by Roxie Noir
I finally unzip my coat, hang it next to hers.
“I guess you got it in the divorce?” I say, hoping I sound casual.
There’s a stone fireplace, a huge flat-screen TV, leather couches. A kitchen with marble counters and a huge stainless steel fridge. It’s all sleek and rustic at the same time, all perfectly matching. It doesn’t look a thing like Delilah’s house.
“Well, technically it’s owned by the Radcliffe Family Trust, not me,” she says, crossing her arms and surveying it. “So it wasn’t up for grabs in the divorce because it never became joint property. He kept his beach house in the Outer Banks, I kept this place.”
“It’s a hell of a place,” I say, and she just laughs.
I’m not jealous of Nolan, her ex-husband. Not exactly. The truth is that I don’t know the word for how I feel about the man who married the girl I was in love with, who got the huge wedding and the big house in the suburbs and even the cute dog. The man who apparently had a beach house of his own and God knows what else.
It’s hard not to feel inadequate sometimes, like I’m unversed in all this rich people shit. It’s hard not to see that I don’t fit as neatly into her life as someone with his own beach house.
“I’m probably lucky that Vera and my dad didn’t take it away again after I got divorced,” she says, walking into the living room and looking at our suitcases, left there by some silent, helpful being. “Ava had a bedroom in their penthouse until a month and a half ago. I sound insane, don’t I?”
“Should I really answer that?” I tease.
“I just mean that I wish it had been, I don’t know, a graduation present or a birthday present or anything besides a wedding present,” she says. “As if getting a man is the only thing that really matters and everything else is just fluff. Oh, good, there’s an itinerary. I was afraid we might be left to our own devices for more than an hour here and there.”
There’s a sheet of paper on the table. Delilah grabs it, and I follow, reading over her shoulder and forcing myself to stop thinking about how many times her ex-husband ate at this table.
He’s gone. I’m here. That’s all that matters, right?
“We’re expected at happy hour this evening, and that one’s labeled casual attire,” she says. “Then after that is dinner in the Ridgeline Suite — that’s Dad and Vera’s penthouse — also casual attire, as is Family Game Night afterward —”
I pull the sheet of paper from her hands and spin her to face me.
“Delilah, it’s okay,” I tell her. “Whatever you think I think of you right now, I don’t. I don’t care if the toilet is made of gold and the fireplace is lined with diamonds.”
She smiles, and I swear her shoulders relax an inch.
“I’m pretty sure they’re not,” she says. “But thank you.”
“I can’t believe I’m trying to make you feel better about being rich.”
“That’s why you’re my favorite kept man,” she teases, so I lean in and kiss her, and she’s warm and soft and rises on her toes to meet me, and all that makes it easy to forget everything else about this and focus on her.
“Which one’s our bedroom?” I ask when it’s over.
“First left,” she points. “It’s the one with rubies and emeralds studding the walls.”
I give her a look.
“Kidding,” she grins. “Just a big-ass TV.”
I pick up both of our suitcases and carry them to the bedroom. Sure, they’ve got wheels, but I prefer lifting them because I know she’s watching and I know what Delilah likes.
The master bedroom does have a huge flat screen, along with another stone fireplace and a four-poster bed that’s the biggest bed I’ve seen in my life. There’s a sitting area and an en-suite bathroom with a soaking tub and a shower that’s got an entire wall of buttons, one of which probably makes the New York Philharmonic show up to play you Vivaldi while you shower.
She’s standing in the doorway, watching me, and because of that I take an extra moment before putting the suitcases down, one by one.
“Yes?” I finally ask.
“Just trying to think of more heavy things you could lift while I watch,” she teases.
“Excuse me, miss, my eyes are up here.”
“Mhm. Pick up the suitcases again?” she says, grinning.
“I can’t believe you’re objectifying me like this,” I say, crossing the room toward her. “Keep it up and I’m sleeping in the other bedroom.”
“Would that involve carrying the suitcase some more?”
“Don’t tell me you’d pick that over getting to snuggle this hunk of burning love all night,” I say.
She’s still leaning against the door frame, and she reaches out, grabs the fabric of my t-shirt in one hand, tugs me closer as she looks up at me. My heart spins in my chest, dizzy.
“No, but I’d get to watch you pick up a heavy thing now, and we’re not sleeping until later,” she says, still tugging. “And waiting for what I want is so hard.”
I don’t answer her, just take her chin in my hand, run my thumb along the valley just below her bottom lip and as I do, Delilah tilts her head up, deep brown eyes looking right into mine.
“Worth it, but hard,” she says.
Since the night she stayed over, we haven’t done more than make out, even though all I want to do is throw out our no-sex agreement and lock us in the bedroom.
There’s one week left. We both know there’s another week. We talked about it on the four-hour drive up here and we agreed to honor it.
Because it’s working. We haven’t fought. I feel like I know Delilah in ways now that I never could have otherwise, this girl who prefers to draw with charcoal over pastels, who doesn’t think much of Jane Austen but loves Emily Brontë, who feeds wild raccoons but has no mercy at all when it comes to spiders.
It’s never been like this before. Not when I saw her once a year and we barely left the bed. Not when we were dating before, when we were both so young and so clueless and completely wild with lust.
It’s taken us years, but apparently we’ve learned patience.
I lean in, kiss her slow. She slides her arm around my waist, straightens, and I feel like I’m sinking into her, the outside world dim and muffled.
We’re still kissing when there’s a knock on the door, and Delilah jumps, then laughs at herself.
“All right,” she says, softly, and straightens my shirt for me. “You ready for this?”
“Always,” I tell her, dropping a quick kiss on her forehead.
“SETH??” a small voice whispers.
Bree’s standing in the doorway to the room, backlit by the hall light as I peek out from behind a bed.
“SETH, ARE YOU IN HERE?”
I bite my lip so I don’t laugh. Three-year-olds are the least subtle people on the planet.
“Yes,” I whisper back.
“Oh!” she says. Small feet patter. Seconds later, she crashes into me, clearly unable to see in the dark.
“SORRY,” she shout-whispers.
“You all right?” I ask, reaching one hand out to her small shoulder.
“I’M OKAY.”
From the doorway, I can hear Harold’s voice counting very, very slowly: “Teeeeeeen. Eeeeeleeeeeveeeeen. Tweeeeeeeeelve…”
“I think it would work better if we hid separately,” I whisper to Bree.
Not that this is a great hiding spot. This guest room has two beds, and I’m between them, sort of hidden from the door. It’s not exactly Sherlock Holmes’s greatest challenge or anything.
It’s closing in on ten o’clock, way, way past her bedtime, so she’s a little punchy right now. Not to mention all the excitement of getting to drink lots of apple juice at the happy hour, running absolutely amok during dinner, and then getting ahold of the M&Ms while the adults tried to play charades and she guessed dinosaur every single time.
“I WANT TO HIDE WITH YOU,” Bree whispers.
“But if you hide somewhere else,
it’ll take your grandpa and Callum longer to find us both,” I explain.
“SHHHHH.”
All right, I guess that settles it: Bree and I are hiding together. Moments later, I hear “Ready or not, here we come!” from the direction of the hallway. Tiny feet run.
“Where should we look first?” Harold asks Callum, Bree’s eighteen-month-old brother.
“That!” he shouts.
Bree claps both her hands over her mouth and stares at me, eyes the size of dinner plates. I know exactly what’s about to happen, so I put one finger to my lips.
A giggle escapes her.
“No laughing,” I whisper.
She giggles harder, unsurprisingly, both hands over her mouth as though that helps at all.
“Stop it,” I whisper at her, mustering all the gravity I can. “Hide and seek is very serious, young lady.”
Bree rolls onto her side, now hysterical with the giggles, and I grin, despite myself. That used to work on Rusty, too, though of course now she’s far too sophisticated.
Moments later, small footsteps pound into the room, and a small, shadowy figure appears. The figure squeals with delight.
“Found us!” I tell Callum.
“Nice work, champ,” says Harold’s voice from the door. “Whose turn is it to count next?”
“MEEEEE!” shouts Bree, popping up.
“Oh! You were back there, too?” says Harold, feigning surprise.
“Yes!” she says with zero irony.
When I stand, one of my knees pops, and I shake it out.
“Any hiding spots with recliners?” I ask Harold, and he laughs.
“I’m counting,” Bree announces. “One. Go hide! GO!”
I obey, and step into the hallway, blinking in the light. I’ve already hidden in all four of the penthouse’s guest bedrooms, in one shower, and out on the balcony, which was the best hiding spot but way too cold.
I turn left for the living room to try my luck. It’s massive, easily twice the size of Delilah’s living room in her condo downstairs, so there’s gotta be something.
As I head in, I can hear Delilah in the kitchen, still drinking wine and talking to her sisters and Vera. I wave at them as I head past, but I don’t think any of them see me. Thad, Chris, and Michael — the husbands — are around here somewhere, probably talking about golf. Or polo. Or using polo horses to golf, I don’t know.
In the living room, I stop and look around. From behind me, I hear Bree shout FIVE!! in what must be the slowest anyone has ever counted to twenty.
The curtains. Floor-length, heavy fabric. Perfect for a hiding spot from a three-year-old, and standing definitely beats kneeling on a hard floor again.
“SIX!” she shouts. I lean against the wall, figuring I may as well settle in. From the kitchen, there’s a gale of laughter, and I smile to myself.
“You were completely certain you’d broken your femur,” Delilah is saying.
“And then you scared the pants off her by telling her that if she had really broken her femur, she would’ve ruptured an artery and died,” Vera says, her tone half-laughing, half-admonishing.
“I wasn’t wrong,” Delilah says.
“But you did convince me that I was going to die at any moment,” Ava says, and Delilah laughs.
“Sorry,” she says.
I wonder if I knew Delilah during the trip they’re talking about, because I can absolutely imagine it: Ava, still a kid, hurt; Delilah, who got really into the macabre as a teenager, telling her all the ways she could be hurt worse.
“Was that the same trip when Nolan took you and I on the black diamond trails?” Olivia’s voice asks.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand at the name. I wish they wouldn’t, but they do.
“Goodness, no, that was years later,” Vera says.
“I remember that day, though,” Winona chimes in. “It was the first time I’d tried a double black diamond, and it was a terrible mistake.”
Everyone laughs.
“You flew on down like it was no big deal, but I was way too scared, and of course at that point there was no way out but through,” she says. “So he spent the next hour guiding me down as slowly as I wanted. Half the time I was sliding on my butt, and he was so sweet and patient the whole time.”
There’s a quick moment of silence. I close my eyes, tilt my head against the wall and hope it’s awkward as fuck in there right now.
“I thought you’d died,” Olivia said, and everyone laughs again. “I got to the bottom and you were nowhere to be seen.”
“We found you drinking hot chocolate in the lodge,” Winona teases.
“Anxiously,” Olivia protests. “I was anxiously drinking it.”
“Didn’t he also somehow program the TV to come on at full volume at four in the morning and Mom called the Snowpeak cops?” Ava asks, to more laughter.
“Their response time was very impressive,” Vera says.
“For the record, he felt really bad about that,” offers Delilah.
It’s not what I want her to say. I want her to say what a moron or thank God I divorced him or how could I ever think I loved that man. Not something as simple and neutral as he felt bad.
“I know, I got an enormous fruit basket with a very sweet apology note the next week,” Vera says, sounding amused. “The papaya was delightful.”
A fruit basket. Nolan gave fruit baskets.
“He had his moments,” Delilah says. “Speaking of skiing, is there a plan for tomorrow?”
“Yeah, stop talking about Nolan, the new one might hear you.”
“You mean —"
“Olivia, please,” Vera says, cutting Delilah off.
“He has a name,” Delilah says.
Now I feel like I’m eavesdropping.
“EIGHTEEN!” Bree shouts from down the hallway.
“Well, I can’t go skiing, obviously,” Olivia says, ignoring Delilah. “And I know the shopping in town is only so-so, but there’s the cutest kids’ boutique, so I was thinking I might get some things for the nursery there, it’s too bad that we still don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl…”
“NINETEEN. TWENTY READY OR NOT HERE I COME!!”
Feet barrel down the hallway to the living room, and I put one hand out and wiggle the curtain back and forth, just to help her find me faster.
“You having fun, sweetie?” I hear Winona ask.
“Yes,” Bree says, very seriously.
“All right,” Winona says, just as Bree gasps.
“WHO’S THAT?” she says, and moments later, she’s yanking on the curtains.
“Whoa! Careful,” I tell her, parting them.
“I FOUND SETH!” she shouts, and then grabs my hand. “Come ON, now we have to find grandpa.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I tell her, and we go look for Harold.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Seth
Seven and a Half Years Ago
(Two years before the previous flashback)
The bartender looks at Caleb’s ID, her lips thinning. Her eyes flick to his face, and then back down.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“Daniel Loveless,” Caleb says.
“Middle name?”
“Creed.”
“Birthday?”
“October twenty-fourth.”
“What year?” she asks, eyes narrowing.
Caleb pauses for a split second before answering, and my stomach drops.
“Nineteen ninety,” he says.
At last, the bartender shrugs, tosses the three IDs back onto the bar.
“All right,” she says. “What can I get you?”
We order beers, and as she’s getting them, Levi glances over at Caleb.
“Told you,” Caleb mutters.
“Don’t involve me in your nonsense,” Levi says, though I think he’s smiling.
Is he smiling? He’s smiling. Somehow, he’s inscrutable, even though I’ve known him my whole life. He wasn’t partic
ularly enthused about Caleb borrowing Daniel’s license to come out drinking with us, but he didn’t protest that hard, either. Probably because Levi doesn’t mind breaking the rules he thinks are stupid.
When we get our beers, I hold mine up.
“To having a job,” I say.
“Also to having a job,” Levi says.
“To… declaring a major,” Caleb says, somewhat less enthusiastically, and we all drink.
It’s Friday night, the summer after college. Levi finished his Master’s degree in forestry the week before I graduated, and two months later, we’ve both managed to find gainful employment. He’s even renting his own place, some tiny cabin out in the woods, though I’m still staying at my Mom’s house, along with Caleb for the summer and Daniel and his kid Rusty indefinitely.
God, it’s fucking weird that Daniel’s got a kid.
We drink. After a bit, we head over to the pool tables. None of us is all that good at pool, but none of us is all that bad, either. Levi wins a game, then I do. Caleb’s mildly annoyed but hiding it well.
He sees her first.
I’m trying to line up a shot, half-assedly calculating angles that will only work if I hit the cue ball flawlessly, when he whispers something to Levi. I ignore it, take the shot. The ball bounces off one side, then misses the pocket.
When I look up, they’re still muttering to each and giving me weird looks.
“What?” I say, picking up my beer.
Levi just shakes his head and leans over the pool table, but Caleb’s eyes flick over my shoulder.
“Nothing,” he says, too quickly.
I turn.
It takes a moment: The Whiskey Barrel is pretty popular, dive-y, fairly crowded on a Friday night. I think maybe it’s nothing. I think maybe they’re just being weird.
Then I see her. Standing there, at a cocktail table with one glass-enclosed candle burning in the middle, the bar’s attempt at class. She’s alone, leaning on her elbows, her shoulders up around her ears as she looks around like she’s waiting for something.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her since the night I fled her parents’ house the week before Christmas.