CLAIRE: Ris! For god’s sake.
IRIS: I said what I said.
“Who are you texting?” Astrid asked, glancing at Claire’s phone white-knuckled between her hands.
“No one,” Claire said. “Josh. He’s . . . bringing Ruby over to the house.”
Astrid nodded and Claire retreated toward the window, her phone abandoned in the cup holder.
Delilah fired off one final text.
I still hate you both.
* * *
AFTER ASTRID HAD dropped off Iris and Claire, Delilah remained in the back seat.
“I’m not your chauffeur,” she said as she pulled away from Claire’s house on Linden Avenue. Delilah just stared at the window, taking in the Craftsman that looked exactly like something Claire would love. Small and cozy, with a large front porch and bright white trim, natural stone base and dusky-blue shingled siding. Claire walked up the front walk without looking back, her hips swaying under her tight jeans in a way that made last night rise up in Delilah’s mind like a flash flood.
Christ.
All morning and afternoon, she had tried not to think about it. She’d kissed Claire, felt her up good and proper, and now she could move on. It didn’t matter that Astrid didn’t know and wouldn’t know until after the wedding—or the non-wedding or breakup or whatever the fuck Iris was trying to accomplish—Delilah knew. And Delilah had gotten through life by putting herself first, only concerning herself with what she knew was true, because she’d learned a long time ago that she couldn’t control anyone but herself. She couldn’t change anyone’s mind, couldn’t make someone love her who had no interest in doing so, and couldn’t keep someone from leaving her if that’s what they wanted to do. She couldn’t make agents see her. Couldn’t make art lovers buy her pieces.
She couldn’t make Claire feel unashamed over what had happened. And she couldn’t change the fact that she was stuck with the woman and her lovely hips for another ten days. All she could do was mind her business and take the damn photos.
Except as Astrid pulled away, Claire paused on her porch and turned. She met Delilah’s eye through the window, and Delilah felt it—that look—shoot down her legs. It was that same look Claire shot over her shoulder at the brunch. Interest. Intrigue. Fuck, it was want.
“Hello?” Astrid said.
Delilah swallowed and looked away, sighing heavily. “The inn is what? A mile from here? Just drive and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Astrid released her own sigh. “I asked you if I could see some of the photos you’ve taken so far.”
“Oh.” Delilah rubbed her forehead. She had to get her shit together. It was a kiss. A really good one. A great one, but still, it was just lips and tongues. Delilah had kissed a hundred people, heard a hundred people gasp into her mouth like she was the air and they’d been drowning.
Or . . . well, fine, she hadn’t heard a hundred people make that sound when she was kissing them, but surely, she’d experienced it before.
“What the hell, Delilah!”
She jolted in her seat. “God, sorry.”
“Where are you, back in New York?”
Delilah rubbed her hands down her face. “If only.”
Astrid pressed her mouth flat and turned onto Main Street, which was bustling with the predinner crowd. The sky was a marbled gray and white, the promise of rain and an earthy scent in the air.
“That’s Claire’s shop,” Astrid said as they passed by River Wild Books. A few customers milled around inside, a woman with blue hair manning the counter.
“Mmm.”
“You went there a lot as a kid, didn’t you?” Astrid asked.
Delilah leaned her head against the back of the seat. “Mmm.”
“It’s different now. Claire’s turned it all modern and beautiful.”
“Mmm.”
Astrid huffed an irritated breath that made Delilah smile. She pulled up outside the Kaleidoscope, and Delilah leaped out like the car was on fire.
A bath. That’s what she needed. A bath, some room service, a huge glass of wine. But when she turned to wave goodbye to Astrid, spit out something polite like thanks for the free spa treatments even though you’d rather I hadn’t been there at all as evidenced by your three-person reservation, her stepsister had rounded the car, purse on her shoulder, eyes wide with expectancy.
“Um . . . are you staying here too?” Delilah asked, jutting a thumb toward the inn. “Spencer snores, huh? Or wait, he makes you sleep on the couch when you’ve eaten garlic and you just can’t handle that lumpy sofa anymore.”
Astrid, unfortunately, did not take the bait. “I’d like to see the pictures I’m paying a fortune for, if you don’t mind.”
“You mean Mommy Dearest is paying a fortune for.”
Astrid just pursed her lips and continued to stare at Delilah. The woman would win a national blinking contest, hands down.
“What, you don’t trust me?” Delilah said, pressing her hand to her chest. “I am an artiste. A visionary. An intrepid explorer through the wastelands of time. A veritable—”
“I’ll just get the key from Nell,” Astrid said, brushing past Delilah and heading into the three-story brick building.
“Oh, well played,” Delilah said, following after her.
Once in her room, she tossed her suitcase onto the bed and removed her camera from its bag. Hooking it up to her laptop on the desk, she clicked around on the camera until all the photos she’d taken so far started uploading into Lightroom, which she’d always preferred over Photoshop. Less flashy, but simple was good in Delilah’s opinion. Cropping, exposure and white balance, contrast and color, vibrancy and saturation. That’s all she needed to play with. The real art was in the eye, the angle, the moment she hit the shutter.
“Keep in mind, these aren’t edited,” she said as Astrid sat at the desk and watched as images flipped onto the screen, piling into Lightroom like a deck of cards.
Delilah felt a flare of nerves. She’d never shown Astrid her work. Not once. Not the unflattering photos Delilah had taken of her and her coven back when they were teenagers, not a single wedding shot or portrait or a black and white of a piece of gum on the sidewalk. But now, she was going to see a lot. Wedding stuff, sure, but also just random shit Delilah snapped when she was walking through town after talking with Claire in River Wild, images she took just because they caught her eye, like a lollipop stick in the grass and a crack in a wineglass and—
Delilah’s posture snapped straight.