“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 bedroom.
“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