by Jolene Perry
I glance around at the pink. Tobin gave me so much crap over my pink bedroom and bathroom. I used to tell him over and over that I picked it all out when I was fourteen and couldn’t be held liable. I think he used it as an excuse to tease me.
Weston hadn’t said a thing. He’d never been to this house, and never said a thing about my ridiculously girly room. Damn, Tobin for still being in my head.
I still don’t know if Tobin’s just a part of this place, or more a part of me than I realized. Either way, his name brings equal amounts of pain and something I don’t understand.
My soft cut-offs are where I left them in my closet, and they’re a little big from my salad and coffee diet, but they’ll stay on. In minutes I’m sitting on the edge of my window, waiting for the courage to drop down. I’ve done this a million times. A million.
But I can’t do it. It’s too far.
I’m pissed at myself when I slide back inside. Now what am I going to do?
The obvious answer hits me.
Go out the front door.
The house is silent as I sneak through, until my hand hits the front door, and someone clears their throat. My stomach seizes up at the thought of being caught. Dad was one thing, Weston would probably be another. He’d want to come, or keep me inside, and I can’t stand the thought of either.
I spin around and see Mom in her bathrobe, leaning against the counter with a mug in her hands watching me. She’s drinking in the middle of the night. I think this is new, but not positive.
“I…” I start to whisper.
She shakes her head, a tiny smile on the edge of her mouth. “Be quiet when you come back. I’ll leave the door unlocked.” Her voice isn’t even a whisper, and I wonder if I heard her right.
My jaw drops. I’m a bit shocked, and bewildered, but I’ll take it. I think I nod or wave or react in some way before tiptoeing out the door, and closing it silently behind me. It makes me wonder what it would have been like if Mom had been the one who caught me sneaking back in that first time, instead of Dad.
***
The first time I got caught sneaking out was awful. Well, I was actually trying to sneak back in. I saw my dad on the porch before Tobin did. He always walked me back home—unless he was too drunk, in which case I’d leave him with Eamon, making him promise me he wouldn’t try some dumb stunt while taking Tobin back to his bed. That had only happened a couple of times. The morning I got caught, Tobin was with me.
I stopped in the woods, in the faintest beginnings of dawn, and Dad’s anger radiated from that porch like nothing I’d ever felt.
“Oh, Shit. Delia, I’m sorry. I’ll come up with you.” His hand squeezed mine and the other touched the ends of my hair.
I’d almost laughed. If I hadn’t been so scared, I would have. “I don’t think that’ll help.”
Dad hadn’t seen me yet, probably wasn’t sure which direction he should be looking. I hated our vast lawn right then. If the trees were closer to the house, I might have had a chance to sneak onto the back porch and claim to have slept there all night.
“A kiss then, and call me when you can.” Tobin’s fingers slid around the top of my jeans sending a shiver through my body.
I turned to kiss him, and as usual, he was already waiting for it. He could never get enough of me, he’d always said. Just another reason that I felt invincible with Tobin. Dad’s voice split the silence just as our lips came together.
“DELIA GENTRY, YOU GET UP TO THIS HOUSE RIGHT NOW!”
I jumped out of Tobin’s arms and started running without a glance back. Dad was not to be messed with.
My heart pounded so hard that I could hear the thump-thump pulsating in my ears, I had no idea what I’d say to him. He’d really caught me in the worst possible way.
“Not you!” Dad yelled again. “Get out of here, and go home!”
I turned to see Tobin following me.
“Please go,” I whispered, desperately afraid for what Dad would do to him.
“I’m not letting you take the fall for this, Delia.
I was so torn then. The love in Tobin’s eyes versus the anger in my dad’s.
Dad was between us before I knew he’d moved, grabbing us each by arm, pushing Tobin away and pulling me behind him in one quick, fluid movement.
“I’m only going to tell you this once, son.” I could barely see Tobin behind my dad’s large frame. “You keep your hands off my daughter. You’re a piece of shit in a small town, and no part of you is worthy of her. Got it?”
Even Tobin didn’t have anything to say to that.
My heart broke at both my dad’s words and the expression on Tobin’s face.
I opened my mouth and tried to speak, tried to defend him, but Dad was too scary. Still is.
Dad grabbed my arm and led me inside. I stared at Tobin the whole way, just praying he wouldn’t let me go. Wouldn’t let my dad stand between us.
He didn’t.
Dad was gone enough that we still managed to find time. But I sometimes wonder what my dad’s words did to him. Or if they ever talked when I wasn’t around. Tobin never mentioned it, and neither did I.
***
I actually have to wipe away tears from the memory. Tobin deserved better than that from Dad, and I should have said something. Done something. Fought harder for Tobin.
The trail he and I used is still here, but overgrown, which makes me sad. Not that I could have expected anything different. There isn’t another head-over-heels-in-love girl staying in my room in need of this trail right now. The night is so much quieter here than in D.C. Dad wanted to be downtown—where the action is. Our place is huge and has an incredible view of the National Monument. I love and hate that home. Love it because everyone loves it, and probably I hate it for the same reason.
When I hit the railroad tracks, my stomach tightens. Eamon died along here somewhere. Maybe I don’t want to be here. Once I get to the bridge over the creek I follow it toward the lake. I can lose myself there for a while instead. I just have to make sure I’m back before everyone’s awake.
I know I might just be torturing myself, but all I can think about is getting to our favorite spots. Seeing them again – the things I miss most about Crawford. Maybe I need a quick trip to the bar first. It’s been ages since I had a beer.
“If it isn’t the great Delia Gentry, come back to slum it up.” Carl, the bar owner, laughs as I walk in. “Are you old enough to be in here?” he teases.
“You didn’t have a problem with it a year ago.” I raise a brow and take a seat at the bar. I love this old place. It’s run down, and always smells like cigarette smoke, but I used to pass through here a lot.
“That was more than a year.” Carl turns away, dries a glass, and sets it back on the shelf. The tone of his voice tells me he might be a bit irritated. Or maybe it’s that his loyalties to Tobin run deep. Everyone had to know that we weren’t together anymore. In this small of a town, there were no secrets. Except maybe one. One that my dad, the staunch Pro-Life Republican would do anything to keep from coming to light.
I start to wonder if underneath the surface everyone here suddenly hates me.
“Did you drive here, Delia?” Carl asks as he fills a glass of beer and hands it to one of the three other people at the bar.
“No.” I almost laugh. “Not with my jail-keeper.” And then my hand flies to my mouth because I’ve gotten so good at never saying anything bad about Dad.
He chuckles. “Did you or did you not graduate, Miss Delia?” He rests his elbows on the bar, smiling with stained teeth, his blondish-grey hair so short I see more scalp than hair.
“I did.” But it doesn’t matter. Not to Dad. “But with his job—”
Carl shakes his head. He sees how much of a wimp I am. Not hard if you’re looking.
“Any chance of getting a beer from you?” I do my best smile and lean over the counter, wondering if a little bit of cleavage will help. I feel completely, scandalously, naughty, and so mu
ch of me wishes I was still this girl. Could still be this girl.
If Weston saw me now… He doesn’t even know this Delia exists.
Carl gives me a smile and walks away.
So much for my beer.
“Delia!”
I spin and squint to see Nelson, a good friend of both Tobin and Eamon, waving.
“I want to feel like a man. Come over here and let me kick your ass at bowling, would ya?” He slaps the side of a table against the wall.
I stand up and move toward him. “Bowling?”
He rolls his eyes, and lets his head follow. “Shuffleboard bowling? Damn. How long you been gone?”
“Too long.” I laugh.
“Delia?” Carl holds up an ice-cold Corona.
“Thanks!” I grin and jog up to the bar, immediately popping the top. Carl always said if he didn’t open it, he could always say we just stole it.
“So, you game?” Nelson asks.
I glance back toward the door. Back to Carl standing behind the dark, wooden bar.
“Got somewhere to be?” he asks.
I want to laugh and giggle and jump. “No. Nowhere to be.”
“Well, let’s get started then.” Everywhere Tobin’s southern accent is soft, Nelson’s twangs, but it’s such a part of him that I love it.
“Yeah. Let’s play.” I step up to the table, take a long drink of my cold beer, and can’t believe how long I’ve stayed away.
Eleven
Tobin
The bar scene in Crawford is limited, but that’s okay. I’m not looking to have a good time anyway. I pull a napkin from the stack on the end of the bar and spread it out.
“Tobin! Surprised to see you here. I was real sorry to hear about your brother, man,” Carl, the owner and lone employee of the one and only bar in town says. He’s frowning at me, his eyes full of pity.
I hate pity.
“Thanks, Carl,” I say, and shake his hand.
“Well, what can I get you? It’s on the house tonight. Your brother was a good man,” he says.
Was he? I wonder. I mean, he was my brother, of course I loved him, but do good men leave their mom’s mourning them because they were too stubborn to step away from an oncoming train?
“Just a beer. Whatever you have in a bottle is fine. Oh, and an ink pen,” I say.
He pulls a pen from his shirt pocket and pops the cap off of a beer bottle and slides them across the bar to me.
I take a long pull from the bottle. It’s not entirely cold, but it doesn’t matter.
I stare down at the blank napkin. What can I write about Eamon that can be said in front of a church full of people?
Eamon was always there for people when they needed him.
I write across the flimsy napkin. I stare at what I’ve written. Lies. I draw a thick line through the words. If Eamon cared about being there for people he would be here now. Sitting next to me. Telling me about his latest conquest. Or arguing about who was going to win the game on Monday. No, those weren’t important things in the grand scheme of things, but I was. Brothers were supposed to be important. I wad the napkin up and shove it into my jeans pocket.
“Hey bro!” I flinch at the word bro like I’ve just been punched. Nelson Gautreaux has pulled up the stool next to me.
“Hey man, I didn’t see you come in,” I say. To be fair, I wasn’t looking. I was too busy trying to write a eulogy for my real bro.
“I’ve been here all night,” he says.
Of course he has. This town doesn’t have much else to offer. I should’ve just gone out to the lake. It was my first thought. It’d be a quiet place to get my thoughts together and write something for the funeral. But I knew she’d be there. Not literally. I’m sure Delia is back at her house–her parents thinking she’s tucked safely into her bed, though she probably snuck in to be with her boyfriend. At least that’s something the Delia I knew would do. With me. I shudder. But the feeling of her haunts our spot out at the lake.
Most days I’m okay with the lingering sensation that she could walk up any second and I could coax her into going for a swim—for starters. That first night that I met her out on the dock was only the first of many, but it’s a night that every detail is burned into my memory.
I’d bet her she wouldn’t go in the water, but she surprised me by beating me to it. I always think of the way she looked in the near blackness of the night as she climbed out of the water in nothing more than her flesh colored bra and panties. Her long, dark hair was wet and stuck to her chest; beads of water ran down her stomach. She was incredibly sexy. I knew she was out of her element that night. Acting brave. But doing it for me. Because if Delia Gentry were the kind of girl to strip down in front of people, I definitely would have heard.
Being with Delia was like always walking a thin line between innocence and sin. Things that I’d done with a dozen girls before her were suddenly new and sacred. Every touch meant something. Even on that first night.
***
I purposely got out of the water before she did so that I could sit on the dock and watch her climb up the ladder. She was unbelievably hot. I can’t believe I hadn’t hung out with her before. Well, I guess I could believe it. From what Eamon told me, her dad kept a short leash on her and controlled who she spent time with. That should have deterred me right off the bat, and it might have–if I hadn’t already seen her strip down and run into the water. If I hadn’t watched the way she threw her head back when she laughed. If I didn’t see her blush when I told her that she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And if I hadn’t meant it.
After all of that, I knew I was in it, no matter who her father was.
“Brrr!” she squeaked. “It’s freezing!” She clutched her arms across her stomach and jumped up in down in place, beads of water falling from her skin and hair. I wanted to pull her in close to me. Well, if I’m honest, I wanted to do more than that.
She looked around the dock, “Where’s my shirt?”
I raised my eyebrow and grinned.
“Your shirt for a kiss,” I said.
She laughed, that perfect, genuine laugh. “I’m not sure that’s a fair trade.”
“Why is that?” I asked. I dangled her shirt up above our heads, much too high for her to reach even if she were to jump.
“Because I was going to give you one anyway,” she said through chattering teeth. She smiled that same daring smile she had earlier.
I reached for her, and she shivered, so I wrapped my dry shirt around her. I leaned down and my mouth barely brushed hers before she pulled back. It was the quickest kiss I’d ever had, but it changed me. And her standing right there, staring up at me was pure torture.
Her eyes were smiling and I thought for sure she was screwing with me. Had the whole night had been a joke to her?
“Holy shit,” she said.
And I had to agree.
I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her in close. My thumbs grazed along her hip bones, and this time, she stood up on her tip-toes to meet my lips with hers.
***
“You just missed Delia,” Nelson says.
With the mention of her name, my heart hammers in my chest.
“She was here?” I ask.
“Yeah, she schooled me at shuffleboard bowling! I’d been holding that record for the last two years. And that big city girl comes in and whoops my ass! You know what they say, you can take the girl out of the country and all that,” he laughs.
Even though it’s ridiculous, I feel myself swell with pride that she beat Nelson.
“Where’d she go?” I ask. It doesn’t matter; I can’t go tracking her down like some lunatic ex-boyfriend, even though that’s exactly what I feel like.
“Said she was going home, had to get up early for…you know…” he fumbles over his words and stares down at his boots.
“Right,” I say. I finish off my beer and throw a couple of bucks onto the bar. “Well, it was good seeing you, Nelson.”
Your girl said she’d be there, so I guess I’ll see you then,” he says.
I should tell him that Delia is most definitely not mine, but I let it go.
