He told her. Unloaded all of it—the cocaine and ecstasy, and all those nights in the pitch dark when he and Daisy tried, it seemed, to kill each other. To fuck each other to death.
“The last time,” he said, “when I had her in the shower afterward. Her body… She was like this broken thing. The scars on her thigh and the scars on her calf. And then the scratches down her back and the bruises on her arms. Her hair was collecting in the drain because I had pulled on it. It was horrible.”
“It must have been frightening.”
“But it felt so good. Violence made the sex amazing and I didn’t understand. I still don’t. Well, maybe I do a little. I see how they were tied together in our minds. Maybe… Maybe we were trying to connect back with the night before the shooting. Because the night had such a raw edge to it.”
“But remember it was deeply loving as well. And since feelings of love only brought anxiety, possibly you had to jettison it and focus solely on the raw savagery.”
“I have no memory of thinking that way.”
“Of course not, it was purely subconscious. You were simply trying to take control any way you could. And losing control simultaneously.”
“I remember I couldn’t do it anymore,” he said. “Be violent in bed. But I think she still needed it. And then I was useless to her.”
Diane inclined her head. “You feel that?”
“I do. I really believe Daisy needed the violence. She was hooked on it. Just like coke. I wouldn’t give it to her. And she went to David to get it. To ask him for it. Knowing he would do anything for her.”
“You must have been devastated.”
“She killed me,” he whispered.
“It seems you’re still angry with her,” Diane said after a moment.
He opened his mouth to reply of course, but then stopped to think about it. Was he angry with her? Of course he was. At least he had been. Was he still?
“Am I?” he said.
“Are you?”
He put his head in his hands, pulling the hair back from his temples. “I just don’t understand,” he said, sighing. “I just don’t understand how she could do it.”
“She was traumatized as well, Erik. I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment and say she may not have been entirely in her right mind when she slept with your friend.”
“It’s possible,” Erik said, thinking of the cocaine left carelessly on David’s coffee table, “she was high when she slept with him.”
“Would you treat it as a reason or an excuse?”
Erik looked at her. “I don’t like to treat it at all.”
Diane gazed back, fingertips steepled beneath her chin. “I can’t speak to her experience, Erik. She’s not here. We’re talking about you and your experience. About what it was like, no matter the reason or excuse, to find her in bed with David. After everything you had been through together.”
“Everything I did,” he whispered. “Crawled through broken glass. Stared down the barrel of a gun. And it wasn’t enough. She made me feel useless.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“And used.” His face twisted with the pain, eyes hot and throat tight. “It was almost like another shooting. Except she had the gun this time.” A swift rage filled him and he grabbed the tissue box and fired it against the far wall. “Fuck,” he said, sinking his face into his hand again. “Sorry. I’m not aiming at you.”
“I know,” she said calmly.
“She was… She had my life, Diane. She had my soul. She was like this.” Erik put his hands out, cupped together, open and receiving. “Like this. And I put myself there. Everything. Anything. No secrets. Stories about my father, memories of my father. I would put them in her hands and she would hold them. She understood me. And then it was ruined.”
“Was it?”
“You know how when they execute someone by firing squad, the captain takes the last shot. It has a name. It’s French, Daisy would know it.”
“The coup de grace,” Diane said.
“Yeah. The death blow. It killed me.”