The Man I Love (8 page)

Daisy rose up on her elbow, eyebrows wrinkled. “I’m so fucked.”

Staring up at her, he felt his face widen in a grin of wicked delight. He reached his hand into her tangled hair and pulled her face to his.

“Me, too,” he whispered.

The month of December brought what Will called Nutcracker Mercenary Season. Private ballet schools around Philadelphia were getting their
Nutcracker
s ready, and they needed experienced dancers for the more difficult roles in the second act—always Sugarplum and Cavalier, sometimes a Dewdrop for the iconic flower waltz. They came scouting around the conservatory, looking for hired guns.

“It’s a stupid easy gig,” Will said. “One or two rehearsals a week, a few on weekends. The choreography is never complicated and you’re only doing the second act anyway. In and out. It’s good exposure and you earn a couple hundred bucks. Win-win all around.”

Daisy and Will landed Sugarplum and Cavalier at a school in Ardmore. The whole entourage—Erik, Lucky, David, Marie and Kees—turned out to watch the Saturday evening performance, which happened to coincide with Daisy’s eighteenth birthday.

Daisy’s parents came, too. They all stood around the lobby at intermission, talking and chatting easily. This was Erik’s second time seeing them, the first back at the fall dance concert. He felt it had gone well, and tonight Francine Bianco had hugged and kissed him, which was an encouraging sign.

Francine had once danced with the Paris Opera. She now ran the orchard, raising chickens, ducks and organic produce, but she still looked and carried herself like a dancer. Her posture was impeccable. Her black hair, elegantly threaded with silver, was drawn up in a bun, showing her long neck. Standing with turned out feet, she was talking vigorous shop with Kees and Marie, switching effortlessly between French and English.

Erik and David stood apart with Daisy’s father.

“My mother kisses everybody,” Daisy had said. “But with my dad, approval is all in the handshake. First time meeting, it’s single hand.” She shook Erik’s hand, demonstrating. “But if he likes you, you graduate to a shake with the other hand on top, or better, on your upper arm. This is acceptance. If the other hand comes up like this—” She patted Erik’s face gently but heartily with her palm. “—you’re family. But here’s the carte blanche: handshake, palm pat and tug on the earlobe.” Her fingers gave Erik’s ear a single, brisk tug.

“Then I’m in?”

“Then you’re behind the velvet rope.”

Erik’s ears had gone untouched tonight but he had received the single handshake with upper arm grasp. He was satisfied.

Joseph Bianco had gained American citizenship by joining the Army and doing two tours in Vietnam as a combat engineer. Poised and observant, with a dry humor, Joe didn’t say much, yet he was fully present. His reticence wasn’t awkward or exclusionary. Rather he put out a companionable sort of silence, much like Daisy’s. Erik was instinctively drawn to it. And he couldn’t help but appreciate a man who could dismantle land mines. He suspected Joe Bianco had a plan K, minimum.

“Is it true sappers are the only ones in the army who can wear beards?” David asked.

“In the French Foreign Legion, yes,” Joe said. “And they’re allowed to carry an axe, too.”

“What did you carry in Vietnam?”

“An axe.” Joe winked at the boys. His blue eyes didn’t have Daisy’s green overtones, but the same dark rim was around the iris.

They filed back into the theater for the second act, sitting through all the candy divertissements before the climactic grand pas de deux for the Sugarplum and Cavalier.

It was the first tutu role Erik had ever seen Daisy dance. A role firmly entrenched in the classical vocabulary. Her technique was clean, polished, precise. She sparkled. He noticed her feet were especially controlled, defying gravity whenever she came down off her pointes.

Will dismissed the role of the Cavalier, calling it a mindless, hands-and-arms role. “It’s a snore. I never string two steps together, I just stand where she needs me to be and make her look good.”

But it was still Will and Daisy dancing, and they still put their own interpretation into the conventional partnering, making eye contact and smiling at each other. Real smiles. They didn’t make it romantic, they maintained a certain regal, storybook air, yet their natural human connection transformed them from an insipid dessert to a textured couple who ruled this make-believe land together.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a Sugar-Cavi couple who actually looked like a couple,” Kees said afterward.

“It’s pure Daisy and Will,” Marie said.

It’s generous partnering,
Erik thought.

Joe and Francine took him and Daisy out for a late supper, where the wait staff brought Daisy a piece of cake with a candle. Back in her room, she unwrapped Erik’s present, a set of Russian nesting dolls. Matryoshka. Daisy had been collecting them since she was a child.

They locked the door, unfolded the night and spread it out like a blanket. They tumbled onto its softness, kissing, touching and undressing.

“Don’t move,” Erik whispered.

“What?”

“Don’t move. Stay still. This.”

“This?”

“This. This right here is like the greatest moment of my life.”

He was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder down the full length of her body, its curves and contours and shadows. One of his arms across her collar bones, above the swell of her breasts in the silver-grey bra he loved. His other forearm, darker against the skin of her stomach, and his hand slid halfway into her underwear, just on the verge of easing them down. He held still. Took a mental picture and framed it.

“This,” he said. He touched the heat coming off her, the heat he had created.

She pulled her breath in. He slid his hand under her bra, fingers curving around her breast. Opening the clasp, she tilted her head to look up at him.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you.”

“And I’m ready if you are.”

He turned her, held her head in his hands, their eyebrows together. “You’re supposed to get presents today, not give them,” he whispered.

She smiled. “It is my present.” She slid her arms out of the bra straps and brought them up around his neck, her hands gliding on his bare skin. Beneath them he trembled, hard and aching with the need to be inside her. He was pure, mouth-watering want. Dying to seize it all and swallow it whole and curbing himself to let the taste linger.

“You’re sure?” He felt compelled to ask one last time.

She kissed him. Her fingers curled around his earlobe and pulled slowly. “You’re in,” she said.

* * *

Her skin was amazing: burnished gold under twinkling light garlands. She was sitting on her bed, her long legs stretched out in the tangle they had made of the covers. They had kissed and touched and caressed and licked and explored each other until the sheets were a twisted and rumpled mess beneath their sweating, trembling bodies. Now Erik was kneeling between her calves and together, with shaking fingers, they were tearing open the condom packet and rolling it on him.

The air in the little room was close and warm, redolent with anticipation, sweat, sex, the faint smell of latex overlaid with Daisy’s perfume. She lay back and pulled him along with her. He gathered the covers up around them, tucking them into a cocoon. Her hand was tender at the back of his neck, her knees inching up his hips.

“Come inside me,” she whispered.

Cradled in her thighs, pressing the tip of his cock to that hot, pink cave, he had to take a split-second to absorb what this meant. He was her first. She had chosen him. He would belong to her after tonight. Belong to her history.

It was almost more than his young male ego could process. And in an instant of reflection, he grasped man’s need to walk where none had walked before. He understood Columbus and Neil Armstrong and Hillary and Peary. And he pushed into her, hungry to take the step for his own mankind.

Daisy sucked in her breath and her back arched so suddenly Erik froze. He was sure he had hurt her. He backed off, no longer Prince Henry the Navigator but just an amateur lover, a nineteen-year-old emotional virgin.

“I’ll stop,” he said.

“No, no, go on.”

“I’m hurting you.”

“No.” Her damp hands held his head. “You’re not hurting me,” she whispered against his mouth. “It’s just really tight.”

It was. All of her body was an incredible squeezing pressure around him. He was in some primitive place, the first, the only, the one, sliding his cock into the gripping heat, the sensual effort to get inch by delicious inch inside her nearly undoing him.

“Is it all right?” he whispered, barely holding it together.

“Yes,” she said, her voice filled with laughing wonder. “It’s good. God it’s… It’s good.”

Then he was on his elbows, stretched full out on top of her, his sword sheathed to the hilt. She wound her legs around him and they held still, kissing, whispering, feeling their bodies joined.

“I love you so much,” he whispered.

“God, I love you,” she murmured beneath him, her hands sliding over his skin. “You feel so good in me.” She ran her shaking mouth up his neck. “I knew you would.”

“You’re so tight.” He was trying to move in her, trying to make it into something more.

“It feels so good,” she said. She was beautiful and exhilarated under him. Too beautiful. And he was too young, too excited, too inexperienced with making love and being in love. He tried to hang on to his desire, rearing and pawing like an untamed colt at the stable doors. But she kept whispering in his ear, responding to every move he made inside her and it was too much. The colt busted free and ran for the pastures, dragging Erik behind. He turned inside out and poured into her.

She hung onto him with arms and legs, crooning, stuck to his body like a starfish on a rock, riding out the tremors. Interminable minutes passed. The colt slowed to a walk. Erik’s heartbeat grew softer in his ears. The mist of sweat on his body felt cooler. Finally he lifted up his head to look at her.

She smiled at him, but tears were dripping from the corners of her eyes, running diagonally along her cheeks. Erik’s thumbs smudged them away.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered through a throat of iron.

“I’m just happy.”

The minutes passed in kissing, and he felt the muscles in Daisy’s body quiver and relax. First one leg, then the other dropped off his hips. Then her head fell back on the pillow. Finally her arms released, which he took as a signal, and rolled off her.

“Oh,” she said, looking down between them. He looked, and the condom was smeared scarlet. It wasn’t a lot. But it was definitely blood.

“Is it your period?”

“No, it was over weeks ago.”

“Then…did I do that?”

“I guess.”

“And it didn’t… You’re not hurt?”

“No, not at all…” Her confidence seemed rattled. “Sorry,” she said, a little meekly, which he found odd.

“Don’t be,” he said. He looked down again. He had made her bleed. He touched it, mesmerized, rubbing the warm tackiness. Now he could see Daisy’s thighs were smudged with it. A small, bright rose had bloomed on the mattress beneath her.

“Can you get me a towel?” she asked.

“Yeah. One sec.” He pushed up on an elbow, dipped a finger and began to trace letters on her leg, just above her bent knee. E. Then R.

“What are you doing?” But she was laughing, and her hand caressed his head.

He smiled, not sure himself, but into it, carefully making the crossbars of the I. Boldly, he slid his finger into her, and then finished with a strong K. And there, on her leg, his name, in her blood.

“Now you’re mine,” he said. She looked down at her leg, up at him, and her eyes turned wicked. Her hand, which had been soft in his hair, seized the nape of his neck and pulled him on her again, all of his body along hers. She opened her mouth under his, wound her limbs around him like vines. Caught up in her savage and greedy grip, he kissed her, crushed her down into the bed even as the joy in him spiraled up through the roof and burst into the sky. He had always known the one was out there and he had found her.

And he had marked her in blood.

James Dow came to Lancaster the fall of Erik’s junior year.

Erik heard about him first through Daisy, who spoke of a talented transfer from Juilliard who was wowing the tights off the conservatory. “Marie’s having him partner me a lot,” she said. “I think he’s being groomed as the heir apparent.” She still danced with Will, but Will was a senior now, and clearly Marie was keeping a shrewd eye on the future.

“Is he any good?” Erik asked.

“He’s a good dancer,” Daisy said. “But he’s kind of erratic. Good days are phenomenal, bad days are horrendous and it’s either one or the other. No middle ground.”

“Perfect or useless.”

“Right, which makes it hard to partner with him. He’s strong, his timing is good. But he’s not consistent.”

“He’s not Will,” Erik said.

“Nobody is going to be Will. But I can’t ignore he’s graduating. That would be stupid.”

“And no stupid girls are in ballet.” It was something Daisy’s old ballet teacher used to say, and one of Daisy’s personal credos.

“James isn’t stupid,” she said. “He’s got a phenomenal memory. He’s just unpredictable. And I have to think so much when we dance together, which is exhausting.”

Erik followed the gossip with interest, wondering if a rivalry would erupt between the newcomer and Will. They sounded intensely competitive in the studio. But then Will started bringing James around to hang socially and Erik’s interest quickly morphed into concern. While James was a dynamic and likeable guy, something about the new friendship seemed odd to Erik. Troubling in a way he couldn’t quite articulate.

James Dow came from a small town outside Pittsburgh. His face had a dark, devilish handsomeness punctuated by stormy grey eyes. He was twenty-one but already losing his hair. “I got crap genes. None of the men in my family can keep a head of hair to save their lives.” He gave in gracefully by sporting an eighth-inch buzz cut and a slick goatee. Gold hoops hung from both his ears. These, the beard and his olive skin gave him the look of a pirate, Erik thought. Or a conquistador. “You look like Vasco da Gama,” he said.

“You, you look like freakin’ Adonis,” James said. He turned to Will. “How do you concentrate with this guy around?”

“With great difficulty,” Will said.

“Jesus, with a face like his I could’ve conquered half of Greenwich Village. Must be a pussy-market around your place. What, does he just stand in bars and take numbers?”

“Fishy, fishy in the brook,” David said, “doesn’t have a little black book.”

“He’s Bianco’s boy,” Will said.

“Oh.” James gave Erik an appraising look.

“He could be the Olympic champ of getting laid,” Will said. “But where is he on Saturday night? Pushing up daisies.”

“Can you blame him?” David asked.

“I’m standing right here, guys,” Erik said.

“We know,” Will said.

James shushed him. “Don’t speak, Fish. Just stand there and look cute and let us talk about you, okay?” His tone and cadence were an uncanny mimicry of Will. He even captured the little French-Canadian inflection on “okay,” drawing the word tight up against the roof of his mouth. Erik was puzzled by the tactic. Trying to emulate Will was one thing—imitation, sincere flattery and so forth—but James seemed to be taking it to extreme levels. Making himself into a Kaeger Klone. It made Erik feel strangely defensive.

Maintaining a healthy social life did require some effort on Erik’s part. Given his way, he would only be with Daisy. He was happiest with her. But he pragmatically sensed this wasn’t a healthy way to go through college, and so when the boys went out, he went along. His circle of friends within the conservatory was diverse and casual. Then he had a smaller exclusive circle with David, with whom he spent most his time, and Will, with whom he shared most his thoughts.

Against the fixed constant of Daisy, Erik found it odd he had ended up with two wild cards like Will and David as mates. Odd because a third of the time he couldn’t even stand David. Erik’s friendship with Will, on the other hand, had only strengthened over the past two years.

He often wondered if he and Will would have been as close, had they not been involved with Daisy and Lucky. Erik didn’t think the bond was born solely out of the convenience of two roommates banging two roommates, but he wasn’t positive Will’s company was something he would have sought out on his own. Despite the strong affinity, they were nothing alike.

“You can’t pick human connection apart, honey,” Daisy said. “Sometimes the affinity just exists without a reason. Or in spite of the reasons not to exist.”

Erik shrugged, not entirely convinced.

“Anyway, I think you’re a lot alike,” Daisy said. “You and Will seek out the same things in life, you just use different tactics. Will tries everything until he arrives at what he wants. Process of elimination. You get what you want all worked out in your head first, then you make a plan to go get it. But at the end of the day, what you’re both after is essentially the same thing.”

“Which is?”

“Creativity,” Daisy said thoughtfully. “Mastery of a skill. Athleticism. And connection. Mostly connection.”

“We just want to be loved?”

“By women, no doubt. But maybe you’re looking for a male kindred spirit.”

“Maybe.” He and Will hadn’t sliced palms and mingled blood, but it had been a mindless decision to room up sophomore year, and to continue the living arrangements this year. They lived well together—neither was a slob, in fact, both gravitated toward order, liking things to be in their place. They never lacked for conversation. And as Daisy had said, each had skills the other was curious to master. Some of them quite useful.

“What’s with you and the pineapple juice?” Erik asked Will once, noting never than less than a gallon of it was in their fridge.

“Il donne le coup un bon goût,” Will said, twisting the cap off a new bottle.

“English, please.”

Will did a high pour into two glasses, handed one over. “It makes your jiz taste good.”

“Jesus,” Erik muttered. But naturally he drank it, his interest piqued. Such a sexual tidbit coming from David could be immediately dismissed as a mind-fuck. From Will, however, it required serious consideration. (“And it doesn’t exactly make it taste good,” Daisy said later. “It just makes it not taste.”)

On the less-useful but more refined front, Will was learning to play credible guitar under Erik’s tutelage. He was also a born-again tea drinker. Erik had taken two semesters of Taekwondo. They worked out together several times a week. Will hated to run, but he ran if Erik wanted to, and eventually hated it less. Will’s cross-training routine left Erik winded and wounded but he could tell he was getting stronger. And ripped. So he pushed through the sessions on the wave of Will’s motivation and the promise of Daisy running greedy hands over his body, purring about the little cut in his deltoid.

But analyzing Will’s friendship made Erik’s Y chromosome ache. Men didn’t pick apart and classify relationships the way girls did. At best, Erik could conclude he admired Will. Looked up to him. He wasn’t a father figure, but in Erik’s eyes, Will was definitely the alpha male. Which made Erik the beta. The behind-the-scenes man. Where he liked best to be. But now with James, a new buck was on the scene. Not exactly locking horns with Will for breeding rights—James was gay—but definitely shifting the status quo by sheer personality.

Erik shared this observation with David, who laughed in his face. “First of all, you’re the alpha male.”

“Me?”

“What, you think it’s only how tall you are or how much magnetism you have? It’s about pack mentality, Fish. You bring out the best in people.”

“Say what?”

“Haven’t you ever noticed everyone calms down around you?”

“No.”

“You’re human valium, dude.”

“Get outta here,” Erik said, giving David a shove to emphasize.

“I’m telling you, Fish. As long as you’re around, things stay chill. Your girlfriend’s the same way. She’s got the inner flame that never flickers. People love you. But maybe it’s better you don’t know it. Forget I said anything. You’re an asshole, Fish. Everyone hates your guts.”

Erik laughed but the reflection left him more than a little stunned. Both the content and the person it was coming from. He long resigned to David being one of his more difficult friends. They were excellent collaborators and had worked on several successful projects over the past three years. But if the best was in David, Erik didn’t think he had brought it out. David had always remained moody and unpredictable, a relentless tease and notorious practical joker. The genuine moments remained few and far between, and Erik took them at face value when they came.

“Second of all,” David said, “and I realize this will be hard for you to grasp, so listen closely. What James is doing with Will is called a crush.”

Erik stared at him, then closed his eyes. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yes, you are. And I got even more bad news for you, Fish, because Will’s eating it up.”

“Not this again,” Erik said. “He’s straight. Come on, he’s been with Lucky two years now.”

David grinned. “Well Lucky ain’t here, is she?”

She wasn’t. Lucky had been experiencing a life path shift, leaning away from physical therapy toward emergency medicine. She was taking a sabbatical and doing a modified EMT training program in Boston. Seeing if she had the stomach for it.

“Will’s definitely enjoying being a swinging bachelor again,” David said. “Regardless of which way the door is swinging. And he plays James like a violin. It’s fascinating in a twisted way. You watch.”

Erik watched and couldn’t deny it. Flying solo, Will had a little more swagger in him. He seemed augmented—taller, louder, funnier. And after the conversation with David, Erik quickly grasped James wasn’t competing with Will. He was adoring him. And Will was skillfully basking in it. He soaked up James’s infatuation yet he was careful not to reciprocate it. He never asked for James’s attention, he simply made his pleasure in it irresistible. He increased supply by decreasing demand. Erik couldn’t believe James didn’t get what was going on. Until he began to figure James out a little more.

If Will was an entitled cat belly-up in a puddle of sunshine, James was a stray out in the rain. Not the alpha male, but the omega. His desire to be included and accepted made him try too hard. His jokes were always slightly too loud, his joviality a little too forced. His good moods had a touch of mania to them while his downswings were wretched. If he felt the least bit rejected he plummeted into morose, passive-aggressive silence. He reminded Erik of nothing more than a lonesome dog trying a gamut of attention-seeking tricks, a ball in the lap or a muzzle on the knee, content with any scrap given and crushed when it was taken away.

James’s heart was in the right place, Erik thought. But along the way, his heart had somehow been damaged, leaving James an empty, aching vessel. And Will could fill it with a single word, or crack it into pieces with a word withheld.