“I’m sorry, Daisy. I shouldn’t have told you, I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. You don’t need to know about some obsessed asshole who made you into all his foolish hopes and dashed dreams. That’s not on you, all right.”
“Oh my god, stop blaming yourself for everything, you didn’t mean anything the way I thought you did. You’re a good person, okay, you’re a good person,” she cried out, so brokenly he went to reach for her then. Her heart actually lifted to see it, even amidst the near sobbing breakdown she’d fallen into.
But just as quickly, it was gone. It was gone.
And now his face hardened.
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what happens when I do let myself feel things passionately. When I do let myself love someone as much as I love you,” he said. But before she could cut in, he shook his head. His mouth twisted up at the corner, almost bitterly. “You know, I didn’t realize it fully almost all the way through college. It was the night of the fight that I truly knew. The night I know you barely remember—but I do. I know every single thing that happened, right down to the last detail. The dress you were wearing, black with yellow flowers. The bracelet on your wrist with the padlock on it. The smell of your perfume. It’s the same one you wear now. God, the number of times I’ve had to breathe it in through all this, and feel that night all over again.” He looked at the ceiling, despairing, and so clearly about tomake some terrible point that she flinched away from him. She took a step back. She tried to reframe what he was starting to say, before she even fully understood.
“But you were nowhere near me when it happened,” she said.
And now his eyes were back on her.
“For most of that night, sure. But then he hit you.”
“If you’re trying to say—” she tried to cut in. Even though she knew it was a lost cause. He was on a roll now, his gaze far away as if he were fully somewhere else. In a place where he was the person he believed he was. And not the one she was trying to tell him was real.
“I don’t think he meant to,” he said. “Elbows get thrown in a fight, people get hurt, accidents happen. But I didn’t react like it was one. I couldn’t. I saw it happen and I wanted to kill him, I wanted to murder him. In fact, I almost did. I dragged him out into the street and beat him until my hands were bloody. And I did it while you were lying on the floor of that bar, being looked after by better people than me.”
Then he focused back on her. Gaze flat.
All the feelings for her gone, buried.
“Still want to tell me I’m good?” he asked. Then, as he walked away, “Didn’t think so.”
Nineteen
There were a million things she wanted to say to him in the aftermath.
But the trouble was, he gave her no chance to do it. He walked away while she was still reeling, and this time he did not come back. The truck was gone when she went down to the parking garage. Then in the morning, there was the email from Beck.He says it’s nothing to do with you, he just wants to finish the tour there. And honestly I think it’s righter than rain that he does, sales are through the roof, we’ve got everything we need, and I see no reason either of you should keep at it if you’d rather not,it said.Just say the word and we’ll cancel the last stop.
And she came fairly close to just saying yes.
Yes, halt it all.
It didn’t even seem to matter anymore if everybody realized it was phony, or started wondering why they weren’t together.Who cares, it’s all just nonsense anyway, she told herself as she packed up her things for the car that was waiting for her downstairs to bring her to the plane.
She wasn’t sure what stopped her.
She just got into the thing, and when the driver askedwhere to, she saidMinneapolis. And he took her, too. Seemed happy about it, because apparently it was on Caleb Miller’s dime. “I’m supposed to do whatever you want,” he said. Then, of course, he wanted to know why she was crying.
Tell him I love him, she thought.Tell him I’m in love with him and make him understand it better than I did.Though she had to say, that seemed a little beyond a man who ate a kebab upside down in front of her and then exclaimed in horror when it all fell into his lap.
“It’s all right, Frank, I’ve done the same thing before today,” she told him as he did his best to apologize. In fact, she discovered burger sauce down her best shirt, just before she went into the Minneapolis Center for Business Excellence. A squat little building with a revolving door that was temporarily out of service.
No wonder I’m exhausted, she thought, as her liaison there tried to help her in through a window. “The fire door around back isn’t real either,” she said, apologetically. Though everything inside was thankfully fine. The greenroom was actually real this time. She sat in it with a real cup of a tea in an actual mug, waiting for someone to say it wasn’t a good idea for her to do this.
They really came to see Caleb Miller, she imagined.
But nobody said anything. Instead, they almost seemed excited by the prospect. The moderator for this particular stop—a woman called Neeta, all avid eyes and perfectly lined lips—had a stack of questions just for her.“You never seem to say anything, but I suspected you might one day want to,” she said, breathlessly.
Though that wasn’t really what Daisy had in mind.
And the sight of what was on the cards only solidified that inside her.
You are British so could you share your favorite slang, the top one said. Then Neeta flicked to another one, and somehow that was even worse.Do you like blood pudding, Daisy read, and walked out onto the stage, resolved. No sitting in the seat provided. No lingering on the audience, which looked way more fucking enormous than she knew how to process.
Just grab the microphone, and go straight into it.
