CHAPTER 16 JACKSON #2
I know she can. She always is. I try to find the words that explain this feeling in my chest. The one that winds tighter and tighter every time she laughs or grins or brings up an important discussion point about fast-moving wind systems.
I release an agitated breath.
“You’re like a lamp,” I finally say.
Her normally expressive face is completely unreadable. “A lamp,” she repeats.
I nod. “You—you have this light inside of you that—Delilah, it shines so fucking bright. And I think I’ve hated that about you because I’ve never—” I swallow, these words harder than the rest. “It’s never been like that for me.
My light’s gone out, or it’s flickering, or maybe it’s a faulty bulb, I don’t know.
I’m getting twisted up in this stupid analogy, but sometimes it feels like there’s this brick on the center of my chest. I think I gave everything I had left to the girls. ”
Delilah shakes her head. “That’s not true, Jackson.” Her hand squeezes mine. “That’s not true at all.”
“I’ve told you my mother is unconventional,” I say quietly, trying to find the words for the things I never talk about. “The reason I took on the girls is because—is because—”
“It’s okay,” she tells me, the look on her face breaking me into absolute pieces. It makes the ache even stronger. “You don’t have to talk to me about this.”
“I want to,” I rasp. “I just need a second, okay? I want to explain why I’m like this. I want you to understand.”
Delilah nods. “Okay.”
“When it was good, it was really good. But when it was bad, it was—” I flex my fingers in Delilah’s grip, feeling all the places we fit.
“My mom had medication she never wanted to take. Appointments she didn’t like going to.
She had trouble keeping track of things like that, so I tried to fill in the space for her.
I tried to make it easier. I made charts.
Got her those little pill containers. But an eight-year-old can’t fill prescriptions.
She could be passionate and excited one day and sad and lethargic the next.
She thought excitement could keep the bad days away.
She was always chasing it, something bright and shiny to focus all her enthusiasm on. Sometimes, it was me.”
And those were the best days. Cake baking and movies cuddled together on the couch.
Surprise visits where she’d pull me out of school early so we could go to a street festival she saw in the paper.
Cotton candy for lunch and a balloon tied around my wrist. But that balloon would almost always lose air.
I’d find it shoved under my dresser two months later, sad and deflated.
“But most of the time, it wasn’t. It was something else. She’d find a new hobby or meet someone who promised a new opportunity, and I’d be left behind.”
Delilah’s eyes fracture, and I avert mine to the tabletop.
“I’d beg her to stay, but she’d laugh it off.
Say I was too old to need my mommy. Eventually, I stopped asking and just .
. . prepared as best I could instead. It’s why I like my routines.
I spent a lot of my childhood alone, aware that I was not only unwanted but avoided. I didn’t want that for the girls.”
I grip Delilah’s hand like it’s the only thing holding me above water.
I haven’t said any of this aloud in years.
Not since I got drunk at a bar with Aiden during a St. Paddy’s Day pub crawl and unloaded on him.
Or that first meeting with the therapist Maggie recommended, digging through everything that made me feel itchy and tight.
“You’re always smiling, Delilah. You’re always positive.
You have all this shit you’re dealing with, but you find a way to hold it that makes you lighter, you know?
I’ve never been able to do that. It’s only ever weighed me down and I think—I’ve had trouble with that. I’ve hated how easy it seems for you.”
She shifts her hand. For one awful second, I think she’s going to pull away. But she just rearranges her grip so our fingers are threaded together.
“You’ve also hated me for my parking,” she says. “It’s okay to admit that.”
I huff a laugh, tracing my thumb over her knuckles.
Her smile fades again, and she’s looking at me like she’s just lifted up a rock and found a key hidden beneath.
Twisted a knot a different way, and the strings came loose.
“It’s not always like that for me,” she says quietly. “Sometimes it’s heavy.”
“I know. But even when you’re hurting, you find a way to glow. You find a way to make everyone else glow too.”
“Like a lamp,” she says quietly.
“Yeah. Like a lamp.”
Her nose wrinkles and she looks down at the table. She sniffles once. Then again.
My hand tightens around hers. “Shit. Delilah. I didn’t mean—”
“That’s a really nice thing to say, Jackson,” she manages, her voice tight. Her eyes find mine, shiny and bright. “That’s—thank you.”
“I mean it,” I whisper.
I let myself hold her hand for another second, then pull away. I busy myself with typing across my laptop, trying not to watch the way she delicately traces the corner of a napkin under one eye and then the other.
She collects herself slowly, fussing with the different baked goods.
Shifting plates, rearranging napkins. Drinking out of my mug, and then hers when she realizes she’s made a mistake.
Watching my face to see if I’ve noticed.
Breaking off a corner and humming under her breath when she tastes something she likes.
She’s lost in thought until she’s not, her face popping up behind my computer screen, her eyes no longer red-rimmed, but just as bright.
“Did you want your scone, or can I have it?” she asks.
“You can have it,” I tell her.
I’m pretty sure I’d give Delilah whatever she wants.