CHAPTER 13 DELILAH #2
I finally pull back, smiling ruefully. My knee is throbbing, but my ego hurts more. Jackson’s hand moves from the back of my neck to the place just between my shoulders, fingers spread wide. The way he’s hovering over me is really not helping things.
“Good?” he asks again, ducking his head closer to mine.
“M’fine,” I mumble. I tug myself out of his grip and—very carefully—pick my way back to my side of the room. My poor Swedish Fish. They’re littered over the carpet like tiny red land mines.
I flip open my suitcase and pull out my flannel pajamas. They’re oversized and well loved, with a hole in the thigh. I thought I’d be wearing them in a room by myself, not in the minuscule space I’ll be sharing with Jackson for the foreseeable future.
I grab my toiletry bag too. “Do you mind if I go first? I won’t be long.”
He shakes his head. “I’m going to call my sisters. I’ll be out on the balcony. Give you some privacy.”
“It’s ten degrees out there.”
“I’ll be fine.” He gives me a half smile. “I’ll turn on the fireplace when I come back in.”
That’s right. The best feature of this room.
A gas fireplace that takes up the length of one of the walls, two cozy armchairs on either side of it.
I can’t wait until snow is falling outside the massive window that anchors the other side of the room.
Sitting in that armchair in front of the fire while I tap away on my computer sounds like an actual dream.
I glance at it, sighing happily. “Based on the room alone, I think this might be my favorite assignment ever.”
When I turn back to him, he’s still looking right at me. “Yeah. Me too.”
Despite what I told Jackson, I take my time once I’m in the bathroom.
I spend an obnoxious thirty-eight minutes underneath the rainfall showerhead.
I shampoo and condition. I wrap myself in a fluffy towel and unpack my toiletries, careful to keep to my side of the sink, trying not to be nosy and pick through Jackson’s stuff that he’s already set up and organized. But the bad voices win.
I peer inside the leather pouch sitting next to an electric toothbrush. He’s got a tin of breath mints in there. A travel-sized bottle of aftershave. A utilitarian razor and a small, worn, folded-up piece of paper. I squint at it and bend closer, trying to see what’s written on it.
Something in crayon? Maybe?
I brush my teeth and rinse my face, eyeballing his case the entire time. It wouldn’t hurt to take a little peek. Not if he never knows.
Except I’ve never been stealthy a day in my life, and when I’m reaching for the bag, I knock it off the side of the sink.
The contents spill across the floor, a kaleidoscope of tiny blue mints and razor heads.
The small piece of folded-up paper taunts me, and I reach for it last after I collect the rest of his things.
It’s a small greeting card with one of the edges missing, the other folded and creased so many times it looks like it’s an intentional part of the design.
BEST DAD BIG brOTHER EVER, the front says. It’s a repurposed Father’s Day card with three stick figures drawn at the bottom, right above a date from almost a decade ago. I slide it carefully back into place, my heart in my throat.
Jackson knocks at the door and I almost fumble the bag again.
“Everything okay in there? I heard something fall.”
I toss his toiletry bag on the counter like it’s on fire. “Everything is fine!” I make sure my shirt is buttoned, then crack open the door. “Everything is fine,” I repeat.
Jackson is propped up against the doorframe, his forearm just above my head, his body one long slouch. He studies my face in the muted light, then raises his eyes to look behind me. I wait for him to say something about the half-open leather bag, but he doesn’t.
“All right.” He pushes off the door, still watching me carefully. He shakes his head, a little rueful smile. “I got distracted with work emails, but I’m going to give the girls a call now. Need anything?”
“I’m okay.”
He taps the frame and a second later, I hear the balcony door slide open. A burst of cold wind swirls around the room before it snicks shut again, the heavy floor-to-ceiling drapes in front of the windows rustling.
Relieved I wasn’t caught snooping, I finish up in the bathroom and slip out.
The room is mostly dark, nothing but the glow of the fire behind the grate and the dimmed nightstand light on Jackson’s side. Everything is soft and glowing orange, a hazy warmth that curls around me like a blanket. I notice the candy has been picked up off the floor.
I climb under the heavy quilt and reach for the massive stack of pillows at the top of the bed, arranging a divide down the center of the mattress.
I don’t want to assume Jackson’s comfort, and I don’t want to wake up splayed over the top of him like a starfish.
Satisfied with my pillow stack, I sink into the mattress and curl up in a ball, watching Jackson’s shadow pace back and forth through the frost-edged window, his phone at his ear.
His laugh sinks through the thick glass and I smile, letting my eyes fall closed. The fire cracks and pops in the hearth. The wind whistles at the window. Jackson’s low, muted voice weaves between it all and I let myself be wrapped in the comfort of it.
When I was a kid, my grandpa used to have poker nights every other week.
He and his buddies would sit in the living room at an old card table that listed to the left, drinking cheap whiskey and telling the same stories over and over.
I’d lie curled up in my bed and watch the light under my door and hear the clinking of glass and the low sound of voices and feel so safe.
It was like being tucked in with their happiness. I never felt alone.
I feel that way now, listening to Jackson talk on the phone, his voice so low his words are indecipherable.
But his presence is there. The heavy fall of his boots.
The swish swish of his coat. I let it ease me into sleep like a lullaby, my mind caught somewhere between sleeping and awake when he finally comes back inside.
The balcony door opens and closes quickly, a whispered shit under his breath when he fumbles with the handle. I smile into the pillow but don’t open my eyes.
I listen to these new sounds instead. His jacket sliding off his shoulders. The click of the hanger as he puts it back in the narrow wardrobe. His boots on the plush carpet and then the softer sound as he toes them off, down to his socks.
The snick of the bathroom door. The zip of his leather pouch. The rustle of something soft that tells me he’s changing out of his clothes.
All of it intimate in a way I’ve never experienced before. It feels important, a whispering thought just out of reach. It feels special, though that might be the exhaustion talking.
His nightstand light clicks off and then it’s just our breathing in the dark. I slip a little bit farther, my body heavy beneath the blankets.
“Delilah?” he asks sometime later, and I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or awake.
“Mmph,” I answer back.
I hear the rustle of bedsheets and imagine Jackson turning over on his side. One arm under the pillow, his glasses folded neatly on the nightstand.
Neat, neat, neat.
Always so neat.
“I know you were looking through my stuff,” he whispers.
I snicker into my pillow, sleep drunk and unashamed. “Do you want me to apologize?” I whisper back.
“No,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. Sheets rustle again, his long body stretching out. “Find anything interesting?”
“Just pieces of you,” I answer lazily.
He laughs. “Not interesting at all, then.”
I shake my head, frustrated with that. Frustrated that he keeps putting himself down. Frustrated he’s only letting me see this side of him now, when it could have been like this the entire time.
I could have had a friend.
“I think you hide all of your best parts in tiny, little pouches, Jackson Clark.”
And then I finally slip into unconsciousness.