Delaney
“He’s obviously jealous,” Emily said.
“Of what?” I asked, taking a bite of my ham and cheese, the silver medal Olympian of sandwiches, second only to the patty melt with Swiss.
“Of Cliff, duh,” Ursula said as she bit into her own sandwich, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “Cheese and bread are a winning combination.”
“The winningest.”
After she chewed and swallowed, she said, “It’s obvious that Oliver is fond of you.”
Emily snorted. “You could say that.”
“Oliver is not fond of me. He just the other day was looking at my legs in disgust.”
“He saw your legs?”
“Well,” I hedged, “sometimes I forget to wear my running tights when we run.”
“You forgot to wear tights?” Emily asked. “You never forget to wear tights. You’re like, a Tights Security Officer. You’re like your own personal Tights Gestapo. You’re like the Tights—”
“She gets it,” Ursula said. “Maybe she forgot her tights because she feels comfortable around Oliver because Oliver is a good guy, unlike Cliff, because you never forgot your tights around Cliff.”
“That’s because I lived in LA with Cliff,” I said.
“That’s exactly my point!” Emily said, throwing up her hands. “You lived in LA! Where it was hot all the time! You should have let loose and lost the tights once in a while!”
“I lived in LA with actresses and supermodels, some of whom my boyfriend worked with.”
“And worked on,” Emily said. When Ursula and I both stared at her, she said, “Sorry. Sorry.”
“So, how is Cliff?” Ursula said.
“Cliff is Cliff,” I said. “Honestly, I’ve barely spoken to him. I’ve been working a lot, and when I come home I’m exhausted, so I basically just go to sleep. I don’t even know why he’s here. He said it was to visit me, but he hasn’t wanted to come to the library, and when I asked him to lunch, he said he had a call with his agent.” I shrugged. “So, Cliff is Cliff. This is about how it went in LA. I don’t know much.”
“Is he staying with you?” Emily said with accusation in her tone, since she already knew the answer.
“Yes,” I said. Then I added, “I’m on the couch, so don’t worry.”
“Wait, you’re on the couch?” Ursula asked.
“He has a bad back,” I said. “He can’t sleep on the couch.”
“But you’re not in the bed with him?” Ursula said in a low, panicked tone. “Not ever, right?”
“Right,” I said slowly. “Ursula, are you alright? You look sick.”
“Are you going to get back together with him? Because I don’t know if I could take you leaving again,” Ursula said, and Emily put a soothing hand on her back and said, “Of course she’s not going back.” Emily shot me a pleading look.
“Do you want some water?” I asked Ursula.
“I’m fine,” Ursula said. “Be right back. I need to make a phone call.” After she left the apartment to walk into the hallway, I turned to Emily. “What was that?”
“Ursula missed you,” she said. “She doesn’t want you to leave again. Plus, Cliff? Really?”
I shrugged. “He’s Cliff.”
“Yeah, we know,” she said. “That’s what worries me.”
Oliver
“What’s up, Urs?” I said as I swallowed a piece of my ham and cheese, the best combination of sweet and savory in a food that existed, except for maybe salted caramel or chocolate-dipped pretzels. Delaney had made some of those the other day. I wiped my hands on my sweats.
“It’s Delaney,” she said, and I sat up.
“What about Delaney? Is she okay?” I stared at my apartment door. I’d been avoiding running into her and Cliff in the hallway, actually using my peep hole to spy on them, when they came and went, so I wouldn’t have to see her or her asshole boyfriend’s face. Except I hadn’t seen them together. Not once.
“She’s okay. Wait, no she’s not. I mean, she is, but she’s not.”
“Spit it out, Ursula.”
“It’s Cliff. He’s a user. He’s crashing at Lane’s.”
“I know,” I said.
“You have to save her from him. He’s trying to get her back. I just know it.” She sucked in a breath. “I was thinking maybe you could ask her out on a date. Sweep her off her feet. Make Cliff look like the piece of baloney he really is. She’s never been wooed like that. It would be good for her. And I know how you feel about her. I thought maybe it was a bad idea. Michael said…”
“Michael said what?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re not great, but you’re better than Cliff.”
“Thanks?”
“It’s a compliment.”
“Not much of one,” I said.
“So will you do it?”
“Urs….I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know? You should know. You know she’s great. It would just be to get Cliff out of the way, and then you could sort things out with her.”
“I do. She’s great.” I paused, unsure of how to follow this up.
“And?”
“And I don’t think I can do that. Delaney’s a friend,” I said. She was too good of a friend, and I couldn’t mess with her emotions that way. I pressed my face to the door again to look out of the peep hole to an empty hallway.
“Right,” she said. “She’s a friend. That’s why you keep texting me bitching about Cliff. That’s why you send me photos of Jenny. Because Delaney is just a friend.”
“I don’t mean it like that. She’s a good friend,” I added. “I care about her a lot.”
“Then do this for her. Keep her away from Cliff and LA.”
“Can’t.”
“WHY NOT?”
“Don’t you think that would hurt her? Me pretending to like her and then changing my mind? Since you obviously don’t want me with her.”
“Delaney’s strong, and she could take it. It’s not like you mean that much to her,” she said coldly. “It wouldn’t be a big deal to her.”
“You think so?” I said too loudly.
“I do.”
“I won’t. I’m not attracted to her,” I lied. I knew Ursula knew it was a lie, but I couldn’t think of anything else. Ursula wasn’t in a mood to understand me, and I couldn’t explain about Mia, or about how I knew Delaney would capitulate to Cliff. Cliff knew what he was doing with Delaney. There wasn’t any point, and I couldn’t get involved.
“There’s nothing I can do about Cliff and Delaney,” I started, and that’s when I realized Ursula had hung up on me.
Delaney
Cliff started to rub my shoulders as we sat next to each other, watching the latest episode of his show, Next Door. We used to do this in LA, comfortably stretched out on our sectional, a piece of furniture artificially monstrous, like Alex Rodriguez. He would tell me about his day and I would rub his shoulders. And then we’d watch Next Door, which usually involved Cliff kissing a very pretty, very thin blonde, who Cliff insisted was a terrible kisser.
I should have known that things were going sour when he stopped commenting on actresses’ kissing skills.
“You’re tense,” Cliff said on my noticeably smaller-than-a-sectional sofa.
“I had a rough day at work. I’ve had a lot of rough days. Students seem to think I’m their personal assistant. One dropped an assignment on the keyboard at the reference desk and told me to find her sources,” I said. “Like I was a servant!”
I closed my eyes when Cliff hit a knot. “God that feels good.”
“If you hate your job, then quit.”
“I can’t quit. I need the money, not to mention the health insurance,” I said.
“You could always move back to LA. With me,” he said, and I turned. His hands fell from my shoulders as I examined him.
“You’re serious?” I asked. He nodded. “That’s why you’re here?” He nodded again, then bit his lip. H
e always had the best mouth, soft and full bodied, full of sweetness. It was a dessert mouth, meant for indulging. “But what about Kelsey?”
“Kelsey’s not you,” he said with a tenderness in his voice. “No one is you.” He brushed a hair from my forehead, and then leaned in and kissed my patch. I stiffened. Cliff hated my patch.
“Cliff,” I said with a strained voice.
“Delaney, I was wrong. I was an idiot. Give me a second chance. Please.” He wrapped his arms around me, and pressed his forehead to mine.
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “Give me some time to think about it?” I said.
“Of course. My flight leaves on Sunday, though. You could be on it with me.”
“Sunday? That’s only three days away.”
He trailed a finger down my cheek and said, “I love you. I’ll love you forever. Please come back.”
I nodded and said, “Give me until Sunday.”
“Sunday, then. I know you’ll make the right decision,” he whispered, right before he kissed me.
Thirteen
Oliver
There was a knocking on my door, followed by a paw scratch, and when I opened the door and looked down, I saw Jenny, and my eyes trailed up to see Delaney standing there, nervously twirling a piece of hair around her finger.
“Hey,” she said, not meeting my eyes. “I was wondering if you could be a sounding board for me. I have a dilemma.” She lifted the plate in her hand. “I brought pie. Apple.”
I stepped aside and motioned her into my apartment. “Come on in.”
She put the pie plate on the coffee table and sat down on my large leather sectional sofa, which took up the entirety of the living room. “I never told you thank you for letting me sleep here. So thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Cliff used to have a sofa like this,” she said. “What is it with guys and big sofas?”
“It makes us feel important.”
“Well, you are important. You save lives. I don’t think your sofa needs to get involved in your ego.”
“What about Cliff? Why does he need a big sofa?”
“Because it’s comfortable?”
“He’s not overcompensating?”
“You’ve seen him. What reason would he have?”
“You tell me.”
“This is weird, Oliver.” She picked up the pie and walked over to the kitchen, putting it on the counter. She started rummaging through drawers. “Do you have a knife? And if you have vanilla ice cream, it will make it even better. The pie’s still warm.”
“Stress baking?” I asked. “Yup,” she said.
I came up behind her and she jumped when I put my hands on her shoulders, putting a hand to her chest. “Sorry,” she murmured.
“Go, sit.” I turned her hips back toward the sofa and got everything.
I said, “So, out with it. What’s the dilemma?”
“It’s about Cliff,” she said, and I stiffened.
“Go on,” I said, clattering everything on the coffee table and kneeling near it to cut and dish the pie and ice cream.
“It’s just—I can’t talk to Emily, because Emily’s always been prickly about Cliff. And I don’t know what’s gotten into Ursula, but lately I can’t talk about Cliff without her getting all pale and Regency-era secretive with me, which is to say not very secretive. She clearly doesn’t want me to go back to LA. So I need an objective, impartial listener to hear me out.”
“That’s me?”
“Of course. I can’t imagine you’ve formed a lasting opinion of Cliff. Have you?”
“Nope,” I lied. “So let’s hear the dilemma.”
“See, well, Cliff kissed me,” she said. I stopped cutting. I breathed in through my nose and counted to ten as I closed my eyes. “And he asked me to move back to LA with him.”
“And you’re thinking about going?” I said, trying to keep my voice even and modulated.
“Yes.”
I put down the knife and looked at her then. She looked like a big-eyed, scared owl. I said, “Why?”
“Because he says he loves me. Because he’s Cliff.”
“Do you love him?” I don’t know why I asked it, because I didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Yes. No. Maybe. I think so.”
“How long have you two been together?”
“Five years, on and off.”
“And you don’t know if you love him?”
“I mean, I definitely loved him. And then I definitely didn’t love him. But now I just don’t know. I think I’ll always love him. He’s a great man, and, I mean, God, he’s Cliff Burns. And he wants me.”
I didn’t try to keep the disgust out of my voice as I said, “Of course he wants you. The question is why you would ever want him.”
“Well, because,” she said. She looked confused. “What do you mean, of course he wants me? You realize he lives and works in Hollywood. He could have any woman he wanted.”
I shook my head. “No, he couldn’t. If he could have any woman he wanted, you wouldn’t be sitting in my living room, wondering if you should go with him.”
“He’s Cliff. He’s the love of my life.”
I turned and stared at her. “But why?”
She shrugged. “Love is hard to explain.”
“I think you’re obsessed with appearances. You think if something looks good, it must be good. Like your damn sofa. It’s awful. There are springs that practically stab me when I sit on it.”
She crossed her arms. “Then don’t sit on it.”
I edged closer to her. “You’re not listening.”
“I am. I have an awful sofa, which, by the way, is beautiful and I love it and I always have.”
“Because of the way it looks.”
“Right, so I have a sofa you hate, so Cliff can’t be the love of my life.”
I stood up and walked around the sofa once in a loop, my hands in my hair. I came back around in front of her. “You just—don’t you see? You don’t think anything of yourself because of how you look.”
“I see,” she said, her eyes dropping to her hands in her lap. “I think I’m going to go.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “Delaney.” She stood. I nodded. “Okay, we can talk later.”
“I mean, I think I’m going to go to LA. I hate my job. I know I’m not going to ever be with anyone better than Cliff, if I’m ever with anyone at all. I thought I could be alone, but I’m not good at it. I miss being with someone, and Cliff is offering me exactly what I want.”
I pushed her down on the sofa, then sat next to her abruptly, our hips bumping. “Ow.” She moved down the sofa, away from me.
“Delaney, no. Don’t go. You are not a supplicant.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you believe that Cliff is as good as your life could ever get, and you should go along with whatever he wants. But it’s not true. It’s not the truth.”
“It’s not?” She peered up at me.
I scooted closer to her on the sofa, and put my hands on either side of her face, feeling the softness of her cheeks. My fingers slipped to the back of her neck, tangling in her hair, which was softer and thicker than I’d expected, and I felt my whole body awaken as her breath landed on my neck. “Delaney,” I said. “Stay.”
And then I kissed her.
Delaney
Oliver put both hands on my cheeks, and I felt a rush in my ears right as I closed my eyes. Then he was pulling me close to him and his lips were on mine, his tongue tangling with mine, and it felt so good that I kissed him harder, pressed into him, and a heat that had been simmering in me flared.
He pulled away, gasping, and ran a finger down my neck, to the crook, to my collarbone. Lower. “Delaney, don’t move back to LA,” he said, and then he kissed me again.
I touched my lips after I left Oliver’s apartment. I touched them as I sat down on the sofa, hoping Cliff was already asleep. I touched them as I lie
down.
I never understood when Emily talked about kissing Sam the first time, how she said she could feel it all over her body, in her hair and behind her eyelids and in her toes and inside her lungs, like the kiss had gotten caught in her air.
But now I understood. Oliver was caught in me. Or I was caught in him.
Fourteen
Delaney
“Delaney?” Cliff padded out from the bedroom. I tilted my head backwards on the pillow near the armrest to get a better view.
Cliff was shirtless and in boxer briefs, and beautiful and perfect and desirable, looking exactly like he had six years ago when I’d bumped into him outside of the dorm bathroom. I’d been in my college uniform of a t-shirt and jeans, my hair dyed black and severe, pulled back from my face. I was walking out of the bathroom after carefully reapplying cover-up to my patch so my roommate wouldn’t have any clue what I really looked like.
That had been Ursula’s suggestion when I was worried about rooming with a stranger, even though she’d added that I didn’t look “that bad,” and didn’t really need to go through the extra effort, I was glad I did, especially right then, bumping into a shirtless Cliff. I’d seen him around the floor and the dorm cafeteria. We all had. It was hard to avoid the best looking guy we’d ever seen.
“Perfect Man approaching,” Ursula would say whenever he walked past our table at dinner. Then she’d sigh and shake her head at his beauty and his ridiculous wardrobe, which consisted back then almost exclusively of various gas station attendant and bowling shirts with different names sewed on, “Art,” and “Buck,” and “Horace.”
“I bet his name is something extra sexy,” Ursula said. “Like Grant.”
“He looks rich, so his first name is probably something named after capitalist royalty, like Carnegie, or Reynolds, or Procter-Gamble,” I said.
“And he was probably the apple of his mother’s eye, doted on,” Ursula said.
“Oh, precious little Procter-Gamble is taking his first steps!”
“Procter-Gamble just won the spelling bee!”
“Yeah, the word was ‘diaper.’ He spelled it ‘L-U-V-S.’ Good job, Procter!”
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