The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(22)

Erik lifted up his head and let go the breath he had been holding.

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

He left the wings, leaped off the apron and ran up the aisle to the booth. Seizing his jacket, he bolted out the lobby doors, out of Mallory and into the icy November night. He ran. Ran for his life. Ran to start his life. Across campus to the south quad, to Daisy’s dorm.

Heart pounding in his heaving chest, he knocked on her door.

It opened.

Daisy stood before him. Sweats and her Lancaster hoodie, her hair down, the makeup scrubbed off her face. Her hand reached out to touch him. Her brimming eyes glowed blue-green.

“Me too,” he said.

Daisy drew him in, closing the door behind.

The room was dark except for a reading lamp clipped onto one of the beds, and a string of Christmas lights around the window. She slid her arms around his neck. Her head settled on his chest. He put his hand on her head, the other arm across her back, pressed her to him. He exhaled. Thank you, he thought, rubbing his cheek against her hair.

For a long time they held each other.

“I can feel your heart,” she whispered.

“I can feel everything,” he said. A thudding pulse in his ears, the hum and roar of his own blood coursing through his body. Daisy unzipped his jacket and peeled it down his back and off his arms. She put it down on the bed and switched off the reading lamp. They stood together, her hands lightly touching his chest. His fingers traced her eyebrows, pushed her hair behind her ear. He felt himself expanding, swollen with emotion, unfolding for her like a map.

“Have you ever felt this way,” she whispered, beautiful in the Christmas lights.

“Never,” he said, his voice squeezed tight through his throat. He thought about maps, roads taken and untaken. The twists and turns of life, choices and their consequences sending a person in a certain direction. He could have chosen a different school. He could have come to this school but not gone with the tech theater minor. Anything could have thrown him off course. He could have missed her. He might have gone his whole life not knowing who or where she was.

“I don’t think I can explain,” she said slowly, “what this week has been like for me.”

“Dais, I—”

“No, wait,” she said, a finger at his mouth. “Just listen. Let me say this. You have to understand something. I’m such a practical person. To a fault. A lot of people think I’m cold but it’s just… I don’t like drama. I don’t like ooey-gooey sentimental shit. I don’t coo over babies or cry at movies. And I never believed in love at first sight. I don’t write love notes, either. I mean, I don’t bleed my feelings on paper. Especially for someone I just met. But I swear, Erik, I wrote to you tonight and I… I just breathed it. Breathed myself onto the paper. It was so easy and it was like seeing myself for the first time. Who I really am. I should be thinking ‘This isn’t me. This isn’t what I’m about.’ But it is. This is me. I just didn’t know it until I met you.”

Running his hands over her face and hair, Erik could not speak. He had made her become herself. What else could love be? How could he have imagined love was anything but a force which made you your most authentic being?

“God, I love looking at you,” she said, putting her palm on his face. Her thumb ran along his bottom lip and desire smacked him hard in the chest. He closed his eyes, leaned out over the edge of the abyss behind his lids. He opened them, kept them open as he brought his mouth to hers.

“Keep looking at me,” he whispered.

They kissed, staring at each other, breathing each other’s air. Each touch of their mouths was longer, and in between her fingertips grazed his lips. He’d never kissed with his eyes open like this. Never known a girl who made her fingers part of a kiss. He would never want it any other way now. Already he was changed.

Long, magic, elastic stretches of time, holding each other, kissing. He gave her a little of his tongue and her throat let loose a tiny sigh. Then her tongue against his, their kisses blooming like flowers. He took it all in, how she opened her mouth for him, her arms twining up around his neck, her body pressing against his, fitting into his hands.

I want to be inside you, he thought, following the aching, physical concept into another dimension of need. His soul cried out for her. He wanted to be conjoined. His atoms and cells combined with hers. Their perceptions melded so he could see the world through her eyes. How different this was from being fifteen and consumed with desperate, hormonal curiosity. Willing to take it from anyone, just for the sake of getting it. His brain swirled in a mature and masculine revelation as his mouth found her neck, sweet with her sugar-soap scent. He tilted her head back, set his tongue in the hollow of her throat and tasted what was there. Carefully. Selectively. He didn’t want just any experience. He wanted hers.

“Kiss me,” she whispered. The bite of her fingernails was in his skin as he worked his mouth up her neck, over her chin, and then onto and into her mouth again. Finally their eyes closed and they fell into each other, kissing deep, kissing like lovers, sighing, clinging, drowning in each other.

“I want you so much,” he said against her mouth.

“You know I’ve never—”

“I know,” he said. “You said you were waiting for the one.”