectant palm.

“Goddammit,” he muttered, reaching for his wallet and the dollar he now owed.

“I’m teasing,” she laughed. “No, no, I don’t want your money. You say ‘merde.’”

“Merde.”

She spelled it for him. “It’s French for shit.”

He went to sign his name, then decided not to. He took the note and his gifts to the row of little wooden cubbies, which served as mailboxes for the performers and stagehands, and slid the offering into the one marked Bianco. Checking his own cubby, he found a short note of appreciation from Leo, and a longer one from Allison Pierce, heavy with exclamation points and smiley faces. He put it politely in his pocket, then nervously checked his offering to Daisy hadn’t inexplicably fallen out of her box in the last sixty seconds.

The dancers performed to a full house. Daisy danced beautifully. Even though she behaved in the Prelude and did a double pirouette at the end of her solo, the audience still gave her a small, spontaneous ovation. Erik didn’t miss any cues, but he watched the ballet program filled with distracted anticipation. He wondered if Daisy had found the gift in her mailbox, worried she wouldn’t know it was from him, then both wondered and worried how he could see her after the concert when he had the whole second act to run and she could just leave.

She did leave. After the curtain came down, and Erik and David had closed up shop, he searched backstage, but she was gone. He stood in the wings a few confused moments, not knowing what to do. He needed a cue here.

He saw Will crossing the stage, his arm wrapped around Lucky Dare’s curvy body. Erik had never worked with a wingman but maybe now was the time. He started walking over, passing by the wooden cubbies, and a flicker of yellow in his own slot made him stop short. He reached in and retrieved the now-empty wrapper from the Swedish Fish. His face filled with swift heat, then it went numb, as if he had been slapped. He didn’t understand. He turned the wrapper over and over, not understanding. Then he looked and saw his own note to Daisy folded inside the plastic bag.

She had eaten the candy, but given the rest back.

She didn’t want him.

With shaking fingers he drew out the paper and unfolded it, re-reading what he had written. Where had he gone wrong? Ten simple, almost stupid words, and she had changed her mind?

He turned the paper over.

A pile of penciled lines on the back of his note. Words jumped out at him. Heart. Happiness. Want. Hands. Whisper. Shaking, Erik pulled back into the privacy of the curtains to read.



I don’t know what to do since I met you. I don’t know how to be since you showed me your necklace and told me about your father. You let me touch some of the sadness you carry in your heart and now your happiness is something I need. I’m looking for you all the time. I want to talk to you about everything.

Who are you? I feel like I already know. Like I always knew. I want to be near you. I was born to be near you. I want to know you in the dark. I want you to look at me with your hands. To talk to me with your body. To show me without words. To trust me with your most secret self while I trust you with mine. I want to feel your smile against my mouth when I tell you things and hear you whisper, “I know. Me too.”

I didn’t know love would be like this. I didn’t know I would love like this. And I want to see you seeing me love you. Like this.

I’m in my room.

If you don’t feel the same, please be kind.

But if you are thinking right now, “Me too,” then please come here, come talk to me.

I need to talk to you.

Right now.

God, I can’t breathe…