After a minute Will pushed him away, roughly wiping his face. “God, you’re such a crybaby, Fish.”
“Yeah, I love you too,” Erik said.
Will pointed at him. “Don’t. Just don’t. If I tell you how much I love you, it’s going to get embarrassing. You’ll really cry. Then I’ll cry. Someone’s cock will get sucked. It will rapidly get out of hand and we’ll wind up on Jerry Springer.” He ran a hand through his hair and nudged his chin toward the bottle of juice on the table. “You wanna open that for me?”
Erik twisted the cap off and handed it over.
“Thanks,” Will said, taking a sip. “Apparently hospitals make Lucky horny. Who the fuck saw that coming?”
Erik laughed, and even Will managed a smile, shaking his head against the bottle.
“Listen, I need your help.” Erik told Will what he wanted to do, and Will made a short phone call on the spot. After hanging up, he wrote down an address for Erik.
“Ask for Omar. He does all my ink. He’ll be waiting.”
Omar had been following the coverage of the shootings on TV. In the inner sanctum of his tattoo parlor in South Philly, he listened to Erik’s story, then took pencil and paper and began sketching. He grasped what Erik wanted right away. Not cute or cartoonish. Simple. Realistic. He even consulted a botanical book he had on one of his many shelves. He suggested the petals not all be perfect, maybe one or two could be tattered. Erik liked the idea, as long as the flower didn’t look like it was dying.
“Oh no,” Omar said, in his sing-song Jamaican patois. “We’ll keep her alive, my friend, but we won’t ignore her scars. We’re all shaped by our scars.”
Erik watched as Omar went over the pencil with a black pen, watched the design come to life.
“It’s a daisy,” Omar said, “but it’s just a little…dark.”
“It’s perfect.”
“Do you want any lettering—her initials, or the date?”
Erik wanted just the flower head. On the inside of his left wrist. It took Omar less than twenty minutes to ink. It hurt like hell and Erik was glad of it.
He went back to the hospital and sat at Daisy’s bedside, tenderly running his hand over her face and hair. She stirred under his touch and began to wake up. He smiled as her eyes grew lucid and settled against his.
“Feel better?” he whispered.
She hummed in her throat. The corners of her mouth flicked upward and she turned her forehead into his palm. The tattoo was inches from her chin. Erik waited. A moment’s silence passed with her head bowed against his hand, and then she seized his wrist. Her mouth slowly opened as she moved his forearm back from her face. She blinked hard. Her fingers slid to carefully touch the puffy swollen skin.
“Erik…”
He sat still. She looked a long time, her lips trembling as she ran fingertips over her representation sunk into his skin.
I have set you in my presence forever, Erik thought, remembering Psalm 41. I uphold you. You’re in my skin. And I am not leaving.
Still holding his wrist, she looked at him. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” he said.
Her face dissolved beneath a stream of tears. She took his hand and drew it along her neck, tucked it beneath her jawline, curled against it as much as she could.
“Nobody loves me like you,” she whispered.
Part Three: David
Executive Decisions
David drove Erik to the airport to pick up Christine. At the gate he accepted a hug and took her carry-on bag, retreating tactfully so she and Erik could have a moment alone.
Christine, warm and loving on the phone yesterday, now stared unblinking at her eldest. She had been a competitive swimmer in high school and still retained a long, broad-shouldered physique. It gave her an uncompromising presence and made her appear taller than she was. Her golden-brown eyes matched Erik’s—right down to the red rims and circles beneath. Two deep lines angled from the sides of her nose, framing her full, proud mouth. Lines Erik had not seen before. The grey at her temples was new to him as well.
“I need a minute to be angry,” she said.