Here to Stay (9 page)

“Time I got,” Erik said.

SNOW WAS FALLING AS they walked back to the municipal parking lot. Will had a handful of gift bags. Erik had looked for something for Daisy, but nothing moved him to a purchase.

“Who’d you sleep with all those years?” Will asked. “Before you were married.”

“Too many people.”

“All female?”

“Shut up.”

Will laughed. “We always said you could stand in bars and take numbers.”

“Well it wasn’t in bars. And I was picky about what numbers I took. I didn’t want anything serious. I barely wanted to talk. I ended up nailing a lot of older women. It was easier.”

“You whore.”

“I plead the Fifth.”

“What did they look like?”

“What do you mean?”

“The chicks I dated after Lucky? All of them tall and brunette with straight hair. Not one little, curly blonde. Couldn’t do it.”

“My ex-wife is black.”

“Shut up.”

“Hand to God.”

“You really went to the opposite pole.”

“It was funny when it happened though. I went so long thinking my heart was shut down for good, but I came across her in the theater one day. This little voice inside started tugging at my sleeve.
Hey. Girl. Look. See? Girl. Pretty girl. Fetch.”

“I hear you, I couldn’t believe when I felt attracted to another woman after Lucky. Anyway, back to her being black… What was that like?”

Erik shrugged. “It honestly wasn’t anything until we were trying to have kids. And then it…showed up like a snake. Somehow. We had some ugly arguments, man. One in particular.” He shook his head hard, diffusing the memory. “I was a shitty husband at the end. She called me out on a bunch of behavior. I was defensive at the time but looking back now, she knew me better than I knew myself. Which sucks.”

Will grunted. “Self-realization usually does.”

“Did you have anyone serious? At all?”

“Not really,” Will said. “Anytime something started to turn serious, it started to rub me wrong. Love made me anxious. Then again, everything was making me anxious at that point. So I did the obvious thing and ran away to Europe.”

“Anxiety travels in your luggage.”

“No shit.”

Erik waited for Will to take the bait, maybe talk about his breakdown in Germany. But the hook went untouched.

“So what will you do now?” Will said. “About Dais, I mean.”

Erik dug his hands further in his pockets. “Half of me wants to resign by phone and let my landlord have a yard sale. The other half knows I can’t just bail. So I’ll stay for Christmas. Ring in the New Year if she’ll have me. Then decide what next.”

“Stay through New Year’s, then go home? Try it long-distance?”

“I can’t see that being too sustainable, but… I mean, you tell me. Am I insane to just drop my life in Brockport and come here?”

“Is your life really in Brockport?” Will asked.

“True.”

“You want to wait another year or two while you guys
date
or some shit? Just because it looks sensible on paper?”

“I could say I should stay close to my mother, but she’s in Florida half the year and she has Fred. I could argue I want to be close to Pete, but he has Laura and the kids. Nobody in New York is depending on me to stay.” He looked at Will for validation but Will wasn’t there.

Erik turned. Will had stopped at a storefront and was peering into the window. He looked over at Erik and beckoned with his chin.

Erik went. It was a jewelry store. Will touched the glass with a gloved fingertip, pointing to a white mannequin head. Its chin was turned aside to show off a thin gold chain at the neck, off which hung a tiny gold fish. Not a carved bob like Erik’s charm but flat, no bigger than his little fingernail. Next to it hung a single freshwater pearl.

Erik looked at his friend, then back at the necklace.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Will said.

The bell on the jamb tinkled as Erik pushed the door open and walked into the perfumed warmth of the shop.

“THINGS GOING ALL RIGHT with Will?” Daisy asked that night in bed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’s good.”

“What do you talk about?”

“Oh God, all kinds of shit. You. Me. Us. Life. Parenthood.” He told her about the boy and the condoms in the drug store.

“You know he and Lucky didn’t plan this third baby,” she said. “After Sara, they were done. One boy, one girl, they were set. So Lucky got an implant. Eighteen months later…surprise.”

“Holy shit. Will must have sneezed really hard one night.”

She laughed. “It wasn’t exactly joyful when they found out. It was definitely a decision to have it, not a no-brainer.”

He turned onto his side. “Lie against my back?” he asked.

She snugged up to his shoulder blades, her hand coming around to rest on his heart. Bastet jumped on the bed and settled between their calves, kneading the mattress and purring.

Erik took a deep breath. “Something I want to talk about.”

“All right,” she said.

“The other night?”

“Which night. We have several now.”

He threaded his fingers with hers. “The first night I was here. When I asked if you needed me to use something.”

“I’m on the pill.”

“I know. But what if you hadn’t been?”

“Ah.” She kissed his head and gently closed her teeth on the top of his ear. “You mean would I trap you into staying by getting pregnant?”

“Well, I’m staying anyway,” he said, while his mind bit its nails.

Quit fucking around and tell her.

He sighed. Did he have to?

Yes. Now. Everything on the table.

“That’s your troubled sigh,” Daisy said.

He smiled. “You remember.”

“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

He rolled over to face her. “My marriage began to fall apart when we tried to have kids,” he said, taking both her hands. “The shortest, simplest story is I have some major plumbing issues and I probably couldn’t get you pregnant even if I wanted to.”

The room raised its eyebrows. Even Bastet looked up from washing a paw and stared at him.
Really?

He squeezed his eyes tight then opened them. “That sounded better in my head than it did out loud.”

“Shh,” she said, her own eyes closed. “I’m rearranging my personal narrative.”

He pressed the clump of their fingers to his mouth and waited.

The room went away on tiptoes.

A click in Daisy’s throat as she swallowed. When she opened her eyes, the blue-green of her gaze was blurred and wet.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

“Sorry for what?”

“I know why things ended with Ray.”

Her smile flickered. “Will told you?”

He nodded.

Her chest filled up, then slowly deflated. “Ray wasn’t you,” she said. “And this conversation isn’t about me.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“It’s about us.” A single tear tracked diagonally from one eye to her nose. Her hand settled soft on his face. Her thumb moved along his lower lip. Her breath became his breath.

“Erik, I’m in love with you,” she said.

“Still?”

“It never stopped.” She leaned up and brushed her mouth against his. “I’ve rearranged now,” she said. “And the shortest, simplest story is I still want you.”

“Even if it’s not your dream?”

“You are my dream. I want us.”

“You want a family, too.”

“I know a lot of different ways to have a family.”

He made and discarded a half dozen sentences. “It’s hard to say what I want to say without getting way ahead of myself.”

“Tell me.”

“I was ambivalent about kids with Melanie. But with you… If the time comes… I mean, when it comes…it’s going to matter. I already know it’s going to be different. Because it’s you. And it’s us.”

She nodded. “When it’s our time,” she said. “I’ll do anything. Right now, all I want is you. And to know where you are.”

He nodded, lost in her eyes. Perfect peace drawing over him like a glove welcoming cold fingers. He ran his hand soft over her head, remembering all the nights he reached into the empty dark beside him and made her materialize under his touch. Laid his palm on a cheek that wasn’t there and felt the loving weight of her gaze settle on him and press him into stillness. Both marveling and lamenting how no other woman ever made him feel as complete and content.

“Dais, I love you,” he whispered.

He sat up then, got out of bed and went looking for his jacket. Dug in the inside pocket for the gift box with the necklace. His plan had been to give it to her on Christmas morning.

Plans changed.

She lifted the lid from the box. Stared at the necklace a moment. Then closed her mouth up in her palm. He took the chain from its nest of white cotton and undid the clasp.

“I’ll have to go back home soon,” he said, fastening it at her nape. “But this is so I can stay here with you.”

Daisy released the hair she had been holding out of the way. Cupping the charms in her hand, holding that hand against her collarbones, she turned into his arms.

“You came back,” she said.

“I’m staying,” he said.

She pressed her face into his chest and cried.

THEY IGNORED THE DAYS that fell away faster and faster. The New Year was nigh. They made dinner reservations with Will and Lucky at The Supper Club. Erik had nothing suitable to wear so he went with Will to buy a shirt and sport coat.

“I’ve waited years to dress you,” Will said.

“Just so you can undress me?”

Will pointed an empty hanger at him. “I didn’t miss you. At all.”

Will insisted Erik get a new pair of shoes. They were, Erik had to admit, perhaps the finest shoes he’d owned in his life. He felt three inches taller in them. If asked to dance, he might even say yes.

As he packed his bag his last night in New Brunswick, he left the shoes in Daisy’s closet

“Are you crazy?” she said. “Take them.”

“Nope,” he said. “These stay here.”

“I trust you, if that’s what this is about.”

“I know you do. And they’re staying here.”

He led her around Barbegazi that night, intent on making love in every room. From the obvious to the absurd. Laughing up against the linen closet door and then shivering on the basement steps. He overlooked nothing.

“I want you to walk around this house and see me everywhere,” he said, pressing her to walls, floors, piano keys, cushions and counters. Marking his territory with a vengeance.

“This is your home now,” she said, leading him back to her bedroom. “I want it to be your place, too.”

The candlelit air pulled apart, gossamer threads of aching need stretching across the hours.

“God, honey,” she said, stretched out on her back at the corner of the mattress, her arms long over her head. Her silky legs rested on his shoulder. He curled an arm around them like a cello, running his mouth along her calf.

“You’re so good,” she whispered, pulsing around him.

“Only with you,” he said. “I’m best with you.”

Their shadows danced across the walls and ceiling. The flickering light caught in the tender curve of her throat and the gold fish curled in its hollow. The coiled heat in his belly reversed direction and spiraled down, heading for the warm wet that had no name. His awareness swelled, pressed against his eardrums. A wave of furious release tumbled down from his head as the intense, squeezing pressure rocketed up his spine. He checked the impulse to thrust, to force it over the top. He held still. Let it rip through him like a slow-motion bolt of lightning.