Chasing Delia

by Aubrey Cara

  The word 'dead' came out a bit choked and caused his head to drop to his chest as he let out an aggrieved sigh. I really am an asshole, he thought. Her life was like the lyrics to a sad country western song and here he was making her feel interrogated.

  The intelligent thing to do would be to apologize, call someone else to come escort her home, and leave her to grieve in peace. The thing was, it seemed pretty obvious to Jake the people in her life left her to ‘deal’ on her own a lot. He wondered again how long she had been gone from home. He had checked in at the station, looking at the missing person reports more than once this morning. No one under her name or description had been reported missing. He couldn’t say why but no one reporting her missing irritated him irrationally. He knew plenty of people kept to themselves, choosing to live independent solitary existences, but something inside him screamed that this particular woman would never choose to be alone. He wondered if she willingly played chicken last night with a drunk in a truck bigger than her own, knowing it may end in her death. He determined that Ms. Myers was just going to have to be stuck with him a little longer. He didn’t think she would try to kill herself, but one could never be too certain about these things.

  Coming to a decision he let her know that he would leave her to get cleaned up, but after he got her some clean clothes he would be back and escort her wherever she wanted to go. Her arms were still crossed tight across her chest, but now her toe had started an angry tapping against the floor. With one hip propped out she looked the picture of indignant female. A sexy as hell indignant female, especially as she sassed, “Don’t do me any favors.” She turned and stalked toward her bathroom, either forgetting that her hospital gown was open in the back, or not caring.

  “You’ve got some nice panties, or would those be referred to as bloomers?” he said. “That’s what my granny called hers and I believe she had some just like the ones you’re wearing.”

  She whipped around on a huff and a glare, slamming the bathroom door. Hearing her muffled irritated scream on the other side of the door caused his lips to pull up a bit at the corners. He didn’t know why he needed to goad her. All he knew was as long as he kept her angry at him she wasn’t crying about everything else. The sight of her wounded and broken was something he just couldn’t take.

  *** ***

  Delia was mad, in fact she couldn’t remember ever being this angry. Bloomers indeed! She knew her underwear tended to be on the practical side, and she may have overestimated her size, but she wasn’t trying to be some sexed up hussy!

  Over the years she had learned how to dress plainly, as not to draw attention to herself. When she had been younger she loved dressing cute and flirty, or just stylish, but after she married Connar that all changed. Connar wasn’t around for the first time ever, him being in the military, and she started getting hit on by other men more and more.

  Lord help her if someone from the Schmidts' church saw her talking to another man. After getting regularly ridiculed by Connar’s mother about dressing for attention, she started to feel like maybe she was purposely trying to gain unwanted flirtations. Filled with guilt she started dressing very demurely choosing practical, if not baggie, plain clothes over fitted stylish clothes.

  When Connar got back from boot camp, he only mentioned something disapproving of her frumpy new look once, and it was in front of Mitch and Susan. Susan quickly squelched any mockery to come with pointing out that Delia was a decent women and a responsible military wife now. Sitting in his old reclining chair, his eyes never leaving his newspaper, Mitch nodded his agreement. Connar momentarily looked like he wanted to say something more, but one stern glance from Mitch clammed him up.

  On the drive home that night Connar had patted her knee, telling her she had made him proud. She had felt so loved and her change of style got the validation she needed at the time. Looking back she recalled all the many times Connar had patted her knee or shoulder reassuringly, the same way he patted their mangy dog. Thinking about their scruffy dog Duke, her only real companion over the past couple of years, brought fresh tears to her eyes.

  Shaking off the pain of her musings and trying to regain some of her anger, she looked back down at the clothes Captain Forrester had acquired for her. The full brunt of loathing she felt for the captain, and men like him, rose to the forefront of her mind as she stared at the tie-dye too tight underwear. Despite being boy cut, they revealed more than they concealed. Which was a good thing, any bigger and they would show out the back of the hip hugging low rise jeans. Those barely covered the only generous part of her anatomy, her bottom.

  The top, a purple v-neck t-shirt, looked like the only redeeming part of the ensemble. Then she put it on and discovered just how clingy cotton could be. Over the push up bra, that gave her cleavage she hadn’t known was there, she felt more risqué than she had in years. All together the outfit had to have come from the junior's department!

  Staring at herself in the mirror, she turned this way and that. Even with the nasty bruises on her face and arms— that were nicely extenuated by the purple shirt— she looked cute and young. Younger than she had looked in years.

  Too bad she felt like she got run over by a semi truck that still had a tire placed squarely between her shoulder blades. Shoulders slumped forward with the weight of the world firmly on her back, all of the anger drained out of her. Feeling fully dejected once again she grabbed her failure papers and bag of bloodied clothes. Heading out of her hospital room she was detained by the same perky nurse from earlier that morning.

  “Just need you to sign right here and you will officially be discharged,” the nurse said. “I’ll get you a wheelchair so you can head out.” Delia was about to respond, but Nurse Perky rambled on. “I would decline the wheelchair if I were you. You have Captain Forrester escorting you out. Although policy says you’re supposed to be wheeled out, I would walk out if I were you. That way you can swoon in his direction.” Thus saying, she put a dramatic hand back to her forehead. She looked about to continue so Delia cut her off right there.

  “Thank you,” Delia said. “And I do not need a wheelchair.” Her voice was intensifying as she spoke, and she put a hand on her hip giving it a little attitude. “As for Captain Forrester? You can have him. If you were me, you wouldn’t want him either. Men like him have strings of stupid women that buy into their smiles and the flirtations.”

  That insult was not lost on Nurse Perky who gasped.

  “Pretty boy with the charm of a snake is what he is. Captain Forrester, and men like him, are the scum of the Earth.”

  Nurse Perky was staring open mouthed at her, then slightly over Delia's shoulder. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure if the nurse was surprised by her outburst or by the fact that the pretty boy in question was likely now standing behind her, and had probably heard who only knows how much of her outburst.

  Her new-found pluck vanished as she was again filled with remorse. She had done it again. She had no right to disparage a man she barely knew, let alone a man that saved her life. For some reason she just couldn’t help herself. She was going to apologize but the words seized in her throat as she turned around and looked into his face.

  He wore a laughing grin and was casually standing with his hands in the pockets of his coat looking sexy and playful. “Charm of a snake, huh?” he said. “I’ve been guilty about a thing or two, but ‘Charm of a Snake’?” Adopting a falsetto voice he put his hand on a cocked hip mockingly stating, “Pretty boy with a charm of a snake! Wow!” The last coming in his regular voice. A chuckle seemed to bubble up out of him, the chuckle growing into a laugh, the kind of laugh that seemed to take over his entire body. His laughter sparked her ire.

  As he began to laugh, her eyes narrowed. As the laughter grew so did her frown, which had started in confusion but ended in a full scowl of contempt. How dare he mock her! What an ass! All the remorse she was feeling was quickly replaced by rage. Nurse Perky beat a hasty retreat sensing she may have started something.<
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  “Am I funny? Laugh it up, I’m out of here.” Delia was halfway to the elevators at the end of the hall when a smiling Captain Forrester caught up to her. With a hand on her arm he gently turned her around.

  “Hey, wait! I don’t imagine you’ll get too far without a ride. Where can I take you? I imagine something to eat and maybe some real coffee would be just the thing you need.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I will not be needing a ride from you. I’ll catch a bus.”

  He ignored the fact she slurred out the word “ride” like he had implied something dirty, continuing on undeterred. “Without any money I don’t imagine you’ll get far. Besides a girl's got to eat.” Thus saying he walked beside her to the double doors of the elevator. As much as it irked her, he was right. She didn’t have money and had left her purse and wallet at home.

  Had she not gotten into an accident she would have soon ran out of gas and been stranded God only knows where. She had gotten as far as she did only because she had stopped for gas on the way home from volunteering at the nursing home. Before she read Connar's letter. Her heart constricted a little and she pushed her morose thoughts aside in order to concentrate on the present.

  Now following the overly good looking Captain Jake Forrester out the revolving front entrance to the hospital, she tried to reconcile herself with the fact that she was going to be stuck in his forced company just a little longer.

  *** ***

  Jake stood next to Delia Myers in the humming elevator for a twenty second lifetime in the wake of her deafening silence. He had to will himself into stepping out and walking through the lobby first, just hoping she was following behind him. So far she did pretty well if he pushed a little and stepped back and let her process. He figured she probably never had anyone that actually let her make up her mind for herself. He again ruminated over the kind of abysmal life she had lived.

  They drove without talking, a country western radio station their median between an uncomfortable silence. He didn’t normally listen to country outside of a bar, but for some reason he had a hankering for the sometimes sad, often times upbeat, stories that played out in twangy rhythms and tunes of a country song.

  He gripped the wheel of his beat up pickup he drove whenever off duty, and smiled a real smile for the hundredth time since meeting Delia Myers. The cotton t-shirt he had purchased for her showed a subtle amount of cleavage that was bouncing and jiggling in a way that made his mouth water and his mind travel to places far beyond the confines of his old truck. Even through the clinging hospital stench he could detect the smell of something sweet. He wondered if she naturally smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, or if that was a perfume she wore. Either way he wanted to pull her onto his lap and taste her, everywhere.

  As he pulled in to park at one of his favorite local diners, their eyes met and held, and he spotted an interest in her luminous green eyes that rivaled that of his own lustful thoughts. He wanted so much in that moment to lean over and feel her lips yield under his but held back. In hesitating the moment was gone, if it ever existed.

  That was why he was so surprised when five minutes later she sat in a booth fidgeting and looking near tears. Then ten minutes after that she was eating like a lumberjack and five minutes after that, when he excused himself to the gentleman’s room, Delia Myers disappeared leaving behind nothing but a quickly scribbled note written out on a paper napkin.

  Thanks for breakfast, I’ll forward you money for the clothes and my bus ticket. Sorry.

  He checked his pockets and then looked at where his wallet had laid on the table, now empty except for his ID. Smooth, Jake he thought to himself. Real smooth.

  He picked up the note, studying it again. No signature or initials, yet somehow he knew, or least he hoped, that wasn’t the last he was going to see of Delia Myers. Holding the note and his empty wallet, his forefather's words about spanking women came back to him for the second time that day. Lord help him, or maybe her, because if he ever spanked a woman in his lifetime, it was going to be Delia Myers’ thieving, round behind under his hand.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Three Long Months Later…

  “Earth to Del, when it’s buzzing that means it’s done. Where’s your head honey?” This came from a tall robust woman with a shock of multicolored dreadlocks and multiple piercings. Her old, well-loved tie dyed dress was covered by a stained apron.

  Delia’s attention snapped from her daydream and right back to the back room of Two Tarts & a Strudel, the bakery and coffee shop she had been employed at for the last two months.

  One minute she had been spreading a new herb and bacon quiche crust on the marble pastry board and the next she was mentally reliving the accident, and worse, the devastation of cleaning out her house and dealing with Susan and Mitch. She had been naive to think she had seen the last of Mitch and Susan. Mitch made it clear to her that Connar’s leaving was her fault. Dealing with Mitch and Susan just made her hate Connar all the more.

  Going back to her first real home, knowing it had been built on broken dreams and empty promises, had hollowed out anything left inside her. She had almost felt relief when Susan and Mitch had arrived. She didn’t want any reminder left over from her vacant marriage, and sorting through everything had filled her with an aching nausea for days.

  The dishes had been wedding presents, the sheets and blankets carefully picked out to suit her and Connar’s home they never truly shared. When she had left for good, all her worldly possessions fit into one medium-sized suitcase. Everything else carried too many memories that were tainted with lies.

  She had sat for hours looking through albums of photos feeling herself die inside a little more with each picture. Every smile Connar wore made her sick. She also noticed for the first time how each year that passed, her smile grew dimmer in each photo. She wondered if she had ever truly been happy and in love as she had thought she’d been. The little realizations like that were what flayed her down to the bone leaving her feeling raw and exposed.

  Finally the nightmare of memories would shift to a daydream and she would be back in the passenger side of an old pick up, staring at startlingly blue eyes, unruly silky waves of brown hair and a perfectly sculpted mouth above a subtly dimpled chin. Jake Forrester.

  The troublesome daydreams quickly turned fantasy with Captain Forrester leaning in to kiss her. It was ridiculous to still think about him, let alone fantasize about him, when their association lasted all of a few hours. She had no business thinking and fantasizing about any man. She had no common sense when it came to men and it would be better to steer clear.

  Her shoulders slumped as she moved out of Sally’s way. Sally and Macy were the owners of Two Tarts & a Strudel and were bound to believe she was a space cadet.

  They had kindly hired her on the spot and even let her rent the studio above the bakery. Sally was an eccentric hippie, originally from a small southern town and she had spent the last twenty years living in Seattle. Her partner was Macy, a no nonsense ex-lawyer gal from Boston who was desperately trying not be too high strung.

  They had met and fallen in love on a cruise ship to Alaska of all places. After a year traveling to see each other they agreed the fairest thing would be for them both to move to a new location. After throwing a dart at a map of the United States to determine their new location, they decided why not follow their dreams and open a fabulous bakery coffee shop?

  Two Tarts & a Strudel, only opened for a year now, was a much welcomed addition to the town of Hope Springs, which only boasted a handful of bars and diners. Although slow to start out, business was now booming. Sally and Macy couldn’t be happier with their success. They were partners in the truest sense and that was just fine with her.

  Since leaving behind South Carolina, she was determined to put everything she ever was or believed, behind her. Liberated from the confines of repression she welcomed complete change with open arms. No longer was she the wife and unwanted daughter-in-law, or the girl being ship
ped around because her mom was a drunk. She was truly finding out who she was meant to be and reveling in having her own opinions and ideas.

  Her small town self would have never worked for the town lesbians running a bakery/coffee shop. That would have brought much too much attention to her. She might have had to stick up for her beliefs and deal with confrontations. Now she gloried in being different and sticking up for herself, considering herself fortunate indeed to have met these incredible strong women.

  She hadn’t been in town for more than an hour before Sally had her set up in the apartment above the bakery, with a set work schedule. Macy claimed Sally saw her standing out on the corner of Main Street across from the bakery, like a stray puppy with one lone suitcase, and knew she was a lost soul they were meant to help. Ever since, Sally and Macy had been helping her find her way in the new life she had claimed for herself.

  Keeping her occupied, if not downright busy, she was exhausted but not tired enough to be standing around thinking dejected thoughts and having daydreams about a man she met for two minutes. She had been doing that a lot lately. Daydreaming, that was. Each night she acquired less sleep the more she spaced out during the day. It was an unfortunate circumstance since she one: really wanted to prove to Sally and Macy that they put their faith in the right person and two; really wanted to stop thinking about Jake Forrester’s eyes and mouth and three; she should be working on being attracted to women.

  Though Sally and Macy laughed and informed her that wasn’t how it worked. The last being especially unfortunate since she didn’t think she would ever be able to look at a man and trust him ever again. If she couldn’t be attracted to women, she was destined to be on her own for the rest of her life. A fitting ending to such a pathetic beginning, she thought.

  “Why don’t you go work the register Del? I think you need some interaction to take you out of your head for a little while.”