“Delilah,” he says, solemnly. “Will you marry me?”
There’s a moment, then, where all the sound drops from the world. There’s a silence beyond silence, still and heavy.
When it ends I’m already shaking my head, pulling my hand out of his. Stepping backward like he’s just offered me a tarantula.
“No,” I’m saying. “No. I can’t.”
He’s frozen. Shocked. I keep shaking my head.
“What?” he says, without moving, that single word full of pain and betrayal. “Why?”
“I think we should take a break,” I blurt out. “Just some time apart so we can think about things and not talk and not see each other, because things have been so bad between us lately and I think if we just took that time apart it would really help. So a break. Just for a while.”
The box snaps shut. He stands.
“A break?”
I nod like a puppet on a string. He shoves his hands into the pockets of the coat he never even took off, looks away. Swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“We can’t take a break,” he says. “I know it’s been rough lately, but that’s temporary, Bird, I’m gonna graduate in May and then I’m coming back and we’ll be together, and we’ll get —”
“Please don’t.”
His knuckles are white around the ring box, and the guilt is huge, overwhelming. A shadow trying to eat me alive.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. I step forward, stop, because Seth is hurt and my urge is to hold him, comfort him, but what do I do when I’m the source of the pain? What do I do when this is my fault for not loving him enough?
He shakes his head. Shoves the box back into his pocket, steps away from me.
“I don’t want to take a break,” he says. “I want our plan, the way it was supposed to be —"
“This wasn’t our plan!” I say, desperately, but Seth keeps shaking his head.
“I can’t take a break,” he says, his face falling.
I swallow hard, and a tear spills down my cheek. I didn’t even realize I was crying.
I want to say a thousand things right now — that I’m sorry, that I didn’t want to hurt him, that I love him but not enough, that I want to keep him but I don’t — but I can’t get any of them through my lips.
“That’s it,” he whispers.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, and he shakes his head like he can shake me off.
“It’s okay,” he says, his voice sounding strange, strangled.
Then he steps forward. Puts his hand to my face. Bends down.
Kisses me for the last time, and then it’s over.
“Goodbye, Bird,” Seth says, and then he turns and leaves the house.
I don’t know how long I stand there, crying. Winona finds me, makes me sit down. I never tell her what really happened.
Then next time I see Seth, it’s eight months later at a dive bar.
Chapter Forty-Six
Delilah
Present Day
The car ride back feels like the longest car ride in the history of car rides. Thankfully it’s with Ava and Thad, not someone else, and Ava keeps up a bubbly, cheerful running commentary for most of the time, as if she can cover over the unpleasantness of the night before.
She can’t. I feel like hell in the back seat of Thad’s BMW, wishing that we didn’t have to stop at every single vista point and Starbucks along the drive, but somewhere in the back of my mind I know that Ava is, in her way, being extraordinarily kind to me.
I also know that Ava at twenty-two is probably a better person than I was. For all my misgivings, she and Thad seem really good together: she listens, rapturously, to his stories. He laughs at her jokes in a way that suggests he’s besotted. She’s not me, thank God.
When we get to my house, my car’s there. I wave goodbye to Ava and Thad, look through the windows, in the trunk, but there’s nothing to suggest anyone else’s presence. The key is under my welcome mat, and when I step inside, I hold my breath against the tiny spark of hope, buried in my chest.
My house is empty. The spark flares, flickers, dies. No one’s there. Not even a note.
Not that I thought that there would be. Not that I thought I deserved anything but this silent emptiness, because I’m the one who shouted I want you gone and I’m not allowed to get upset that he did what I asked.
That night, I go over to Lainey’s place. She lives in a stately brick house near downtown, on a fancy street where her neighbors routinely report her to the homeowners association for her Black Lives Matter flag.
We watch The Batchelor and I tell her about the fight. Then I tell her again. We get tacos delivered from Gloria’s, Sprucevale’s best and only Mexican restaurant, and then I cry into my carnitas and I tell her one more time, now with angry editorializing.
She says all the right things, like that must have really hurt your feelings and absolutely, it’s a betrayal. She holds me while I ask her what’s wrong with me that I’ve done this again and again, and she gently reminds me that humans are nothing but flesh and bone running on less electricity than it takes to power a lightbulb.
It does make me feel better, which is why we’re friends.
We share a churro. We judge the romantic choices of everyone on The Bachelor, and that night, I sleep in her guest room because I don’t want to leave her warm, wonderful house.
Ava calls. Winona calls. Vera calls. Even Olivia calls, and I ignore them all. The only call I answer is from my dad, and I swear him to secrecy.
They call again. I know I’m being an asshole and making them worry more, but their concern feels like a burden that I can’t carry right now.
My cousin Georgia calls. Wyatt, her brother, texts, then calls, then texts, then calls. I don’t answer any of them, because answering them feels like climbing out of a hole I’ve dug myself into and I don’t even have a ladder.
Life goes on. Work goes on. I do touch-ups, line work, color work. I have a consultation about a full-back tattoo of a stylized wolf, and it’s badass as hell. I cover up an ex-con’s grinning frog tattoo. It’s a busy week, and I wonder again if I should hire a second artist. Move to a bigger studio. Develop my business plan beyond make this work so I don’t have to ask my dad for money, because I’m somewhat startled to realize I’ve already done that.
Whenever I look in the mirror, I fantasize about tattooing something on my face, just to do it. A star. A teardrop. A tiny broken heart. It doesn’t really matter what, though if my volunteer work has taught me anything, it’s to be careful with face tattoos because apparently they all mean you’ve murdered someone.
I keep avoiding calls from my nice, well-meaning family.
Then, one night nearly a week after our fight, I do it.
Not on the face. That’s too much. It’s on the inside of my left wrist: a small, black star, about half an inch across. It’s been a couple of years since I tattooed myself — that’s how most tattoo artists learn at first; we almost universally have some very bad thigh tattoos — and I have to lash my forearm to the chair with gauze to hold still, but I manage.