Aaron called me for the fourth time as I sipped another beer.
I stood in my apartment alone, dressed in my cleanest jeans and a shirt with buttons, the sleeves rolled up twice. Azor had a showing at Sasha’s gallery and I was requested to be there. I told him he could use the painting we worked on.
It was a big night for him.
I promised to be there.
I ignored Aaron’s call for the fourth time.
His voicemails and texts were vague. That was his sign that he was trying to check up on me. Which I appreciated, but he had his own family to take care of. That wasn’t me. Last time we talked, he pushed at me about Amelia and I was one second away from punching him when Toby came into the room with a broken wheel off of a toy truck that Aaron went to work, quickly fixing it.
I finished my beer and left the apartment.
Letting Amelia go was hard. The answers she didn’t have hurt.
The bigger problem… I was empty.
Amelia had taken everything from me. I had given everything to her.
Almost everything.
I had no desire to take a picture. To draw a line. To paint the smallest of marks.
I knew the truth of Delilah.
But I also knew the truth of Amelia.
I couldn’t live without her.
“You’re going to need this soon,” I said to Azor.
I handed him back the flask he had given to me the night of my gallery showing.
That seemed like a lifetime ago.
The night Amelia stepped back into my life. The night she pushed at me. The night I dropped the fucking letter to Delilah, and she found it…
“Hey, thanks for this,” Azor said.
He was dressed in all black and smelled like the cologne counter at a department store. And he wore about fifteen pounds of gold jewelry on his neck, wrists, and fingers. I wasn’t sure what kind of look he was going for, but it was Azor. Even he tried to make some kind of fashion statement.
“Congrats on tonight,” I said.
“Have a drink with me,” he said.
“Oh, I’ve been drinking out of that already,” I said with a grin. “It’s probably half empty by now.”
Azor laughed. “Hey. You know this is because of you. You walked into my apartment and destroyed that terrible painting…”
“I was an asshole for doing that,” I said.
“No,” he said. “I was closing myself up. I was forcing a certain look. You broke that, Josh. You were vicious and it worked.”
“You can thank me in your speech later,” I said. “Go enjoy your night.”
Azor lumbered into the crowd waiting for him. Everyone gathered around the painting he and I worked on. I refused to answer a question about the painting. I wanted all the attention to be on Azor.
Sasha slithered her way toward me, her tight dress and tick tock hips trying to flirt, but it didn’t work on me.
“This is exciting,” she whispered.
“He’s a good guy,” I said. “He deserves more. Hope he chases this down.”
“What about you? Got anything for me?”
“Not yet.”
“You give any thought about next door yet?”
I looked at her. “You’re as bad as Aaron.”
“We could be neighbors.”
“That could be a bad thing.”
“Or a really good thing,” Sasha said.
“I work at my own pace.”
“Slow, but worth it,” she said.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
Someone called her name and she hurried away like a seductive siren.
I shook my head and then felt someone touch my shoulder.
I jumped away, not wanting to be touched.
“It’s just me,” a familiar voice said.
Delilah is here…
My brain scrambled for a second as I turned to see Michelle standing behind me.
Her skin was tan and her eyes brighter than normal.
“Michelle,” I said.
“I’m only in town for a couple of days,” she said. “Came for a quick visit. Sasha mentioned there was something going on here, so I wanted to come and see it. Come and see you.”
“Here I am,” I said.
“Here you are. You look…”
I laughed. “Trying to find a word that makes me sound like hell?”
“Maybe.”
“You look good,” I said. “Tan and relaxed.”
“It’s perfect out there. Perfect.”
“That’s good.”
Michelle closed in on me. “Let’s get a drink. We have one night, Josh. I know the rules. And you know mine. Well, my new rules. I’ll be gone by sunrise because I have a plane to catch.”
She smelled like honey and sugar. The look in her eyes begged me.
The temptation blanketed me, wanting to pull me closer to Michelle.
She could make me forget about everything. That was the one thing she knew how to do.
I watched her hand reach for my face.
I grabbed her wrist before she could touch me, and I pulled her into the back area of the gallery. She giggled and ran with me, thinking things were going somewhere they weren’t.
“If you came all this way for a quick fuck, you’re in the wrong place,” I said.
“Since when do we do quick?” she asked.
“Michelle, no,” I said.
She looked into my eyes and gasped. “It happened.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“You found her.”
“I found who?”
Michelle covered her mouth and then ran a hand through her thick hair. “You finally did it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Josh, I never asked about her. Or told you about her.”
“Who is her?” I asked.
“Delilah.”
Hearing Michelle say the name put ice in my veins. “What?”
“We had an agreement. I was fine with it. I wanted more, sure. I thought maybe one day you’d wake up next to me and feel something more. But you didn’t. And that’s okay. But there were nights you would talk to her in your sleep. You would talk to Delilah.”
“I talked to…”
“Delilah,” Michelle said. “That’s the person you love. I mean it’s pretty obvious with the way things happened. You have her now. I can tell by the look in your eyes.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Michelle,” I said.
“Have a drink with me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
I stepped toward her and was an inch away. “No.”
In a strange moment of déjà vu, I walked out the same door I had walked out of the night Amelia showed up.
My phone started to ring.
It was Aaron, one more time.
I decided to finally take his call.
“What the hell do you want, man?” I asked. “I know you’re checking-”
“You need to get over here, Josh,” Aaron said. “Right now.”
“For what?”
“For the reason I’ve been calling you all day. You’re supposed to be in my corner at all times.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Just get here. Now.”