CHAPTER 3 JACKSON
JACKSON
I lie face down in the middle of the hallway on top of Delilah Stewart, my pride somewhere on the floor with my coffee.
“Hello, Delilah.” I sigh, trying to figure out if anything is broken or just badly bruised. My glasses are nowhere to be found. Everything is blurry smudges of color.
“Hello, Jackson.”
She sounds defeated.
“Always a pleasure.”
Beneath me, Delilah snickers. “Something like that,” she says, her voice low and sweet. A laugh, caught somewhere behind her teeth.
Well, I’m glad one of us finds this funny.
Delilah squirms, somehow managing to knock me in the groin and the solar plexus at the same time.
“Please,” I groan, directly into her ear. She smells like my light roast coffee and something sweeter. Strawberry jam, maybe. “Please stop moving,” I beg.
She immediately stills and I drop my forehead to her shoulder. I can’t breathe, and I can’t stand up if I can’t breathe.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
“Trying not to die,” I wheeze.
She huffs and wiggles again. One hand pats at my rib cage. “There, there,” she says awkwardly. “Easy does it.”
I snort a laugh and some of her hair flutters around my face.
Delilah Stewart, Human Disaster, strikes again.
Somehow we’ve found ourselves stuck in a loop with each other.
Every time I see her, something inevitably goes wrong.
We’re the opposite of magnets, blasting away as soon as we enter each other’s force field.
She gives me another pat, then drops her hands to her side.
“I would appreciate it,” she says, her voice muffled, “if you removed yourself from my person now.”
I press up on my knees with no small amount of effort, a heavy grunt at the base of my throat as I steady myself with my hands planted over her shoulders. Without my glasses, I can only see her vague outline. Smudges of color against a pale white floor.
Chestnut brown. Ruby red. Deep emerald green. She must still be wearing her turtle suit.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she whispers.
“Like what?”
A hand flutters in front of my face. “Squinting.”
“I can’t see without my glasses,” I grind out, grunting when her knee hits the inside of my thigh. I almost go down again. “You know. Those things that are always on my face.”
“Oh.” One arm presses above her head, her elbow glancing along my side.
My shirt is wet and sticking to my chest but all I can focus on is the places we’re touching.
My knees, pressed between hers. The inside of my left wrist, brushing against her hair.
This is the closest I’ve been to a woman in six months and naturally, it’s Delilah Stewart.
In the middle of the newsroom floor at the local television station.
In the world’s most uncomfortable game of Twister.
Breaking News. Local Man Makes Fool of Himself with Woman Dressed as Turtle.
I’m my worst self with Delilah, and it’s entirely her fault.
“Here,” she says, fingers easing the frames over my nose.
She holds them there with her thumb between my eyes, then gives me a bright smile.
Now I can see every detail of her face beneath mine.
The collection of freckles on either side of her nose.
The slight gap between her two front teeth.
Her long hair, spilling out beneath her on the floor.
“There,” she says. “Good as new.”
I blink at her. “These are my favorite glasses.”
“And they look great.”
She removes her hand and they tilt crooked. One half of her is blurry, the other in focus. Her hand snaps back into place, holding them steady.
“I can fix them,” she whispers.
“Please don’t.” I’m not interested in whatever that nightmare brain cooks up next. I replace her hand with mine, holding the glasses against my face.
I shift to the side and leverage myself up, extending a hand to help her.
She ignores it, crawling up slowly after me instead, using the wall for leverage.
She has a giant coffee stain in the middle of her turtle-clad chest, one side of her hair wet at the ends.
I have a stain, too, slowly spreading across my abdomen.
We stand there in the corner of the bustling newsroom, staring at each other. No one pays us any attention, and I have to wonder: How often is Delilah tackling people to the ground?
“So,” she says. “What are you doing over here?”
When I stare at her blankly from behind my broken glasses, her cheeks flush pink. “I usually see you in the parking lot,” she explains. “Not in the middle of the station.”
“I have a meeting.”
She stops trying to wring the coffee out of her hair. “Here?”
“Not in the hallway, no, but at this station. Yes.”
She frowns. “With who?”
“I’m not exactly sure.” I reach into my wet pocket and pull out the half-crumpled note that was left on my desk at the radio station. Delilah plucks it out of my hand. “Help yourself,” I mumble.
“YBAL offices,” she reads. “Ask for Keith.” Her eyes close in defeat as she slaps the note against the middle of my wet chest. “I think I know where your meeting is.”
“Where?”
She points wordlessly at the half-ajar door no more than two feet away. I glance at it.
“Great,” I say slowly. “Thanks.”
I move toward it and Delilah follows. I stop abruptly at the threshold and she bumps into my back.
“Is there something I can help you with?” I’m still holding my glasses to the side of my face. “Want one more shot before we go our separate ways?”
“Fun as that sounds”—resignation firms the corners of her mouth—“I have a meeting too.”
I point at the door. “In this room?”
She nods. “Yup.”
“With me?”
“It would seem so.”
A prickling sense of awareness creeps up my spine, itching between my shoulders.
I’m not going to like whatever happens in this office. I know it.
“If you have a meeting, why were you walking in the opposite direction?”
“Because I wanted to spare myself the humiliation of sitting in a business meeting dressed as a tortoise.” She gestures at her coffee-stained chest. “Clearly, that’s no longer a concern.”
We linger at the doorway playing the world’s most awkward game of chicken.
“Are you going to go inside?”
“I’m really not sure,” I answer. “I’m considering climbing out the window, actually.”
She snickers. “I think it’s too late for that. Our fate is sealed.”
Fate. It rattles around my skull and plunks down to land somewhere in the middle of my chest. A marble in an empty soda can. A tuning fork, vibrating at a frequency I can’t hear.
A silly thing, for silly people. I control what happens. Not some mystical force.
“Says who?” I ask.
“Says me.” Maggie appears in the doorway. Her eyes flick briefly to where I’m holding my glasses together. “You’re late.”
“I thought our meeting was at the station.” Our station. “I’m here now.”
“Yes, and with quite the stunning entrance.” Her face remains impassive, but delight shines in her catlike eyes. They cut in Delilah’s direction, softening slightly. “Do you need a minute before we get started?”
Delilah shrugs. “It can’t get much worse, can it?”
It can, in fact, get worse.
The four of us sit in silence in Keith’s spacious office.
Keith, who didn’t so much as grunt a greeting when we all finally settled around the meeting table.
Keith, who looks more enamored with his extra-large Dunkin’ frozen coffee than whatever it is we’re here to discuss.
Keith, who seems determined to make this a power play between himself and Maggie by remaining frustratingly disinterested and silent.
I try to grab Maggie’s attention with a look that appropriately conveys What is happening? and Why am I here for it? but she’s busy trying to disintegrate Keith’s skull with her stare.
This could have, by every definition, been an email.
If it were, maybe my glasses would have survived the morning.
Delilah sits in a corner of the room on a too-small folding chair that looks like it might collapse at any second. Either Keith couldn’t move his chair to make room for her, or he refused to.
Given how this meeting is going, I have my suspicions.
She pinches her turtle top and pulls it away from her chest with a grimace.
I clear my throat and three sets of eyes snap to mine.
“I, uh—” I nod at Delilah, trying to force my face into something polite. If no one wants to start this meeting, the least I can do is make small talk. I can try. “I like your suit.”
She blinks at me. “What?”
“The . . . turtle thing. You look nice.”
Maggie immediately stomps on my foot—hard—beneath the table. I suck in a sharp breath through my teeth.
“Be nice,” she whispers under her breath.
What would have been nice is if Maggie didn’t ambush me with a surprise meeting with Delilah Stewart, of all people.
“Oh, um.” Delilah glances down at herself, like she’s forgotten she’s dressed as a reptile. “Thank you?”
“Do you like turtles?” I ask.
A crease appears in the middle of her forehead. “Turtles are fine.”
“I’ve heard female sea turtles use the earth’s magnetic field to return to the same beach where they were born to lay their eggs.”
Delilah looks at me like I’m the one about to lay eggs. She scratches her temple and adjusts her position on the uncomfortable metal chair. “That’s, um. That’s great?”
My enthusiasm for the conversation, limited as it was, slowly ebbs. Of course Delilah doesn’t know anything about turtles. She probably tossed on her little costume and headed out the door for her turtle feature without a care in the world for preparation. The same way she approaches the weather.
Suddenly, I feel the need to quote even more turtle facts. It’s imperative that I know more about turtles than she does.
“Did you know that turtles—”
“Keith,” Maggie interrupts, cutting me off with a withering look. “Maybe we should get started.”
“You could have let me finish,” I mumble under my breath.
Maggie shakes her head. “Absolutely no one in this room wanted you to finish,” she whispers. She tips her chin up to Keith. “Shall we?”