The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(80)

Erik didn’t know what made him turn around and leave. Shock, he supposed. Or maybe a human body could only take so much stress before it went numb. He felt numb walking down the stairs, walking through the living room of David’s apartment, going out the way he came in. He closed the front door without a sound. Politely. So as not to disturb. What a bizarre thing to do.

He had trouble reconstructing what happened next. More shock, he guessed. His mind shutting down what was impossible to comprehend. Up in his hot, airless bedroom, he sat on the bed staring at the wall. Trying to determine if he indeed saw what he had just seen. He couldn’t feel his limbs. His face burned, his lips were numb, but the rest of his body didn’t seem to be present. He was nothing but a head. A head trying to process an impossible math problem where one plus one equaled three.

I just saw David f*cking my girlfriend.

He would have laughed. It was absurd.

Then the problem turned grammatical. A matter of tenses to solve here.

He f*cked my girlfriend.

He is f*cking my girlfriend.

Will he f*ck my girlfriend again?

He could not wrap his mind around it. The problem was unsolvable.

He rearranged the factors.

Daisy f*cked David.

He stood up. The rest of his body was back and filled with a shaking nausea.

She slept with him. She’s sleeping with him. She will keep sleeping with him.

It was not only unsolvable, but intolerable. He stood up, hands on the crown of his head, pressed down to keep his mind contained.

What would he do?

“It’s this place,” Will had said. “We all need to get out of here.”

He needed to get away. Yes. He picked up his backpack. He could not stay here. Not in this room. Not in this house.

Not in this town. Not anymore.

A panic began to creep over his head. He had to get out of here. Recklessly he stuffed in some clothes. Random things. He didn’t even think. He was getting out. He couldn’t stay.

He stopped. Blinking. What was happening? What had just happened?

How could she do it? Like a wet bar of soap, the idea she would cheat on him flopped and slipped through his hands. He couldn’t catch it. It made no sense. They were together all the time. They were together. They were in love, they were bonded. Their love defied description. They were each other’s sole means to survive.

They were inked into each other’s skin.

What in hell had just happened?

From the window. Voices and action outside. He leaned on the sill and looked out at the backyard. Daisy was hurrying up her back steps. Little blue skirt, a white shirt. Her arms crossed over her middle, her head down. Hurrying. Scurrying.

And a few steps behind, David.

David, following Daisy. Into her kitchen. She was trying to get away. He was following.

Erik’s eyes narrowed.

Betrayal had refused to stay in his hands, but the notion of theft slammed into Erik’s chest and he crossed his arms over it, holding on tight. Now he had his answer. He was certain of it. David wanted Daisy. He had always wanted her. He wanted her but she went to Erik. And David had bided his time, waiting for a chance. A chance to take her away, chew her up and spit her at Erik’s feet.

He should have known.

He never should have trusted David.

“You only want what you can’t have,” Erik whispered.

Erik closed his eyes. Opened them again. Looked down at his feet and the image of Daisy there, used, thrown out, thrown back at him because David was done playing with her.

“You son of a bitch,” he whispered.

Outside, the sky was pale grey, veiled in sickly clouds. The heat was intensifying. Erik walked through a cloud of tiny buzzing insects as he came through the hedge and into Daisy’s yard.

Through the screen he saw David, sitting with his back to the door—at Daisy’s kitchen table.

Sitting in Erik’s place, smoking.

I get a panic attack after sex with Daisy, Erik thought. David gets the cigarette.

He pulled the door open. David whirled in his chair, white-faced and trembling. He stood up, crushing the half-smoked butt into a saucer.

“Fish.”

Erik stared at him.

“This is all my fault,” David said hoarsely. “It’s my fault, Fish, not hers.”

Erik advanced on him, fingers opening and closing in fists. “Fishy, fishy in the brook,” he whispered. “What to do with David the crook?”

David started to speak but Erik hadn’t come here to listen. He seized David by the shirt collar, pivoted lightly and threw him against the wall.

Though the fight was vicious, his brain was oddly detached. It kept making up little rhymes to finish fishy, fishy…

Not his to take, but still he took.

Blood spraying from under his hands. David’s blood spattering onto the walls of Daisy’s kitchen.

I found you in bed, and the walls shook.

Pots and pans clattering from the counter, a shining arc of silverware across the floor, chairs skittering sideways.

For King David, I was forsook.

Hands on his shoulders, pulling at him. Daisy’s hands. She was screaming at him to stop. He shook her off violently, hoping she stayed to watch.

As I kill you, let her look.

Then different hands were on him, stronger ones. “Let go, Fish.”

A forearm across his collarbones and an index finger set into the hollow of his throat, pressing down against the nest of nerve endings there.