“She told me she talked to you about doing other things.”
“Not really interested at the moment,” I said.
I was completely focused on sliding a pen through my thumb and pointer finger, letting it hit the table and flipping it over to do the same thing.
Over and over.
A notebook was open and next to me, but nothing had been written.
I was stuck in a thought I couldn’t make sense of.
Not to mention I was unable to get the look on Josh’s face out of my head as he dropped me off to get my car. That little headstone at the cemetery was something important to him. And when I saw the Del, I instantly wrote this intense story that wasn’t true. I had jumped hard and Josh was pissed at me.
“Amelia, what’s going on with you right now?”
“Nothing,” I said. “This is just how I write.”
“You’ve been sitting there for an hour.”
“So? You don’t know what goes on in my head.”
“So, you’re working?”
“Totally,” I said.
Grace smirked. “I don’t believe that for a second. Maybe you should face your fear.”
“Of?”
“Everything. Go into a bookstore. Face the fear that you should have been there. Or call up your old agent and yell at them. Or just write whatever is on your mind. You’re actually free, Amelia. There is no pressure on you to write. So write whatever you want.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t know the ending.”
“Make it up. That’s your job.”
“Not this ending…”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Is this because of Josh?” She switched eyebrows, trying to get me to laugh. “Are you hot for him?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re lying to me.”
“You have no idea where that goes. Maybe I should have never showed up to that gallery and tried to interview him.”
Grace didn’t respond.
She just frowned.
That part was true.
If I hadn’t gone there, I wouldn’t have stepped right back into Josh’s world or back into the world of how I used to feel. Even if my body still tingled and ached in a certain way, the path was steep with twists and turns that seemed to never end.
And what was I supposed to do? Keep going after him, demanding more and more about his life? I’d forever look like a cheap writer begging for a story and that’s not what I wanted.
“What are you working on?” I asked Grace, wanting to change gears a little.
“I have a call in a few minutes. Wonderful woman. Going through a rough patch. She’s worked in health and fitness her entire life. Got injured and was set back and feels useless now. Her husband left her for a younger woman too. She’s terrified of what that is going to do for her image. So, I’m helping her mend. All the way around.”
“Wow. That’s hard.”
“It’s life, Amelia. Life is hard.”
I glanced around at the cat pictures on the walls. Sometimes Grace would say something that really mattered, but then I’d look at the cat stuff and it would just creep me the hell out.
“I’m having her make a list of five things on her mind each day,” Grace said. “Something small to start with. So she can tackle each thing. One by one. And it doesn’t have to be positive. I’m not going to ram that down her throat. We need to face the good and the bad. All the time.”
I leaned forward and saw the page.
Just five blank lines that were numbered.
My eyes then met with Grace’s.
I knew exactly what she was going to say next, but I was saved by her phone ringing.
“There’s my call,” she said.
She stood with her notebook and mug of tea. She hurried down the hall to her bedroom.
I glanced over at my notebook and sighed.
I leaned to my left to make sure Grace was out of view.
That’s when I made my first mark in the notebook.
A list of one through five.
“A list of five things on my mind today,” I whispered.
What do I write now?
Why am I so afraid to write?
Who is Delaney?
Who is Josh?
Who is Delilah?
I stared at the list and shook my head.
So many different things…
Yet they all felt like they were connected.
I’ve touched your tears, whether you know it or not. I’ve touched your pain. I’ve gotten so close to it, I could feel the pain too. There was this dream I had of you. I had this beaten up car. A real piece of junk. But it always started on the first try. It had an engine. Some gas. Some music. And one night I started that car and came to get you. You were waiting for me, sitting on your front steps. Your knees were gently knocking together as you bit on your nails, worried about me not coming. You weren’t worried about leaving. Just about me not showing up.
Your bag next to you.
That was it.
That was your life.
And now it was going to be my life.
We had nowhere to go and nobody to go find.
It was just us.
The road.
Burning gas.
Singing songs at the top of our lungs, sounding horrible, but it didn’t matter.
When we’d go down hills, we’d hold hands then you’d put your hands into the air and yell like it was a roller coaster. Over bumps, I’d speed up, so you’d lose your stomach. I didn’t need those bumps though. I felt that way each time I looked at you.
On the highway you’d roll down the window and let the wind play with your hair.
You looking at me, laughing or singing, the wind messing with your hair, that was the closest to heaven I could possibly ever get.
Touching you. Loving you.
It was just us. Just us being free.
That was the dream, Delilah.
And it ended, like it did every single night.
“Hey, are you coming back to work or what?”
I stood up and folded the letter. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“You okay?”
Mitch raised an eyebrow.
He had the bushiest eyebrows ever and took his job as shift manager way too seriously.
“I’m good,” I said. “It’s not even that busy in there tonight, Mitch.”
“Yeah, but you have two tables.” He stepped back and grabbed the door. “Oh. And before I forget. Mags said something about needing your help at the bar.”
“The bar?” I asked. "For what?”
“Someone there is looking for you,” Mitch said. “It’s slow tonight. So, if someone is here to see you and is willing to sit, drink, and pay…”
“Tell Mags I get the tips then,” I said.
He laughed. “You two can work that out yourselves.”
Mitch went back inside.
I may or may not have thrown him the finger.
Yeah, I threw him the finger.
The sight of Josh at the bar, sitting there with Aaron, made me freeze in my tracks. The second Mitch said someone was looking for me, I should have known exactly who it was.
Josh had been very quiet since he had taken me to the cemetery and told me about his life. And I had been just as quiet since that same day. I still played the moment in my mind when I dropped to my knees and started to clean off that little headstone, thinking I had somehow solved a puzzle that was none of my business.
Plus, the letter I found - and Delilah - that was something very serious. Whoever wrote that letter was in love with Delilah in a much different way than a person would love a young child.
Mags worked the bar, knowing she was the only one making any real money.
She was washing a glass when she saw me and hurried to nod in Josh’s direction.
“Brooding hot guy and his fancy friend are asking for you,” she said. “Took a drink from me but refused anything else until they talked to you.
”
“Both of them?” I asked.
“Well, just the one,” Mags said. “Do whatever you have to do. Just don’t bother anyone else.”
“I’m not going to steal your business, Mags.”
“You’d better not. I’m saving up for Trevor’s braces. You’d think his fucking father would give a shit, but he doesn’t.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I said.
“Yeah. Me too.”
Mags put the freshly washed glass down and shook her hands. She pointed to the end of the bar and walked that way.
Josh had his eyes locked on me and I gave a wave.
“Hey, I didn’t know you worked here,” Aaron said with a sense of naiveness in his voice that made me wonder how in the hell he and Josh were friends.
“And what’s this I hear about you bothering Mags?” I asked. “The bar is hers tonight.”
“Yet I got my way,” Josh said.
“Need a refill or anything?” I asked.
“Just out for a quick drink,” Aaron said. “One beer and I have to get home.”
“He doesn’t want the wife mad at him,” Josh said.
“I don’t blame him,” I said. “A married man with a kid at home should maybe be home after work.”
“Oh, I’m not married,” Aaron said.
“He’s too afraid to ask,” Josh said.
“I’m not afraid. I just haven’t found the…”
Josh nodded. “… the balls to ask her.”
“You’d better do it soon,” I teased. “Rae’s a catch. Someone might come along and steal her away.”
“You think?” Aaron asked.
“Please don’t start anything, Amelia,” Josh said. “You don’t want to know the complexity of that relationship.”
“It doesn’t help that my best friend is a complete asshole,” Aaron said. “And that the mother of my son hates his guts. For good reasons too.”
I looked at Josh.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Could be worse,” Josh said to Aaron. “I could be obsessed with cats.”
“Cats?” Aaron asked.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” I said.
“Wait,” Aaron said. “Are you obsessed with cats?”
“Me?” I asked. “No. My roommate is. Again, don’t ask.”
“It’s amazing in her apartment,” Josh said. He waved his right hand across the air. “Everywhere you look. Pussy.”
Aaron laughed and snorted. “You still joke like a dumb teenager, Josh.”
“He still acts like one too,” I said.
“You didn’t seem to mind the way I was acting,” Josh threw at me.
My cheeks warmed up and the look on Aaron’s face and the grin that grew told me he knew what Josh’s comment meant.
“So, what’s the big plan for tonight?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.
“Quick drink and home for me,” Aaron said. “This guy has some work to do. Decisions to make.”
“Hey,” Josh said. “My life, my business.”
“Decisions?” I asked.
“It’s nothing, love,” Josh said. “Just need to put together some artwork. Come up with some new ideas. Figure out my voice. Nothing new. I do it my way and that tends to piss people off.”
“Pisses everyone off,” Aaron said.
“I can understand that,” I said.
Aaron’s phone started to ring. He jumped up and gave a quick wave to me. “I’d better take this.”
“Rae is pulling on the chain there,” Josh said to me.
“True love,” I said. “Comes in all shapes and sizes, Josh. Don’t judge what he has. Just because you don’t know what that’s like.”
“I don’t know what true love is?” he asked.
I leaned against the bar. “Do you?”
We just stared at each other. I thought for a second I could break him down a little, but he devoured me with that stare. That dark-eyed, brooding stare. The story hidden behind those eyes that I wanted so badly. Just like Josh himself.
I wanted him so badly.
“I’m sorry for what happened the other day,” I said. “The way I reacted when I-”
“Don’t worry about it,” Josh said. “There’s more to the story, love. Just like your story. That’s the whole point of two people together, right? You each take your story, put it on the table, and then decide if you can make something happen with it.”
“What about a bar?” I asked. “Feel like putting your story on a bar?”
“The bar is kind of dirty.”
“And your story is clean?”
Josh laughed. “You really know how to push at me, love. I like that about you.”
“Yeah, well there’s a lot I like about you too, Josh.”
“Like what?” he asked.
I pointed to the bar. “Sorry, it’s too dirty here. Remember?”
With one quick move, Josh reached across the bar and took my right wrist. “When are you free again?”
His fingers stroked the inside of my wrist, sending tingling pulses across my body.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to check my schedule. I’m very busy.”
“There’s more I have to tell you. And I will.”
“I’m not hard to find.”
“Neither am I, love.”
“I would never want to bother an artist hard at work.”
“Except you already did that,” he said. “You couldn’t get the hot water to work. Remember?”
I swallowed hard.
He grinned.
“Hey, listen, I’m sorry, but we have to get out of here,” Aaron said as he returned to the bar.
“Free time is up,” Josh said. He pulled his hand from mine and downed the rest of his beer. “Better make sure this guy gets home in one piece. Or else it’ll all be my fault.”
I lost my breath for a second, wondering what to say next to Josh.
I wanted him to stay.
I wanted him to keep drinking.
I wanted him to tell me everything.
“Come on, let’s roll,” Aaron said. He put money on the bar. “Good to see you again, Amelia.”
“You too,” I said. “Have a good night.”
I watched them walk away and Mags passed behind me.
“I hope you’re sleeping with at least one of them,” she said. “Or both.”
I opened my mouth, but she was already down at the other end of the bar.
I looked forward and Josh and Aaron were gone.
I missed Josh. I liked Josh. I more than liked Josh, just like before when I was too young to know what that meant.
My heart was racing.
My heart was ready for whatever was going to happen by getting too close to him.
Chapter 29
A Meeting IV
A LITTLE WHILE AGO
(Josh)
“There’s a different version of the dream,” I said.
“Is there?”
“Yeah,” I said as I ran a hand through my hair.
“Are you still on a plane?”
“Yeah. Except it’s a private plane. Small. Maybe enough room for twelve people. But I’m the only one in the plane.”
“No pilot?”
“No pilot.”
“Yet the plane is flying.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I’m sitting there with this little table in front of me. Looking at pictures. Like actual pictures, right? Photographs. And they’re all of her. Except that she’s older. She’s older as though she never…”
I let the last word hang somewhere between my lips and the air.
“Let me pause you there for a second, Josh. You never complete the sentence. You’ll use the word gone. You’ll say not here. You’ll throw out not around. But you never say the word.”
“What word is that?” I asked.
“You know what word. The final word, Josh. The one that brings it full circle. I think if you at least spoke the word once, it wou
ld help bring a small sense of closure. Or at least acceptance of what happened. It doesn’t make it easier, Josh. It’s not going to. I’m not going to lie to you. But by using the word, you begin to face the truth. And when you face the truth, that’s when you can find your sense of healing.”
I knew what was right and wrong. I knew the word. I had spoken it a million times in my head. I whispered it to myself at three in the morning when the world slept and I rolled in my bed of anger.
“Do you want to hear about the fucking dream or not?” I asked.
“Of course I do. Please continue.”
“So, I’m staring at all these pictures of her. I mean it was… she was a teenager in one of them. This beautiful young woman. And then a picture of her at a prom. In this dress with these flowers and her hair done perfectly, looking like a real woman. It was overwhelming to look at. So, I scooped up the pictures and moved them aside. Sometimes in the dreams it feels like there are two versions of me. The version of me who believes it’s real. Then the version of me who knows it’s a dream. And I’m screaming at the other version to keep going. To keep looking at those pictures. But it didn't happen. So I reached for the window. There was this little tan shade that was closed. So I opened it. Don’t worry, the plane was actually in the air. I was actually flying.”
I paused.
I looked around the comfortable office.
It pissed me off that I was actually comfortable. It meant I was coming here too often. I had a spot to sit. A spot to stand. My favorite place to pace. I could navigate the building without worrying what floor or door to look for.
“Josh? Are you okay?”
“She was there,” I said.
“Where?”
“Outside the plane.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was flying. She was the age… you know… and she was flying. Her arms open. A cape on her back. Her hair dancing behind her in the wind. And she smiled at me. The biggest smile I could ever imagine seeing. I opened my mouth to say something and I woke up.”
“What did you feel when you woke up?”
“Anger.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want the dream to end.”
A Letter to Delilah Page 18