Josh slipped his hand into mine. It made me gasp and I shivered with this strange heat I wasn’t sure about.
“Oh, damn,” Murph said. “Josh picked up on something here.”
“Don’t kill it for me, brother,” Josh said. “Now. Go.”
The three guys charged out of the clearing and disappeared into the night.
The smell was really weird. It wasn’t cigarette smoke, that was for sure. I knew that smell. This was… different.
“Sorry about them,” Josh said.
“Were they… were you…”
“Doesn’t matter now,” he said. “What are you doing out here alone like this? You have to stop coming this way, Amelia. It’s dangerous back here. You were lucky I was here, again.”
I stared at Josh and nodded.
Like a stupid fool, my head just kept bobbing up and down.
And I didn’t stop either. I couldn’t stop.
“Whoa. Hey.” Josh gently touched my shoulders. “Amelia. Stop moving your head.”
But I didn’t stop.
He shook me. “Hey. What’s wrong? What happened to you?”
I snapped back to reality.
I looked into Josh’s eyes.
They were dark and evil.
But I had seen worse.
And something about Josh just felt… good.
“Amelia,” he said. “Say something. Do something.”
I burst into tears.
Chapter 13
Sneakin’ Around
THEN
(Josh)
She was a fucking wreck.
I never saw a girl cry so hard in my life.
I wrapped my arms around her and just let her cry. I didn’t know what else to do. I stood there in the middle of the night, half stoned, wondering what had happened to Amelia.
Better yet - who had hurt her? Because whoever had done this was going to get their face smashed in. I wanted to know who did it. Which boy messed with her heart. She was too young to feel this hurt. So, if some punk wannabe thirteen-year-old asshole decided to mess with her, I was going to make sure he never did it again.
Hell, I could call Murph to call up the others and we’d bring in an entire crew from the Lower Valley and then things could get real nasty.
When Amelia sucked in a breath and suddenly stopped crying, I thought for a second that she had stopped breathing too. My hands were spread wide across her back - not like that - but out of care.
I counted for a few seconds and she didn’t make a sound.
My brain was a little mushy at that moment, so instead of just asking her if she was okay, I moved my hands to her sides and softly dug my fingertips into her ribs.
The second I started tickling her, she jumped back and let out a playful yell.
Watching her jump back and hearing her laugh…
Now I was the one breathless for a few seconds.
“What the hell?” she yelled at me.
“Sorry,” I said. “Thought you’d stopped breathing.”
“You’re an idiot, Josh. I’m breathing. I stopped crying.”
“Why were you crying?”
“Because.”
“No. No way. You have to tell me, Amelia.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“Tell me.”
“Josh.”
“No fucking way,” I growled. “Someone hurt you. You’re not supposed to be out here this late. Or in this part of town. You know that. You were… I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“You’ve only met me a few times.”
“That’s my point. You only cry in front of people you trust. Or unless you’re really hurt.”
“Or maybe both,” she said.
The way she talked sometimes was like she was older than me.
“So, what happened?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Don’t do that. Don’t cry and then make me think all these things…”
“Think what things?” she asked.
“I want to fight someone.”
“Who?”
“Whoever hurt you, Amelia. I want to fight them. I want to beat the hell out of them for making you cry.”
“You’d do that for me?” she asked.
“Of course I would. Nobody should make you cry.”
A smile crept across her face, but it was short-lived.
“Tell me what I can do,” I said to her.
“Hug me again. Then walk me home so I can feel safe.”
The back of her house was completely white and flat. There was a concrete pad with a few steps that served as some kind of back porch. The grass was overgrown. The bushes and shrubs unkempt. An old, rotted shed stood crooked off to the side.
Something about the sight of it bothered me.
This wasn’t a good home for her.
Not that mine was any better.
Which was why I spent so much time on the streets.
I looked over at Amelia and then down at my hand holding hers. Again, not trying anything funny, but just trying to make her feel safe.
I hated that this was her home.
“Just tell me right now,” I said as I stopped and made her stop. “Did… did something happen here?”
I pointed to her house.
Her face was my answer.
So, it wasn’t a boy that hurt her.
It was her father.
“Did he… hit you?” I whispered.
Amelia shook her head.
But the fear on her face…
“He wanted to,” I said. “He came after you. So you ran.”
“I just want to go to sleep, Josh,” she said.
“In there?” I asked.
“It’ll be okay now. It doesn’t last long. Please… just understand.”
I swallowed down all the anger inside me. “Okay.”
I walked Amelia to the back door.
“Come inside,” she said.
“No. That’s not a good idea.”
“Please. I just want some sleep.”
I gritted my teeth. “Okay.”
We went inside. The kitchen counter was full of empty beer bottles.
The kitchen smelled like burned chicken.
The sink was overflowing with dishes.
The kitchen table was cluttered with papers, mail, magazines, and what looked like old, greasy car parts.
The house smelled like dust and mold.
Each breath I took made me more and more angry.
I kept my mouth shut as Amelia led the way through the house toward the stairs.
At the bottom of them, I pulled at her hand. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I meant what I said before. About fighting someone for you. I don’t care how old the person is…”
“I know,” she said.
We went up the stairs and snuck down the hallway. She opened a bedroom door and I was then inside her room. A bed. A nightstand. A dresser missing the second drawer down. The walls empty but with plenty of tiny holes from nails. The corner next to the closet had a small stack of stuffed animals.
“I really just want to sleep,” she said.
“You’re safe now,” I said to her.
“Can you just sit on the edge of the bed and wait?”
“Of course.”
Amelia shut the small light off next to her bed and we were in darkness. There was a tiny bit of light coming in from the moon outside. That was it.
“Thank you, Josh,” she whispered as she took her hand from mine.
I heard the sound of the bed squeaking as she climbed into it.
When she stopped moving, I sat down on the edge.
A few silent seconds went by and I felt her touch my back.
“I’m here,” I whispered.
“Okay.”
“Tell me about those stuffed animals,” I said.
“What?”
“In the corner. I saw them.”
“Oh, jeez
. I feel stupid. I’m too old…”
“Nah. You’re not too old. They mean something to you.”
“All I have left are Mr. Monkey, Mary, and Jeffrey. There are a few others, but they’re not important.”
I smiled. “I get it. I used to have that stuff too.”
“Used to? You got rid of them?”
“No. I gave them away.”
“Because you got too old?”
“No,” I said. “Gave them to someone else who needed them more.”
“I hope whoever got them is happy,” Amelia said.
I didn’t respond.
The ‘whoever’ that got them… was dead.
Amelia fell asleep.
I stood and pulled the covers up to her shoulder.
I quietly shut the door and stood in the hallway.
It was crazy.
I was in Amelia’s house.
I looked to my right and saw a door down the hallway was open.
My lip curled.
That’s where he was sleeping.
Amelia’s father.
I knew exactly what Amelia was going through and what she must have felt.
Before I could finish my thought, I was already walking down the hallway.
As I crept through the open door, I had no idea what I planned on doing. Drag her father out of the bed and beat him up?
When I looked at the bed, there was only one person in it.
Sleeping.
It looked like a woman.
It was Amelia’s mother.
My high had all but been washed away. Reality struck me hard and I knew I had to get out of the house.
I moved through the house with speed and went out the door I came through.
Halfway across Amelia’s yard, I stopped and looked down at my hand. I had been holding her hand. It had been nice. I looked over my shoulder and nodded at the house.
I wasn’t sure if she was going to sleep well or not.
I knew I wasn’t going to sleep at all.
I called Murph so I could catch another high and try to forget about Amelia.
Chapter 14
Fancy to Filthy
NOW
(Amelia)
There was a box tucked away under my bed that contained the only remaining evidence that I had once been a kid. I never opened the box. I didn’t even want the box. But anytime I thought about getting rid of it, it just felt wrong. The emotions that came with that box were just too much to handle. Which was why a year ago I took all those dumb stories I used to write out of it. I had the chance of a lifetime, when I wrote a book on a whim and ended up getting agent representation for it. That agent fought hard to get a deal. And the deal that ended up on the table was washed away in the blink of an eye.
Same for that agent. Here, then gone.
In my mind, I thought this is it. Opening that box of memories was worth it at the time. To get those old stories out. The stories my mother would read and laugh at. The stories where she would say aww at the sad parts. The stories where she’d always gently put the story down, tilt her head to the side, and smile. She’d tell me how amazing the story was and then somehow, in the span of ten seconds, she would have every character memorized. And she’d talk to me about the story and the characters as though she had authored them.
I missed her. I missed her a lot.
But I didn’t miss the life that came with her.
Which made everything else - including that box under my bed - really complicated.
It didn’t help matters that I had met up with Josh again. He wasn’t in that box under the bed. Nobody knew about Josh. Josh had been my dirty little secret of sorts for a long time. I had this thing built up in my mind about him. But it never happened. So, going through that box of memories wouldn’t do a thing. Because Josh resided somewhere else. Somewhere really dangerous.
Josh had been stuck in my heart. For years.
My phone buzzed on my bed as I stared down at the stupid clipart covers of my first few stories.
Printing those covers was a dangerous task.
Wasting colored ink was a capital crime in my house.
And if my father…
I turned my head and swallowed hard.
I didn’t recognize the number and normally would have just ignored it.
But my heart and mind synced together.
It’s Josh!
The voice in my head squealed like the young girl standing in her bedroom window watching the older, cute boy running through her yard, unsure of the feelings she felt and the places she felt those feelings.
I answered the call, expecting his flirty wit and bad boy attitude.
Except it wasn’t Josh.
“Do you have my story yet?” a woman’s voice said.
“Hello?”
“Amelia?”
“This is Amelia… who is…”
“Bel.”
“Oh. Right. Bel. Hey. Hi. Hello.”
Stop saying variations of hello, Amelia.
“Is this a bad time?” Bel asked.
I looked down at the old printed stories. I looked over to my dresser and saw my laptop resting there. Unused.
“No,” I said.
“So, how did everything go? I haven’t heard from you. It was a few days ago.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Did you go?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yes.”
“That’s great,” she said. “I’m amazed by his work. Getting a story out of him is like-”
“There really is no story, Bel.”
“I thought you said you saw him.”
“I did,” I said. “I tried to talk to him. He was standoffish, and then left.”
“He left?”
“Out the back door and was gone for the rest of the night.”
“Wait a second,” Bel said. “Josh walked out on his own night?”
“I guess. I mean, yeah. I went back the next day and-”
“You did? That’s great. So, what’s the story then?”
I swallowed hard.
The story was in my nightstand drawer. The letter to Delilah. That was the story. I wanted to write about Delilah. Who she was. Where she came from. Why someone had written her such a beautiful letter. The person who wrote it was so heartbroken… and yet Delilah was so beautiful and perfect, how did she not know how much she was loved?
“Amelia?” Bel asked.
“Yeah. Sorry. Uh… I don’t have much right now. I’m sorry. Grace shouldn’t have gotten involved in my… business…”
“She means well,” she said. “And I think she sees me in you. Or you in me. I’m not sure how that goes.”
“Oh?”
“I could tell you stories about my life, but it won’t matter,” Bel said with a laugh. “The offer is there, Amelia. I know it’s been a few days, but I would still love to put something up about Josh. I’m not sure he realizes how far his artwork travels. He’s done interviews before. Cliché stuff. I was sort of hoping you’d take a more fictional spin to it.”
“Make stuff up?”
“No. Write what you see. You said it yourself about him being standoffish. Write about it. Where you met him. What you said. Then he took off? That’s fantastic. Did he do that in the past? I mean, it’s a really interesting story.”
“I’m not sure… that feels like an invasion of his privacy,” I said. “Plus, I might have something better.”
“And what could that be?”
I bit my lip as I looked back at my nightstand. “I found a letter.”
“A letter?”
“On the ground. And it’s this beautiful letter to a woman. This man - or woman - was so in love with this person… I can’t describe it quickly. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever read.”
“And you want to write about it?”
“It’s in my mind.”
“Well, you do what you feel like
, Amelia. I want you to write about Josh. Anything else, it’s on your time.”
“Right. Thanks for the opportunity.”
“Of course.”
The call went dead.
I set my attention back to the stories on the bed.
Josh wanted to read one.
Then he’d tell me his story.
The question was, what did I plan on doing with his story?
He was the boy (mostly a man) who came so close to tasting what was left of my innocence, only to disappear for what felt like forever.
It was tough to think about.
I ditched everything right there on the bed and reached for my nightstand.
I wanted to read the letter again.
I wanted to be Delilah.
My shift started out crazy. A table of twenty had called to give a fifteen-minute heads up. Tables were quickly pushed together to accommodate the large group. My mind was not there, but when was it really? Running around a restaurant, taking order after order, trying to make sure everything was perfect for everyone wasn’t exactly the dream I had while sitting next to my bed during the worst of nights.
I was supposed to be in a quiet apartment, somewhere in a city, near the top floor, where I would spend hours writing the most perfect and touching story for the world to experience. And when that got the best of me, I’d sneak away to a cabin in the woods where I’d hide out some more.
Dreams were good to have.
Dreams in a way saved me when I was younger.
But now… I needed something more than just dreams.
The table of twenty was a massive reunion of old college friends. Friends who were now older, in relationships, married, divorced. The group was loud, funny, and stayed for a couple of hours.
When they finally got up to leave, a sense of relief went through me.
I looked at all of them, realizing they were my age. They were all so grown up in a way. They were living a part of life I really knew nothing about. Chasing careers instead of dreams. Finding stability instead of risk.
Ed was the guy who sat at the head of the pushed together tables and had commanded the entire group while they were there. He was the last to leave as he stood there, trying to stack plates.
A Letter to Delilah Page 8
