Fixing Delilah

by Sarah Ockler

  “Emily, I’m sorry. I just—”

  “Patrick couldn’t even do his show that Thursday after your fight on the lake because he was so upset. He said he had a strained vocal chord, but all of us knew the deal. I tried to talk to him after you and I spoke on the phone, but I couldn’t get through to him. All week he just sat at the counter, drinking coffee nonstop, babbling about how he screwed everything up. We all knew he could fix it if he’d just shut up and talk to you. But he didn’t want advice. He just… ‘Delilah this, Delilah that.’ He left Luna’s in a daze last Saturday, so I followed him home to try once more to talk some sense into him. He asked if I knew what happened that night with your family—if I knew why you were so upset. I couldn’t lie to him, Del. I told him everything. He was about to go look for you, and then you showed up and undid everything. And by the way, Miss I’ve Got It All Figured Out, there’s—”

  “Em, stop, okay? Right now, I want to talk to you. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry for the way I treated you and for freaking out like that. I didn’t really believe you guys hooked up. I was just really, really messed up that day. It’s not an excuse, but it’s the truth, and I’ll spend the rest of my summer trying to make up for it if you’ll just let me be your friend again.”

  Em looks at me before the headstones of my family, the smell of roses and freshly dug earth strong between us.

  “Actually,” I continue, “I’ve been really, really messed up for a while now. Since before I got here. Family stuff, as you’ve seen. School stuff. Friend stuff. Me stuff, mostly.”

  Em smiles and shakes her head. “Join the club.”

  “I’m the president of that club,” I say.

  “I’ll accept your apology if you let me be second in command.”

  “Done.”

  “Then I forgive you.”

  “Just like that?” I ask.

  “Oh, get over yourself, Del. You’re the first cool girl to come to Red Falls since… well, ever. I don’t know how you do it in Pennsylvania, but Vermont chicks? We don’t let stupid fights mess up the real deal.”

  “Right. I think my entire family was absent the day they taught that lesson.”

  “Yeah, well… my father must have been out drinking with your family that day.”

  I laugh. “Still no progress on the dad front, huh?”

  Em shrugs. “He’ll come around eventually. He just needs some time to accept the fact that his little girl… you know…”

  “Is all grown up?” I ask. Despite feeling like I have two fathers now, the reality of the father-daughter dynamic is completely alien to me.

  Em meets my eyes, her smile fading. “His little girl… likes… girls,” she says.

  “Likes… what did you just say?”

  “Girls, Delilah.” Emily nods slowly, watching me as if she can see all of the things in my head clicking into place as I recall our summer together. Did she ever mention guys when I talked about Finn or Patrick? Did she ever name a past boyfriend or even a crush? Then, that fight at Patrick’s house, she said she was… God, she probably tried to tell me about a million times, but I was so wrapped up in making everyone talk about things they didn’t want to remember that I didn’t even know someone else actually wanted to talk.

  “More than a friend?”

  My eyes fill with tears. “Remember my friend in Montreal?” she asks. “Her name is Kate.”

  Emily nods and reaches for my hands. “Please don’t hate me for not telling you before. I wanted to. It’s just not something… I mean, it’s not the easiest thing to bring up in conversation, especially with girlfriends—er, friends that are girls. I’m always worried they’re going to think I’m checking them out and then it gets all weird and I’m so tired of losing friends over this and I just want to be myself and I really wanted you to meet Kate and I really wish—”

  “Emily?”

  “I know I should have told you sooner, I just—”

  “Em!”

  She looks at me, tears spilling onto her cheeks as her hands let go and drift back to her sides.

  “Do you think the two of us can stop crying long enough to get some lunch?” I ask, putting my arm around her. “I mean, away from all the funeral people? Sounds like we have some girl talk to catch up on, and besides, I’m starving.”

  For a second, her eyes go big and wide. Then together we laugh until the tears dry, long and loud enough to wake up all the dead people, including my grandmother, whose grave stands quietly behind us, flowers leaning over one side of the black-and-gold urn as if to wink.

  Chapter thirty-two

  Tonight is Patrick’s final summer show.

  He might not want me here, but I promised Emily I would try. As I watch him arrange power cords and adjust lights and double-check his set list, I know that if I don’t fix it now, I will leave Red Falls next week and never look back, disappearing from his life for the last time.

  “You okay?” Emily asks, setting down my chocolate hazelnut latte. I watch the steam curl out of it and remember that first day at the lake house when Rachel lit sage in the window. Out with the bad, in with the good. Out with the bad, in with the good.

  I shrug. “No, but that won’t stop me.”

  She squeezes my shoulder. “No charge for this one.”

  “Thanks, Em.”

  Outside, the rain that held off for Nana’s service returns, soaking the pavement with increasing ferocity as the sun sets. The glow from Luna’s windows and the promise of fresh coffee and music pulls in a rush of end-of-summer tourists seeking refuge from the damp street, and soon the crowd swells to the largest Patrick has entertained all season—even bigger than the Fourth of July week mob. It’s hard to see the stage now, but I’m grateful for the extra layers of bodies between Patrick and me.

  Fifteen minutes into his first set, there are so many people packed into the coffee shop that I almost expect to see Mom and Rachel, certain that every last person in Red Falls has come in from the rain to see the show. On any other night, my whole body would be warm and buzzy with such energy—people singing along and screaming and whistling after every song, Patrick making the crowd laugh with his charming intermittent chatter, the cappuccino machines hissing and whirring and steaming as Emily and Luna rush to keep up with the orders. This is the kind of endless night people tell their friends about—the last big summer hurrah before the dawn of reality rises with autumn’s golden leaves.

  I order another latte and slurp it down fast. It burns, but it’s better than the burn that scorches my stomach whenever I catch a sideways glance at Patrick’s dimpled smile across the crowd, knowing it’s no longer meant for me.

  By the time Patrick winds down to his last few songs, I’ve had four lattes, I’ve burnt the roof of my mouth, my bones are jittery, and I’m not one word closer to knowing what to say. How do I apologize for wanting him so much that it scares me? How can I say I’m sorry for being who I am? For all of the mistakes and bad decisions that led me here, knowing that if not for them, I wouldn’t have found him again?

  I shouldn’t have come here tonight. I have nothing to say, no way to explain anything, no words to make an adequate attempt. And Patrick—singing his heart out like everything in the world is all right again—has clearly moved on.

  The ceiling is coming down and the walls are pressing in and the crowd… crushing… and the warm cinnamon air… choking… I need to get out of here…

  I twist my way through a knot of people standing at the door, dodging hot coffee and elbows and it’s just four more steps to the door, two more, one, my hand is on the glass, ready to push, ready to breathe in the cool outside air. A sliver of it seeps through the opening as I move forward, one foot almost over the threshold… if I could just…

  “The last one’s called ‘Sigh.’ It’s for you.” Patrick’s voice pierces the air like an arrow shot across the crowd, and I know, even before I look back to the stage, that he means me. I suck in one last breath of cold air, let the door click sh
ut, and turn around to face him. He closes his eyes and leans into the mic and the entire coffee shop falls silent. Even the cappuccino machines seem to suspend their constant hissing just to hear this song. The last one. For me.

  Talkin’ ’round you

  Kills a little more each time

  A murderous seduction would kindly suffice

  The poet she sighs

  As the night floods her eyes

  And a sonnet succumbs to a bad, bad rhyme

  No-o-oh

  You won’t let it go

  So you try and fake it

  ’Cause nobody knows who you are

  I hang around and take it…

  ’Cause like an outlaw desperado

  I would fight all the world to run with you

  Like the rose to willows weeping

  I would shatter the skies to be with you

  I would leave it behind

  To roll with you

  I’d throw it all away and ride

  I’d throw it all away and ride

  Come away and rally love it’s the good tide

  The river rolls in leaps and bounds to the far side

  Let it go

  ’Cause like an outlaw desperado

  I would fight all the world to run with you

  Like the rose to willows weeping

  I would shatter the skies to be with you

  I would leave it behind

  To roll with you

  I’d throw it all away and slide down with you

  The last line is softer than the rest, with no guitar, just Patrick’s voice fading into a whisper. There isn’t enough room in the halls of my whole life to feel this much. I can’t… I can’t stay here.

  The front door seems so far away now and my legs are too heavy to push through the crowd, the crushing, suffocating crowd, so I turn around and make my way along the wall to the side door marked EMERGENCY—ALARM WILL SOUND, and it does, howling up against the rain like it’s the end of the world. I don’t know how long it screams before Luna shuts it down—I’m already in the middle of the street by then, the lights of the coffee shop wilting in the rain behind me like tiny neon flowers. I’m shaking from the caffeine and the song and everyone watching me, tears mixing with rain and covering my face, and I don’t care what happens after this. I just want everything to stop. I just want to see the headlights on Finn’s old silver 4Runner flash three times under the streetlight so I can get in and go to that spot in the woods and not talk and forget everything in my entire life again, because all the stuff worth remembering hurts too much.

  “Delilah, wait!” Patrick runs up the street after me. “Please,” he says, one hand stretched in front of him like he has this one chance to catch me, this one chance to reach out and hold on before I slip away into Red Falls Lake forever.

  I stop, but because I want to or because I’m too weak to keep going, I don’t know. I let him catch his breath, and we stand in the middle of Main Street for a long time until I finally blurt it out, breaking the rhythm of the rain against the pavement at our feet.

  “I don’t even know who I am anymore, Patrick. I’m not faking it. I’m lost.” It’s the truth. I never thought it would be so hard to say it, but it is. After all I’ve shared with him, this one thing, this one admission giving voice to the private things that scrape against the walls of my heart, feels shamefully intimate.

  “You’re Delilah Hannaford,” he says, shaking his head. “The girl who complains about manual labor and gets scared on the Ferris wheel and calls Crasner’s the Foo nasty.” His smile is sad and fierce at the same time.

  “No. You don’t get it. All of those things—that’s who I am with you, hanging out and painting fences and sneaking into your room like Red Falls will never end. But it is ending, and I’ll just go back to—”

  “No, you won’t, Del. I won’t let that happen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so crazy about everything. I just—”

  I shake my head. “You don’t have to—”

  “I want to. I want to say this. Sometimes I just get these really intense feelings about stuff and I don’t know what to do with them so I end up saying all the wrong things, but not now. Not tonight. That night at Heron Point—it hurt so bad to push you away like that. I hated seeing your face—how it crumpled up when I stopped kissing you. You have to believe me that it just about killed me. And that day at my house with Em—she’d just finished telling me about what happened with your mom and finding out about your father. I made her tell me because I needed to know what was going on with you, and…”

  He’s talking a mile a minute, coming closer with every word. I turn my face to the sky and close my eyes, trying to focus on the feel of the rain on my skin. He’s whispering my name again and again. It’s a question at first, and then not. I’m shivering and I feel him come closer, his hands moving to the top of my shirt, wrapping it around his fingers. I open my eyes and in less than a heartbeat, he wrenches me close to him, only a sigh keeping us apart. His face turns soft and serious, so near that I can count the drops of water falling from his eyelashes.

  “Don’t,” I whisper.

  His head is shaking. My mouth opens to protest again, but he knows I don’t mean it. His fingers trace my lips, the silver heart on my collarbone. His eyes follow, hands twisting into my hair, both of our hearts pounding. My eyes have nothing to do but close again, and then it’s there: his mouth anxious on mine, breath hot against my lips.

  “Delilah Hannaford,” he says, stopping only long enough to tell me. “I’m not letting you disappear again. I meant what I said that night at the lake.”

  “I believe you,” I whisper in his ear, breathless and weak and all out of lies. “I believe you.”

  The ground shakes and spins and falls away again as I collapse into him and let go, rain washing the broken pieces of me all the way down the hill, straight into Red Falls Lake.

  Chapter thirty-three

  On the morning before we leave Red Falls, I awake to an unusual silence. No drills and hammers and saws chewing through the wood. No estate-sale customers haggling for cheaper knickknacks. No appraisers or lawyers to usher us closer to our final good-byes.

  It’s the first time since our arrival that I hear so many birds outside my window, singing and chirping and wishing one another well, all the way from here to the lake.

  I get out of bed slowly and stretch, enjoying the solitude as I begin to pull my clothes from the dresser and pack up my suitcase. I save Holden Caulfield for tomorrow, but I put the dog sweater in there and Patrick’s green guitar pick and the rock he carved with our initials and my new friend, Moo, smiling in her way. I brought her up from the windowsill in Nana’s kitchen to remind me of everything that happened this summer; how easily some things can be broken for good and for bad, and how some things, no matter how shattered, can still go back together. Like Moo, my family may never be as strong as it once was. There are chips and cracks and scars. But some of them can be repaired, piece by piece, rebuilt into something even more cherished and loved and unique. That’s what I’m working for now. That’s what I’m holding on to.

  I don’t know what’s waiting for me back in Key. I cringe to think about the last time I was there, all the momentous screwups, my photo-worthy Finndescretions, the friends I left behind without explanation. We may not have much in common these days, but they’re still my classmates. We’ll still see each other in the halls of Kennedy High as we all prepare to cross the graduation stage together next spring. Our lives may be different this year, but they were once my friends, just like the people of Red Falls were once Mom’s and Rachel’s. And maybe, like the people of Red Falls who came back together after my grandmother’s passing, there’s still a way, a new way, a different way, that we can be friends again.

  But if not, if they don’t like the changes I’ve made in my life, I have to accept that. I have to be okay. Emily, Megan, Jack, Luna, Patrick… they helped me learn what true friendship is. It’s never per
fect, but it is important. And now that I’ve had the real thing, I’m not going to settle for anything less.

  As for my non-boyfriend, Finn, there is no place in my life for him anymore. When I think of him now, of our spot in the woods, all my thoughts run into Seven Mile Creek and wash away. I don’t miss him. Finn and I never knew each other. Knowing each other wasn’t our thing. He just made it easy for me to drown it all out. He helped me run away from myself without really going anywhere.

  I don’t regret my time with him. Without the dark contrast of Finn, I might never have seen the light of Patrick. In that way, I’ll always be grateful that he was part of my life.

  But I’m not running away anymore.

  I slide my phone from my pocket and scroll to his last text—the one he sent just before meeting me on the street corner that last night in Key.

  pick u up at midnite? usual spot?