by Raven Scott
“You wanna talk about it?”
Did I? I shrugged lightly.
My dad rubbed my arm lightly. “I guess I’m not the one you should be talking to about it, anyway.”
“I feel...lost. I feel like I never knew who I was. Mom pushed me to be a teacher, and I could’ve liked that if I didn’t screw up my life and become a model. Ever since, I haven’t done anything of substance, and I don’t know if I liked living like that, or I just got complacent with that lifestyle.” My confession dragged down my whole face as I spoke, and I cracked open my eyes to stare at the glistening donuts beyond the window. “We’ve been on and off for so long, and I never had to worry about him or what he’s doing or feeling.”
“Have you talked to him about it?”
Lifting my head, I inhaled deeply as I prepared to nod, but a singular memory bubbled up behind my eyes. When Darren showed up outside my bedroom door—the troubled expression on his face. The guilt. The shame.
“You know, Delilah, I only know what I saw briefly, and what your mother won’t stop telling me, but I think you’re trying to force a square peg into a circle hole.”
“How?” Tearing my eyes off the donuts, I watched my dad draw a thoughtful expression. Expectation tingled my forehead, and my mouth dried even as I licked my lips.
“You’re both trying really hard, but maybe you’re not putting your efforts where they’re most effective. Just because he was transferred to the States, doesn’t mean your whole relationship has to change. It’s been five years, yeah, but take from someone who’s been with one person since I was 18…time isn’t a good indicator of how much you should care for a person.”
My heart stuttered a little, and the urge to just spill my friggen guts to my dad swelled my tongue until it couldn’t fit in my mouth. “I just don’t know. He wasn’t like this when he was international. Or maybe he was, and I never knew? If I didn’t know...how much do I really know about him? And assuming that...what if we really aren’t good together?” Spewing out question after question until I locked my jaw tight, I ducked my head to frown at the ground. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t think you should change the nature of your relationship simply because he’s around more often.”
Drawing my brows in confusion, I puffed out my lips as I thought about that.
“According to your mom, you basically ignored him, and he didn’t really try to engage either of you. Just because he’s here, doesn’t mean you should be glued at the hip.”
“...Really, I just wanna slap him and tell him to stop being such a—a bitch ” Scrunching up my nose as my words failed me, I admitted, “The one thing we’re really good at, we don’t do because he just...won’t. I don’t get it.”
“Maybe, you should slap him.”
This time, a bark of laughter escaped my tight throat and heat pooled in my cheeks as my dad rubbed my back firmly.
His eyes warmed, his lips picking up in a small smile that deepened the lines around his mouth. “I’m serious. Men need a kick in the ass sometimes to see that they’re trying to help is actually making things worse. I know thatwhen your mom and I went to different colleges, it was really difficult to get back into being around each other, and we had a lot of fights and near breakups.”
“Yeah? But you stayed together, obviously.”
Rather than answer right away, my dad tugged me towards the entrance to the donut shop. My stomach grumbled greedily, and I gnawed on my inner cheek. “I don’t know. I live in company housing, so it was all, like...it seemed like an okay idea for him to move in with me. But he wants to get our own place off campus, and I don’t want to move that fast. I told him I didn’t want to move fast, but I think he took it like he has to cater to me completely. I told him he didn’t have to change, but he feels really bad about everything.”
“What do you want, honey?” my dad asked.
The smell of donuts and sweet frosting curled my nose hairs, and I bit my bottom lip hard. When I thought of my life, Darren was always there. Anything I did, I wanted him next to me, sharing my experiences.
But never once, in all my fantasizing, did I picture us together. There was no white picket fence, no house, no dog, no kids. There was travel, and whims, a big truck with a camper hitched and screwing around every night. I didn’t envision moving in together, struggling to set up cable together, or an eventual proposal or marriage. “...I just want to mess around with him, and do anything we want whenever we want, without ever being expected to go down the house-slash-marriage route. Does that make me bad? What’s the point of a relationship if I don’t want to commit and love him enough for marriage?”
“Ah, Delilah, marriage is a scam.”
I almost choked on my sharp inhale, my head whipping up hard.
My dad smiled comfortingly at me. “You don’t date for marriage. You date because you enjoy spending time with a person. If you date for marriage, you’re never going to be happy. You’re only going to develop expectations that make you unfulfilled. I think the only reason your mom and I got married was because she was pregnant, and her parents pushed it. Some people are just better not tied together like that. That doesn’t mean you don’t love him or take the relationship seriously, Delilah.”
“Maybe. I’m kinda hoping that this trip makes us have some sort of epiphany about us, you know? We’ll just somehow figure out…I don’t know. It’s stupid.” There weren’t any other people in the donut shop but my father and I, and I sighed softly. “I just...I don’t know.”
“You should talk to him.” Very, very gingerly, my dad reached to touch my neck.
Flames licked my cheeks as embarrassment sloshed in my chest. I’d used makeup to hide it, but I didn’t actually want my bruises to disappear completely. I liked knowing they were barely visible, that if someone looked close enough, they’d see it.
“I was really hoping you’d get over this. I hate seeing it, Delilah.
“Okay, do we really need to talk about my sex life? Darren doesn’t hurt me, Dad. It looks a lot worse than it is.” Giggling as my dad scrunched up his face in horror, I shook my head, rocking back on the heels of my sneakers. “You’re not working today? What about you and Mom?”
“I took today off because you called me. Your mom had some errands to run, but she was going to meet with us for lunch.”
Nodding firmly, I inhaled sharply before turning my attention to the donuts displayed in front of me. They all looked delicious, and my mouth watered as the woman manning the register glanced up from her phone periodically. I could worry about Darren when my mom and dad weren’t around.
After all, I wasn’t going to move back to Portland, but I wanted to try to fix our relationship. We’d all spent enough time judging and being bitter.
24
Delilah
“Did you really not know about the teacher?” I asked.
My mom froze across the small, wrought-iron table, her mouth open with bread poised to her lips.
I pursed my lips thinly. “Everyone knew about it. All the students. All the teachers. But she kept lying and said it was a mugging, so there was nothing they could do about it. Did you really not have any suspicions that Kyle was capable of something like that?”
“...I knew he was spiraling out of control, but I didn’t think he’d do something like that, no. Honestly, Delilah, I don’t understand how you two turned out so different. You’re doing okay, you know? You obviously have some money, and you’ve been places I can only dream of. You’ve enriched your life with experiences that I’ll never have. But...Kyle...Kyle is a- a loser. He’s worked the same job manning the fryers since he was 15, and he’s never paid a dime in rent or ever contemplated moving out. To think that he’s involved in more horrific things than just being an immature...man-child...”
My eyes widened as my mom’s tangent went on and on.
She bit into her garlic bread to chew grumpily. “I feel like a failure of a mom.”
“One out of two
is better than none out of two, Mom. If it wasn’t for you being pushy and stubborn, I wouldn’t have enriched my life and have money.”
She perked up at that, a grim, small smile tilting her lips.
I smiled over my bowl of pasta. “Has Kyle tried to come back?”
“No, but I did get a phone call from him at 4am when he got out of work. He wanted me to pick him up because his buddy forgot about him. I told him to get a license.”
Hiding my smile behind my napkin, I couldn’t help the budding pride in my chest. My mom had always given Kyle the benefit of the doubt. He could hold a minimum wage, dead end job. He wasn’t in jail. He didn’t do hard drugs…supposedly.
Across the table, she shook her head, and my dad reached to hold her hand comfortingly. “I don’t know where I went wrong with him, but he’s almost 31 years old. Just good enough isn’t good enough anymore.”
“Speaking of...”
My dad’s frown caught my attention, and I twisted to find Kyle himself wandering down the sidewalk. He was still in his Burger King uniform, sluggishly walking with his head deep in his phone and his wireless earbuds stuck all the way up into his brain.
Hopefully, he doesn’t notice us.
But my hopes were dashed when Kyle’s brown eyes drifted, glazed and unfocused, up to mine. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and he froze as anger turned him red past his hairline and up into his ears. The muscles in his neck strained, his pupils narrowing into tight points as he clutched his nice, most-recent iPhone in a white-knuckled fist.
I felt bad for my brother, in a way, but I also knew that trying to help him would just get me hurt. Kyle took advantage of anyone that showed him any sympathy. Watching him as the tense atmosphere rippled across my face, I clenched my jaw hard. He whipped around on his heel to stalk back the way he’d come, and I only breathed when he disappeared around the corner.
My brother had nothing but the clothes on his back, his work uniform, and his phone and wallet. But that’s more than enough if he tries hard enough. People pulled themselves up when they realized they’d fucked up, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he blamed me for his mistakes. Sure, I’d told on him, but really...I should’ve done it a long time ago.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen to that boy.”
Turning to my dad as he spoke, I stabbed a piece of my chicken parm.
He curled his shoulders. “So, I was wondering, Delilah...are you going to move back to L.A.?”
“Um...I really don’t know, to be honest. Darren and I have talked about maybe moving in together, but he just got to the States. Honestly...I kinda want to quit. At this point, I’m thinking of trying something else, but I really don’t know what that could be, either.” I frowned around my fork as I pushed it past my teeth, and my mom’s brows rose in surprise. How many times had I just wanted to ‘quit’ even though Carlyle was essentially holding me prisoner? Every move I made was tracked, so it didn’t matter where I went. He’d know about it, could find me instantly, anywhere, any time. Safety was an illusion.
“You know, Delilah, before all that drama...before you were a teenager, you loved to garden. Maybe, you can try to pick that up again.” My mom struggled not to frown sadly, the lilt in her tone directed at herself rather than me. “I never—I never did apologize for that. I was so focused on you not ending up like—like Kyle is now, I guess. Except with a few kids trailing behind you. I just didn’t want you to end up miserable, Delilah.”
“I know, and…you know, it did work.” My mom blushed, and I smiled as warmth suffused my chest. “Maybe, not the way you wanted, but I’m not miserable, and I’m not a loser.”
“Yeah.”
Smiling broader at my mom’s bashful murmur, I chewed my bite with a wonderful, light feeling invading every part of my body. My fingers tingled around my fork, and I tapped my feet under the table. I knew that part of this peace was the fact that it was so new. There was no way to escape some things my mom and I had done and said to each other, and eventually, that residue would float up.
But I felt confident we could get through it. I didn’t want to go through another five years of not talking just because of petty squabbling. “I’m thinking that if I did move somewhere, it would be somewhere warm. Winter in New York sucks. A lot. It’s not like here. It’s wet and ugly and the cold...” Just remembering the winter, goosebumps blanketed my skin, and I shook my head. “No. No thank you.”
“Don’t forget what I said earlier, Delilah,” my dad added. “You should do what makes you happy, not what other people expect of you.”
Ducking my head in a nod, I swallowed my bite as I recalled our conversation at the donut shop. “I wish knowing what would make me happy was easier to figure out.” I propped my elbow on the table to hold my chin in my palm. “It’s alright...I guess it can be fun.”
“You’re adventurous enough to be able to handle it, honey. Where’s the most exciting place you’ve been?” my mom asked.
I huffed a little, a small smile tilting my lips as I shook my head. I picked up my crust of bread to nibble off the cheesy parts.
My mom’s eyes bored holes into my face, excited and bright. “Oh, come on. You must’ve gone to some really cool places, right? Have you gone to Paris? What about Canada?”
“To be honest, Mom, I’ve never left the country, and I’d really rather not talk about it. Let’s just say that modelling was a disaster, and I did it for way too long.” Sourness stained my tongue and twisted my lips. I didn’t want to lie to my parents more than I had already.
My mom’s face fell a little even as she nodded, and she sighed softly.
“You were right about that, at least. It’s really, really stressful and judgmental and—it was a mistake. So I’d just rather pretend it never happened.”
“Yeah. No, of course you don’t have to talk about it, Delilah.”
I knew that my mom just wanted something to talk about, and my life seemed so exciting. Look at my hair! Look at my clothes! Surely, I was doing great these past five years.
But that was far from the truth, and not telling my mom about it wasn’t really lying.
“If you do move, maybe we’ll come to visit once you’re all settled in. I’m about that age where Florida is looking really nice.” My dad took a swig of his beer leisurely, leaning back in his seat to smile fondly. “No snow sounds great now that I think about it.”
“I would never live in Florida. Ever. Nope. There’s plenty of other places that never get snow.”
My dad laughed at my adamant denial.
I twirled my fork in my pasta absently. “I’d move back to L.A.. It was great! The people were fantastic. The food was awesome, too.”
I was glad my allergies weren’t acting up today as the breeze flowed down my cheeks, and my dad smiled at me over the rim of his glass. Days like this, I just wanted to savor and make stretch as long as possible. Carefree. Or should I say...ignoring my problems.
I could afford to do that for a few hours.
25
Darren
Stepping into the hotel room, my whole body ached with the intense sensation of fucking demolishing Igra on the paintball field. I targeted him exclusively, and I made sure to shoot him right in the ass every time. Petty, maybe, but it made me feel better about something that happened 15 years ago, in another country—in another lifetime.
“You had fun.”
Delilah didn’t sound any type of way, but the hairs on the back of my neck bristled.
She sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, her bright, green eyes shining beneath her dark red hair.
Slowly shutting the door behind me, I only nodded.
She mimicked me sluggishly as discontent marred her pretty features. “Good.”
“Yeah. I had a lot of fun. How was lunch with your parents?” Kicking off my sneakers, I walked over to sit on the foot of the bed.
Delilah shrugged halfheartedly.
“What happened, baby?�
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“...I don’t think I’ll ever want to get married.”
Tension zinged through me, straightening my spine.
She ducked her head to stare at her hands. “I don’t want that kind of relationship, or the expectations. I just want things to go back to how they were when we were...not...so serious. Ever since you came to the States, I feel so much anxiety and weight...”
“Oh.” Delilah seemed almost ashamed of how she felt, and I sat back as her words ran ruts into my brain. My mind turned from my game with Igra to her and our relationship, which was most certainly not a game. “So, you want to go back to being...friends with benefits?”
“Yeah.”
Her answer came far faster than I was expecting, and my brows rose.
Delilah peeked up at me from under her curtain of dark red hair. Guilt swam in her eyes, as she licked her lips in preparation. “This—this...I don’t feel good about this, Darren, and I’m sorry, but...This kind of thing...it’s not what I want. And yeah, five years is a long time, but all these problems we’re having—the no sex, the hesitancy? This—this horrible, looming expectation that I’m gonna be stuck with you...I think about it all the time. Like what if we’re not good for each other? Like all the guilt and stuff from the past five years is all we have in common?”
“Stuck with me? You think you’re stuck with me?”
“I’m worried it’ll end up like that. We were good the way we were, Darren.”
I covered my mouth to hide my grimace as alarm slackened my jaw.
Delilah frowned at me, hesitancy and pain etched into her porcelain, freckled face. “You came all the way here for me. You had people try to kill you because of me. I don’t want all that effort to be wasted because we’re moving too fast in the wrong direction.”