Track 17 #2
They spend most of the day on the road, stopping only to eat and stretch their legs and—once, memorably—spend a leisurely hour making out on a classic covered bridge in Madison County, Iowa, Delilah murmuring into Emmett’s ear that it was a well-known cruising spot back in the day and so they might as well use it for its traditional purpose.
To her surprise, Emmett had taken to the idea immediately, boosting Delilah up onto the wooden railing and slipping between her legs to kiss her breathless, their long, slim fingers trailing over her waist until she was shivering in ways that had nothing to do with the wind tunnel they’d found themselves sitting in.
“I cannot be the first person you’ve ever kissed,” Delilah says as they make their way back to Roscoe, her mouth still fairly buzzing.
She digs a tube of ChapStick out of her backpack before she’s even closed the door, running it over her lips as if they’re just chapped from the wind, not hot and swollen from having been kissed within an inch of her life. “I refuse to believe this.”
“Like I said,” Emmett says. “No comment.”
Delilah throws the ChapStick at them. They pluck it effortlessly out of the air and hand it back to her.
They set up for the night in a neat and well-maintained campsite halfway across the state, run by the Iowa Parks and Recreation Department.
There’s a playground by the entrance and plenty of picnic tables and covered outbuildings for small gatherings and communal meals.
Delilah hooks Roscoe up to the power while Emmett takes her credit card to buy firewood, and then they work some kind of magic with their remaining groceries, the open flame from their firepit, and Roscoe’s tiny induction burner to make a shockingly delicious dinner of toasted sourdough spread with fig jam and goat cheese and delicate slices of pear.
“This is just annoying now,” Delilah tells them. “Please develop a flaw. Or fake one. Just to humor me.”
Emmett flashes her a grin. “Maybe I’m just on my best behavior.”
“At this point, it would be a relief for you to turn out to be a serial killer.”
“No such luck, I’m afraid.”
After they finish dinner, Delilah sits on the picnic table, picking out melodies on her guitar and scribbling notes in the margins of her journal while Emmett takes their dishes to the nearest water hookup to clean them.
She finishes most of another song in the time it takes them to come back, even managing to record it for Alex and send it off before she can talk herself out of it.
Then, on a whim, she sends the song to Iris as well.
She stares at the little check marks, waiting for typing bubbles to pop up, then sighs and turns her phone off before she can start looking at gossip sites.
A gleeful shout from across the campground catches her attention.
There’s a group of seven or so children—probably all under the age of ten, though she’s not very good at gauging kids’ ages—engaged in what looks like a complicated game involving three soccer balls and a Frisbee.
To her surprise, Emmett seems to be caught up in the middle of it, but she’s not at all surprised that they’re letting the kids absolutely run circles around them, clearly not even trying to win.
Delilah can’t relate—she’s never met a game she didn’t get vicious over—but she finds herself watching anyway, her chin resting on the body of her guitar, taking in the way the setting sun paints Emmett and the children in shades of gold, the way their laughter carries on the breeze until it almost feels like she’s right next to them, sharing in their easy joy.
And Delilah thinks, Ah, fuck.
“Sorry I took so long,” Emmett says when they finally make it back, half jogging along the path leading up to their campsite, with their dishes under one arm. “I got recruited.”
“I saw,” Delilah says, taking the dishes and putting them on the picnic table next to her. She hooks a finger in the collar of Emmett’s jacket, tugging them closer and reaching up to pluck a few leaves from their hair. “It looked like you were having fun.”
“You should have joined us,” they say. “We had uneven teams.”
“Were you even on a team? It kind of looked like you were the ball at one point.”
They grin, looking young and light and lovely.
Delilah considers screaming out of sheer cuteness aggression, decides that would disrupt the early evening quiet settling over the campground, and pulls them in for a short, chaste kiss instead, just to see if they’ll let her.
They do, bending easily to meet her, one hand slipping into her hair like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
“Come to bed with me,” she says.
Emmett draws back, looking surprised. “Delilah—”
Delilah cocks an eyebrow. “You don’t want to?”
They hesitate, fingers drifting from her hair to her neck, the cool tips of them just resting against the pulse at her throat. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“I thought we’d already determined that I’m full of only bad ideas.”
They shake their head. “Not only,” they say.
They sway toward her, a slow, almost unconscious movement, and Delilah slides an arm around their waist, hoping to keep them close when their thoughts catch up to their body.
“I thought you wanted…” Emmett begins, and then stops.
Starts again. “I didn’t think you were looking for—”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
The words slip out before she can stop them, and Emmett goes still against her, then leans away, looking down at her with dark, serious eyes. “Delilah.”
In all the years they were together, Sam never once said her name like that. “You can just say no,” she says. “We don’t have to start psychoanalyzing me.”
“I’m not psychoanalyzing you,” they say. “I’m not saying no, either.”
Delilah still finds herself hesitating. “Then—”
“Delilah,” they say again, and this time they cup her face in their hands, tilting her gaze up.
She shuts her mouth, and they bend to brush a gentle kiss against her closed lips, then pull back before she can chase the contact.
“We can go to bed,” they say. “Not for anything—serious. But we can go to bed.”
The night before, they’d turned away from each other to change.
Tonight Delilah lets herself watch, shamelessly, as Emmett sits down on the floor to take off their boots and jeans and then stands to slip into a pair of sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt.
They’re all pale skin and lean muscle, cut through with occasional patches of that rough, obvious stone, like the minerals sparkling through a broken geode.
The sight of the patches takes away some of the heat in her blood, and Delilah catches her breath.
She reaches out to Emmett, pausing just long enough for them to nod in consent before she slips her hand under their sweatshirt to lay her palm against the largest stretch of stone where it curves around their ribs.
“Emmett,” she says. “Is this…” She hesitates. “Should I be worried about this?”
They shake their head, taking her wrist and gently drawing it out from under their shirt. They kiss her fingertips, as if to soothe away any rejection, then let her go. “No,” they say. “It’ll stop.”
Delilah sits down on the bed. “What’ll happen before then?”
“I don’t know.” They run their thumb over their own forearm, where she knows there’s another patch.
A memory strikes her. “The other night,” she says. “You got all…”
She makes a wobbly gesture, and Emmett winces. “I know.”
“Emmett.”
“I know.” They step farther back, rubbing their eyes. “There might be something in the journals, I’m not sure. I haven’t looked at all of them.”
“Journals?”
“Jacob’s. And—his family’s. Grandfathers and great-grandfathers and…on and on.” Emmett shakes their head. “I don’t have them all, just Jacob’s, and what he pulled from the others to put into his own. He told me to take them with me.”
Something about that sends a chill down Delilah’s spine. “Why?”
“Like I told you the other night—because he doesn’t want anyone else to do what he did.
” Emmett seems to hesitate, and then finally sighs, coming to sit next to her.
They draw their legs up and loop an arm around their knees.
“I think he regretted it. Trying to replace Isaac. He did it out of grief, and then I was there, and…” They shrug one shoulder. “And then he was stuck.”
“Why?” Delilah takes their other hand, lacing their fingers together.
Emmett smiles without humor. “He didn’t like to be wrong.”
“So why didn’t he…you know.” There probably isn’t a good way to say this, so Delilah just goes for the jugular. “I mean, in the story you told me, the guy just—” She slices a hand across her throat. “Right?”
Emmett doesn’t answer right away, just runs their thumb almost absentmindedly over Delilah’s knuckles. After an agonizingly long silence, they draw away to pull their phone out, tap at it briefly, and then hold it out to Delilah.
She takes it with a puzzled frown, looking at what she thinks at first is a photo of Emmett.
But no, she realizes, hit with that same clarity she’d had looking at their sketchbook.
It’s not Emmett. The longer she looks at it, the more she sees the differences.
The sharper angles of the face, the thicker brows, the completely different energy to the set of the shoulders and the lift of the chin.
And the eyes—the eyes are a dark brown, nothing at all like Emmett’s clear gray, and full of a bright, youthful cheer, miles from the ancient solemnity that seems to cling to Emmett’s gaze, even when they’re smiling.
“Oh,” she breathes. “That’s—”
“Isaac,” Emmett confirms.
Delilah stares at the picture for another few seconds, then hands the phone back. “I guess I can see why he wouldn’t pull the plug.”
“Yes.”
“But you can change what you look like,” she says, slowly. “You told me that. Even if it’s not a lot, you could have…made yourself not look like him. Right?”