40. Delilah
DELILAH
The car turns onto Kane’s street a little after seven. I still don’t know where we’re going.
“Is it dinner?”
“There will be food.” Kane doesn’t look up from his phone. “You’ll eat. You’ll be fed until you complain about it, actually.”
It’s my birthday. The big 3-2, which as anyone knows is a milestone event in every culture on earth.
I spent the day doing what I do every other day. Priya made me stop at nine to eat a croissant and then sang at me while Cameron banged a sheet pan with a whisk.
She chased me out at four o’clock. It struck me as a little suspicious at the time, but I had other things to think about. The curb’s still half-fixed. There’s a temporary plywood ramp bolted where the brick apron used to be. The problems never end.
My birthday has never actually been my birthday.
It falls in that stretch of March that runs up against Palm Sunday, and when I was a kid, my mother folded the two together every single year.
One party. Palms on the table, ham in the oven, forty people from the parish, and a cake with my name on it near the back if I was lucky.
The year I turned twelve, I spent half of my own party hauling coats up to the guest bedroom. When I was fourteen, I ran the coffee urn. Efficient, my mother called it. Why do two when you can do one?
So I’ve never really had a proper birthday party. I figured more of the same was in store for this year.
But then we pull up in front of Kane’s brownstone, and I realize just how wrong I was.
“Kane… what have you done?”
“Get out of the car, Lilah.”
He pulls me by my hand up the steps. Anton opens the door and steps aside.
Behind him, the hall is full of noise—and then somebody screams.
“MISS DELILAH!”
Priya’s four-year-old daughter Zara comes flying down the hall in a purple princess dress with a crown crooked on her head. I catch her under the arms and haul her up before I’ve fully processed the rest of it.
Because the rest of it is: Priya, hands over her mouth.
Angelica with a party hat pulled down over her eyebrows.
Cameron in a button-down he clearly bought today, tag still crimped at the collar.
Jolene with a glass of wine already halfway gone.
Skye Brewer, my lawyer, in jeans, which I have never seen.
Niko. Yuri. Stepan coming in behind me still holding his keys.
“Surprise!” Priya says, and then: “You didn’t guess. You seriously didn’t guess.”
“I thought you were just sick of me.”
“I am sick of you. I planned a party for you anyway. That’s love, Delilah.”
Over her head, a huge banner hangs from the ceiling. It reads HAPPY BIRTHDAY DELILAH in cut-out letters. One of the Ls is backwards. Zara tells me she did it that way on purpose, which I choose to believe.
I look around for my mother, my sister. It’s reflexive.
But they aren’t here. Neither is anybody else with my last name.
“They’re not invited,” Kane says by my ear. “None of them are.” He slips my coat off my shoulders, kisses the side of my neck, and steps away, leaving me to fend for myself in the middle of a crowd of people all smiling at me.
Another reflex: immediately asking who wants a drink.
I call the question over my shoulder as I head for the kitchen.
But I don’t get far.
Before I can even set a toe on the tile, Anton gently grabs my elbow. “No, Ms. Dorsey.” He spins me around and guides me back toward the party. “Tonight, I do this.”
“I’m faster than you,” I warn. “And I’m not afraid to fight dirty.”
“You are.” He nods gravely. “Still no.”
Then Priya’s in the doorway with her arms crossed and her head tipped. “Delilah Dorsey. Get back in the party.”
“I was checking the—”
“I know what you were doing.” She points at me, then at an armchair in the middle of the living room. “Sit down. Let people look at you and sigh longingly at how hot and cool you are. It’s one night in the spotlight. You’ll survive. These people love you, remember?”
“You don’t know for a fact that I’ll survive,” I argue. “And if I do die, you’re gonna feel soooo guilty.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take. Now, go. Scoot your booty. We want to celebrate you.”
And so they do. We eat and laugh and tell stories. Anton is constantly replenishing everyone’s drinks and bringing around serving dish after serving dish filled with my favorite foods.
Dumplings from my favorite Chinese place.
Sesame noodles. Baby back ribs. Philly cheesesteaks and little gem salads. It makes no sense together except for that I love them, and even though that’s kind of a terrifying theme for a perennial people-pleaser like me, no one seems to mind one bit.
Each time I reach for a serving dish, someone else hands me what I want. When a glass needs refilling, Anton beats me to it. When Zara drops a dumpling, Priya picks it up before I can get out of my chair.
I keep waiting for the assignment attached to all this attention.
None arrives.
Instead, people tell stories about me while I remain seated and increasingly desperate to hide under the table.
Then Priya taps a fork on her glass, which makes Yuri flinch and reach toward his jacket, which makes Niko laugh so hard he chokes.
“Okay,” Priya says. “Short speech.”
“That’ll be the day,” I snort.
She raps me on the head with her fork. “It won’t be short,” she agrees. “Hear ye, hear ye. I have been instructed to say nice things about Delilah Dorsey.”
I balk. “By whom?”
“Kane. He threatened to bake again if I refused. And I’m threatening you with grievous bodily harm if you interrupt me again. So shush, okay, you beautiful creature, you? I’m trying to pay you compliments.”
I mime zipping my lips, though there’s no way I can hide away my smile.
Pri clears her throat. “Two years ago, I was working at a nameless shithole—sorry, Zara; I mean, craphole—in Bay Ridge where the owner docked me half an hour of pay for every one minute I was late. Then Delilah fell from heaven into my lap, hired me and gave me a schedule I could put on a fridge and a wage I could plan a life on. When my life fell apart in January, she swore she wouldn’t let me go hungry before I even asked her.
” Her chin starts to wobble, but she powers through it.
I blush. “You’re really laying it on thick.”
She glares at me until I shut up again. “That being said, she’s a little bit thick-headed sometimes.
I could go on and on about all the kind things she does, but in some ways, that’s actually a mistake.
It reinforces her worst opinion. She thinks we love her for what she does.
But she’s so, so wrong about that. We love her for who she is. ”
My eyes fill up with tears.
“So,” she concludes, lifting her glass. “To Delilah. Who takes care of everybody. And who is going to sit there tonight and let us take care of her, because we outnumber her and she can’t win.”
Everybody cheers and drinks.
What I want to do more than anything, more than breathing, is make a self-deprecating joke to defuse all this lovey-dovey attention. I’ve got one locked and loaded, about how payroll is cheaper than therapy.
But I swallow it down.
Let yourself be loved. I can almost hear Kane whispering that in my ear.
For once, I take his advice.
“Thank you,” I say instead. “All of you came here for me. That’s…” I have to stop for a second and collect myself. “That’s new. So—thanks.”
Then the lights go out.
I panic for half a second before a familiar glowing figure emerges from the kitchen.
It’s Kane, holding…
Well, I guess it technically meets the requirements for a cake.
The two vanilla layers list toward the left.
Chocolate frosting has been applied with more determination than skill.
HAPPY 32 LILAH stretches across the top, although the final H has wandered into the border and may never find its family again.
“He made it himself from scratch. Wouldn’t let me touch it,” Priya explains in my ear, delighted beyond words.
“I offered. I begged. But nope. He holed himself up for five hours, and by the sounds of the curses erupting from the kitchen while I was setting up the decorations, he spilled a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and flour along the way.”
My tears threaten to escape and run free as everyone sings Happy Birthday at the top of their lungs. Kane sets the cake-like concoction down in front of me.
It takes a few big blows to get all thirty-two candles extinguished, but in the end, I manage to complete the job. I’d make a wish, but why bother?
Everything I need is right here.
Kane hands me a knife as the lights come back up.
The crumb is tight and rubbery near the middle. Overmixed—he beat the flour in like it owed him money—and there’s a dense band along the bottom where the batter sat while the second pan went in. The icing is too sweet. He didn’t sift the cocoa, so there are little pockets of raw powder in it.
I know all of that by the end of the first bite.
And yet it is, without a doubt, the best birthday cake I’ve ever had.
I look up at him and grin with a mouthful of frosting.
“Well?” he asks.
“I love it.”
“You lie.”
“I would never.” I take another bite and pretend to wince. “Er, just one question, though… How many eggshells entered the batter?”
“None remain. Let’s leave it at that.”
I laugh and pull him down for a kiss. People cheer.
Then Angelica demands we take a photo. Niko fulfills his customary role of arranging everybody, including me when I try to scurry to an edge.
“Nope,” Niko says. “Behind the cake. Dead center. Go.”
Laughing, I go stand behind the crooked cake in the middle, with Zara on my hip and Priya’s arm around my waist, and Kane just off my shoulder.
I look right into the camera and smile with my whole heart.
A little before midnight, they’re all gone. Zara went out asleep over Priya’s shoulder, still in the crown. Stepan drove Jolene and Cameron home. Skye left last and told me on the step, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” which from her is basically a kiss on the mouth with tongue.
The house is quiet in their absence. Anton clears the last of the glasses and disappears, leaving behind just me and Kane in the parlor with the banner sagging on one corner and half of a very good, very bad cake on the table.
“One more thing,” he says.
“You already did too many things,” I retort.
“And yet I persist in doing more.” He hands me an envelope. Plain, black, sealed, and too thick to be a letter.
I open it.
It’s a photograph. Printed, matte, five by seven.
Of me.
On his bed, three weeks ago. The candles are in it, warm and low. I’m on my back with my head tipped toward the camera. The blindfold’s on. My wrists are cuffed and up above my head, the chain arcing off the top of the frame.
My legs are apart. There’s no sheet, no shirt, no arm across my stomach, no hand covering anything.
Every part of me is in it.
The whole soft length of me, the hips, the thighs, the stomach I have spent thirty-two years hiding.
But I don’t look ashamed. Not one bit.
I look free.
“This is the only copy in existence,” Kane explains. “I felt guilty about not telling you, but… Well, it just felt like it had to go this way. I couldn’t bear to let the moment pass without capturing it. But you can destroy it if you want. It’d be a pity, in my opinion, but I won’t stop you.”
A year ago—three months ago—hell, even four weeks ago, I’d have had it in a dozen pieces before he finished the sentence.
Now, I’m not so sure.
“Why’d you take it?” I ask.
“Because you couldn’t see yourself.” He crouches down in front of me, elbows on his knees.
“You are perfect in that picture, Lilah. There is not one inch of you I would change. So I wanted you to look at it and see what I saw, which is a beautiful woman taking her own pleasure and not apologizing to anybody for it.”
I look at it again.
Naked, cuffed, blindfolded, hiding nothing. Enormous by every measure my family ever handed me—and wanted anyway.
Visibly, obviously wanted—and more than that, wanting. There’s lust and greed in my open mouth, and I actually don’t hate it.
I slide the photograph back into the envelope, fold the flap down, and put it in my lap with both hands on top of it.
“I’m keeping it,” I decide.
“Good.” He puts one hand over both of mine, over the envelope. “It’s yours.”
I sit there for a second and soak it all in. The banner drooping and the bad cake going stale and thirty-two years of birthdays that belonged to other people finally, finally behind me.
“Kane.”
“Mm?”
“There’s a mirror in your room.” I stand up. “Take me to it.”