The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(69)

“Any ideas?”

“None. I don’t know what else I am,” she said, her voice splintering apart. “I can’t think of anything else I…” She trailed off, sighing, her chin on her hand. “You have so many books on your shelves, Erik. I just have one.”

He lay on his elbow with his body curved close to her. His hand ran down the length of her hair and along her spine, then back up again. “Think you would ever teach?” he asked.

Her mouth twisted. “I guess. Keesja says nobody plans to be a dance teacher. It just naturally evolves for some. Maybe it will with me.”

Erik watched her, helpless. Helpless with love for her. And admiration. All these weeks he had been watching her gather her will during physical therapy, amass every shred of cunning and ingenuity, and settle the bit of recovery between her teeth. It broke her down. She fought and lost. She cried bitterly, but they were her productive tears, her means to go back and try again.

Now she was turning her laser focus inward, taking an unflinching look at what she might or might not be able to do, facing up to the practical decisions which might need to be made in the near future. And making a plan. Or at least, making the plan to make a plan.

He laid his palm on her leg, across the scars on her inner thigh.

“We’re all shaped by our scars,” Omar had said, as he inked a daisy into Erik’s wrist.

“I love you so much,” Erik whispered. He loved her calm, pragmatic poise. She took on her problems without drama or tantrums. Beneath her stillness lay rich and complicated passion. Erik knew how scared she was. But afraid or not, Daisy would look her life in the face and do what she had to do.

“I’ll be there,” he said. “Whatever you want to do. Or not do. I’ll be there.”

She looked at him, the moonlight in her eyes. “I know how to dance,” she said. “And I know how to love you.”

“There’s a book on your shelf,” he said.

They stared, breathing each other, pulling into their little haven.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said.

“You’ll never have to know.” He smiled, reached and tucked her hair behind her ear. She lay down again. In what had become a ritualistic gesture lately, he set his daisy tattoo—now with the added Hindi script beneath it—against the little red fish inked by her hip.





Petal by Petal


They came back to Lancaster in late August.

The girls moved into Jay Street. The boys moved into Colby. They unloaded and unpacked, then clipped back the stray branches in the gap of the hedge separating their backyards. Open for business.

After a week of classes, they threw a little dinner party. Daisy and Lucky cooked. David came over. And John Quillis, now firmly established as part of their clan. John’s height was up an inch and his voice down an octave. His face was shedding its babyish curves, sporting a careless growth of beard. He looked adult. And a little haunted. In the light of the kitchen table, they all looked older and battle-worn. Yet as they ate and laughed and passed around a bottle of red wine, they talked optimistically about what lay ahead.

Lucky was designing a dance therapy minor to go with her physical therapy major, and using Daisy as her case study thesis. Daisy hadn’t yet been green-lighted to go back to class. She was doing her therapy and her training sessions and had christened the fall semester, “Operation Irons in the Fire.” She was taking psychology, creative writing and art history, and auditing a course in French literature.

She was also teaching.

Kees took over as director for both the contemporary and ballet divisions, holding down the fort until a new ballet head could be hired. Short-staffed, he wanted Daisy to cover some of the lower-level technique classes. She balked at first. “I don’t teach,” she said, partly indignant, partly terrified.

Preoccupied and stressed, Kees would have none of it. “Consider this your senior project. Teach the damn class or I’ll flunk you.”

To her surprise she was good at it. More than good. “She’s a natural,” John said. “Like who didn’t see that coming?”

“Duh,” Will muttered.

Will’s appearance had shocked everyone: he had cut his hair. Not a mere trim, but cropped close down to the scalp. Even after a week, Erik barely recognized him. He gaped all during dinner, still getting used to the startling presence of Will’s facial features. He was all eyes and jaw. Exposed and raw. Dangerously handsome.

“Dude,” Will said, “you keep staring at me like that and we’re gonna have to take it upstairs.”

Erik rose out of his seat. “Let’s go.”

John got up as well. “I’ll witness.” And the table broke up laughing.

“What possessed you to do it?” Daisy asked, touching Will’s head.

Will shrugged. “I just felt the need to do something dramatic. You and Fish got tattoos. You know what I mean.” He massaged his left wrist as he talked. The surgeons had saved the middle finger—no end of jokes there—and Will had spent the summer in intense rehab, gaining back control of his maimed hand. It pained him—both the lingering discomfort in his palm and the phantom pain from the two lost fingers.

“Was Lucky mad?” John asked.

“Furious,” Lucky said, smiling.