The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(66)

Erik rounded a bend and the farmhouse came into view, pale grey with black shutters and a yellow door. Francine’s treasured flower beds sprawled on either side of the stone walk, a riot of colors competing for attention. The porch ran the full front of the house and wrapped around both sides. Daisy was waiting, her red sundress bright against the grey shingles. As Erik switched off the engine, she took up her crutches and came carefully down the steps, swinging the last few feet as fast as she could. With a cry she let her crutches drop to the ground and flung her arms up around his neck. He locked his arms around her slender waist, buried his face in the curve of her sweet-smelling shoulder and exhaled.

“Dais,” he whispered.

“Never again,” she said against his face. “I never want to be away from you again.”

“Never,” he said. “God, I missed you so much.” The words didn’t do it justice. He could feel the cells in his body perk up, as if he was severely dehydrated and Daisy was a long cool drink of water. They stood a long time in the driveway, holding each other without speaking. And then a longer time passed in kissing.

“Let’s go in,” Daisy said, smoothing her hair. “My parents went out to dinner. It’s just us.”

His lips tingling, Erik opened the car door to get his backpack from the front seat. Walking across the lawn, he slowed his step to Daisy’s swinging gait, a hand lightly on her neck. He knew she used the crutches in the evenings, whether she needed to or not. Mandatory rest. Sun went down, she went off the leg.

“Guess what I did this week?” she said.

He could barely answer, he was too consumed with stuffing his eyes full of her. “I don’t know. Pressed twenty pounds with your left leg?”

“Twenty-five,” she said, smiling. “But guess again.”

He wound a length of her hair around his fingers, dying to undress and wrap himself in its soft length. “I don’t do guessing games,” he said. “Just tell.”

“I had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Jinani. And while I was in Philly, I went to see Omar.”

“Why?” It took a moment to sink in. “Wait. You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“You got a tattoo?”

She nodded, biting her lower lip, nose wrinkled.

“What did you get? Show me.”

“Come inside.”

He set his backpack down in the front hall and followed her into her bedroom. The door clicked shut. “Now go find it,” she said.

He brought her over to the bed, into the light of the table lamp, where she put down her crutches and stood still for him. He searched her arms, her shoulders, lifted up her hair and peered at her neck. Finding nothing, he crouched down and inspected each leg. His fingers reverently touched the starburst pucker on the inside of her thigh and the long, raised zippers of flesh on either side of her shin. Still nothing.

He stood up and slid her little sundress over her head. It wasn’t on her back, nor her stomach, nor under her bra. He got distracted there a few minutes, running his tongue in circles around her breasts, breathing in the sugary scent of her skin.

“Keep looking,” she murmured.

He knelt down once more, his fingers poised around the waistband of her underwear.

“You’re getting warmer.”

He eased them down and saw a splash of color by the jut of her hip bone.

“Oh, Dais,” he whispered.

“Do you like it?” she asked, her hand in his hair.

Inked into her a skin were stylized red letters spelling out Svensk Fisk, but in such a way they cleverly formed the shape of a fish. The little loop of the E made the eye, and the top of the first K was the dorsal fin. The legs of the final K were elongated and curved, creating the tail.

“It’s amazing,” he whispered. “Did it hurt?”

She gave a dismissive snort. “Ruptured femoral artery. Compartment syndrome release with open fasciotomy. A tattoo is nothing. Omar cried the whole time, though.”

On his knees before her, Erik put his fingertips to the little red fish, then his lips to it.

“I thought hard about where to put it,” she said. “Somewhere only you could see.”

He gazed at it up close, far away. He laid his head against her stomach and viewed it sideways. He traced the letters with his fingernail as his heart swelled and grew in his chest, a seed blossoming and blooming until he was a wide-open flower in the sunshine of her love. He laid the inside of his wrist against her hip, his daisy pressed to her fish.

“Nobody loves me like you,” he said.





We Own This Place


Their first day of work, the boys arrived at Mallory Hall and Erik froze. He had not walked into the building since the day of the shooting—six weeks ago—let alone into the theater. Nauseous and anxious, he dug in his heels at the auditorium doors and David did an inspired job of getting him inside.

“We’re going in,” he said, like a platoon leader. He had Erik by the shoulders, half-hugging, half-shaking him. “We’re going in. This is our theater, we own this place. Say it with me.”

“We own this place,” Erik said, his voice sticking in his throat.

“All my enemies whisper together against me. They imagine the worst for me, saying… What do they say, Fish?”