by Roxie Noir
She stops mid-sentence, her blue eyes wide as she glances at Delilah.
“Down Crunch Street?” Delilah asks, taking a bite of salad.
“Right,” Ava resumes. “He pretty much had to talk me through every single turn, but he was so sweet about it. Anyway, it’s just practice! Muscle memory and stuff. Besides, you’re kind of tall so you’ve got further to fall and that makes it harder. Do you guys want more wine?”
Ava tops our glasses off. We keep talking about skiing, and even though Nolan doesn’t come up again, I can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s standing right behind me. That he could talk to Vera about her fundraiser and the brothers-in-law about cars, take Ava down the hard ski runs, know which wine to pick.
That maybe it’s no wonder he’s the one she married.
But then Delilah leans in toward me, her hair brushing my shoulder, and she points her fork at an olive on my salad plate.
“You gonna eat that?” she asks.
“You know I’m not,” I tell her and she stabs it, pops it into her mouth, smiles at me.
“Thanks,” she says. “You want a crouton in exchange?”
I can’t sleep.
I don’t know why. Between the skiing, the sex, and the wine, I should have been out before my head hit the pillow, but instead every time I finally doze off, I wake up again half an hour later with the strange, unsettling feeling that I’ve left something undone, some problem unsolved.
I lie awake, tick through all the possibilities. There aren’t many, because I’m on vacation, and nothing needs my attention in the middle of the night in West Virginia.
I fall back asleep, barely. I wake up in a huge, comfortable bed, Delilah warm and naked next to me. I still feel like there’s something moving just underneath my skin.
Finally, around four in the morning, I give up. I get out of bed, pull on a shirt, a sweater, my plaid pajama pants. I walk into the living room, rub my eyes, wish I’d brought slippers with me, pad to the fireplace and turn it up.
I’m standing exactly where Nolan was in the photo I found, the one hidden in the closet underneath towels and sheet and her wedding album. I look down at my feet. I walk quietly to the bedroom door, close it silently.
The box is exactly where I left it, of course, under a stack of sheets and towels, all bleached perfectly white and folded neatly. I take them out, put them on the floor.
The cardboard sags in my hands, and for a moment I think it’s going to give way and send everything crashing to the floor, waking Delilah up. I brace it with a hand underneath. Look at the bedroom door again.
I know better than to think I’m acting right as I place the box gently on the dining table, push the flaps aside. I know that the clean slate and starting over were my idea. I know she’s long-divorced and the past isn’t supposed to exist, let alone matter, but none of that stops me.
The album is still on top. Hardbound, leather cover, glossy pages inside. I flip through it and try not to linger on any one page: the kiss, the first dance, the posed photo under a lit archway. Her family is there. Her sisters are teenagers; Vera looks remarkably the same.
The photos I found before. The two of them, standing right there, looking happy. Her hair shorter, her face rounder, his arms circling her middle like he’s caught her and is pulling her back.
There’s more. A birthday card, the greeting that came with flowers. A few more photos, one with them on skis. A cutesy, fake-rustic sign that says “Mr. and Mrs. Prescott.” Tchotchkes. Their wedding guestbook.
And then, at the bottom: a small jewelry box that rattles when I pick it up. I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to find, but when I pop it open, I’m still surprised.
There are two rings. One’s expected, the glittering monster I saw on her finger at the Whiskey Barrel. The other I’ve never seen before: a matching wedding band, tiny diamonds embedded in delicate gold.
I don’t think about the fact that tens of thousands of dollars of jewelry are sitting in a cardboard box in a closet. I don’t even wonder what they’re doing here.
I just try to imagine them on her finger, and I can’t.
I’m still staring at them when the bedroom door opens and she leans out, naked except panties, blinking.
“Hey,” Delilah says, voice foggy. “You okay?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell her, folding my fingers around the rings as if I can hide what I’m doing.
“Yeah, that bed is a little weird,” she says. Yawns. Stretches. The Kraken and the vines move like they’re alive. “It just takes a little…”
She trails off, arms crossed over her chest, leaning in the door frame.
“What are you doing?” Delilah asks, suddenly sounding more awake.
I tighten my hand, the diamond digging into my palm.
“I was looking for a towel.”
She walks over. Stands at the table, her hair coming loose from a braid over her shoulder. Looks at the cards and the book and the photos and the sign. Grabs the box, peeks inside.
Finally, she looks over at me, her cheeks going pink and her expression unreadable.
“Is this why we fucked?” she asks, voice low as the calm before the storm.
She knows me. Isn’t that what I told her the night I brought scones? She knows me, and it’s going to be my undoing.
“No.”
Her cheeks flush even redder.
“It wasn’t because you found this while I was out skiing and you wanted to mark your territory?” she asks. “And now you’re going through my shit at four thirty in the morning, making sure you marked everything there was to mark?”
“We fucked in the bathroom because that’s what we —”
“After we specifically talked about it in the car yesterday? After not fucking was your idea in the first place, because fucking was all we did and you wanted to try something new?”
I unclench my fist and toss the rings on the table. Delilah watches them, arms crossed again, like she’s protecting herself despite wearing nothing but her panties.
“How do we start something new when you’ve got your wedding ring kicking around in the bottom of a closet?” I snap. “How do I start something new when the man you left me for is everywhere? When your family can’t stop talking about him?”
“God forbid someone mention my ex-husband,” she says, sarcastic and sharp. “I was married. It happened. I can’t undo it. I could throw all of this away and it wouldn’t undo shit.”
“Then where am I?”
She pauses, frowns.
“Is this a trick question?”
“He’s still here,” I say, pointing feverishly: the rings and the photos and the book and everything spread on the table. “He’s in the cocktail shaker in your house, he’s in that photo of the dog, he’s in those earrings you like. I was with you for six years, and all you’ve got is the man you left me for.”
“I didn’t leave you for him.”
“Really? That was a hell of a turn—”
She’s turning away, stalking toward the bedroom.
“I broke up with you and then started seeing him,” she shouts. The lights go on, but the door doesn’t close. “He had nothing to do with it.”
“Sure,” I say.
She reappears in the doorway, dragging a sweater over her head.
“I broke up with you because I didn’t want to date you any more,” she shouts. Her head pops through, her hair wild, and she pulls it out. “That’s it. That’s all. I broke up with you and I wiped you out of my life and then I met Nolan. Whatever you think of me don’t you dare think I cheated on you.”
She turns back into the bedroom. I realize I’m pacing back and forth. One by one, I crack all my knuckles, turn, pace, try not to feel as if she’s just thrown a knife and nicked a vein. I’d always thought our breakup with because of him, somehow. Not because she just didn’t want me.
“You could rid your life of me but not him?” I shout back at her, somewhere in the bedroo
m.
“Oh, don’t worry, you popped up,” she says, and she’s back in the doorway, angrily pulling on the rainbow pajama pants. “On Mindy Drake’s ass, for example.”
I stop like I’ve been hit by a cartoon hammer.
“Now that we’re talking about it, are there any others?” she says, arms crossed, head tilted. Her voice is faux-sweet, laced with venom. “Am I gonna see Property of Seth Loveless on any other butts in the future, or do I get to be done with that now?”
I swallow hard. Fuck. Fuck. I haven’t thought about Mindy or her tattoo in years.
‘That’s the only one I know of,” I tell her. Quietly.
“And how about the panties and the makeup and the hairbrush under your sink?” she says. “I can’t keep my wedding album, but you’ve got souvenirs of all these other women?”
“Not souvenirs,” I say. I’m pacing again, a sensation under my skin like something’s boiling. “I never kept souvenirs, they didn’t matter —"
“OF COURSE THEY MATTERED!”
I stop dead in my tracks. Hold my breath at the sudden volume, violence.
In the silence that follows you could hear a pin drop.
“I never dated them,” I say, my own volume rising. “It was just fun, a release, I never felt anything —”
“Besides getting your dick wet?” she says, and now her voice is shaky. Eyes glassy. “Do you know how it sounds when we finally have sex after waiting that long and then hours later you tell me sex doesn’t matter? It sounds shitty! It feels shitty! It feels like I’m a name on a list with a check mark next to it!”
“If I could go back in time and undo everyone else right now, I would,” I say, jabbing a finger at the floor. “But I can’t.”
There’s a pause. A long pause. I realize what I’m waiting for, and I realize she’s not going to say it.
“I wouldn’t,” she says, voice flat. “And if you and I had gotten married, you and I would have gotten divorced.”
I walk away from her, back to the table. It’s so still that it feels like time has stopped, and I stand there. Look down at the photo album.
“How long?” I ask her.
“How long what?”
“How long do I have before you get bored and leave me for some rich prick with a nice watch and boring golf stories?” I ask. I don’t turn around.
She exhales like the wind’s been knocked out of her.
“Before I get bored?” she says. “Me? You spent years plowing through Sprucevale dick-first and you think I’m going to get bored of you? I will never be enough for you. Not after that.”
Before I can answer, there’s a loud knock on the door.
“Is everything okay?” Thad shouts.
I turn and look at Delilah. There’s a single streak down her face, her eyes brimming with fury.
“Delilah?” calls Ava.
Delilah looks away, takes a deep breath. Shoves her hands into her eyes.
“I’m going to answer the door and tell them you had an emergency,” she says, voice wavering with forced calm. She puts her hands down, looks at me. “And then you’re going to take my car, and you’re going to leave. I don’t give a shit where you go, I just want you gone.”
“Del —"
“I don’t want you here!” she says, voice rising. “You don’t belong here. Is that what you want me to say? You don’t belong here. Get out.”
She walks past me to the door, an angry blur. Stops in front of it, takes a deep breath, and before she opens it I walk away from her, into the bedroom. Throw my suitcase on the bed.
“Hey, sorry,” I hear her saying. “Seth had some kind of beer emergency, so he has to go back right now…”
Less than five minutes later, I’m gone.
Chapter Forty-Three
Delilah
I fold my legs onto the chair, watching the mountain. There’s a mug of coffee cradled in my hands, though it’s already ice-cold. The mountain’s blue, then silver, then pale yellow as the sun comes up behind me, washes it with light.
I take a sip of the disgusting coffee and make myself the colors change, committing myself to it even though I don’t like sunrises.
I’m not a morning person. I’m not getting up early t0 rejoice in the promise of a new day while breathing in hope and light or whatever shit morning people do. If I’m seeing a sunrise, it’s probably because something’s gone wrong and I never went to bed.
For instance, right now.
I take another sip — ugh — pull my feet up further, onto the cushion covering the metal chair. It doesn’t help the cold but it gives me something to think about it, at least.
I couldn’t sleep after Seth left. I didn’t bother trying. I put all the shit back in my box. I put the box back. I stormed around the condo for a little while before remembering that the lobby has free coffee starting at five in the morning, so I threw a robe on over my sweater and came down here.
And now I’m sitting on the balcony, overlooking the town, watching the sun come up in the freezing cold because it feels like what I want right now.
I want to sit here until I can’t stand it, then go roast myself by a fire. I want to get drunk and just off a ski lift, just to see what happens. Get a full-face tattoo. Run naked through town. I want to do something reckless and destructive and transformative, because right now I’m so fucking tired of myself I can’t stand it.
Behind me, the balcony door opens, and I sigh into the coffee mug.
“Hey, Freckles,” my dad says.
I turn, surprised.
“You’re not cold?”
“Hey,” I say.
“Well, here’s a blanket,” he says, and hands me one, thick and woolen with a geometric pattern. I recognize it from the penthouse.
“Thanks,” I say.
He settles in the chair next to me, fully dressed in slacks and sneakers, a puffy parka, coffee in a travel mug. I’m still in pajamas, a giant sweater, a robe, and slippers. We must make a hell of a pair right now.
“Your mom and I got into a fight up here once,” he says, leaning back, sneakered feet crossing at the ankle. “We were here for our first wedding anniversary. I think you were about six months old.”
I was born about six months after my parents’ wedding, and yes, that’s why they got married.
“What about?” I ask, eyes still on the mountain.
He sighs, laces his fingers together around the mug he’s holding.
“I don’t even remember,” he says, thoughtfully. “That might have been the one over the eggbeater.”
They divorced before I was two, so it’s not exactly a secret that they didn’t get along.
“Sounds travels, huh?” I say, looking into the mug. I don’t want to have this conversation, but at least it’s with my dad, who’ll relay it to Vera, not with Vera herself.
“A bit,” he says.
“Sorry,” I say, and tilt my head back against the glass wall behind me. “I know it’s… I know I’m me. Sorry you had to hear that.”
He reaches out, over the arms of our chairs, and puts an arm around me.
“It’s great that you’re you,” he says, punctuating it with a shoulder squeeze.
“It doesn’t feel like it,” I say, too tired and spent to do anything but tell the truth. “It mostly feels like…”
I trail off, my mind blank as the morning sky.
“… I do everything a little bit wrong, and that spirals into me doing everything a lot wrong,” I finish.
There’s a long, considered silence.
“I wish your mom was still around,” he finally says. “I miss her sometimes, even now.”
I exhale, my breath blurring the sky.
“Me too,” I say.
“You’re so much like her,” he says. “I think by now, you’d be great friends.”
I can’t help but laugh, my head still back against the wall. When she died I was fifteen, and I was an asshole in all the ways fifteen-year-olds can be asshol
es, so we were going through a rough patch.
“Well, we had a lot in common,” I say.
“I mean it,” my dad says.
“Thanks,” I say, then take another sip of cold coffee. Grimace. “I just feel like such a fuck up.”
“Freckles, everyone sitting on this balcony right now has gotten into a shouting match with a parter in the dead of night,” he says, sounding very stoic. “It’s just the way of things. Besides, you can’t fuck up badly enough that I won’t still love you.”
I shift positions so I can lean my head against his shoulder and close my eyes.
“I love you too,” I say.
We stay there like that for a few minutes. The sun keeps rising. I wonder if Seth’s back in Sprucevale yet, or still on the road, or even going back to Sprucevale, or maybe he’s already in a cheap motel —
“Can we go back inside?” I ask, cutting off my own train of thought. “It’s kind of cold out here.”
“Thank God, I thought you’d never ask,” my dad says, already standing, offering me his hand. “How about I take you to breakfast? There’s a great hole in the wall that Vera never wants to go to.”
I wrap the blanket around myself and shuffle toward the door.
“Sounds perfect,” I say.
Chapter Forty-Four
Seth
By seven-thirty that morning, I’m on the outskirts of Sprucevale. The drive should have been longer by an hour, but I did ninety the whole way back and only stopped once.
I want Snowpeak, West Virginia and skiing and Delilah and her family in the rearview mirror. I want to stop hearing her say I just want you gone. I want to stop seeing the look on her face when she mentioned Mindy’s tattoo.
Even her car smells like her. It feels like her. There’s a hula girl on the dashboard and her sunglasses in the glove box along with three half-empty bottles of sunscreen and it all reminds me that it happened again.
After everything, it happened again. We fucked and we fought and now I’m driving away from her, furious and heartbroken, like I’m stuck in some nightmare time loop. I can’t believe I’m not used to it by now. I can’t believe that I don’t have a system for dealing with my post-Delilah weeks; a Gantt chart or something that says sleep for eighteen hours and then bake three cakes, play video games, take up Crossfit. Find someone new for a night.