Track 16 Delilah
Delilah
Awake, O north wind; And come, thou south;
Blow upon my garden,
That the spices thereof may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden,
And eat his precious fruits.
—Song of Songs 4:16
Delilah wakes up alone.
The sheets are cool when she stretches across them, and it takes her a heartbeat, two, three, to remember why that should be strange—
Her fingers touch paper. Delilah opens her eyes and picks up the folded piece of what she recognizes as a piece of hotel stationery from their room in Chicago.
Outside, the note says. Didn’t want to wake you. —E.
Emmett’s handwriting is smooth and delicate, an intricate script that reminds Delilah of the letters her grandmother would send her in college. “You could make a fortune in calligraphy,” she says to the empty van, tracing a fingertip over the intricate loop of the y in you.
The air inside Roscoe is chilly, and the air outside misty when she peers out the rear window.
She can just make out Emmett sitting at the picnic table, book in hand.
They have their sleeping bag wrapped around their shoulders and the beanie Delilah bought them in Chicago tugged over their ears.
Their face is turned away, and Delilah is too far and the window too foggy to make out their expression, but she finds herself studying them anyway, scanning their body language for any sign that they’ve been out there all night.
If they’ve slept at all since they got back from their ill-advised night hike, swollen-lipped and flushed, and Delilah, before she could talk herself out of it, asked them to come inside with her.
“Just to sleep,” she’d said, maybe too quickly. The way Emmett’s kiss-flushed mouth parted in surprise had reminded her that this time she didn’t have the excuse of trying to make sure Emmett wasn’t going to swoon outside. “I just—I want—”
Emmett had bent, touched their forehead to hers. Their skin was cool to the touch, and now she understood why. She’d closed her eyes and felt their nod against her skin.
They both changed in silence, turned away from each other, somehow awkward in a way they hadn’t been the night before.
Delilah hadn’t turned on the fairy lights since they set off.
Instead, the van stayed dark and quiet as they crawled together into the bed.
This time she didn’t bother with the blanket barrier.
She hadn’t wanted to stop touching Emmett, not yet, so she’d cupped their face in her hands and waited for their whispered yes before drawing their lips back to hers.
She must have fallen asleep mid-kiss, and then somehow slept through the rest of the night. As a notoriously terrible insomniac when not drugged, drunk, or immediately post-orgasmic, she’s surprised at how quickly and deeply she had dropped off.
She wonders, belatedly, if Emmett even needs to sleep.
Her phone hums on the counter at the end of the bed.
Pulling the blankets close, Delilah shuffles down to pick it up.
There are six texts from Alex and one from Iris.
Also a missed call from her mother, time-stamped during her mom’s usual late-night snacking hour, and a text message from a few minutes later with a beautifully framed photo of an ice cream sundae.
None of the other notifications are worth looking at before she’s heavily caffeinated.
Delilah taps her fingers against the side of her phone.
Her usual impulse is to start scrolling through her recent photos to find something to post, but she knows that, too soon, she’ll run out of pictures from the last few days with Emmett and end up back in the album from the rehearsal dinner, the night before Sam left.
It’s so, so tempting to open them. To stare into those bright beaming photos of the two of them, matching lipstick marks on their cheeks, and try to read for hints of what was coming.
To swipe through pictures of Sam with other people, studying the body language for a clue as to which of the many gorgeous women Sam might have been leaning toward just a little more than the others.
Delilah takes a breath, puts down the phone, and gets out of bed to get dressed.
Emmett looks up with a smile when Delilah makes it out of the van, still tying up her hair, bundled in Emmett’s flannel and her own cardigan and jacket, feet stuffed into her boots. “You’re awake.”
“I’m awake,” Delilah agrees. She stops in front of them, a foot or so away, and then scoots closer until she’s tucked between their knees.
They set their book down on the table to put a hand on her waist, looking up at her, their eyes the same gray as the gathered fog around them.
“Hm,” she says, and then bends down to kiss them.
Emmett returns the kiss with the same gentle hesitance they’d shown last night, soft and sweet but with the careful distance of someone actively staying still, not of someone resisting the urge to pull away. Their other hand tucks a few loose strands of Delilah’s hair behind her ear.
Delilah leans back. “Do you sleep?”
Emmett blinks. “Do I sleep?”
“Yeah.” She nudges their ankle with her toes until they move back on the bench, and she slides in next to them, nestling in until her back is against their chest. Seeming to get the hint, Emmett adjusts to wrap their sleeping bag around her, too.
“You weren’t there when I woke up. I wasn’t sure if you were an early riser, or if you’ve actually just been putting on an act this whole time and you don’t need to sleep at all. ”
“I don’t, actually,” Emmett says. They shift to slip an arm around her, almost chivalrously, as if to keep her from slipping off the bench. “Need to, that is. I can sleep. I do, most nights.”
Delilah twists to look at them, vaguely baffled. “Why?”
Emmett cocks an eyebrow. “Would you not?”
“Do you have any idea how productive I could be if I didn’t have to sleep?”
Emmett drops their chin against Delilah’s head. “It gets old,” they say. “And lonely.”
Delilah hears it again, in those words—that deep, bone-weary weight so much older than their soft tenor seems like it should hold.
“All right,” she says, going for levity.
“Well, do you have any idea how productive I could be before it got old and lonely?” She pauses, considering.
“If you don’t have to sleep, does that mean you don’t have to eat or drink either? ”
Emmett nods into her hair. “Yes. But that’s harder to hide, so I’ve always just done it anyway if I’m with people.”
“Huh.”
“Also,” Emmett admits, “I think Jacob gave me a sweet tooth.”
Delilah laughs. She feels it when they smile against her temple in return. “So it sounds like you wouldn’t be mad if we got pancakes for breakfast.”
“I think I could bear it.”
“Thank God,” she says, sitting up. The cold air rushes in between their bodies, and she feels an immediate desire to whine and crawl back into the cocoon of warm sleeping bag and warmer arms. She tugs her cardigan closer around herself instead. “Because I really need coffee.”
Emmett chuckles as they gather up their things. Then they let Delilah take their hand and tug them back toward their temporary home on wheels.
They’re tucked into the corner booth of a twenty-four-hour diner when Delilah asks, “Do you regret it?”
Across the table, Emmett stills, midway through squeezing a wedge of lemon into their tea. They look up at her, eyes like the clouds stubbornly blocking the sun outside, unreadable and dark. “Do you?”
“I asked you first.”
Emmett studies her for a moment, then says, “No. I don’t.” They cup both hands around their mug, long fingers meeting in the middle. Their nails have a slightly bluish tinge, as if from cold, but it’s warm enough in the diner that Delilah has shed her cardigan. “Do you?”
Delilah matches their posture without thinking—hands around her own cup, breathing in the steam. “No,” she says, surprising herself a little at how true it is. “I don’t either.”
Emmett just looks at her, patient and silent, one brow raised ever so slightly, signaling an invitation—not a demand, but a clear question. An understanding that there’s more to what Delilah is thinking, even if she doesn’t know what to say.
It’s a very quiet, knowing expression, like they’re looking right into her heart, and it makes Delilah feel hot and cold and shivery all at once.
“I keep waiting to feel guilty,” she says at last. She picks at the last chip of wedding nail polish still clinging to her thumbnail.
She’ll pick up a new bottle today, she decides.
Black. Maybe with glitter, just for fun, but definitely black.
“I was engaged a week ago. Less than a week ago. And now…” She gestures between them. “This is happening.
“And I’m not mad about it,” she adds, because Emmett’s brows have started to draw together in barely there worry, and she doesn’t think she can handle that.
“It was my idea in the first place, and you’re obviously—I mean, I have eyes—” That gets her a twitch of a smile, and something loosens in her chest at the sight.
Relief, she thinks. Or affection, though that’s a scarier possibility, and she’s not willing to touch it.
“I don’t regret it. I’m just trying to be self-aware enough to figure out if I don’t regret it because it’s not something I should regret, or if I don’t regret it because I’m leaning into making bad choices. ”
Emmett’s expression softens, their storm cloud eyes gentling to a lighter gray as the sky shifts outside the window.
Is that some kind of ancient magic at work, Delilah wonders, or is it just the nature of the eye color, transient and easily moved by the slightest change in the light? “Does it feel like a bad choice?”
Delilah snorts, picking up her coffee. It’s still hot enough to scald her lips, but she sips at it anyway, then sets the cup back down on the table with a clack. She wishes their food would get here; the pancakes won’t fix her, but they’ll probably help.
“They never feel like bad choices while I’m making them,” she says.
“That’s the problem.” At Emmett’s curious hum, she says, “It puts me on edge. Not knowing if I’m slipping and getting manic and unstable again.
And then I start getting anxious, because in some ways, honestly, a manic episode would be a great thing right now, if I could send all that energy into getting the album done.
A few weeks of writing and singing and recording and driving and making out with you?
Sounds amazing. It’s always amazing—until it isn’t. ”
That truth hovers between them, solid and heavy, until Emmett extends one hand across the table, taking the weight of it as carefully and gently as they take Delilah’s hand.
Their fingers are cool and dry, and Delilah automatically threads her own through them.
“All right,” they say. “So, what do you want?”
Delilah laughs, waving the fingers of her free hand—gesturing just to move, just to do something, even if it’s just flicking her fingertips at nothing. “Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“I want to ask you a lot of questions that are probably really invasive and inappropriate.”
Emmett blinks, and then laughs. “All right.”
“Wait,” Delilah says. “Really?”
Emmett shrugs. “I already told you the biggest secret I have,” they say. Their thumb skims along the backs of Delilah’s knuckles, an absentminded gesture that sends a shiver along her skin. “Everything else is just details.”
Delilah snorts, and her hand pulls out of Emmett’s as she sits back in the booth. “Just details, they say,” she says. “Like you’re not literally made of…” She cocks her head. “What are you made of anyway?”
“Mud and water.”
She nudges them under the table. “Emmett.”
“I’m telling the truth.” They give her a small dry smile. “I have to tell you the truth, actually.”
Delilah blinks, taken aback. “Wait. Really?”
Emmett nods, touching their fingertips to their throat. “It’s…one of the few limitations I have. I only had to follow orders from Jacob, but I can’t lie to anyone.”
“But…” She trails off, not sure what to say to that, because it’s almost more dangerous than them telling her who—what—they are.
She thinks about the fifteen or twenty white lies she tells just to get through the average day and wants to shudder.
She could ask them anything, ask to know anything, about what they think or feel or want, and they’d have to tell her the truth.
She’s not naive enough to think that Emmett doesn’t know how to work around their limitations.
She’s sure that even in the few days they’ve known each other, Emmett has found loopholes, or ways to be vague instead of specific, maybe even simply omitting the most incriminating or revealing details.
But at the same time—
What would it be like to be with someone who couldn’t lie?
“What if I ask you something you don’t want to answer?”
Emmett shrugs one shoulder. “I’m not compelled to answer. I just can’t lie if I do.” They incline their head toward her, and there’s a warm, quiet softness in their expression she definitely doesn’t deserve. “I trust you.”
You shouldn’t, she thinks, but their waitress comes back with their plates, and Emmett looks away from her to give the waitress their bright, open smile, and Delilah decides that, at least for a few minutes, for the length of a single meal, she can let herself lean into that warmth.