“Do you remember his voice?”
“Sort of. He said Prosit when I sneezed. Sk?l for a toast. Those were the only Swedish words he used. I can hear them in my head. In his voice.”
“What did he look like?”
Relaxed and warm, Erik thought about how to answer. He loved lying in bed with Daisy, in the gold haze of the Christmas tree lights, talking. She asked him the funniest things. Unexpected questions often startling him into thoughtfulness. He found himself opening up in a way he never had before, telling her everything, answering anything she asked.
“Like me,” he finally said, laughing a little. “I don’t know how else to describe him. He looked like me. But with blue eyes. Dark blue.”
“Was he tall?”
“I was a kid. Everyone was tall.” He gathered her hair up in his hands, then slowly let it fall. “If you come to my house someday I’ll show you his picture. I have a few I kept.”
“I’d like that.” She dropped the charms and pulled herself up and onto him. “And I like you.”
“I can’t keep my hands off you…”
It was their honeymoon.
With the rigors of the fall dance concert behind them, and no other stage productions on the docket, life had downshifted into a more relaxed pace. Only classes and homework demanded their attention, and a heady surplus of free time was available to be together and evolve into a couple.
They went out often with Will and Lucky. The four of them laughed and carried on, all around Philadelphia, ambling through museums and galleries, going out to dinner or the movies. Sometimes David came along, sometimes with a date. But usually it was the four of them on the town, young, crazy, high on life and each other.
The nights passed in slower, quieter hours. Being alone. Falling in love.
And fooling around.
Spoiled by Lucky’s regular sleepovers at Will’s place, Erik and Daisy had the room to themselves, and together they were constructing a sexual fortress. She was still a virgin, spoon-feeding Erik her body. He ate what she offered, relishing it. He knew the pace wasn’t set out of mistrust or teasing, but from her own desire not to throw any of the journey away.
“It’s not that I’m totally inexperienced,” she said, the first time he spent the night with her.
He tucked her hair behind her ears. “I’m stunned you’re not with someone. And I’d be more stunned if there never had been anyone.”
“I’ve had boyfriends,” she said, gazing off over his shoulder. “But this is the first time everything I feel about a boy and everything I want from a boy, I want to feel inside me.” She looked at him. “David’s such an ass. I have no delusions about sex and marriage. I just wanted to wait until I knew. And I figured I would know when my mind stopped debating and my body said ‘Him. All of him. Inside me.’”
It wasn’t the first time Erik had heard a girl say she wanted to wait, but he had never heard a girl articulate why so clearly. She was so self-aware and fearlessly true to herself and it made his heart peel open to its most tender core. She was beautiful in his arms, a mermaid in jeans and a silvery-grey bra, her long hair spilling down her back. He made to gather her to him but she hung back, touching his face.
“You’ve done it,” she said.
“I have,” he said, hestitating to admit the particulars of who and when. Not because he was considering lying, but because his gallery of sexual encounters, so thrillingly delicious at the time, were now revealed as being so void of emotional connection he regarded them not sadly, but the same way a parent would indulge a child’s mediocre artwork—oh yes, lovely, dear—and then secretly chuck it.
Daisy touched his face, bringing him back. “What were you going to say?”