Track 15 Delilah #2
Emmett says nothing. Delilah runs the pad of her thumb over the backs of their knuckles, just to have something to do.
“I always crash hard, when I crash. I thought it was just a personality thing. But Iris and I went on this hike, up to this gorgeous lookout point, and it was the middle of the day, and all I could see were trees and sky and water, and it was so beautiful. And all I could think was that I didn’t deserve something that beautiful.
I didn’t deserve to exist in a world that had that much beauty in it, because how could I?
I was me, and that was the worst thing anyone could have been.
And it was the easiest problem I could possibly solve. ”
Of all her memories, it’s one of her clearest, so close to her fingertips at any given moment that all she has to do is close her eyes to be there again—up so high that the air felt thin enough to make her head spin, but smelled so clear and sweet she couldn’t stop trying to breathe it in.
It had felt, for just a few moments, too perfect.
Iris sitting next to her, close enough that Delilah could feel her warmth through the fleece of their jackets, smell the warm floral scent of her perfume.
The sun glinting off the distant water, so bright it hurt her eyes.
The tang of salt in the air. Birdsong and pine sap and endless green.
And below them, an infinite drop into nothingness. Impossibly easy. Impossibly close.
The breathless freedom of that moment, the euphoria of the world dropping into place and making absolute sense, like a dissonant progression resolving into a perfect chord, still haunts her.
Every time she changes her meds, puts down a bottle, or takes a risk on a new song instead of buying a new pack of cigarettes or signing up for a new credit card or giving in to a new bar bathroom hookup, as she slogs through the absolute, dirty, bitter work of living, that instant of clarity is so tempting it hurts.
But she didn’t do it then. And part of her knew, even before she asked Emmett to come with her, that she wouldn’t do it now.
Emmett asks the question. “What stopped you?”
“Iris was up there with me.” She feels her mouth smile, crooked.
It’s a real smile, though, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
“I couldn’t do that to her. Or to my mom.
” She waves her free hand, trying to encompass a thousand feelings in a single movement.
“Just because I don’t understand why they love me doesn’t mean I don’t believe them when they say they do.
If not wanting to hurt them was the only thing I could do right, the least I could do was keep doing it. ”
“I think—” Emmett breaks off, their fingers flexing in hers, almost an unconscious motion. They take a breath and start again. “I think you’re good at more than that.”
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”
“I know you weren’t.” They fall silent for a few seconds, the only sounds between them the rustle of the wind, the distant rush of the river below their feet. “Thank you for telling me that.”
Delilah hums. “I thought it was only fair, since I was dragging you all the way up here.”
A pause. “Why did you want to come up here?”
She considers all the ways she could answer that question, and settles on the truth. “I like to see what I’ll do,” she says. “But it’s easier to come back down when I have someone with me.”
To her surprise, Emmett lets out a startled laugh. “Should I take it as a compliment or an insult that you were considering being okay with traumatizing me, but not your mom or Iris?”
“Okay, well, when you put it like that, I sound like an asshole.” Emmett laughs again, something breathless and relieved in the sound, and Delilah feels the rictus smile on her face turn into a genuine grin.
She knocks their shoulders together. “I wouldn’t have.
Not in front of you.” She thinks about it.
“I think I wouldn’t have at all. Even if you weren’t here.
I feel…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Clearer.”
She takes another breath, letting her body fill up with sweet cold air and the distant sound of the river and the murmuring life of the forest around them, and then sighs.
“Anyway, that’s my vulnerability for the night,” she says, forcing some levity back into her voice.
“We now return you to your regularly scheduled Fun Delilah Time, unless you have a deeply emotional confession you’d like to share while we’re up here, in which case I can put my serious face back on. ”
They’ve been out here long enough that Delilah’s vision has adjusted to the darkness, which is the only reason she sees Emmett open their mouth, and then close it just as quickly.
“No, hey,” she says, tightening her grip on their hand before they can start to pull away.
“I mean it. No jokes or anything. I’ll listen. ”
“I believe you,” Emmett says, but the hesitation still clings audibly to every word. “It’s not that, I just…” They exhale slowly, a whisper of breath, the hand not held in Delilah’s drifting to rub over their chest. “I don’t want to make things difficult for you, especially if…”
Their tone isn’t quite pitying, she thinks, but it’s not far off. “I’m mentally ill, not a baby,” she says. “I can handle other people’s problems.”
“It’s not about handling—” They break off with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. I’m not…I’m not supposed to.”
She’s known Emmett for three days, and she already knows that sentence has Jacob’s fingerprints all over it. “Emmett, he’s dead,” she says. “Whatever he told you not to do, or not to tell people, it doesn’t matter anymore. You get to decide who to share things with, not him.”
“It’s not…really that simple.” Emmett’s fingers flex against their shirt, then drop to dangle over the railing.
“And I don’t want to…I don’t know if you’ll believe me.
Not that I think you’d tell me I’m lying,” they add quickly, before Delilah can open her mouth to protest. “But it’s not…
it’s not something anyone would…think was real. ”
“Buddy, I live and work in Los Angeles,” Delilah says.
“You would not believe the shit I’ve seen.
” When Emmett still doesn’t say anything, she says, as quietly and gently as she can, “Hey. If there’s anything I’ve learned from the last eight years of therapy, it’s that some secrets hurt more to keep than to tell.
” She squeezes their hand. “I’m not pressuring you.
I mean it. But it’s just us up here. And maybe I’m overstepping, I don’t know, but…
whatever it is that you’re holding, it kind of seems like you need to tell someone. Even if it’s not me.”
Emmett spends another few seconds picking at a splinter on the railing before finally taking the kind of steadying, settling breath Delilah has been teaching herself to practice since she was six. “You won’t tell anyone?”
“Not a soul.”
They let out a rough sound that might, in some universe, have been a laugh, and pull their fingers out of hers so they can put their head in their hands.
Cautiously, Delilah lays one of hers between their shoulder blades.
Their breathing is slow and steady, their back rising and falling under her palm.
Finally, Emmett says, very quietly, “Do you remember that story I told you the other night? About the golem?”
Whatever Delilah had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “Yes,” she says slowly.
“It’s true.”
She waits—for an elaboration, or a punch line, or both—and when it doesn’t come, she frowns, trying to decide if Emmett is messing with her. “What?” she says. “Like, as a metaphor? For controlling relationships or something? Is this about you and Jacob?”
“No. I mean—yes, but—it’s not a metaphor. It’s…”
“Take your time,” Delilah offers, but they shake their head.
“If I take my time, I won’t say it. I won’t be able to say it. But you’re right. It—it hurts more not to.” They take a shaking breath that Delilah feels under her fingers, and then straighten. “Do you still have your flashlight?”
Puzzled, Delilah takes her phone out of her pocket. “Yes?”
Emmett swallows audibly, then says, “I want to show you something, but once I do, I can’t take it back. But I need you to know that it’s real. It’s not a delusion. It’s not a hallucination. It’s not a trick. It’s real.”
“I understand.” She taps the flashlight on, wincing in the sudden light. “Show me anyway.”
Emmett waits, just a heartbeat, as if to make sure she’s sure, and then they shrug out of their jacket, draping it over the railing before they unbutton the cuff of their left sleeve. They roll it up, along with the long-sleeved henley they have underneath, baring pale skin and corded muscle and—
Delilah freezes.
On the underside of their forearm, between the crook of their elbow and the surprisingly delicate lines of their wrist, there’s a patch of something different.
For a moment, Delilah thinks it’s a strange skin condition, or maybe a trick of the light, but when Emmett nods permission, and she reaches out to touch it, she feels—
Stone. Cool and hard and unmistakable, rough under her fingertips and absolutely unyielding when she presses more firmly against it.
It stands out starkly against Emmett’s skin, reminding her, strangely, of a cyborg in a science fiction movie, where artificial skin parts to expose sparkling wires and whirring gears.
“Jacob didn’t meet me and decide I was going to replace his son,” Emmett says. Delilah looks up at them and finds their gaze fixed on that same patch of stone. “He made me to replace his son.”
Delilah whispers, “How?”