Page 45 of And Now, Back to You

“Your sisters,” Delilah says, amused. “How old are they?”

“Oh, they’re fifteen.” I push the sugar container away. “Twins,” I explain.

“That’s quite the age gap.”

I shrug. I thought the same thing when my mom came back to our tiny apartment after being gone on a two-week bender, clutching a sonogram with tears in her eyes.

Our family just got bigger, Jack, she had said with a tremulous smile. How lucky are we?

I didn’t feel lucky at all. I felt horrified that she’d bring two more children into the world when she was already doing such a shit job raising the first one.

“My mother is . . .” I try to think of a word that fully encompasses Camille Clark. “Unconventional,” I finally settle on. “It’s why I have full custody of the girls now.”

I know what to expect at this point in the conversation. Pity will soften her features and she’ll struggle to find something to say. She won’t bring it up again, and she’ll make her own assumptions about me, the girls, and the family we’ve stitched together. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times. The discomfort that people distort themselves into, just so they don’t need to feel the edges of mine.

I brace myself for it, but when I lift my eyes, Delilah is toying with the cherry from the top of her milkshake, chewing on the stem thoughtfully.

“That’s cool,” she says, without a trace of . . . anything. “You must be close.”

I blink, stupefied. “Yeah. We are.”

“Are they excited to see you on TV?”

I think about the family text thread and how it’s filled to the brim with a string of incomprehensible emojis and requests for updates. Penelope’s last message of, Should I get a life-sized cardboard cutout of you for our viewing party? And Adeline’s immediate response of, YES, WE ARE DOING IT I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU SAY.

A picture twenty-five minutes later of Aiden standing next to a cobbled-together cardboard cutout of me, his arm slung over its shoulders.

“Yeah, they’re excited.” I pick at a tiny chip in the side of the sugar container. “They’re big fans of yours.”

Her face lights up and she sits straighter in the cracked leather booth seat, the jacket slipping off one shoulder, taking the collar of her sweater with it. I get a glimpse of pale, creamy skin. The delicate line of her throat. She has a thin gold necklace on, anchored with some sort of rabbit charm.

Do not look below her chin, you asshole. Do not.

I’m acting like a Regency era viscount. Two inches of collarbone, and I’m gripping the edge of the table so hard it’s biting into my palms.

“That’s so nice,” Delilah exclaims, like all of Baltimore isn’t already in love with her and the loyalty of two teenagers is something awe-inspiring. It would be annoying if it wasn’t also completely genuine. She pops the cherry into her mouth. “Honestly, the only reason I started doing broadcasts is because my grandpa was obsessed with seeing me on television. He said it was my destiny. Big horoscope guy, Gus Stewart.”

“Yeah?”

She nods with a little hum. “Yeah. He’s always believed in me best. I think if he could rewrite the stars for me, he would.” She takes another long slurp of milkshake. “He raised me, you know. My mom was also . . . unconventional.”

My breath backs up in my lungs. “Oh,” is all I can think to say.

“She was a violin prodigy,” Delilah continues, undeterred. “I’ve seen some videos of when she was little and she was incredible, even then, when the bow was bigger than her. My grandpa took her to the Peabody three times a week. Worked multiple jobs so she could have the very best of the best when it came to lessons, equipment. Eventually, she won a chair with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Coincidentally around that time, she also got pregnant with me.” Delilah shoots me a small, tight-lipped smile. “I guess she thought she could have both, but I was . . . too much, and she chose what she’d invested the most time in. She was going to put me up for adoption, but my grandpa begged her to reconsider. She signed over custody to him instead.” She takes a noisy slurp of her drink. “He gets a kick out of seeing me on TV, and I like showing him he didn’t make all those sacrifices for nothing.” She frowns at her milkshake glass. “Hey, hand me that extra straw. This one is zapped.”

I hand her my straw without looking away from her face. How can she do that? Open a vein and let all her barbed truths spill free without stumbling over a single word. Without being broken or burdened by it.

She taps the straw on the table to clear the wrapper, then drops it into her milkshake. “So. We have more in common than you think. Or, me and your sisters, I guess.” She hits an empty spot with her straw and shifts it around, trying to find another pocket of chocolate while I navigate the brand-new, tipsy-topsy feeling tightening like a band around my chest.

“What do they think of your unmitigated hatred for me?”

I shift in the squeaky booth seat and decide I’m not going to dignify that with an answer. “They’re excited for a weeklong sleepover with their friend.”

“Probably longer if the snow does what we say it’s going to do,” Delilah muses. She wiggles her fingers and does something ridiculous with her face. “We hold all the power.”

She adjusts the collar of the jacket so it’s back at the base of her throat. Like the world’s stupidest moth to the world’s prettiest flame, my eyes follow. I wonder if my jacket will smell like her when she gives it back. Something fruity and light with a sharp bite. Dark cherries. Summer peaches dipped in wine.

I drag my eyes up to the ceiling of the diner. I don’t know when this burgeoning attraction to Delilah went from a passing awareness to a fire poker in my side, but it couldn’t have worse timing. It’s the last thing I want when we’re going to be more or less handcuffed together for the duration of this storm.