Chapter 11
ELEVEN
DELILAH
Idrive home on autopilot, Penelope’s words echoing in my head like a bad song stuck on repeat.
Ask her why she really left. Both times.
Ask her what she told me the night before she disappeared.
The worst part is, I know exactly what she’s talking about. I remember that night—the wine, the tears, the way I’d spilled my guts to someone I thought was my friend. I’d told her everything. About Levi. About why I was leaving. About the overheard conversation that had broken something inside me.
And now she’s holding it like a weapon, ready to use it whenever it suits her.
Ruffy greets me at the door with his usual enthusiasm, completely oblivious to my emotional crisis. He’s been fed—I can tell by the crumbs around his bowl—which means someone stopped by while I was at the gym.
Mom has a key. So does Jo.
A terrible suspicion begins to form.
I walk into the kitchen.
My mother is sitting at the table, drinking tea from my favorite mug, looking like she’s been waiting for this exact moment for approximately twenty years.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she says. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“You’re supposed to be in Florida.” My voice comes out strangled. “You said April. It’s March.”
“I said April-ish. This is April-ish.”
“This is March seventeenth.”
“Which is April-ish if you round up.” She takes a serene sip of tea. “Aunt Patricia sends her love. She also sends this.”
She gestures to the table, where a weathered metal box sits.
I know that box.
I helped bury that box.
Twenty years ago, under the pecan tree in Mom’s backyard.
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” Mom says.
“Absolutely not.”
“Sweetheart—”
“How do you even have that? We buried it.” I’m backing away like the box might literally explode. “How did you—why did you—when did you—”
“Your grandmother dug it up about three years after you buried it.” Mom’s voice is infuriatingly calm. “She was worried you wouldn’t be able to find it again. So she gave it to me for safekeeping.”
“For safekeeping.”
“I’ve been keeping it safe.”
“For twenty years?”
“It’s been very safe.”
I sink into the chair across from her because my legs have apparently decided they’re done supporting my weight. Ruffy, sensing drama, comes to rest his head on my knee.
“Why,” I manage, “are you showing me this now?”
Mom sets down her tea. “Because I got a call from Jo yesterday. She told me you’ve been spending time with a certain rock star who’s in town for the wedding.
” She pauses. “And then I got a call from Brittany at the gym this morning, who said she saw you and that same rock star having ‘a moment’ in the hallway before Penelope interrupted and made things awkward.”
“The Twin Waves gossip network is terrifyingly efficient.”
“It’s how we survive. Small towns run on information.” She nudges the box toward me. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to be ready for this, Delilah. I think you’re finally ready.”
“I’m not ready. I’m the opposite of ready. I’m so far from ready that ready is a dot on the horizon.”
“Open the box.”
“Mom—”
“Open. The. Box.”
Her voice has shifted into what I call her “flower shop negotiation” tone—the one she uses when brides try to change their entire order two days before the wedding. It’s the voice of a woman who has seen some things and will not be moved.
I open the box.
The smell hits me first. Old paper, sea salt, something faintly floral—pressed flowers, I realize, catching a glimpse of faded petals at the bottom. The scent of seventeen and stupid and so desperately in love it hurt.
Inside, nestled in tissue paper that’s gone yellow with age, are the artifacts of a summer I’ve spent twenty years trying to forget.
A photo strip from the boardwalk photo booth. Four frames: Levi making a face, me laughing, both of us looking at each other, and the last one—the one where he’s kissing my cheek and my eyes are closed and I look like someone who’s just discovered what happiness means.
A guitar pick. His favorite, worn smooth at the edges. He’d pressed it into my palm the night I left and said, “So you don’t forget me.”
As if I could ever forget him.
A pressed flower—a forget-me-not, because teenage Levi had been painfully earnest about symbolism—and beneath it, two envelopes. One with my handwriting, one with his.
“We wrote letters,” I say, and my voice sounds far away. “To our future selves. We were going to open them together when we turned thirty.”
“Thirty came and went,” Mom says gently. “I kept hoping you’d ask about it.”
“I tried not to think about it.”
“I know.”
I pick up the envelope with Levi’s handwriting. To Delilah, when we’re old and boring (30 is basically ancient). There’s a tiny drawing of a guitar in the corner.
“Have you read these?” I ask.
“Never. They’re yours.” She stands, gathering her tea. “I’m going to take Ruffy for a walk. Give you some privacy.”
“Mom—”
“I know I made mistakes.” She pauses at the kitchen door.
“I know what I said that summer, and I know it influenced you. I was wrong about Levi. I was wrong about a lot of things.” She looks back at me.
“But I’m not wrong about this: you’ve been running from that boy for twenty years, and it’s time to stop. ”
Then she’s gone, Ruffy trotting happily at her heels, and I’m alone with a metal box full of promises I never kept.
I read Levi’s letter first.
His handwriting at seventeen was terrible—all sharp angles and cramped letters, like he was trying to fit too many words into too small a space. Some things never change.
Delilah,
Okay so we’re supposed to write about where we think we’ll be in thirteen years (THIRTEEN. That’s insane. We’ll be SO OLD) and what we hope for the future and stuff. Here goes.
I think I’ll be playing music somewhere. Maybe not famous—that’s probably a stupid dream—but doing something with songs. Playing in bars or weddings or whatever. As long as I’m playing, I’ll be happy.
Actually that’s a lie. I’ll only be happy if you’re there too.
I know that’s probably too much. We’re only seventeen. People don’t end up with the person they meet at seventeen. That’s not how it works. I looked it up, and statistically it almost never happens.
But here’s what I know: when I write songs, I write them for you. When I think about the future, you’re in it. When I try to imagine my life without you, it’s just...blank. Like a song with no melody.
So here’s what I promise, future Delilah: I will wait for you.
However long it takes. If you need to go to college and find yourself or whatever, I’ll be here.
If you need to move to a city and have adventures, I’ll be here when you come back.
If you need ten years or twenty or fifty, I will still be here.
Because some things are worth waiting for.
You’re worth waiting for.
I love you. I know we haven’t said that yet, but I do. I love you, and I think you’re the bravest, funniest, most beautiful person I’ve ever met, and I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to be good enough for you.
See you when we’re old and boring.
Love, Levi
P.S. If I’m famous by the time you read this, please don’t tell anyone I used to write poetry this bad. I have a reputation to maintain.
P.P.S. I wrote you a song. It’s on the tape. Don’t laugh.
I’m crying.
I don’t realize it at first—I’m just reading, and then there are drops on the paper, and then I’m sobbing so hard Ruffy would be deeply concerned if he weren’t currently enjoying a walk with my traitor of a mother.
He waited.
He said he would wait, and he did. For ten years, until I came back at twenty-seven. And then I left again, and he finally stopped waiting and became exactly who he said he’d be—someone playing music, someone who writes songs.
Songs about me. Songs the whole world knows.
I left, and he turned his heartbreak into art, and now he’s a rock star, and I’m sitting in my kitchen crying over a letter he wrote when we were teenagers because I never told him why I ran.
I never told him I ran because I loved him too much to hold him back.
I reach for my own envelope. The paper is thinner, more fragile. My seventeen-year-old handwriting is neat and careful—I was always the organized one.
Dear Future Me,
I hope you’re happy. I hope you figured out how to be brave. I hope you didn’t run away from the scary things like you always do.
Mostly I hope you’re still with Levi.
I know Mom doesn’t think he’s going anywhere. I know she thinks I should focus on college and “my future” and all that stuff. But here’s what I can’t tell her: when I’m with Levi, I feel like my future is already here. Like I don’t need to go looking for it somewhere else.
He makes me want to stay.
Nobody’s ever made me want to stay before.
So here’s what I promise: I will try to be brave. I will try not to run when things get hard. I will try to believe that I deserve good things, even when it’s scary.
And if I mess it up—if I get scared and run anyway—I promise I’ll come back. Eventually. When I’m ready.
Because Levi is the kind of person worth coming back for.
I hope thirty-year-old me is brave enough to keep this promise.
Love, Past Delilah
P.S. If you’re reading this and you DID run, it’s okay. Just don’t run again. Third time’s the charm, right?
I laugh through my tears, because seventeen-year-old me was apparently a prophet.
Third time’s the charm.
Or the final heartbreak.
Mom comes back an hour later. I’m still at the table, surrounded by memories, the tape clutched in my hand like a lifeline.
“There’s a tape,” I say. “He made me a tape. A song he wrote. We didn’t have anything to play it on when we buried this, so I never heard it.”
Mom sits down across from me. “There’s a tape player in the attic. Your grandmother’s old boom box.”
“Of course there is.”
“Want me to get it?”
I look at the tape. At the faded label that says For Delilah in Levi’s terrible handwriting. At the promises we made when we were young and stupid and brave in all the ways I’ve forgotten how to be.
“Not yet,” I say. “I need to...process.”
“Take your time.” She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “But Delilah? Don’t take too much time. That boy has waited twenty years. It might be nice if he didn’t have to wait much longer.”
“How did you know?” I ask. “That he waited?”
Mom’s smile goes soft. “Because he came into the shop, you know. Every few years. Bought flowers for his father’s grave—lilies, always lilies. And every single time, he asked about you. Where you were. How you were doing. If you were happy.”
My chest aches. “What did you tell him?”
“The truth. That you were in Asheville. That you were working. That I didn’t know if you were happy because you never stayed on the phone long enough for me to ask.
” She pauses. “I never told you he came by. I thought it would make things harder. You were trying so hard to move forward, and every time that boy walked through my door with those lilies, I could see he hadn’t moved forward at all. ”
“You should have told me.”
“Maybe.” She looks at her hands. “I’ve made a lot of choices I thought were protecting you. Not all of them were right.”
“But you kept the time capsule.”
“I kept the time capsule.” She squeezes my hand again. “Because some stories aren’t over just because someone runs away. Some are just waiting for the right moment to continue.”
I look at the photo strip. At seventeen-year-old me, laughing and in love and so sure that life would be simple.
“Penelope knows,” I say quietly. “About why I left. I told her, back then. She’s going to tell Levi.”
“Then maybe you should tell him first.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“Most brave things are.”
I help Mom unpack her suitcase—she’s staying in the guest room “for a few weeks,” which we both know means until the wedding—and we make dinner together, and we don’t talk about the time capsule or the letters or the tape I haven’t listened to yet.
But later, after she’s gone to bed and Ruffy is snoring at my feet, I pull out my phone.
My finger hovers over Levi’s name.
I need to tell you something, I type. Then delete it.
We should talk, I try. Delete.
I found something from when we were seventeen. Delete.
Finally, I settle on: My mom showed up early from Florida. She brought something I think you should see. Can we meet tomorrow?
I hit send before I can chicken out.
His response comes thirty seconds later: Is everything okay?
Not sure yet. But I think it could be.
A pause. Then: I’ll be at the coffee shop at 7. Our usual spot.
Our usual spot. Like we have one. Like we’re people who have patterns and routines and a “usual” anything.
Maybe we could be.
See you then, I send.
I set down my phone and look at the metal box, still open on the kitchen table. Twenty years of promises, of running from the one person who said he’d wait.
Third time’s the charm.
Tomorrow, I’ll find out if that’s true.