Track 18 #3
“You know I am. I sent you those samples—you listened to them, didn’t you?
” A flare of panic makes her tighten her grip on the phone, heat and pressure flaring at the base of her throat, familiar and anxious and asphyxiating.
She brings her other hand up, automatic, pressing her fingertips into her skin like she could loosen the invisible cord tightening around her neck. “Were they that bad?”
“They were a start. You’re not quite there yet.
” Trust Alex not to mince her words. Delilah expected it, knew they weren’t her best work for all that she’d been at least decently content with them, but she flinches all the same.
“Melodies were good. Catchy. The lyrics were…not up to your usual standard.”
Delilah winces. “I—”
“It’s not the writing,” Alex says, cutting her off.
“They’re good. If you were anyone else, I’d say they were good enough to sell.
But they sound like what you’d have written for you and Sam, not like what you’d write for yourself.
They’re missing…” Delilah can almost hear her shrug.
“They don’t sound like you. And if this whole thing is supposed to be about setting you apart from what you were doing before, they’ve gotta set you apart. Otherwise, why bother?”
It’s not anything Delilah hasn’t said to herself. She doesn’t know why it stings to hear it from someone else. She swallows. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll rework it. Maybe try to find some new themes to hit on, I don’t know.”
“You’ve got an interesting life,” Alex advises. “More interesting than usual right now, even. There’s something there, just find it.”
“If it was that simple, everyone would do it.”
“I’m not talking to everyone,” Alex says. “I’m talking to you.”
“Is that a vote of confidence or a dismissal?”
“Both. I’m going to bed.” A pause. “Take care, all right? Make good choices.”
“No promises.”
The line goes dead without a response. Delilah drops her phone back onto the comforter, rubs her eyes, and looks back up at Emmett. “So,” she says. “That was Alex.”
Emmett hums an acknowledgment, reaching over to the counter for Delilah’s coffee and handing it back to her.
She takes it gratefully, and even more gratefully leans against their side when they shift to sit closer to her.
They’re solid, steady, and maybe there is something to be said about being made of stone, if it means being that unmovable, that impossible to shake or blow away.
You’ve got an interesting life. Interesting?
Delilah? What’s so interesting about her, when there’s so much more to the world, mysteries and wonder and—what?
Magic? Divine mysticism? There’s a concept album there, probably, she thinks, if she were that kind of songwriter.
She isn’t, but maybe that’s what she needs right now, some kind of Hail Mary, something experimental and literary and weird and different—
And she has, she realizes, with the kind of coldhearted understanding Alex would probably high-five her for but just makes her feel slightly sick with nausea, the perfect opportunity.
“Emmett,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady, “Can I look at Jacob’s journals? The ones you said you brought with you?”
Emmett draws away, brow furrowing as they look at her. “Why?”
Because my story is melodramatic and boring, she thinks, and yours is at least something new.
“Because Alex told me to make good choices,” she says, choosing her words as carefully as she knows Emmett does, wrapping a loophole of a lie in enough truth that she can make it real.
“And the best choice I can make right now is figuring out a way to make it so you can make your own choices, instead of crawling into a cave to die because some asshole old man told you to.”
Emmett lets out a choked bark of laughter. “Blunt.”
“But accurate.”
“Maybe.” Emmett hesitates. “They’re not…He wouldn’t want me to show them to anyone.”
“Did he tell you not to, though?”
“No. I…” Another rough laugh. “I don’t think he’d have ever thought I’d dare.”
Delilah cups both hands around her mug, pressing the ceramic into her palms in the hopes that the slight burn will be enough to stop her from saying anything too offensive about the dead.
Not that she’s not tempted. “So then there’s no harm in my looking,” she says.
“Right? I’ll be careful, I promise. No spilling the secret how-to-build-a-golem recipe on Instagram or anything. ”
Emmett studies her, eyes unreadable, for all they’re nearly quartz-clear today, as rare and unlikely as Emmett themself.
Delilah watches them in return, searching their face for the tiny signs of emotion she’s already learned to recognize, impossible depths of feeling hidden behind the flicker of eyelashes or the slight indentation of teeth into a lower lip.
But they’re as blank as she’s ever seen them, and she doesn’t know if that makes her feel better or worse about what she’s about to do.
“Hey,” Delilah says, as softly as she can. She’s never really been a gentle person, but Emmett makes her want to be, for all she knows in her gut that what she’s doing is messy at best, and cruel at worst. But she says it all the same. “What do you have to lose?”
She holds out a hand.
Emmett takes it.