Chapter Ten #2
I stood. “Sounds like they’re finished.”
Neither woman stopped me as I strode out of the room.
I didn’t look back.
I couldn’t.
We regrouped in the dining room like survivors returning from separate natural disasters.
Delaney sat in her original seat, cheeks flushed and eyes narrowed to slits.
Glamma wore a satisfied smirk on her face. One that indicated she was the victor in this mad scheme.
Goldie was practically giggling in excitement.
Coco darted between our legs, then sat near the table as though she were overseeing the events.
Glamma cooed at her and picked her up to settle in her arms.
“Alright, let’s compare answers,” Glamma said, settling in.
Delaney lifted a hand. “I’d like to formally state that this doesn’t—”
“No,” Gladys interrupted.
“What do you mean no? I didn’t even finish what I was going to say.”
Gladys raised an eyebrow. “No.”
Delaney turned to Glamma.
Glamma smiled sweetly.
Goldie held up the first card like she was presenting evidence in a case she’d already won. “We’ll start easy. How does your partner take their coffee?”
I exhaled. This was ridiculous. “Delaney takes it with oat milk,” I said, feeling like that was enough.
Martha cleared her throat and rolled her hand to tell me to keep going.
“With two sugars. And cinnamon on top if it’s available.” I should have stopped there, but clearly common sense had left me. “And when she’s mad, she stirs it counterclockwise.”
Silence.
Goldie’s mouth fell open. “Counterclockwise. That is very specific.”
Delaney’s head snapped up. “What? I don’t—”
“Yes, you do,” I said. Because facts were facts and if I was going down, I was going down with accuracy. “I’ve observed you when you didn’t know I was there. When you’re not angry, you stir normally. When you are, it’s counterclockwise. Notably aggressively counterclockwise.”
“That’s not—I’m not—” She made a strangled sound. “That’s just how I stir.”
I shook my head.
Goldie clapped both hands over her mouth.
Glamma pressed a hand to her heart like I’d recited the poetry of the century.
Delaney’s jaw dropped, and her eyes narrowed as though I’d just admitted I’d been reading her diary. She pressed her lips together hard and glanced away.
Martha held up her clipboard. “Delaney’s answer about Marc’s coffee.”
Delaney’s jaw tightened. “Black. Not too hot. He waits exactly two minutes before drinking it.”
I went still. “You timed me?”
“I didn’t time you. I was texting a friend and I happened to look over and noticed—” She stopped herself. “It’s not like I was studying you.”
Goldie made a noise like she was physically restraining herself from shrieking.
Martha leaned back in her chair. “This is even better than my soaps, and I have been watching The Young and the Restless for thirty-one years.”
“Next.” Gladys fanned herself with a card. “Favorite color.”
I went first again. Of course.
“Delaney’s favorite color isn’t purple,” I kept my eyes on the table. “She loves it. It’s a close second, but her actual favorite color is dark blue. Like the winter sky. She wears it when she wants to go unnoticed.”
Delaney’s head turned toward me slowly. “That’s not true,” she said defiantly.
“It is,” I replied.
“It—” She looked at Glamma, furious. “Tell him it’s not true.”
Glamma smiled. “It’s true, sweetheart.”
Delaney made a sound, a small, strangled sound at the back of her throat. “You’re all in a conspiracy.”
Gladys tapped her clipboard. “Delaney, your turn?”
“Green. A dark hunter green.” She said it fast, like taking a shot. “He’s worn it his whole life when we’re told to wear our favorite color. It’s the one that—” She stopped. “It soothes him.”
The room went quiet.
She’d noticed why it was my favorite color.
My throat felt weird. I picked up my water glass and chugged.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
It wasn’t teasing.
It wasn’t insulting.
It was … attentive.
“That’s sweet,” Martha said softly.
Delaney shot her a glare. “Don’t.”
Goldie laughed. A light joyous sound. “Oh, don’t be mad because she’s perceptive.”
Glamma chuckled. “Next question. What does your partner do when overwhelmed?”
I cleared my throat. “Delaney talks faster. Rearranges objects. Touches her necklace.” I hesitated to admit the rest. I hadn’t even mentioned it during my inquisition. “If she’s truly overwhelmed, she goes quiet for a half-second. Then loud.”
As I said it, Delaney’s fingers drifted without thinking toward her necklace, a tree fashioned out of small crystals.
She caught herself, and her hand dropped as though she’d been burned.
Goldie bit her lip so hard I thought she might injure herself.
Color rose in Delaney’s face, her shoulders pulling in—but when every head turned her way, she drew in a deep breath and quickly responded on the exhale.
“He avoids eye contact when he’s processing.
If he’s in overload, he stands very still.
As if he doesn’t move, nothing else will move either, and it’ll give him time to figure out what to do next. ”
I inhaled slowly.
She had described me with precision. Without the typical mockery.
“That’s an accurate read,” I said.
“I know.” She waited a beat, her gaze drifting to mine before she said softly, “I didn’t always know that.”
Something shifted in the room. Goldie didn’t laugh. Glamma didn’t smirk. Even Martha sat very still for a moment.
Then Goldie slapped down the next card. “What does your partner need when they’re emotionally hurting?”
My spine went rigid.
I already knew what I’d said. Now I was about to have to say it in front of Delaney.
Gladys pointed to me. The woman was enjoying this all far too much.
“Delaney needs someone to stay,” I said. I kept my voice level. “Not to fix things. Just to not leave when she needs them the most.”
Delaney’s face went completely blank.
Not angry or defensive.
Just blank. Like a screen that went dark.
Had I gone too far?
Coco barked softly as though comforting Delaney.
“That’s not—” Delaney started.
“It is,” I said. Then, because the room was quiet and I couldn’t seem to stop myself, “I’m sorry that was ever something you needed.”
Delaney swallowed hard, then looked away.
Goldie made a small noise and Martha shushed her.
Gladys cleared her throat and consulted her clipboard very deliberately, giving us both a moment. “Delaney’s answer for Marc.”
Delaney’s voice came out steadier than I expected. “He needs clarity. He needs you to explain exactly what’s going on and what you expect of him.” She paused. “Then he can relax.”
She’d guessed correctly. I studied her. She was looking at the table.
She saw me clearer than I thought she did. “Most people just assume I—” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Don’t care,” she said quietly. “Yeah.” Another pause. “I know.”
The, I know, landed in a way I didn’t have a framework for. So I stayed quiet.
Martha’s eyes had gone suspiciously bright, which was alarming.
Glamma, for once in her life, said nothing.
“Last one.” Goldie placed a card gently on the table. “What’s a habit your partner has that they think no one notices?”
Delaney muttered something under her breath.
“Mushrooms,” I said.
Delaney’s head snapped up.
“You pull them out of everything and line them up on the edge of your plate.” I kept a straight face. “In a row. Like a firing squad.”
“They’re fungus,” she said, not able to fully hide the smile tilting the corner of her lips. “They don’t belong with food. They deserve a slow painful death.”
I grinned.
Delaney took a deep breath and regarded me the way she had earlier. Measuring. Deciding on whether to answer or not. “You separate your food.”
I froze.
“You’ve done it as long as I’ve known you,” she said. “You got better about hiding it. But you still do it. The mashed potatoes can’t touch the green beans, the green beans definitely cannot touch the protein.”
“That’s—”
“A preference?” She raised an eyebrow.
I closed my mouth. After being teased when I was much younger about hating my food touching, I’d spent years trying to make my food habits less noticeable.
Goldie pointed between us triumphantly. “Oh my God, you two have been obsessed with each other since childhood.”
Delaney choked. “No.”
“Absolutely not,” I said at the exact same time.
Goldie slapped her hand down on the table, making the dishes on the table clatter and Martha jolt. “They’re even answering in sync. Gladys write that down.”
“Already writing,” Gladys said.
“What are you writing?” Delaney’s voice squeaked on the last syllable. “Is anyone going to stop her?”
Glamma scratched behind Coco’s ears. “No.”
Delaney crossed her arms over her chest and glared around the table. “I hate all of you.” Her nose scrunched, making the sentiment entirely unconvincing.
Goldie lifted her wineglass. “We love you, too.”
Glamma set Coco down and folded her hands. “One last question. What is one thing you respect about the other person?”
Delaney’s mouth snapped shut, and I racked my brain for an answer. Anything. Any answer at all. But this question hadn’t been asked during our separate sessions. I was not equipped for it.
Silence spread between us.
Delaney’s eyes narrowed—bracing, probably, for something efficient and impersonal she could be annoyed about.
“She makes people feel seen,’ I said, not able to look away from her.
“She can be in a room full of people, and somehow every single one of them walks away feeling as though they were the only one that mattered there. She leads with—” I stopped, working to find the right word.
“—with generosity. Even when she doesn’t have to.
” Delaney was honest and direct, and always led with love in her interactions.
With everyone but me.
Goldie set her wine glass down very carefully. Martha’s hand rose to her mouth. Gladys’s pen moved so fast across her page it was practically generating heat.
Delaney stared at me. My instinct was to look away—file how I knew that, process it later, somewhere she wasn’t watching. I’d said it out loud. All of it. I hadn’t meant to. And now she was right there filtering through my words. Instead, I held her gaze.
Martha cleared her throat. “And what about you, Delaney?”
Delaney continued to hold my gaze. “He remembers things.” Her lips pursed as she said it, like she hadn’t meant to vocalize that thought. “Little things. Things people mention once and forget they mentioned. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He just—” she stopped. “He pays attention.”
No one said a word.
Glamma broke the silence, rising with the unhurried elegance of a woman who’d just won a very long game she’d been playing for years.
Her pearls caught the candlelight, and she tucked Coco under one arm.
“That was absolutely perfect. I believe we’ve worked up an appetite with all that honesty.
We’ve outdone ourselves tonight, ladies. ”
Delaney exhaled—long and unsteady, the kind that had been held in too long.
So did I.
Goldie was already up, bangles chiming, reaching for the wine bottle and accurately reading the room.
Martha pushed back from the table with the careful dignity of someone trying to hold back strong emotions.
Gladys winked at Delaney on her way past, earrings swinging.
“I think you need wine more than the rest of us.”
“I need something,” Delaney muttered.
And then the room was empty, except for the two of us.
The quiet that followed was different than it usually was between us. Less of a stand off. More the strange, held stillness after a storm breaks—when the air doesn’t know what to do with itself yet.
Delaney spoke, her voice barely above a murmur. “Do you really remember me pulling mushrooms out of my food?”
“It’s disruptive.” It wasn’t, but my emotions were rioting, and I couldn’t come to terms with everything that had happened tonight. Keeping our antagonism going seemed easier.
“That’s not an answer,” she said.
She hadn’t put up her armor. Her face was soft and thoughtful. She wasn’t closed off or defensive. Just open in a way that it never had been before.
“I remember a lot of things.”
The restless energy that lived in her hands went quiet. She didn’t reach for her wine glass. Didn’t shift in her seat. Didn’t clear her throat. “Why?”
The word was quiet. Genuine. Just a question, plain and real.
I didn’t have an answer that was safe to give. So I gave her the closest thing to the truth I could. “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I just do.”
Delaney held my gaze. Then she looked away. And part of me wanted to say something to draw her attention back to me.
But I stayed silent.
It was probably for the best. Tonight had already been confusing enough.