Read Here to Stay for Free Online Page B

peers. Then I’m lying on the floor with my heart exploding through my chest. One of my more spectacular panic attacks.”
    “Huh. That sucks.”
    “I woke up in a woman’s bed so it wasn’t all bad.”
    Will laughed. “Did you bang her at least?”
    “I married her.”
    He followed Will’s car out of Saint John, west over the river into the suburbs. The beers were heavy in his stomach and he kept sighing around the tight thumping in his chest. Lucky could be even more outspoken than Will. Like him, she hated drama and preferred people voice the brutal truth so shit could get done. Her love was unconditional but it was often tough.
    Erik never denied the reason he could tolerate Will’s flirting was Lucky. She was the safety net under all the carrying on. The same time Erik was falling in love with Daisy, Will was falling in love with Lucky. The four of them went everywhere and did everything together. Will remained open about his bisexuality, but Erik had never seen him seriously engage with men on a sexual plane. He had only seen Will with Lucky, a guy in love with a girl. Erik was comfortable with the teasing, with the winks and cracks and insinuations because in his personal experience, to his observant eyes, Will was straight.
    But when James Dow came to Lancaster in Erik’s junior year, and Erik began to see first-hand the other side of Will’s coin, it was another experience. James disturbed the precious status quo and reversed the polarity of Erik’s carefully-ordered universe. The affair with Will raised Erik’s hackles in all kinds of ways, none of them pleasant. It both repelled him and made him jealous. It started to pull threads out of the fabric of daily life. The second semester of 1992 felt like a pot about to reach the boiling point, the tension rising up to the surface and starting to break in bubbles of danger.
    Then it boiled over.
    And it nearly got them all killed.
    Will turned into the driveway of a low-slung bungalow with a stone facade. A couple spotlights lit up a tiny porch and a yellow door. Daisy’s car was already parked at the curb and Erik pulled his rental in behind it.
    “It’s nice,” Erik said.
    “It’s small,” Will said. “Soon to be even smaller.”
    Lucky met them at the front door. She kissed Will and shooed him inside, then stepped onto the porch in front of Erik and pulled the yellow door shut behind her. She crossed her arms and looked at him. His brain drained of words. All he could think was how much she resembled Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and how much he felt like a rabbit about to be boiled.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    She took a step and hit him.
    “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
    Her open hand smacked him again, hard against his upper arm. She planted her other palm in his chest and shoved him backward. “Get the fuck off my porch, asshole.”
    “Finally some refreshing honesty,” Erik said, stumbling down the steps.
    “You fucking punk.” She followed, backing him down the walk toward the driveway, punctuating her lament with a volley of slaps. “You son of a bitch, I hate you. You stupid, stupid, stupid thing. I could kill you.”
    She wasn’t fooling around. He couldn’t recall being hit this way since his pissy adolescent days, when his mother wouldn’t hesitate to swat him for being fresh.
    “I love you too,” he said, shielding his head.
    She had him up against the car now, still letting him have it. After a few more good slaps, Erik started dodging them. He got a hand around one of her wrists, then the other, pulling her in, too close to hit.
    “Don’t fucking hug me,” she said, her voice thick with tears.
    “I’m not.” He drew her against him, where, finally, she crumpled and sobbed.
    “I hate you.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said against her head, taking a handful of her blonde spiral curls and holding them to his face. His own eyes watery and burning.
    “You broke his heart,” she said through her sobs, her