by Roxie Noir
This is the first time I’ve admitted it, even to myself. Daniel listens, silent.
“It was…” I trail off, clear my throat. “More complex than our other interactions.”
Meaning, we spent a long time together with our clothes on.
“But now we’re back to talking about the weather, and in six months or a year or something we’ll just do it again.”
“Then don’t.”
“That’s the point of moving to Montana. I can’t avoid her if I live here,” I say.
“My next sentence is going to sound sarcastic,” Daniel warns. “I swear it’s not.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Have you considered a clothed, sober conversation?”
He’s right. He sounds like he’s being a dick.
“We agreed not to —"
“If she’ll fuck you nonstop for an entire weekend she’ll probably agree to talk,” Daniel says, his patience finally gone. He pushes a hand through his hair, which is getting floppy, and gives me an Older Brother Look. “I know you think she’s made of sex pheromones walking around in a human suit or something —”
“Oh, my God,” I mutter, face in hands.
“ — sorry, Thomas is having a sleep regression and it’s been rough,” Daniel says.
He takes a moment, looking down at the floor.
“Listen,” he finally says. “If you want me to hate her, and call her a witch and talk about how she boils frogs and eats souls and makes you dance like a puppet for fun or whatever, I will. But I really fucking hate seeing you hurt like this. So… try something else. Please?”
He stands, brushes his hands together, and heads for the door.
“And in the meantime, don’t be such a dick our employees,” he says.
“You’re not even gonna help me find the beer?” I ask, still seated.
In the doorway, he turns back. Then he points at a keg a few feet away from where he’s standing.
It’s the Scottish Ale.
“Good talk,” he says, and then leaves.
In protest, I stay there for another five minutes.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Delilah
I drive with my left hand and shake out my right, opening and closing my fist. Most of my day today was spent putting a huge, abstract piece on the thigh of a man with lots of patience and a high pain tolerance, and who told me he’d prefer to get it over with in as few sessions as possible.
Fine by me, though now my needle hand feels weird, not to mention the shoulder cramps. Even though afterward I grabbed dinner with Beau, who gave me the latest updates on Nana’s Squirrel Adventure, I’ve still got knots.
Finally, my driveway comes into view. My house is a hundred feet back, a stand of forest between my driveway and the road, the house itself barely visible through the trees. I thought about buying a house in town, but this one had a sort of charm it’s hard to describe — an odd, lofty, open-feeling farmhouse that seems equally suited to canning in the kitchen, vintage oddities in the living room, and naked dances around a bonfire in the back yard.
I haven’t had a bonfire yet, nor danced naked in the back yard. Someday.
I pull in, turn my car off. Contemplate the darkness for a moment. Massage my right hand with my left, which helps, but not all that much. The cold is already starting to leach in from the window, and I take my scarf from my passenger seat, wind it around my neck even though it’s a short walk to my front door.
I get out, shut the door, and a black shape unfolds from the steps to my front porch.
I scream and bolt back into the car, slamming the door shut. I hit the lock button about a dozen times in a row, my heart pounding and my mouth dry, suddenly freezing inside my coat.
Oh fuck there’s a murdering Bigfoot on my front porch fuck fuck where are my keys I had them one second ago this is why Vera wanted me to live somewhere with a gate —
I finally pull the keys from my coat pocket, and with the cool metal in my hand, I finally take a deep breath.
It’s not Bigfoot, I remind myself, and finally brave a look out my window.
The murdering Bigfoot… waves?
And the wave is very familiar?
I flop my head back against my seat and take another deep breath, my heart still pounding but now for an entirely different reason.
“What the hell?” I mutter to myself, and open the door again.
“I thought you were Bigfoot!” I shout.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he calls back.
“What are you doing?” I call, walking up the path through my front yard toward him, adrenaline still shivering through me. “Are you just sitting on my porch steps in the dark? The porch steps of a woman who lives alone?”
From the look on his face, he hadn’t considered that part of the equation.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and he actually sounds contrite.
I take a deep breath, still trying to settle my nerves, rub one hand over the back of my neck.
“I have a phone,” I point out.
“I needed to talk in person,” he says, and suddenly the rattle in my veins is replaced by an empty spot in my chest and I notice, for the first time, that there’s something in his hand.
It’s a basket. There’s a cloth draped over it, and the empty spot blossoms into dread, dark and shiny, echoing the last time one of us showed up at the other’s house with an offering.
It’s working, isn’t it? Our agreement?
“I don’t know how to talk to you less,” I say, just staring at this basket. “My life’s here. My family’s here. I have to go out in public —"
“I didn’t wait on your porch steps in the cold for an hour to say we should never speak again,” he says.
A cold breeze rustles through the leafless trees, tugs at the strands of hair not stuck in my bun and wafts one across my face.
“Then what did you bring a fruit basket to tell me?” I ask. “If you want to bribe me to leave town and let you be, that’s not —"
He flips the cloth off and holds it out to me.
It’s… scones?
“I like you,” he says, simply, and it feels like my heart sticks to my ribcage, forgets for a moment that it should be beating.
I watch Seth, waiting. I don’t take a scone. I wait for him to finish the sentence, to tell me the real reason he showed up at nine at night with baked goods. To deliver the blow we both know is coming.
“But?” I finally prompt.
“But nothing,” he says softly. Still holding out the basket. I look down at the scones, back up at him. I dig my hands deeper into my pockets and will myself to stand up straighter.
“There’s always a but,” I say, and I make myself look right into his eyes. “I like you, but I also wish you didn’t exist. I like you but I love sleeping around. I like you but we both know that liking isn’t enough.”
I breathe deep, look away again because the blank space in the pit of my stomach is still there, writhing, gnawing at me. I know that something ugly’s about to happen. I can see it coming a mile off, like a train’s headlight in the dark.
“Start over with me,” he says.
I hold his gaze, swallow hard because that wasn’t what I was expecting either. None of this is what I was expecting, and I’ve got no idea what to make of it.
“How?” I finally ask.
I also take a scone. They look really good.
“I hate pretending we’re strangers,” he says, voice low, quiet in the cold dark night. “I hate it. We aren’t strangers. Even after all these years, you know me better than almost anyone and I’m tired of pretending you don’t.”
I want to protest, out of habit. I want to remind him of all the ways we’ve hurt each other, all the barbs we’ve thrown, the venom we’ve spat. I want to tell him that being strangers is better than being locked in a joust with each other, always aiming for the heart and running at a full gallop.
Instead, I take a bite of the scone. Mostly so I
don’t say any of those things.
“Blueberry lemon,” he says before I ask. I chew, swallow.
“Did you make them?”
“Yup.”
I take another bite, the sweet-tart of a blueberry spreading across my tongue.
“You’re wrong,” I tell him.
“They’re definitely blueberry.”
“You’re wrong that I know you. I didn’t know you made scones. I didn’t know you rode dirt bikes sometimes. I didn’t know you sat on porches in the dark.”
“I don’t, as a rule,” he says. “Ideally I won’t be doing it again.”
“I don’t know you as well as you think,” I whisper.
“I bet you know why I like baking,” he says.
I take another bite, watch him in the faint moonlight.
Seth is beautiful. He always is, but right now the moon is behind the clouds, the pale white light diffused across the landscape. Everything in my front yard has a shadowless, unearthly glow, most of all Seth.
He looks like a charcoal drawing, all shades of the same color, his edges smudged and blurred by the dark. I wonder if any artist could ever do him justice.
“Because it’s quantifiable,” I say, after a moment. “It’s predictable. If you do everything according to the instructions, you’ll almost certainly succeed.”
He smiles in shades of moonlight-blue.
“Told you so,” he says. “Start over with me. We’ll wipe the slate clean of all the bullshit we’ve said and done and we’ll just be two people who like each other, going on dates and having movie nights and taking long romantic walks, and…”
He runs a hand through his hair, smiles at me.
“Whatever other cute shit couples do,” he says. “Just say yes, Bird.”
I breathe deep again, exhale in fog, look away from Seth and over at the driveway.
“So we just… pretend nothing has ever happened between us?” I ask.
Seth doesn’t answer, just reaches his hand to my face. I try to stay still but I can feel myself tilting toward him anyway, like a flower toward the sun.
He brushes a crumb from my cheek. Looks at me. Lets his hand linger before lowering it.
“Exactly,” he says.
“You really think we can?”
“I think it’ll destroy me to keep fucking and fighting and being barely polite in public,” he says, shifting his feet, the basket against his hip. “And I think that if I don’t try this one last time I’ll never forgive myself.”
My throat constricts, and I swallow against it, pressing my lips together. I’ve always been an easy crier and I’ve never liked it.
When I open my mouth, I mean to say yes or okay or even I’d like that, but what comes out is, “I miss you.”
Seth’s face changes, softens. Like he’s just lowered a shield, and he steps forward, slides his free hand around the back of my neck and before I can tilt my face up toward his, he presses his lips into my hair.
“Come out with me Friday,” he says, voice muffled, lips still against my hair. “Our very first date. If you’re lucky, I’ll kiss you goodnight.”
“Just a kiss?” I tease, and he releases me.
“That’s yes, then?”
I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a second, as if I have any wits left about me to gather.
“Of course it’s yes,” I tell him.
“There’s one more thing,” he says.
“You are Bigfoot.”
“I want to wait to have sex.”
Those words, in that order, take several moments for my brain to process. I’d be less surprised if he unzipped his human suit to reveal an ape-man.
“What?” I finally say.
And then, still baffled: “Until… when?”
Sprucevale is small, southern, and has approximately four churches per capita, so when I hear wait for sex I automatically fill in until marriage, which was very much not Seth’s attitude a few weeks back.
“A month?” he says.
I narrow my eyes and tilt my head.
“You can’t do that,” I say, simply.
“I can’t?” he asks, grinning.
“What, you think you’re God’s gift to women?” I tease.
“Not women,” he says, grin gone feral. “Just you.”
I roll my eyes at him, but my heart beats a little faster, harder.
“You cocky asshole,” I laugh. “Ever seen my tits in a push-up bra? You can’t last a month.”
“Only a month?” he says. “Come on, make it tough. A month and a half. I made you see God at Ava’s wedding.”
At least the dark hides my blush.
“I’m not the one who nearly passed out on the floor after we were done.”
“That was the whiskey.”
“Was it?” I ask, tilting my head slightly.
“The whiskey was a factor,” he admits. “Two months. Bring it on, Bird.”
“You’ll never make it,” I say.
“Only one way to find out. Deal?” he asks, and holds out his hand.
I slide mine into it, and we shake.
“Deal,” I say, as he raises my hand to his lips.
“Friday,” he says, still holding my hand. “Six. Don’t be late.”
“Do I even get a kiss?” I ask.
“Maybe at the end of our first date,” Seth says. He grins at me again, all cockiness and rakish charm. “What kind of floozy do you take me for, Bird?”
“Drive safe,” I tell him, laughing. He walks to my driveway, scones in hand.
I go into my house. Lock my door. Head to my bedroom.
And I fire up my vibrator, who will apparently remain my sole companion for the foreseeable future.
Chapter Thirty
Seth
When I pull into Delilah’s driveway Friday night, the first thing I see is eyes.
Glowing, beady eyes. Six of them.
Again. They were here the other night, too, and I’m starting to feel like they’ve got something against me.
“Scram,” I tell them, getting out of my car. “Go on, git.”
The biggest raccoon sits down on the bottom step, like it’s waiting for me to entertain it.
“Bastard,” I mutter, and glance around for a stick or something.
Of all the varmints, I’m the most cautious of raccoons. Not only are they bigger than you’d think, I’ve heard Levi’s every single raccoon has rabies talk more times than I care to remember.
I don’t want rabies. I just want to take Delilah out on a date, so I grab a fallen branch and walk toward the porch, waving it.
“Get outta here,” I tell them.
They glare, but when it becomes clear that I will poke them, they waddle off.
I toss the stick away, mount the steps, ring Delilah’s doorbell before I can get nervous.
“Come in!” she shouts, barely audible through the door. “It’s unlocked.”
I obey, glancing back one more time to make sure the raccoons aren’t following me. Sneaky, fearless bastards. My mom once came home to one lounging on her kitchen floor, surrounded by half-eaten bananas. She had to chase it out with a broom.
There’s no Delilah.
“It’s you, right?” she calls, her voice echoing through space, still invisible.
“Do you pay those critters to guard your house, or is this some Snow White setup where they volunteer because you’re a magical forest princess?” I call back.
There are footsteps over my head, and a few moments later, she appears, leaning over the railing on the stairs to my left.
Purple leopard print robe. Wet hair. Holy fuck.
“You’re early,” she says, but she’s smiling.
“I hope you’re wearing that,” I say, and Delilah looks down, as if she’s forgotten what she’s got on.
“Are we going to a pajama party hosted by Andy Warhol?” she asks. “I still don’t know where we’re going.”
“I told you,” I tease, forcing myself
to make eye contact. “I’m taking you to a sock hop. I don’t know how to be any more clear than that.”
She puts her elbows on the railing, shifts her hips. The robe is made of something shiny and flowy — silk, do they make robes out of silk? — and it drapes against her in a way that makes my mouth go dry.
“Then I guess I have to go put on my poodle skirt and put my hair in a ponytail with a bow,” she says. “I’ll be out in a few. Make yourself at home, there’s a couch in the living room and drinks in the kitchen, I think?”
I don’t want her to put on clothes. I want to walk up these stairs and pull open her leopard print robe and push my fingers through her damp hair and see what she tastes like right out of the shower, but that’s the whole problem.
We’ve been in lust for years. Time to try something new.
“Reservations are at six-thirty,” I tell her, taking off my coat and scarf and hanging them on the rack.
“I know, you keep reminding me,” she laughs, pushing herself off the railing and disappearing, her voice getting dimmer. “You’re the one who was early!”
“I’m not that early,” I say, and glance at the clock on my phone.
Ten minutes barely counts as early, but I quit arguing and head into Delilah’s house.
It’s a surprise.
Maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe I, of all people, should know that a proper, staid exterior can hide a whimsical, airy interior, but I didn’t even think about it.
The outside of her house is an old farmhouse, the same as every other old farmhouse around here: two stories, white siding, Adirondack chairs on the front porch. Windows. A door.
But inside it’s open to the roof beams, the soaring ceiling clearly responsible for the odd acoustics. The entire ground floor is open, nothing but an island separating the kitchen from the living room. The back wall is glass almost floor-to-ceiling. One corner has a fireplace set in smooth black stones that go all the way up the wall.
The staircase leads to a second-floor landing that overlooks the living room, one of the doors slightly ajar. I can’t really see inside from this angle, but despite myself I sure do try.
Everything here is bright. It’s eclectic. Hanging from the ceiling is a chandelier made of what looks like driftwood. The coffee table is glass and steel. The couch is deep brown leather, flanked on one side by a sleek, modern steel lamp, and on the other by a lamp shaped like a hula girl. The wall next to the fireplace is floor-to-ceiling with framed art: paintings and photographs and drawings. Prints. A vintage-looking poster for the Ringling Brothers.