“Bless your heart, you tried it,” Eli says to me, in a slow, sarcastic drawl.
I close my eyes, lean my head back, and count to ten before I do something stupid like throw silverware.
Normally, I don’t mind the brotherly ribbing so much. It can be annoying, sure, but I’ve done my fair share in the past so I can’t complain that much. Like when we told Eli that everyone knew he was having a thing with Violet, and I thought he might stab one of us with a carving knife.
Right now, however, I’m hungover as fuck, the coffee and aspirin is wearing off, and I feel like gum scraped off the bottom of someone’s shoe. My eyes feel like sandpaper. My brain feels like sandpaper.
This morning, just as I was leaving the bedroom, Delilah rolled over, still in bed, and for a moment I thought she was waking up. I thought that maybe she’d lift her head and open her eyes and see me standing there, dressed, ready to leave.
I thought maybe she’d tell me to stay.
She didn’t. She didn’t even wake up, so I got one last eyeful of her — on her stomach, face awash in wild orange curls, red and blue and orange of her tattoos bright against the white sheets, and I left just like I said I would.
For once I did the reasonable, sensible, adult thing, and it sucked.
“Why would I ever want to keep any of you from knowing my every waking thought and movement?” I ask, eyes still closed.
“Remember the time you dragged me into the attic and made me kiss Charlie while you watched?” Daniel says, sounding far happier than I’d like.
“Yeah, you really hated that,” I deadpan, finally opening my eyes.
“Are you talking about me?” says Charlie’s voice.
“Only nice things,” Eli says.
“You better,” she says, and walks into the kitchen. “Anyway, Thalia’s entertaining both our children at once, so I think Caleb should marry her.”
Caleb turns stop-sign red.
“Sorry,” she says, coming over. “Just kidding! I mean, or not. Your call. I like her and all but there’s no rush, I didn’t mean to make it weird. Move at your own pace! Don’t let society dictate how your relationship should proceed? Why are we all staring at Seth?”
Dammit.
“He went back to his ex again,” Daniel says calmly. “Did you have a scone? They’re good.”
“They really are, I had a cardamom one and it was great,” she tells me.
“You didn’t think it was a little dry?” Eli asks, still leaning against the counter.
“I think I’m not gonna look a gift scone in the mouth,” Charlie says. “Which ex, the bad one?”
“She’s not bad,” I tell the cabinets over the sink a little more forcefully than necessary.
“Oh, she holds you under her thrall to feed on your soul but she’s not bad,” Caleb says, shutting the dishwasher a little harder than necessary.
“What the fuck?” I ask, turning toward him.
“Name a time in the last ten years you’ve seen her and been happy afterward,” Caleb says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Go on, I’ll wait.”
“Wait. Ten years?” Charlie asks.
“We’ve had a very on-again, off-again thing,” I tell her, still glaring at my brother.
“Sure. He disappears for a weekend, she drains him of his life force, and then they don’t see each other again for months,” Caleb explains.
“Go fuck yourself,” I suggest.
“Both of you stop it. This is Delilah, right?” Charlie asks, holding out her hands toward us, like we’re children she can separate.
“Yes,” we say in unison.
“Redhead with a lot of tattoos?”
“Right,” I say, crossing my arms, leaning against the sink.
Despite myself I think of her last night, in the mirror, wearing the robe. Letting me trace the lines of the clockwork heart tattoo on her warm, slightly damp skin. The way I could feel her chest rising and falling under my fingers.
And later, watching a trickle of sweat drip from her hollow of her throat and over it as she rode me slow and hard, her eyes half-closed, her lips parted.
“I took a yoga class with her last year,” Charlie says. “She seemed cool. The squid tattoo is badass.”
She seemed cool.
“It’s a kraken,” I tell her, and she grins.
“Actually, the main thing I remember is the time she farted in the middle of class and then laughed so hard at herself that she fell over,” Charlie goes on, starting to laugh. “And I was the only other person who laughed, and you could tell the teacher was kind of mad but yoga teachers can’t get mad so everyone just pretended it hadn’t happened, which only made it funnier, and I thought the two of us might die. From laughing at a fart.”
She clears her throat.
It’s the first time in years anyone in my family has said something nice about Delilah. I stare at Charlie for a moment, lost for words.
“Anyway, don’t tell her I told you that because it’s not the most flattering story,” Charlie finishes.
“Also, she once left Seth at a motel and he had to walk eight miles to get back to civilization,” Caleb says, as if this is fun, new information.
“I didn’t have to walk eight miles,” I say, crossing my arms like it’ll help keep my temper in. “I could’ve called any of you assholes —"
“A year before that after he saw her, he didn’t answer his phone for a week and when Daniel finally went to his house, he was applying for jobs on Alaskan fishing boats,” Caleb goes on, still talking to Charlie.
“You’d be awful at that,” Eli points out.
“Before that, when he came back from his fuck weekend he chopped so much firewood at mom’s house that there’s still some left after four years,” Caleb says.
“I didn’t realize you two had been seeing each other,” Charlie says, very politely.
I give Caleb a good, hard glare that doesn’t cow him in the least.
“It’s complicated,” I admit, arms still crossed.
“That’s a way of putting it,” says Daniel.
“Seth just has a really delicious soul,” Caleb says, and that’s it.
I swear my vision crackles, and before it’s fully out of his mouth I’ve turned toward him, unfurled my arms, taken a step so we’re face-to-face.
“You’re fucking your twenty-two-year-old-student,” I say, managing to keep my voice low. “She got you fired.”
Caleb doesn’t move, but I can feel his whole body tense.
“I got myself fired,” he says, voice matching my own. “And now my girlfriend is in the living room, playing with my niece and nephew. Where’s Delilah?”
“At least I don’t have to grade her papers.”
A muscle tics in his jaw.
“I’d rather grade papers than get fucked and discar—"
“STOP IT!” hisses Charlie.
I turn, and she’s standing two feet away, hands in fists at her sides. We both take a step back.
“Caleb, don’t be a dick,” Daniel says, calmly.
Caleb looks away, shoves a hand through his hair, the universal Loveless gesture of psychological distress.