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thirty, then every other day it seemed my back was giving me grief.” He held up his maimed hand, flexed it back and rotated it around. “But more than my back it was this. Sounds fucked for a dancer, right? But all the compensating for my lost fingers over the years was doing a number on my wrist. Bad tendonitis. It started to affect my ability to partner safely. I came close to dropping Daisy in a performance one night and I knew I’d have to make a decision soon. So I made it before anyone else could. You know—leave the party while you’re still having a good time?”
    “But you miss it.”
    Will nodded. “It was a good party. Sometimes I’ll be in rehearsal or watching a performance from the wings and I feel a bone-deep envy I’m not doing it anymore. But in other ways, I’m glad to be out. I can indulge my carb addiction. I wake up in the morning without my first thought being whether or not I can plié. Things like that.”
    “You like running a company?”
    “I like running this one. And I like running it with Daisy.”
    “I wondered if your onstage partnership would lend itself well that way.”
    “Same kind of seamlessness. I start, she finishes. She jumps, I catch. I’m where she needs me to be, she stays out of my way. I don’t really like teaching class, she loves it. She hates the administrative and marketing shit and I actually enjoy it. So it works.”
    “But who didn’t see that coming?” Erik said.
    “It’s good,” Will said, folding and unfolding his napkin. “It’s been a good life.”
    Silence settled between them again. Erik drank his beer and tried to relax into it. Will’s phone pinged from his jacket pocket and he checked it.
    “Well, well, well,” he said. “My wife has invited you for dinner.”
    “Really?”
    Will squinted at the phone, running a hand through his hair. “Unless she means she’s serving you as the main course.”
    Erik laughed weakly. “She’s pissed at me, isn’t she?”
    Will bobbled his head around. “You have different shit to work out with all of us,” he said. “She was pissed, but you know Luck. She’ll bitch you out, have her say, make it clear. And then she’ll put it behind her. She’s not a grudge-holder.”
    “I’m just worried about the size of the grudge,” Erik said.
    “Size doesn’t matter,” Will said as he texted.
    “Easy to say when you’re well-hung.”
    “How would you know?”
    “I lived with you for three years,” Erik said. “Baron von Casual Nudity.”
    Will grinned and put his phone away. “Come on, finish up. Dais is already heading to our place. We’ll have some dinner, we’ll talk, we’ll get drunk and screw. What do you say?”
    “Just like old times,” Erik said, killing the rest of his beer. “Minus the dinner.”

“HOW MAD WAS LUCKY?” Erik felt compelled to ask again as he and Will walked to their cars.
    “Well,” Will said. “She and I had only just started up again when Columbine happened. And that day she was emotional in general but particularly angry at you.”
    “Me?”
    “Angry you didn’t call us. That not even a shooting could move you to reach out to Dais at most. Me at least.”
    Erik tucked his chin down into his jacket collar, swallowing around a cold empathy. He lamented almost the identical thing to his therapist years ago but in regard to his father.
    Byron Fiskare had abandoned his family and disappeared without a word. Erik couldn’t make the slightest conjecture if the man was even alive. The shooting incident at Lancaster, splashed across national media with Erik’s name in countless articles and news reports, hadn’t even flushed him out. Leading Erik to wonder if his father was indeed dead.
    “Would it help to know,” he said, “I spent most of that day in a drugged stupor because I saw the news coverage and passed out on the floor of the student lounge?”
    Will glanced at him. “For real?”
    “For real. One minute I’m watching the news with all my