“This is just more than I ever hoped for,” she said. “All these years, I only wanted to tell you I was sorry. I never really imagined you saying it to me. Or wanting to hear my side of it.”
“I owe you a huge apology. And I want you to tell me what it was like for you. I need to know what those years were like. It doesn’t have to be tonight. Whenever you’re ready. Or whenever it comes to you. I just want you to know I’m going to listen this time.”
“You wouldn’t talk to me,” she said, her throat swelling up hard and hot. “I did a terrible thing to you. I wasn’t expecting you to want to speak to me for a while but the days turned into weeks. And weeks kept piling up. I couldn’t understand. Couldn’t…recognize you.”
“I knew I was doing it,” he said. “Even when I would ask myself, what the fuck are you doing? Enough already. It was just…I don’t know. I couldn’t pull out of the spin.”
“Do you remember,” she said. “The time I was gone all day. I had shut myself up in the library and didn’t tell you where I was. And you found me and you were upset and I had the big epiphany that you needed to know where I was.”
“I remember.”
“I promised you. I told you I would never disappear. And when you were gone… It was so bewildering. Not knowing where you were made me feel I didn’t know where I was. Like looking in the mirror and not seeing a reflection.”
“I shut down,” he said. “I warned myself if I kept it up, I was cutting off my chances for ever opening up again. But I kept doing it. Just pulling inside and slamming doors in my head and heart. Literally trying to erase it. Like I had no other options. And Jesus, I had so many other ways to deal with it. I wish I had a brilliant theory for why I didn’t chose any of them. A reason for why I chose to walk out instead of fight. Something to make you feel better…”
She pulled her breath hard through her nose, held it suspended in her chest and let it soothe what it could. “We’re here now,” she said. “And it feels so much better.”
“lt feels,” he said. “Everything feels to my bones. It’s like I have no skin.”
As if cued, she slumped in her chair, her head foggy and eyes aching. “I just hit the wall.”
He looked away, sighing. “I’m thinking I should be a grownup and go back to the hotel.”
She didn’t trust herself to answer. It had been an anxious day. In twenty-minute increments she was flung between reckless surrender and prudent cautiousness. Overwhelmed with wanting to touch him, grab him hard and never let go. Circumspect with guarding her heart to avoid being shattered again. Now, nearing eleven-thirty at night, the tank was empty.
I can’t take the temperature of this situation, she thought. Let him go back. We should both sleep on it.
She wanted to sleep with him.
“Do you trust I won’t run away in the night?” he said, smiling.
She picked up her tea. “Maybe you should leave your wallet here or something.”
“How about…” He reached behind his head as if to unclasp his necklace.
“No,” she said, a little too sharply, even though she knew he was joking. “No, that stays on your neck.”
He laughed, and then dug careful hands under Bastet and scooped her up. “Sorry, dude.”
Basted yowled in her sleep, limbs and claws extending, then went limp as she was passed into Daisy’s hands.
With the cat slung on her shoulder like a stole, Daisy walked Erik to the door.
“I had a good time tonight,” she said. “Even with the nausea.”
He smiled as he shrugged into his coat, pulled on gloves and his hat. “When will I see you tomorrow?”
“Whenever you want. Call me in the morning and we’ll make plans.”
Bastet gave another low yowl as they hugged. Erik kissed Daisy’s face, seemed to hesitate a moment, then pressed his mouth between her eyebrows.
“I’m going to be a grownup,” he whispered, his voice tight like a nail through the yearning space between their bodies. “But I don’t want to.”
“I know.” She ran her free hand down the length of his arm, curled it around his gloved fingers. Squeezed once and forced herself to let go.
He felt his pockets, looking for his keys. Drew out two sets and regarded them a moment, then handed one over to her.
“My house keys,” he said. “I’ll pick them up in the morning.”
“I trust you,” she said, laughing.
“Then trust me and keep them.”
He kissed her on the mouth, fast, then staggered out onto the porch, clutching his chest.
“Can you die of longing?” he cried to the night sky.
Daisy kept laughing from the door. “It’s a chronic, wasting condition. No known cure.”
The night was bitter, but she stayed in the doorway and waved until his car was out of sight, then turned off the light and locked up.
She took cups and plates to the sink. Banked the fire and closed the hearth doors, turned off lamps and Christmas lights. Heading upstairs, she paused by the bookcase where she displayed Joe’s netsuke on a shelf.
Her netsuke now.
The day after Thansgiving, before she left La Tarasque for the airport, Joe had taken the carvings from their place in his study and put them into the bowl of her cupped hands.
“Dad, no,” she said, even as a child’s greedy delight splashed her heart.
“Yes,” he said. “They’re yours now. It’s time.”
“Why?” she said, her fingers curling around soft wood and ivory. “Why is it time?”
He put a hand on her cheek and kissed her brow. “Because your war is over, Dézi.”
Now Daisy picked up one of the carvings, a little fish perched on its tail, the wood grain blending with the intricately carved scales and fins.
“And we come back from war changed,” she said.
She kissed the little fish, put it on the shelf again. Then changed her mind and took it upstairs with her, to set on her bedside table.
“I WANTED TO SAY goodnight,” she said.
Erik sighed. “Night, Dais.”
Holding the phone carefully, she wiggled her shoulders further down under the covers. “Are you in bed?” she asked.
“I am. With the pillows up against my back so I can pretend they’re you.”
“Shut up.”
“I do it all the time.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, I have your keys under my pillow.”
“You do not.”
She drew them out and jingled them against the phone so he could hear. Him going back to the hotel tonight was the right choice. The smart choice. And every atom in her body was throwing itself on the floor in protest, beating fists and toes and yelling. Me. Want. Now.
“Tired?” she asked, curling up against the receiver.
“I’m tired but I can’t sleep. I’m not done talking to you.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be done now.”
“Good. Because I want you to tell me everything.” His voice slid around her like arms. She imagined him curled on his side, facing her. Her hand reached out, feeling his body beneath it. The hard rolling hills of his chest and shoulder. His face under her palm. A little beard growth rasping against her skin. His lower lip soft and trembling beneath her thumb.
I want to touch you.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Ask me everything.” She closed her hungry fingers around the dark.
I want to hold you again so bad…
“Even if you hadn’t been moving in with John, would you still have sent my stuff back?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Living with him was the catalyst, of course. But also one of the biggest breakthroughs I reached in therapy was taking what I’d done to you, and how I felt about it, and allowing it to be important without letting it define everything I was. It would always matter to me. I would always love you, I would always be sorry for what happened. Up until then, those sta
tements were always followed by a big but. My therapist showed me how to change the but to and.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I will always be sorry, I will always regret what I did, I will always love you. And I am moving on now.”
He drew in a slow, sharp breath. “And,” he said.
“I changed one word and changed my life. But is a restriction. But is either-or. And means you can do both things at the same time. I can give back the physical things that belong to you and keep the things I feel about you.”
“And,” he said again. “That’s huge.”
A long moment passed, quiet except for them breathing.
“Feels like I’m staring in your eyes,” Erik said. “It works over the phone, who knew?”
She put her forearm over her face, feeling her heart was breaking.
His breath formed a sigh in her ear. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
“I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”
She took her arm away and looked at the clock. Almost twelve-thirty. “It is tomorrow,” she said, touching the fish netsuke.
“Happy birthday.”
“Best present ever,” she said. “Well. Second best.”
Now the silence stretched, taut and trembling.
“I was never the same,” he said. “Being your lover, it changed me. Or rather, I became me. Became myself.”
“You said it was the best thing you ever did.”
“It was. And leaving you was the worst thing I ever did. I changed again. Became someone I barely recognized.”
She rubbed her wet eyes with a corner of the pillowcase. “I lost myself, too. For so many years.”
“But I have to tell you, when you picked up the phone on Thanksgiving? I swear, within minutes, I started feeling it turn around. Like a compass. I could feel myself pointing in the right direction again. Something about you brings out the best in me. It always has.”
An aching bit of time clutched at the electric air. Daisy closed her eyes, her soul rabid, howling at the moon, gripped in a desperation she thought might kill her.
“I’m so sorry about what happened,” she said. “All I had to do was walk out. Stand up and walk out of David’s house and everything would’ve been different.”
“You were so broken. I don’t know how I didn’t see it.”
“I didn’t even see it.”
“But when you screwed up, I couldn’t see past it. If things weren’t perfect, they were useless. And I bailed out because something in my soul equated the end of a love affair with desertion. If you think about it, honey, neither of us knew any better.”
Her smile unfolded. “Been so long since I heard you call me honey,” she said.
“Please don’t beat yourself up anymore,” he said. “We both screwed up. And I want to let go of it. I really do.”
She clutched at it. “But I broke your heart.”
“Didn’t I break yours, too?”
“Yes,” she said, relaxing her fingers, turning her palm up to receive whatever the night brought next.
“I never stopped loving you, Dais,” he said. “I know my behavior said the complete opposite, but I see the truth now. And I’ve got to live it. I can’t throw any more time away pretending I don’t feel what I feel.”
She swallowed hard. “Erik, come back.”
“I’m right here.”
“No, I mean come back.”
His voice rose a little. “To your house? Right now?”
“Yes, now.”
“You want me to?” And his voice cracked open.
“I want nothing more. Come back, please, I need you.”
“Dais.” She heard him pull in a long breath. “If I come back, then I’m staying.” He was crying. His words shook through the phone. She gathered them up, clutching them tight to her chest.
“Erik,” she said. “Come back. For twelve years, I’ve been talking to you out loud. Saying ‘come back.’ Calling out to you, reaching out to you. Begging you to come back. You can hear me now and I’m asking, please, come back”
“Oh my God,” he said. “This is happening.”
“Come back to me.” She was crying now. “I swear I only let you leave tonight so I could ask you. Please come back. I can’t breathe.”
“I’ll be right there.”
A click and then empty silence in her ear. She swung her legs out of bed and stuffed feet into slippers. Her heart was pounding fast and thick and she cried out in punchy alarm as the phone rang again.
“I’m coming back,” Erik said. “I just wanted to say that was the last time I am ever hanging up on you.”
A laughing sob poured out of her throat. “Hurry,” she cried.
“I’m on the way.” A clumsy pause. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
Her feet pattered down the stairs. She unlocked the door and turned on the porch light. Pulled the throw blanket around her shoulders and sat on the middle tread of the stairs to wait. Her heart pounded against her eardrums. Her mind reached feelers across the miles to track him. She had him in her sights. Pulling on his clothes and jacket, seizing his keys, running down to the car park and turning out onto the highway.
Coming to find her.
He had come like this once before. After she had breathed herself onto a bit of paper, laid bare her heart and asked him to be kind if he didn’t feel the same.
But if you’re thinking right now, “Me too,” then please come find me.
“God, I can’t breathe,” she said. She closed her eyes and stretched her hands out, willing him along.
“Come back,” she called to the headlight beams sweeping the road.
I never stopped loving you.
I can’t throw any more time away pretending I don’t feel what I feel…
“You’re what I want,” she said, curling up against her kneecaps. “You’re everything I want, you’re all I feel. Come back. I’m waiting for you. I’ll wait for you…”
The clock ticked. The house settled. Daisy waited. A spray of gravel in her driveway followed by the slam of a car door. Footsteps crunching, then thumping up the stairs.
He didn’t ring or knock, just came in, as if he were home. As he shut the door behind him she stood up, came down two steps and jumped the rest into his arms.
They both cried out as their hearts collided. He caught her like a partner, sure and strong, his embrace snapping shut. He heaved her up high on his chest and her hands slid to his face. She was in his arms, up in his mouth and his breath filling her lungs. A bright clean wind blowing the lost years away and bringing the life back into her. He was warm like lime. Cool like mint.
Her feet touched the floor, arms still around his neck. Her throat unleashing a single sob before she was kissing him once more, running her fingertips on his shaking lips.
“Dais,” he said under her touch. “I don’t believe it.”
“You came back,” she said over and over, between kisses, between their trembling limbs, under their eyelids and over their heads. “You came back. You came back to me.”
“I’m here.” His hands held her head, moving her around his kiss as he slid his kiss around the words. “God, I missed you so much. You have no idea.”
“I do,” she said. “Every day I wanted you. I never stopped thinking about it. Not one day.”
He was shaking all over, his knees knocking hers. He pressed his forehead hard to her brow. “I don’t ever want to miss you again.”
“You won’t,” she said. “I know where you are now.”
“You will always know where I am,” he said. “I promise, Dais. No matter what happens from here, I’ll never disappear like that again.”
She held him tight, her wet cheek pressed up against his, crying all over his collar. “You came back.”
“I want to stay,” he said.
“I want us. The new us.”
“A different us. And everything that goes wit
h it.” He kissed her. “I’m letting go of the past but I’m not going to pretend it never happened. Because it all belongs to us. The years together and the years apart. It’s our story and I want it. I want all of it back.”
“And me?”
“You.” His fingers dug hard into her hair. Not pulling but holding her still. “I want you back.”
They kissed again. She opened her mouth to him, filled herself. Felt him take back all the bits and pieces of himself she carefully collected and preserved and saved. Her arms went around his shoulders and she drew on the jacket of his simplest self. Felt it meld to her back and arms and still fit her perfectly.
“I have so much to tell you,” he whispered against her face. “And not enough time.”
“We have nothing but time now,” she said. “Come lie down with me. Tell me everything. We’ll talk forever.”
As she led him up to her room, she sensed two wolves following, the dim light shining on their sugar-white ruffs. Golden eyes glowing wise and warm in the dark.
A pair of souls manifested.
And mated for life.
IT SEEMS ODD TO THANK a fictional character, but I do thank Daisy for persuading me to tell her story.
Writing a second book was a vastly different experience, if for no other reason than I have triple the support network I did the first time around. I have met so many wonderful authors, bloggers, designers, promoters and readers in the past year and I treasure every one of these new friendships. As well as the cadre of Yodas who continue to have my back.
Ami Harju, who read it first, as usual, and as usual helped me find what was and wasn’t a thing. #YMF.
Ellen Harger, who is always there when I need her and an irreplacable partner on the path of this insane thing called being an author. I’ll see you in the steam bath, dear.
My street team, whom I prefer to think of as my Army, deserves to be called out by name, for they do more than just help me promote. They read everything I throw at them, and relentlessly point out the truth, always pushing me to be a better writer: Stacie, Tina, Krista, the Melissas, Heather, Francesca, Mireille, Caryn, James, Bianca, Kathy, Rosie, Linda, John, Felicia, Mary, Mike and Kylie. I cannot do this without you.
Becky Tsaros-Dickson, my editor, who ruthlessly trims, shapes, chisels and chops but never loses my voice. I don’t know how you do it. Don’t tell me. And don’t stop.
Give Me Your Answer True Page 42
