Will’s appearance had shocked everyone: he had cut his hair. Not a mere trim, but cropped close down to the scalp. Even after a week, Erik barely recognized him. He gaped all during dinner, still getting used to the startling presence of Will’s facial features. He was all eyes and jaw. Exposed and raw. Dangerously handsome.
“Dude,” Will said, “you keep staring at me like that and we’re gonna have to take it upstairs.”
Erik rose out of his seat. “Let’s go.”
John got up as well. “I’ll witness.” And the table broke up laughing.
“What possessed you to do it?” Daisy asked, touching Will’s head.
Will shrugged. “I just felt the need to do something dramatic. You and Fish got tattoos. You know what I mean.” He massaged his left wrist as he talked. The surgeons had saved the middle finger—no end of jokes there—and Will had spent the summer in intense rehab, gaining back control of his maimed hand. It pained him—both the lingering discomfort in his palm and the phantom pain from the two lost fingers.
“Was Lucky mad?” John asked.
“Furious,” Lucky said, smiling.
“Only because I did it without telling you.” Will sunk a little in his seat. “I didn’t think that part through too good. None of us is really into surprises anymore.”
“No shit.” John said.
“But once the shock wore off… What the hell, it’s just hair. It grows back.”
Lucky ran her hand over Will’s crown. “It’s like velvet,” she said, a little dreamily. “Especially when you rub against the nap.”
“Yeah, with your inner thighs,” David muttered and again the table broke up.
Erik laughed along, but he kept an ear peeled the next few weeks, listening for Will and Lucky’s customary noises in the middle of the night. Either they were having quieter sex or, like Erik and Daisy, they weren’t having much at all. Erik desperately wanted to ask. Hit the gym or go for a run and bring up the topic. Ask Will if he and Lucky were having trouble in bed.
But he didn’t. It was awkward. And such a fucking drag. He thought his physical relationship with Daisy would get better back at school. Back in the cradle of their romance.
It didn’t.
Their desire was back—whether it was from the campus vibe, or from the memory of past sexual encounters splashed all over the apartment on Jay Street, the love call was loud and undeniable. Yet the love itself was unremarkable.
Daisy had to struggle to come. Moves and tricks Erik had once brought her around in minutes, but now brought only an indifferent, dulled pleasure. “It feels good, it’s just not taking me anywhere,” she said, her voice filled with a confused frustration. “It’s like I’m stuck. I don’t know.”
“I know,” Erik said, confused by his own experience. He felt like a klutz in bed. Getting aroused was no problem, the urge struck often, but once in the act, he couldn’t get completely into it. He wasn’t exactly stuck, but he couldn’t seem to find the hook during sex, the ability to step off the edge of himself and fall headlong into a climax. It was like sleeping with one eye open, or one foot planted on the floor: he couldn’t give over to pure pleasure anymore, he felt constantly braced for something.
Cruelest of all, sometimes the sex was sweet and connected, but followed by an anxiety so intense, it left them reeling and shaking, if not outright physically sick. It was a sucker punch tactic filling Erik with an angry dread. They’d be cuddling together in the afterglow, minding their own damn business, and little by little he would start to feel sick, feel the unexplainable fear coming out of the dark.
“When the wolves come,” Daisy said. To her the angst was like a pack of hunting beasts loping over the horizon, coming to tear them apart.
Erik fought it. Tried to make a stand, using all the mantras and talismans at his possession, but it was no use. The undefinable terror ensnared him like a trap, a fish in a net, dragged down by a churning undercurrent of something is wrong, something is wrong, and no means to fix it other than throwing more and more time at it.
Beside him Daisy shivered, caught in the same net. “Why is this happening?”