Page 26 of Switch
I avoid his gaze and sip the champagne in my hand while I search for a reasonable excuse.I’ve been searching for weeks already with no solid answer.“At the time, I didn’t feel ready for more.We agreed to be friends.”
Does that mean I don’t jerk off every night, and some mornings in the shower, and occasionally after I go for a run, thinking about our night together?It does not.
Daniel stares for a while at a painting of what appears to be a young man with a sword, holding the severed head of a dragon.“I hate this.”
“Marina would have liked it, I think.Her work was pretty bloody.”
He turns to me.“I don’t mean the fucking painting.I hate seeing my friend stuck like a fly preserved in amber.You have the right to take as long as you need before you’re ready to love again, but I have to ask if you’re really not ready, or if even in death, Marina is still making all of your decisions.”
For a second, I swear the flow of my blood screeches to a halt.“Jesus, Daniel, tell me how you really feel.”
He jabs a hard finger into my chest.“You are not grieving, you are languishing.You’re so guilt-ridden over Marina’s death that you won’t allow yourself to admit how angry with her you truly are, and you won’t fix anything by making yourself miserable.For fuck’s sake, if this were Victorian times, you’d have been allowed to cast off your widow’s weeds by now.And that thing too.”
He glances down at the gold cuff on my wrist.Marina’s compromise, since I never wanted to wear a collar.
My fingers twitch.Many times I’ve nearly taken the thing off.More since my night with PJ.It feels wrong to take it off.It feels wrong to wear it still.Daniel’s right.I am stuck.
He’s also right that I’m angry.“How else am I supposed to feel when I go to bed after my wife tells me, after a decade together, that she thinks she stayed with me out of obligation, that my submission, my caring for her, meant so little, and then the next morning the Sheriff’s department is calling to tell me she’s gone.And I can never take the things I said to her back.”It’s as if Daniel’s jabbing poked a hole in the wall that was holding all these things at bay that I hadn’t acknowledged.
“Sorry.”I take a deep breath.“I don’t know where that came from.”
My friend’s expression softens.“What happened was a tragedy.Whatever you said to her, I do not doubt that it was a legitimate response to the way she hurt you.You’re allowed to be angry with her, even though she’s dead.Most of all, you must stop blaming yourself.”
“PJ said the same thing.”
“PJ did, did he?”
“The guy I told you about.We’ve been texting,” I admit.
“Oh?”The way that smug bastard has his eyebrows hiked up to his hairline, I swear to God.
“Just chatting.He’s been a good friend.”
Because some things feel too intimate, I keep it to myself about how the morning after we hooked up, I found the sales slip for the breakfast PJ brought me.And the bank receipt, with the time stamp showing he’d withdrawn cash beforehand.He spent nearly half of what was left in his account buying me breakfast.
I was…touched.I sent him a text to thank him for the food.It all went downhill from there.
Or uphill?It depends.
“A good friend?Just chatting?”Daniel asks.
I turn to focus on the next painting on the wall—a sad-looking tiger in a circus cage—but I swear I can feel Daniel’s stare burning a hole in the side of my face.
“Are you planning to repeat everything I say?”
“Haven’t decided yet.What have you and your new friend been chatting about?”
Dammit, I don’t owe him any explanation.But Daniel’s one of the few friends who stuck around after Marina was gone.One of the few who understands.
“You know, the standard getting-to-know-you stuff.I told him I used to be a writer.”
“You’re still a writer.”
“Who hasn’t written in a year.”
Daniel, who typically reminds me of a wise older man in a thirty-five-year-old body, dares to roll his eyes.“And?”
“He works in…cleaning?Like a custodian, I think.I can’t remember exactly.He doesn’t talk about it much.”
