24. Delilah
Delilah
Monday morning came. The newsroom I came to was as buzzing as it would be at any point this week. I was back in my professional element, and unlike a few days before, when I’d come to escape pain, today was the first day where it felt like I was coming to a source of comfort and reward.
But even still, the scars remained.
Every time my phone rang, a small—not so small, truly—part of me wondered if it might be Adrian Vale. It had not yet been, and I had no rational reason to think it actually would be, but that didn’t stop me from fooling myself.
Every time I passed by the conference room nearest my desk, I thought about the fight we’d had.
It had been so damning, so breaking, and yet so…
honest. Raw. Real. I was coming to realize that while it was easy for me to pin all the blame on Adrian, I had also been the one to retreat to work when things got stressful.
Yeah, we both had meaningful jobs, even if one just happened to have a much larger bank account.
Was that worth using as justification for putting love way at the back? So far back it had fallen apart?
I had certainly all but told Adrian to fuck off. I had been the one to tell him he needed to change, or else he shouldn’t come to me. By that logic, I had made my bed; now I had to lie in it.
“He chose his empire. I chose the truth.”
That was a mantra I had taken to repeating to myself when the hours stretched long or the nights were restless.
It only worked when I took it at superficial face value; every other moment when I probed made me realize that, like all stories in life, there were far more nuanced reasons for why things had gone the way they had.
And did I really want to neuter the King of Diamonds? Did I really want that hard man to disappear? I wanted to date Adrian Vale, but discarding the King of Diamonds entirely was a fast way to end up with a man who lost his edge, lost his appeal.
“Delilah? A moment?”
I jerked up from my desk. Eric, my editor, stood there with a nervous smile on his face.
“Sure,” I said, happy to have some distraction from my thoughts. Apparently, it didn’t matter that I was in my element surrounded by my peers; Adrian’s grip on me had been strong.
I followed Eric to his office—which, mercifully, was not the conference room Adrian and I had dissolved in—and shut the door behind me. He had an expression on his face like that of a proud father.
“How’d you like to move to Reno for the chance of a lifetime?”
The what?
“I… I’m sorry?”
Reno? As in Reno, Nevada? As in the city far, far north of Las Vegas? Almost a day’s worth of driving and a couple of hours of flying away?
“What are you saying, Eric?”
“Long story short, there are rumors of major crime rings building up in Reno that have ties to the King’s Men,” Eric said.
“There are rumors that those who escaped the destruction of the King’s Men realized they could never rebuild in Vegas, but they didn’t want to leave the lifestyle afforded them.
So they’re rebuilding in Reno. Rumors, of course.
Nothing has been published. But we want our best journalist to head up there and to do an investigative series on the rise of underground crime rings in Reno.
We don’t know what you’ll encounter, but rumors abound of new biker clubs, mafia associates, and even assassins for hire. ”
My jaw all but hit the floor. Reno? With the most dangerous group of men in the world?
“Why me?”
“Why not you?” Eric said. “You are our best journalist, Delilah. To be frank, we think your talents are being underutilized with the casino wars here. We have other reporters who can get enough info to publish what we can. And even if not, the rise of crime rings in Reno is a far more important story.”
Nothing in Eric’s words suggested that he knew of my dalliance with Adrian. No smirk, no hints, nothing. This truly seemed like a professional opportunity, not one designed to avoid an explosive lawsuit or HR issue.
And if that was the case…
If I took this, the implication was obvious.
I would be in Reno within a month, if not sooner. Investigative journalism wasn’t kind to those who sat on their laurels, even if articles might take months to publish. And as a result, the door would be slammed shut on reconciliation with Adrian, maybe even a full reunion.
I should have said yes immediately. It hadn’t been said explicitly, but there would be a pay raise and other perks with this kind of new gig. And even if there wasn’t, the prestige and attention that would come from such an article would open up massive opportunities elsewhere.
But I didn’t.
And maybe that was because the looming possibility of Adrian still hung in the air.
Or maybe it was because, for as much shit as I’d given him about prioritizing his work life over his personal life, I was now considering the same.
Except he owed you the courtesy of at least a text. You don’t owe him shit.
I still miss him, though.
“Can I get back to you tomorrow?” I said. “Just to make sure I don’t make a hasty decision.”
“Of course,” Eric said. “No one is expecting anything soon. These are crime rings that are building beneath the surface; it’s nothing like what Vegas was four years ago. Just let me know tomorrow as soon as you can.”
I left Eric’s office thanking him for the opportunity, but as I did, I wasn’t so sure that gratitude was the right emotion. Confusion, maybe. Fear, certainly.
Fear that if I took this, I might shut the door forever on my best chance at what I might have denied wanting but ultimately ached for.
I could not make up my mind as the day went on, leaving me with one clear conclusion.
If I could not, then perhaps someone else could.
That was why, an hour after the sun had set, as the winter evening set in on downtown Las Vegas, I sat at a speakeasy bar, waiting for the one person whom I knew could relate to me well.
Sarah.
Thankfully, unlike what I suspect Adrian or any of the other Vales might have done, she did not keep me waiting. We had arranged to meet at six-thirty, and she showed up right on the dot. After a brief hug and asking me what was going on, I went into everything.
I told her about the night I spent at Adrian’s. I told her about how hurt I was that he had chosen business over love, but how I had retreated into the same. I explained the job offer I had, and how I was left uncertain what to do.
“You know I went back to Phoenix at one point, thinking that I’d never return, right?
” Sarah said. I nodded; I knew that moment well.
It had felt like a tear in our friend group, a surprising return of one of us that was suddenly yanked away.
“There’s one key difference between our work, though.
Me, as an artist, I could go just about anywhere at anytime.
Hell, if I had wanted to move to northern Canada or to Nicaragua, I could have.
Would have been foolish, but I could have.
“You, though, have to go where the work is. You can’t be the work, if that makes sense. That all said, that’s just a question of logistics. Do you want to know what I think this is?”
“Of course, it’s why I have you here,” I said with a gentle smile.
It felt nice to wear one of those. Around Adrian, around Eric, around my coworkers, such smiles always felt like they had to carry undertones of some kind. Not with Sarah.
“I think this is your way of trying to reclaim your agency,” she said.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but as a journalist, you need independence and objectivity.
Taking this job would give that to you in full.
In a way, it’s choosing your professional livelihood not just practically but philosophically.
It would allow you to be who you were before Adrian. ”
“Ye… yes,” I said, “but is it odd that I still ache for Adrian? Or for what I thought Adrian was?”
“Oh, definitely,” Sarah said reassuringly.
“There is a reason we ultimately wound up back together. But I think it’s important to recognize how unlikely that was.
Me, deciding to return to Vegas. Him, being as much of a changed man as he proved to be.
Both of us, looking past the misunderstandings.
Each of those three things probably happens in less than ten percent of breakups.
I’m no math girl, but that seems like a long shot. ”
That, it was.
And Sarah had made a great point. She did the work wherever she traveled; I covered the work wherever I traveled.
Being a remote journalist was technically a thing, but not for the kind of things that I covered.
If I truly valued my career, I needed to break out of the Vale-Morril war and Adrian’s shadow.
But still.
Still!
Damnit, why did this have to be such a hard choice?
“How did you ultimately decide on what you did?”
“Time and talking to people I care about,” Sarah said. “Like what you are doing right now.”
Easier said than done, I thought, but a fair enough point.
I looked down at my phone, which had the Las Vegas Strip in the background.
My mind was absolutely leaning in one direction, my heart in another.
It was easy to call the brain the rational actor and the heart the emotional one, but I’d spoken with enough smart people to know that wasn’t always the case.
But I also knew the longer I sat here, split between two very divergent paths, the more heartache I would cause myself. No matter which path I took, I was closing a door, possibly forever.
And then the answer became clear.
One path was definitely open, presented to me this morning as a clear opportunity with clearly defined expectations.
One path was possibly, maybe not even probably, open, based on the hopes that what had happened a few days ago did not define expectations for us going forward.
I sighed. It was so clear, so obvious a decision put that way. It wasn’t a vengeful or angry one, simply one that seemed so undeniably true.
That didn’t make it any less painful.
“I think I know what I need to do,” I said. “Thank you, Sarah.”
“This won’t be the last time I see you, is it?”
“No,” I said with a chuckle cut short.
But it was one of the last times I’d be able to see her on notice of a couple of hours.
By month’s end, if not sooner, I’d be living in an apartment in Reno.
If that meant closing the door on Adrian, so be it. I couldn’t even be sure if that door was open to begin with, anyway. Briefly, I considered sending him a note, but I decided I could not do so to a man who had treated me as he had.
And besides, word could get to him eventually.
If he wanted to prove me wrong about him, he knew how to find me. He had the means to find the real me.
But I couldn’t pretend that he, not the King of Diamonds, would show up.
And for that reason, Delilah Reyes, journalist of the Las Vegas Times, had to take charge, not Delilah Reyes, the woman.