was in the background, with a boy in a baseball cap halfway up the rungs, looking over his shoulder at the dancing couple.
Erik squinted. A smile broke through and relief cascaded over his shoulders.
Here I am.
Close by, he found another black and white of Will, dancing alone on the same stage. And in the background was Daisy, sitting on the floor with her back up against the proscenium, reading a book. Erik lay on the floor, his head pillowed on her outstretched legs. His ankles crossed, his hands folded on his chest, the bill of his cap pulled low.
He touched the picture, still smiling as the knot in his stomach loosened. He was here. He was allowed on the wall. Not front and center—but when was he ever? Even in the background, he was here. She allowed him to be here.
His feet were happy up the three remaining steps. He unplugged his phone from the charger and dialed. Two rings. Three.
“Tell me something good,” Kees Justi said on the other end.
“I don’t got good,” Erik said. “I got great.”
THE NEXT MORNING THEY slept in until ten. Then they had Warrior’s Breakfast. Daisy made bacon and fried potatoes and sunny side up eggs. She toasted half a loaf of raisin pecan bread and filled her biggest cups with strong tea. The kitchen was chilly, so they sat kitty-corner at the small table in the living room, nearer to the fireplace. Their ankles twined beneath the feast.
“Happy?” she asked.
He was too happy to answer. He pushed his plate away and pulled her into his lap. His arms wrapped around her slender body and he laid his trusting head on her heart, held her tight while she fed him the last crispy bits of potato, the burnt buttery raisins and the toast crusts. His hand worked its way up the back of her shirt or inside a pant leg, caressing her softness.
“Let’s go back to bed,” she said. “Let’s lie around in bed all day. Sleep and make love. We’ll only get up to pee or eat.”
“Let’s do that,” he said into her neck, his hand moving slower underneath her clothes.
They stayed where they were, kissing longer and deeper. She swung a leg over to straddle him. He pulled her shirt off, gathered her breasts in his hands, hungry for skin, to suck and lick and fill his mouth with her response.
She slid his shirt over his head, slid her hand down his heaving chest and trembling stomach and into his pants. His erection rose up long and hard into her palm and pulled back along the length of his spine, drawing him in both directions, a taut wire. He jerked and strained and crackled beneath her. His fingers slid into her mouth, then took the savory wet down between her legs. Past the warm pink and deeper to the hot red. Up to his knuckles in her velvet depths.
“Want to go upstairs?” she whispered.
“No,” he said, pulling her pants down her hips. “I want you right here.”
He kicked his own sweats free and turned her away from him. She pulled on the clip at the back of her head and let her hair fall past her bare shoulders. Reaching behind to help guide him in, she settled down snug in his lap.
“God,” she said, hunched a moment over the table, her fingers white at its edge. “Nobody fucks me like you.”
Through the muck and mire of emotion collected in his chest came a sword of masculine affirmation. A smug, bright blade cutting through the fog to show the sunshine of his maleness, bright and powerful and blinding.
“Nobody,” he said, his voice hoarse with longing, his hands sure and strong, drawing her to lie back on him. “Nobody will ever fuck you like me.”
And there in a wooden chair, with Daisy sprawled back on his chest, her knees open, her arm hooked around his head, her mouth wide and wanton, he finally felt the needle of his sexual compass swing around and find its true North. His wet, syrupy fingers felt the length of him gliding into her and he remembered. Remembered what it was like to throw out the hook and feel it dig into her edge. The tension of the line steady and perfect as he reeled her in to him. The tectonic plate of her rumbling into the plateau of him and the buckling heave of us as climax erupted like a new mountain chain. Coming like a cataclysm, a