Which was a problem, because Delilah didn’t do anything but physical. Claire knew this—whatever this was—could only ever end, but she couldn’t help it. She still wanted this. She wanted Delilah. Maybe Claire could do casual. Maybe she didn’t need dates and squealing with her friends. Maybe she really did just need a good lay.
Even as she thought the words, though, something flickered in her chest. She ignored it. She could do this. It would be good for her. She could reclaim what was supposed to have been her wild twenties while she was busy changing diapers and pushing swings at the park.
“Want to stay for a glass of wine?” she said, but at the exact same moment, Delilah had also spoken, “So I guess I should go” falling out of her mouth like a bomb.
“Oh,” Claire said, again, at the same time as Delilah’s own “Oh.”
The two women looked at each other, then started laughing. Claire’s cheeks heated, and she was thankful for the dim lighting that covered her blush. At the same time, she wanted to know if Delilah was blushing too.
Probably not. She couldn’t imagine Delilah Green blushing over anyone.
“Sorry,” Claire said. “Do you need to go?”
“Not right away, I guess,” Delilah said. “I’ll take that glass of wine.”
“Oh. Great.”
“Great.”
“White or red?”
“Whatever.”
Claire nodded, then continued to stand there like a doofus as Delilah tilted her head at her. “Right. Yeah, let me see what I’ve got.”
Delilah laughed. “Lead the way.”
They walked inside just as Ruby tore down the hall with her backpack, heading for the front door. “Mom, I’m going!”
“Hey, hang on, Rabbit,” Claire said, walking over to her.
Ruby halted and endured a hug from her mother. Claire smiled into her hair, pressed a kiss to her head.
“Mom.”
“Okay, okay. Have fun. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Ruby waved at Delilah and then bolted through the door. Claire stepped outside on the front stoop, watching her daughter walk down the sidewalk to the navy blue bungalow three houses down. When Ruby was safely inside, she stepped back into her own house and closed the door.
The quiet hit her first.
Then the pop of a cork, the glug of liquid into a glass.
She turned to find Delilah in her kitchen, lifting a glass of white wine to her lips.
“I found this already open in the fridge,” Delilah said, angling the pale yellow contents from a bottle of pinot grigio into a second glass. “Hope that’s okay.”
“Totally fine,” Claire said, watching her for a beat. Delilah’s face was her usual calm, but also . . . there was something else there, something in the way she inhaled a slow breath before she took a sip of her drink, the way her cheeks puffed out, just a little, as she exhaled even more slowly.
Was Delilah . . . nervous?
The thought felt like a warm spring rain on a cool afternoon. It opened up a space inside Claire’s chest, made her walk over to the kitchen island and pick up her glass, take a long gulp.
“Does it feel like all we ever do is drink around each other?” Delilah asked.
Claire laughed. “Yeah, a little bit. But, you know, wedding.”
Delilah nodded. “Wedding.”
“And diabolical plans.”
“Those too.”
“So . . . maybe we should do something else, then,” Claire said.
Delilah’s eyebrows lifted, a little smile tilting the corners of her mouth. Claire felt blood rush into her cheeks. God, she was the opposite of smooth. She hadn’t even meant that. Not that she wasn’t thinking about that, constantly and fervently ever since their kiss, but in this moment, all she wanted was to not think at all. Not worry. Not wonder.
Not need.
Before she could think through it, she grabbed the oracle cards her mother had just sent and held them up. “Want to try these out with me?”
Delilah took the box and looked at the front, which featured a woman with dark hair parted down the middle. “Is that . . . Emily Brontë?”
“Very nice, you know your female Victorian authors.”
“More like I was forced to suffer through them during senior English.”
Claire placed a hand on her chest, gasping dramatically. “Suffer?”
“Suffer.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that Wuthering Heights is the least romantic book in the history of Victorian romances, but Jane Eyre?”
“Is that the one where the douchebag hid his wife away in the attic and then lied about it to the girl he wanted to bang who was, like, half his age?”
Claire winced. “Well, when you put it like that.”
“I didn’t put it like that. Brontë put it like that.”
“Okay, fine, yes, Victorian literature was a little messed up.”
“Poor Jane,” Delilah said, sipping her wine. “She deserved better.”
“Let’s see how she’s been immortalized, shall we?” Claire wiggled the box.
“She better damn well have some wisdom beyond stand by your man is all I’m saying,” Delilah said as she grabbed the wine bottle and followed Claire to the couch. Claire settled into one corner, and she definitely did not notice how Delilah sat close enough to her that their knees touched, even though it was a full-size sofa and there was plenty of room to spread out.
Nope, she didn’t notice that at all.
“Okay, how does this work?” Claire said, removing the plastic wrap around the box. Inside was a small coral-colored guide book and a hefty stack of smooth, thick cards. There were thirty cards featuring female writers and forty cards that depicted what the creators called “witch’s materials.”
“Have you ever had a reading done?” Delilah asked. “Tarot or anything?”
Claire tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Does my amateur mother count?”
“Depends. How’d the reading go?”
“I think true love and great wealth were mentioned more than once.”
“Well, damn, let’s put these babies to work,” Delilah said, grabbing a card from the top of the pile. She frowned at it. “It’s . . . a praying mantis.” She turned the card so Claire could see it—indeed, against a cream background, was a solitary praying mantis.