Chapter 6 Deli
Deli
“That’s not great.”
Their waitress stood with hip cocked and bubbly water in hand, taking in the wine splattered across Deli’s lap.
“No,” Deli sighed. “I suppose it’s not.”
“I can get it out. It’s my magic power.”
“I got it.” Deli smiled as she took the glass. “But thank you so much for this.”
She nearly recoiled at the unexpected touch on her forearm as the stranger gave her a gentle squeeze. Their eyes met in the mirror.
“Hey. Who cares what they think of you?”
Deli had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”
Her reflection stared as the waitress smiled softly with something like . . . pity?
“Club soda will take care of that quick,” she said, then backed into the hallway.
Deli took a steadying breath in the stark, cool room—all dark stone and bronze hardware, despite the riot of color and sound muffled just beyond the metal door.
She locked eyes with her reflection and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. A balloon filled in her stomach, and she swallowed it down. It was easy enough to do. “It’s almost over, Delilah.” Her voice wasn’t kind, but she didn’t need kindness. “Keep it together.”
As Deli wove back toward her table with a damp skirt, a roar of laughter and music erupting from a nearby table stopped her in her tracks.
A little girl with unbrushed curls tumbling from a crooked crown stood in her chair over a single birthday cupcake.
In the flickering light, while her family sang, that girl looked wild and free.
Deli blinked very hard, turned, and kept walking toward her own family.
She found her dad scribbling a signature on the check. He folded up the glasses that were perched on the tip of his nose.
She refused to sound crestfallen. She smiled. “Oh, no dessert?”
Her mom looked up. “We knew you had to get back, what with Valentine’s Day being tomorrow.” Deli’s foot pulsed painfully. “And it’s not like any of us girls need the extra calories. Unless Trey is still hungry?”
“Me?” Trey asked. “Oh, no. I’m good.”
“Great.” Lorraine smiled as she pointed toward the exit. “We have to drop Little Miss Lush here off at home.” Grandma Rosemary shooed the comment away with a papery hand like she was swatting at a fly.
On her way out, Grandma Rosemary squeezed Deli’s shoulder and slipped an envelope into her hand with a wink.
“You know, when I was your age I already had two children, a marriage, and a career. I want you to think about your life and reach your goals. Use that to get there.” She nodded toward the envelope and took Deli’s hand, the way she only did when she was a few glasses of wine in.
“I have a very good plastic surgeon, if you’d like to get a little something.
You know, to stay competitive.” Grandma Rosemary whispered the last word with a quick flick of her eyes to Trey slipping on his coat over Deli’s shoulder.
Deli knew Grandma Rosemary was simply from a different time. She barely felt the sting that used to raise welts on her heart. “Thanks, Grandma. I’ll keep that in mind. Love you.”
“Alright, darling. Alright.” She patted Deli’s arm and moved into the hallway.
John and Lorraine MacDonald were probably already in the parking lot.
Deli struggled to get her coat on, until Trey picked up the dangling arm and held it out for her to find.
“I don’t know what you were so worried about,” Trey said from behind her. “That was a delight.”
“A huge success!” She turned to face him. “I’d love to do it again.”
“Is tomorrow too soon?”
They were interrupted by their waitress carrying a single cupcake with a lone candle.
Tears threatened to wash away Deli’s composure. “Did you . . . ?”
Trey teased his robber’s smile. “I may have mentioned it. We are here to celebrate you, right?” He held the cupcake between the two of them. “Make a wish.”
Deli hoped beyond hope that one small flame could carry the weight of so much wishing. She blew, eyes closed, acutely aware of her breath on Trey’s fingers.
Then the cupcake collided with her face.
“You ass!” She laughed.
Trey danced away laughing as she tried to snatch the smooshed cupcake in his hand. She bent to study her face in the twirling plexiglass box and licked a wide circle in the frosting. “Trey, check. Did I get it all?” She spun around.
He was standing close. Too close.
“No.” He set the ruined cupcake down without looking away from her, coaxing a chill with his voice like dark satin gliding across her skin. The kiddish sparkle in his eyes was gone. They simmered silvered blue. “You didn’t.”
They were alone in the private corner of the restaurant.
The air between them hummed with the things they’d never said.
He raised his hand, head barely tilting, and caught her face in his fingers as she went still.
Trey’s thumb traced the place where she had attempted to rub away the mess, so slowly it felt like torture.
Deli looked up while he learned the shape of her lips, and she knew it was impossible she was the only one thinking the things she was thinking. He held her so softly, fingertips against blushing cheek, like he was afraid he might hurt her. He had kissed her. She hadn’t made that up.
She didn’t know when the gap between their bodies had gotten so small. Deli’s heart raced, desperate for an answer—to know what Trey wanted—and she felt the silly thing buckle in her chest as she looked to his eyes for clarity but found misty fog.
“Deli . . .” Trey whispered.
Is this it? she thought.
Splintered bits of shattering glass exploded around their feet—so loud in a room where Deli could hear her own blood in her ears. It jerked them back from the edge. They took a clumsy step away from each other.
“So sorry about that!” Their waitress made a whoopsie face. “Dropped a glass!”
Trey flipped on his million-dollar smile.
“No problem at all!” he drawled. “We were just on our way out.”
“Have a good night!” She stayed hovering in the doorway until Deli and Trey shuffled down the hallway and spilled out into the winter air.
Deli sucked in a massive gulp of night and cold, and hard panic chased off her love-drunk stupor.
She didn’t look back as she walked toward her car, searching her brain for protocol on how to act with your longtime friend after he’d kissed you once, acted like he hadn’t, then done .
. . whatever the hell that had been. She hit the unlock button on her car once, twice, three times.
Trey caught her wrist and spun her toward him in the middle of the empty parking lot.
It all felt too real. Too fragile.
“I have to get back to work,” she said in a rush.
“Come over tomorrow.” Everything sounded underwater. A strange shadow crossed Trey’s face. “After your shift. There’s something I . . . Just come over.”
“I’m off at three,” she managed.
“See you at five.”
“Okay.”
Trey wrapped Deli in his arms, and she stiffened—thinking about all the ways tomorrow night could ruin things—but she forced the thoughts away and melted into him to bury her face into his shoulder.
“Tomorrow,” he murmured against her ear. Then he strode toward his car and looked back at her with one hand on the handle. “Oh, and Deli?”
“Yeah?”
He smiled under a perfect cone of streetlight.
“Happy birthday.”