CHAPTER 37 DELILAH #2
I’m still shivering by the time we make it back to Jackson’s house, my arms clinging to my elbows in the small hallway outside of his kitchen.
He’s upstairs with the girls while I study the tile work that loops in a pattern down the length of the wall.
I wonder if he did it himself, or if the girls helped.
If they pressed laughter and clay-stained fingertips into the wall together, Jackson working with the same meticulous attention to detail he uses with everything else.
I trace the edge of a tile and wonder why he’s never asked me to come here. If maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d knew I’d fuck it all up.
He finds me like that, staring at the tile on his wall, trying hard not to cry. I don’t have any more distractions, and the day is slowly catching up to me.
“They’re watching a movie,” he says, weary, scrubbing his hand roughly against the back of his head. “Fuck,” he breathes. “What a shit show of a day.”
“Yeah.” I laugh, but it sounds hollow and sad. “I can relate.”
I’m jittery and uncomfortable, standing in this narrow hallway with Jackson perfectly apart from me. My toes are being pinched by my shoes, my eyes feel gritty and dry from all my almost-crying, and my heart—
My heart squeezes when Jackson slips both of his arms around my waist and curls his body over mine, gathering me close, burying his face in my neck with a bone-deep sigh.
“Thank you,” he breathes. He squeezes me so tight my lungs pinch, his arms wrapped over each other across my back, his big palms spanning my rib cage.
I am completely enveloped by him, and my composure fractures a little bit more.
“Thank you for today. For what you said to the girls. For helping me. I can’t—” He swallows, his voice thick.
“I don’t know what I would have done without you. ”
The tears are sudden and ferocious. The dam I’ve been struggling to hold all day breaks, ugly sobs pouring out of me.
Jackson scoops me closer, walking me across the small kitchen and into the living room.
He tries to deposit me gently on the couch, but I won’t let him go, clinging tightly with my arms around his neck.
“Delilah,” he whispers. He sits with me draped over his lap, his hands pushing my hair away from my face. I keep my nose against his neck, refusing to look at him. “What’s going on? What happened today?”
“Keith wanted to move me to features,” I mumble against his skin.
His hands keep moving over my hair. Down my shoulders. Across my back. “He tried to take you off weather?”
I nod.
“So you quit?”
I nod again.
Jackson’s sigh makes his chest rise and fall. “I hate that he did that to you. I hate that you felt like you only had one choice.”
More tears burn behind my eyes and I’m—I’m so tired of being like this. “It was my fault,” I manage. “I messed up.”
Jackson urges me backward on his lap. He has dark circles under his eyes.
Weariness etched in the set of his shoulders.
He drags his hand over his face and guilt hangs like a noose around my neck.
He’s so tired and I’m making it worse. He has enough to deal with without this layered on.
He’s always taking care of me when he already has so much on his plate.
“How did you mess up?” he asks.
I run a shaky hand under my nose. “In the mountains. I thought I could be different. More professional, maybe. I wanted to show everyone that I can be taken seriously. But I fumbled it, just like I do everything else.”
Jackson shakes his head. “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” I slide off his lap and curl into the space next to him, tucking my legs beneath me. “I’ve always been like this. Maybe I should take some time, you know? Some space to figure things out.”
Jackson goes still. “Space from what?”
I lift my hands and drop them. “I don’t know. Everything. Is it possible to have a quarter-life crisis?”
He ignores the question. “Am I included in everything, Delilah?” He swallows, the line of his throat working. “Will you be taking time and space from me?”
I shake my head, then nod, then shake my head again. God. I’m a mess. I keep my gaze on his hand flat against the couch cushion. His rolled sleeves and the glint of his watch. “We said this thing between us would only last for our time in the mountains. We’re not in the mountains anymore.”
Jackson’s knuckles find my chin. He forces the eye contact, because he knows I’m too afraid to do it myself.
“No,” he says.
I blink. “No?”
“Yeah, no.” He drops his hand and fishes around for something in his back pocket. “I never agreed to while we were in the mountains. That was your idea, and it was a stupid one.”
“Excuse me?”
He pulls out his wallet and tosses it on the cushion between us, flipping it open and pulling a folded piece of paper from the back.
“You said friends, and I said okay, because I’m going to take you however I can get you.
If you wanted to call it casual, I’d take that too.
Because I’d still get a corner of you to call mine.
But I won’t have you call it nothing. I won’t have you taking time and space away from me. Not when I know how good it is.”
He unfolds the paper he pulled from his wallet, running his thumb along the heavy crease in the middle. It’s stained with coffee and has clearly been folded and refolded a thousand times. Jackson extends it to me. “We have a signed agreement, Delilah Stewart.”
I stare at our contract Post-it note from that day in the café.
“This agreement was for the duration of the trip.”
He extends his arm over the back of the couch, his fingers tangling in the ends of my hair. “Was it?”
I grab the coffee-stained note with shaking hands, bringing it closer to my face. He’s struck through one very important sentence.
I, Jackson Clark, promise to be on my best behavior for the duration of this trip.* No picking fights, no making fun, and no sad-face notes left on car windows.
*and will allow for mishaps and mistakes, without complaint
“How did you get this?”
“I found it in your coat pocket.”
I trace the crooked line through the note. “When did you change it?”
“After that first radio broadcast. Before we left for our trip.”
I sniff. “Why?”
“Because I knew I wouldn’t be done with you by the end of it.
” He swallows, knuckles nudging his glasses up his nose.
“Our contract says we will allow for mishaps and mistakes, without complaint. Why can you help me with my problems, but I can’t help you with yours?
What happened to us taking care of each other?
” He moves closer. “What about . . . getting to be loved by the people who choose us?”
I grip his wrist. “Jackson.”
“I’m not done with you,” he whispers. “Please don’t be done with me.”
I press my lips in a firm line so they don’t tremble. “I’m a mess,” I whisper.
“Then be a mess with me.”
“I’m too much.”
He laughs. “Yeah, baby. You’re too much.
You and your hot pink snow pants. Your doughnut snow sled.
Your sunshine smile and your ridiculous puns.
You laugh too loud at jokes and you talk to every stranger you meet.
I don’t think we were on time for a single thing in the mountains, because you were busy learning someone’s life story.
You think candy is a food group and you smile even when you don’t mean it and—Jesus, Delilah.
You drive me insane. You might be too much, baby, but maybe sometimes I’m not enough.
Maybe when we’re together, we fill each other up the way we—the way we need.
” His voice cracks and he lifts his hand to my face, the pads of his fingers brushing gently over my cheekbone. “Be too much with me,” he whispers.
I want it so badly, but I’m afraid to believe in something else that could be taken away from me. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Neither do I.” He ducks his face down and brushes a kiss against my mouth. I sway into him.
“I don’t want to mess it up.”
He smiles against my mouth. “You hit me with your car once. I don’t think you can mess it up.”
I rear back and stare at him. “Did I?”
He nods, his smile growing wider. “You nudged me in the parking lot.” He pecks a kiss on the bridge of my nose. “It’s only up from here.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He trails small, fleeting kisses every place my tears touch. “Things with us have never been simple or easy, but I’d rather be messy with you than have perfect with anyone else.” He presses his forehead against mine. “Stay with me. Let’s figure it out together.”
I nod, more tears cascading down my cheeks. Jackson wipes them away patiently with his thumbs, his eyes impossibly soft.
“Will you let me help?” he asks.
I nod and I feel the weight pressing down on my chest lighten. How easy it is, in the end, to open the door for him. To trust and believe that he’ll take care of me.
It’s just like he said. We fill in each other’s cracks and crevices. Maybe together we can be something whole.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Yeah, okay. I don’t want space.”
“Good,” he says, and he punctuates it with another kiss. “I don’t want it either.”