Chapter 16
“O h, my God! You did it! You finally did it!” Roxanne practically squealed with glee that evening when Delilah called to tell her what happened. “They say the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, right? Oh, my God. This is so great.”
Delilah got the feeling her sister didn’t fully understand the situation. “But … you don’t get it. I’m not ready for a relationship! I was just … just relieving stress!”
Privately, she worried that she was lying, both to herself and to Roxanne. It hadn’t felt like she was just relieving stress. It had felt like a hell of a lot more than that.
But it couldn’t be more. She wasn’t ready for more, and she didn’t know if she ever would be.
“Well, did it work?” Roxanne asked. “Did it relieve your stress?”
“God … did it ever.”
Roxanne whooped in joy. “Well, good for you!”
“But what about Quinn?” Delilah protested. “I mean … I slept with him knowing it’s not going to go anywhere! When men do that to women, we think they’re awful. We think they’re the worst kind of lowlife scum. I don’t want to be scum, Roxanne!”
Roxanne’s voice changed as though she were speaking to a particularly dense toddler. “Delilah. Did you at any point suggest to Quinn that you might want to marry him and have his children?”
“No! Of course not.”
“Did you persuade him to give you sexual favors by hinting that you might want to be his long-term sweetie?”
“Roxanne—”
“I’ll assume you didn’t. Did you tell him you wanted to go steady even though you secretly know you’re not ever going to wear his letterman’s jacket?”
“You’re a scream.” Delilah’s delivery dripped with sarcasm.
“Since you didn’t tell him any of those things,” Roxanne went on, “nor did you even suggest any of those things, I’m going to assume he went into it with his eyes open. He can make his own decisions. He’s a grown man.”
“You can say that again.”
“Oh ho! Now we’re getting into it. Give me the details, Delilah. I need to live vicariously through you. It’s been years since Joey and I got it on.”
“Years? Oh, my God. I had no idea.”
“Well, it’s been a week. But it feels like years. Don’t change the subject. Come on. Details.”
Delilah told her sister what happened: how she’d worked up a head of steam over the things she imagined Quinn thought of her, how she’d gone over there prepared to tell him off, and how he’d grabbed her and kissed her senseless. And then had done things to her she’d previously only read about in the sex articles in Cosmo .
“He picked you up? He literally picked you up?” That, for some reason, was the detail Roxanne had chosen to fixate on.
“He just lifted me up like I weighed nothing. He was like a … a caveman or something.”
“But better smelling, I hope,” Roxanne said.
The thought of Quinn’s smell sent Delilah into a reverie so deep and engaging that she momentarily forgot she was in the middle of a conversation.
“Delilah? Are you still there? Hey, focus!”
“I … I’m here.”
“Look,” Roxanne said. “I know you’re worried about all of this and what it means, but you don’t need to be. Just have fun. Just see where it goes.”
Where it might go—that’s what was worrying Delilah. She hadn’t thought much about where things might go when she’d started dating Mitch, and look how that had worked out. Marrying him had been like sticking her leg in a bear trap.
If she let things with Quinn get out of control, next thing she knew she might be pondering the option of gnawing off her own foot just to get free.
In the wake of his encounter with Delilah, Quinn didn’t feel the way he was supposed to feel.
In his experience, hooking up with a woman left him relaxed, happy, and carefree. But this particular hookup had him thinking about what came next, and that was decidedly unsettling.
He wasn’t used to thinking about what came next. And he wasn’t used to worrying about what that would be.
Quinn wasn’t the kind of guy who rejected a woman after he slept with her just because the thrill of the conquest was over. He hated those guys.
But usually, after he’d been with someone, he didn’t think about whether to call her, or when, or what to say when he did. If he wanted to call, he called. If he didn’t want to, he didn’t. He never gave anyone any false impressions about where things might lead, so it was okay.
It was simple, mostly because he didn’t play games, and he didn’t lie to anyone.
Except he’d lied to Delilah, hadn’t he? When he’d said he was okay with being used—with being treated like an object—that wasn’t true. It had felt true at the time, but now? Now he wanted her to see him as a person.
And not just any person, come to that. He wanted to be the person.
When the hell had that happened? When had he gone from casually flirting and thinking about an attractive woman to wanting a prominent place in her life?
It was stupid, that’s what it was.
After spending the night tossing and turning, thinking about Delilah, Quinn decided he needed to get away—mostly so he wouldn’t go over to her place and make a fool of himself.
So the day after they’d been together, he packed up the van with some winter clothes and snow boots, tire chains, and a cooler full of drinks and snacks, and he headed out to Kings Canyon National Park.
The park was a three-hour drive from Cambria, but he figured the time on the road would do him some good and help him clear his head. Plus, something about being among the giant redwoods made him feel small and vulnerable, but in a good way—as though his own problems were insignificant and therefore not worthy of his own anxious worry.
He got on the road a little after nine a.m., grabbed some lunch in Visalia, then rolled into the park by early afternoon.
He’d prepared for snow, because you never knew, but there wasn’t much this early in the season. He opted for his hiking boots instead of the snow boots, put on a warm jacket against the late fall chill, slipped a bottle of water and a protein bar into his pocket, and set out to do a brisk five miles on the Cedar Grove Overlook Trail.
For a while, out there among the trees and the boulders, with the crunch of the earth underneath his feet and the bright blue sky spread out above him, he felt great. He stopped feeling the cold as a light sweat formed on his skin from good, solid exertion. His muscles were loose and his movements easy as he made his way along the trail, accompanied only by the occasional wildlife scampering around at the edge of his vision.
But then, something horrifying happened.
He realized he had no cell coverage out here and wouldn’t know if Delilah tried to call him.
What was he, in high school? Since when had he obsessed over whether a girl was going to call him? Hell, he hadn’t done that even when he was in high school.
Traditionally, the man was the one to call the woman. But that didn’t really apply here, since Delilah had made it clear she was using him for his body. If he called, he would seem like some needy asshole who couldn’t handle that kind of arrangement—even though he’d assured her he could.
If anyone called, it should be her. In a perfect world, she would call him and tell him she’d realized she wanted more than what she’d said. That their time together had meant more than she’d said it did.
Of course, this was far from a perfect world.
In this world, this real world, he might have to make it happen, if that was what he wanted. He might have to convince her to let him into her life. Which would mean he had to call her instead of waiting around for her to decide she wanted him.
Only he couldn’t call her, because he was out here in the goddamned wilderness.
If she did call and he didn’t answer, would that solidify her thought that he wasn’t worth the effort? Or would it work for him in a playing-hard-to-get kind of way?
Okay, it was official: he was losing his mind.
People always said women could do that to you, but somehow, he’d gotten this far in life without it happening.
Until now.
Shut it down, Quinn. Just shut it down.
He needed to be in the moment, enjoy his hike, and stop thinking. And that’s what he did for another mile or so, until he saw a man and a couple of kids on the trail up ahead of him. The kids were two boys, maybe ten and twelve years old, and from back here, they looked a lot like how Gavin and Jesse would look when they got to that age.
Gavin and Jesse. If they were here, he’d show them all of the great stuff in the park—the General Sherman tree, Crystal Cave, and the tunnel log you could drive through.
They’d love that.
It occurred to him that thinking wistfully about Delilah’s kids was an even bigger warning sign than thinking about Delilah herself.
He finished the hike, got checked into an RV parking spot with power and water hookups, lay back on his bed for a nap—and then thought, fuck it.
Whether she called him or he called her, somebody was calling somebody, by God.
He unhooked the van, drove out of the park, and headed back toward civilization where he could get some damned cell phone service.