Here to Stay (2 page)

“I never got it back,” he said.

Daisy’s eyebrows flickered. “What?”

“Nothing.” He touched the scar beneath her shoulder blade again. “I pick this one. It’s mine.”

“All right, then.” She rolled beneath his hand, turning to face him. “Hold me.”

He wrapped his arms around her. Their legs wove and twined and they yanked tight like a knot. Soon their mouths touched and they were melting together. Soft and hard. Vicious and tender.

“It will never be enough,” he whispered against her mouth, his hands coming up to cup her breasts. Pinky to thumb, he pulled his hands to their widest span, the most square inches he could lay on her skin, and he still couldn’t feel her. Skin to brain and back, the message was garbled with a surreal static. After twelve years of estrangement, she was live flesh and blood to be touched and held again.

“Never enough, ever again,” he said. “I’ll never be able to touch you enough.”

Her arms went up around his neck, her back arching. “Try,” she whispered.

The square of sun crept across the mattress and the frost on the window panes melted as they made love, frenetic and sloppy. And fast, because Daisy had to get to a rehearsal. Not even a reconciled love affair could stop the tide of
Nutcracker
crashing onto December’s shores.

He listened as Daisy splashed around in the bathroom. The scrub and spit of teeth being brushed. Faucets run, toilet flushed, towel rack rattling. Hating how she was wiping him off her skin and out of her mouth and he’d have to start all over again.

He watched with a tired arousal as she dressed. The flex of her leg muscles as she balanced on one foot and pulled a pant leg over the other. How she still hooked a bra backward around her waist then swiveled and pulled it into proper place. Drawing her hair back into a loose bun, she crouched by the edge of the bed and kissed him. Her sugar smell filled his head.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” she said.

“Hurry,” he mumbled against her neck, already getting sucked back down into sleep.

He woke again when the jingle bells on the front door rang out. Conditioned as a Pavlov dog, his erection stirred. The radiators were clinking and hissing and the room was warm. He moved the sheets and quilt off him, ready for another round. He felt the bit of desire settle between his teeth and a smug, itching need to prove himself.

Come and get it, woman.

She seemed to be puttering around downstairs. She was teasing him. Fine. He waited twelve years. He could wait another five minutes. Still…

“You’re killing me,” he said against the pillows.

Now she was coming up the stairs. Slowly. His toes curled.

The bedroom door creaked open, accompanied by a strange, mechanical-sounding roll.

“Oh. Bonjour, monsieur.”

Erik yanked the covers over his skin and rolled in a panic. A woman stood at the foot of the bed, grey and bosomy in leggings, T-shirt and a long apron, her hand on the handle of the vacuum cleaner. One of her eyebrows went up and the opposite corner of her mouth went down as they regarded each other and their place in the situation.

“Bonjour,” he said.

She set her bucket of cleaning supplies down and walked through the tossed and flung clothing on the floor, over to the windows to open the drapes.

“I regret,” she said through a thick French accent. “I not know Madame had company.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll just…”

“No, no,” she said, picking up a pair of jeans by the waist and giving the legs a brisk thwack in the air. “I begin downstairs today.”

She set the jeans on the dresser, sniffing deeply as she looked around the rest of the wardrobe on the floor. She brushed one hand against the other, then took her vacuum and her bucket and retreated.

His heart pounding, Erik reached for his phone and texted Daisy.

I believe Madame’s cleaning lady is here.

She replied a minute later.
FUCK. I switched her day. I totally forgot. I’m so sorry…

No worries,
he typed
. A little embarrassing when I met her at the door naked. But I think she’s laughing about it now.

Don’t even…

She brought me breakfast in bed. Nice lady.

She’s fired.

He got out of bed, scratching and yawning. He picked his jeans and T-shirt off the floor, shook them out and got dressed. In the adjoining bathroom he swished some toothpaste around his teeth with an index finger, rinsed and spat, and smiled in the mirror as he dried his mouth.

“This is happening,” he said to his reflection.

HE WENT DOWNSTAIRS, skirting the cleaning lady in the living room. In the kitchen he lit a burner and pushed the kettle onto it. He found tea bags and the sugar bowl. The third drawer he tried had spoons. Opening all the cabinets to look for a mug, he found in one a pharmacy.

If you were in pain, Daisy was your girl. Tylenol, Advil, Aleve, Motrin. Various generic cousins for all. A plethora of vitamins and herbal supplements. She had a distinct preference for anything available in gummy form.

Her prescription meds were clustered together, separated in a dignified white-bottled grouping. Conscience and curiosity did a quick face-off in Erik’s head. Curiosity body-slammed conscience and he turned each bottle to the front. Zoloft. Wellbutrin. He knew the names well. Another bottle had Clonazepam. He laughed under his breath. Captain Clon. The real vitamin C. He had his own bottle in his shaving kit back at the hotel.

“Never leave home without it,” he said.

He flipped open a flat, buff disk to find birth control pills, that day’s blister empty.

He thought about last night.

“Come back to me,” she had cried over the phone. And he could deny her no more. Couldn’t deny himself another minute without her. He had no more time to throw away. He pulled jeans over his bare skin, zipped a jacket over his thin T-shirt. Without socks, gloves or a hat, he burst out of the hotel, careened into the bitter Canadian night and drove back to her house. She was waiting for him and took him upstairs to her room.

It began.

Yet it couldn’t begin.

Not until he was done with one last thing. Not until he was on his knees on her bedroom floor, untying the drawstring of her soft pants. Not until he pushed down the waistband and the flash of red letters was in his sight. Red letters spelling
Svensk Fisk
and forming the shape of a fish in the hollow of Daisy’s hip bone. Forming the shape of him, for he was that Swedish fish inked forever in her skin. Fiskare the fisherman. And he wasn’t done grieving the past yet. Not until he pressed his fingers to the red letters. Then wrapped his arms around the backs of her legs and pressed his mouth against her skin. Tasted the ink of himself on the canvas of her body. Found he was still there. She hadn’t erased him.

It was on him then. The dam of his heart broke. His throat dissolved. His lungs gave up the last of their poisoned misery and he sobbed.

She slid down the wall to sit and gathered him close, her hair falling down on either side of their heads. She didn’t shush him or soothe him with words. Only held him tight in the strong circle of her arms and let him dump the rest of it into her lap.

Then it was done.

Then it began.

They didn’t even get to the bed the first time. Down on the cold floor they grappled. Kissing and seizing. With all the grace of a pair of chainsaws coupling. They remembered and forgot. He zigged and she zagged. His head clocked hard on the floorboards, then rebounded into her forehead. They grabbed brows, groaning in pain, then grabbed each other again, groaning in need and tearing at their clothes. Her earring got tangled up in the neck of her shirt. His jeans got snagged on an ankle. He was trying to get his mouth on her. She was trying to get her mouth on him. Neither seemed willing to calm down and take a minute or take turns.

They wanted everything at once, their kiss sliding around words and words smashing between their lips and tongues. Teeth and skin and tears and breath all fought for a chance. He was harder than a fifteen-year-old virgin and just as doomed: one touch and he would explode. This was not going to be his A Game. But Jesus fuck, it was Daisy in his arms. After twelve years in his head, shaping him from afar and haunting him in the night. Now she was on him, naked and crazed, crawling up the length of him. Planting her knees on either side of his hips and she had his cock in her hand—
twelve fucking years and she’s putting me in her—
as her mouth sank deep in his. Her hips hovered over him, rising a bit, then lowering as she held him in place and let him feel a touch of her damp heat, like another mouth to sink into.

Give it to me.

Wait a minute.

No give it to me now put me in you now I need in you want in you now.

Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute.

“Dais, wait.” He stopped her. Pushed his palms against her hip bones, held her still and asked, “Do you want me to use something?”

She drew back a little, staring. Her eyes flicked from one side to the other, mouth parted, as if thinking.

He closed his eyes.

Fuck I don’t care my cock in you now put me in you now…

Then she leaned down again. Her hand squeezed and the tip of him touched pink satin.

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

And she settled her weight into his lap.

He slid in deep, touched down in that smooth molten heat. His eyes opened and his throat unleashed a howl into the magic night. Daisy sat up on top of him, her thighs hugging his sides, her face in her palms. As she rocked her hips, her hands curled into fists and dragged down her cheeks.

“Oh my God,” she said, shaking her head.

“Dais.” His voice was a hollow shell against the jubilant screaming in his head,
I’m inside you, I’m in you, it’s you, I can feel you, I got you back…

Her fists at her collarbones now, she rose up along the slick length of him and sank down again. “Erik,” she whispered. “Is this real?”

He wrapped an arm around her, pushed off the floor, rolled her down onto the rug and got her underneath him where he had always loved her best.

“It’s real,” he said. His fingers gently moved a piece of hair out of her face before he pinned her with his mouth and his body. Her arms and legs clutched him as he pushed into her. Her hand tight in his hair and her teeth at his earlobe as he reared back and plunged again. Further. Harder. Deeper. Groaning and crying. Nothing like a lover, just some deranged lunatic fucking her back into his life.

His phone pinged an incoming text.

I miss you. What are you doing?

He put the birth control pills as he had found them and shut the cabinet.

Snooping,
he typed back.

Did you find the porn?

Not yet.

You suck at snooping then.

I do. Better text me when you leave so I can put everything back.

Alphabetical order, please.

You keep your underwear in alphabetical order?

Hello? Have we met?

A clearing of a throat. Erik looked up to see the cleaning lady in the kitchen doorway. He smiled, took his mug and headed back into the living room. He felt in the way and useless. And cold in his short-sleeved T-shirt and bare feet.

He texted Daisy again:
Is there anything resembling a man’s sweatshirt on the premises?

Sorry, I’ve only had women lovers since I moved in. You can wear that fur coat in the front closet if you want.

He drank his tea and considered.
I think I’ll go back to the hotel and get some warmer clothes.

Kindly leave your house keys on the piano,
she replied.

You think I’m running away again?

I think you should run your ass to the hotel, check out, bring your stuff to my place and put your ass back in my bed. Any other questions?

He wanted to ask if she loved him. Instead he asked where he could get an egg and cheese sandwich.

Sorry, we don’t have those in Canada.

Do you love me?

A few agonizing moments passed.

Kate’s Bakery is a couple blocks down from your hotel. I love their egg and cheese sandwich. But not as much as I love you.