Track 25 Delilah
Delilah
It all goes to hell halfway between Phoenix and LA.
Delilah salvages Santa Fe through the transformative power of Xanax and a weed gummy she finds in a plastic bag stashed in the bottom of her backpack, downing both in the bathroom of the rooftop cocktail bar she found for dinner and then coming back to the table to finish a margarita the size of her head.
By the time they leave the restaurant, she’s loose-limbed and happy again, tucking herself into Emmett’s side, the one that’s still warm skin when she slips a hand under their shirt, just to see if she can.
Emmett walks her back to Roscoe with a hint of tension under their chivalrous amusement, keeping a steadying hold on Delilah’s waist as they follow her directions to their hotel.
Delilah leans into them all the way through check-in, and pulls them into bed with her when they finally make it up to the room.
Emmett must taste enough tequila on her tongue to know that her good mood is chemical, because they resist all of her attempts to coax them into anything more than kissing, but they do kiss her, and kiss her, and kiss her, and Delilah feels forgiveness in it.
Forgiveness for her sharp words, which isn’t what she needs forgiveness for. But it’s something.
It makes her think that maybe she’ll get the real thing, when she grows a spine and comes clean.
Which she’ll do, she promises herself as she drifts off to sleep. In the morning.
She doesn’t do it in the morning, because Morning Delilah isn’t any braver than Midnight Delilah.
She wonders what happened to the girl who invited a perfect stranger along on a honeymoon road trip and hates that she has to admit that that girl didn’t care what happened next, and the girl she is now cares—
Cares too fucking much.
So she keeps her mouth shut and her smile bright and curls up in Roscoe’s passenger seat. The miles of highway slide past her like a hot knife through butter, and she lets it pass, trusting Emmett to get them where they need to be.
They spend the night just outside of Phoenix at a campground where Delilah passes out nearly as soon as her head hits the pillow.
In the morning, they get breakfast in the city at a hole-in-the-wall diner that serves the best hash browns Delilah’s ever eaten in her life.
She downs two and a half cups of coffee, gently bullies Emmett into sharing a giant cinnamon roll with her, kisses the remnants of icing off their lips in the parking lot, and refuses to think about how today is the start of their last full twenty-four hours together.
And then, because Delilah’s life is a joke and she is the punch line, Roscoe breaks down.
It starts with the clicking sound Emmett had noticed in Colorado, the off-and-on clattering Delilah had started to tune out.
It comes and goes over the course of the morning, a bit louder each time it starts up again, but all the indicators look normal when Delilah peers over to look at the dashboard, and Emmett reports that Roscoe still handles as well as ever.
“We’re close enough to LA that we can probably just tell the rental company about it,” Delilah says as she sits back in her seat after the third time it happens, because she’s never learned not to tempt fate. “I’m sure it’s—”
The engine sputters, makes a horrible ka-thunk, and dies.
A horn blares behind them, and Delilah realizes with a startled yelp that Roscoe is rapidly losing speed, slowing to a crawl in the middle of a seventy-mile-per-hour zone.
“Jesus fuck,” she says, scrambling to try to reach the hazard lights, but Emmett is faster.
They turn them on and throw Roscoe into neutral, then coast to the shoulder of the highway until they slide to a stop.
When Emmett turns the key in the ignition, the engine whines briefly, makes a sound like a dying cat, and then cuts off altogether.
When Emmett tries again, nothing happens.
Iris’s voice is still speaking pleasantly through the Bluetooth, telling a story about love letters as a form of queer history. Delilah finds her phone, which had flown off her lap when the car lurched, and turns it off. It takes her three tries.
Silence falls between them, broken only by the sharp whoosh of other cars flying past them. Finally, Emmett clears their throat. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Delilah says, a little hysterically. “What the fuck just happened?” Emmett opens their mouth, and Delilah shakes her head. “No, that’s a stupid question, don’t answer that, obviously we—fuck. Where are we?”
Emmett cranes their neck to look out the window, but there are no mile markers in sight. “The last sign I remember was for Joshua Tree.” They give her a worried look. “That’s not so far from Los Angeles, right?”
Delilah rubs her eyes. “It’s—I don’t know, three hours?” Close enough that she could call Alex to come out and get them, not that it wouldn’t be the most humiliating thing on the planet. “God, I am so stupid. Why didn’t I just get the engine checked when you first pointed it out? I should’ve—”
“Hey,” Emmett says. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” Her chest feels tight. She wishes she hadn’t wasted that weed gummy back in Santa Fe, because she could use it now.
“It is.” A warm hand settles over the back of her neck, squeezing gently. “We’ll call someone, they’ll come get the van, we’ll find another ride back to LA. You’ll still be able to finish your album.”
“It’s not about the album,” Delilah snaps, and then immediately regrets it when Emmett’s hand tenses, then starts to draw away. She grabs for it. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m taking this out on you, I’m—”
“Take a breath.”
She’s startled enough by the firm steel in Emmett’s voice that she does, gulping in air.
“Good. Another one. Slower than that.”
Feeling hot with humiliation, Delilah hiccups her way through five minutes of deep breathing exercises.
She wants a cigarette so badly her fingers twitch toward her backpack before she clenches them into fists.
Emmett carefully pries them open before she can dig her nails into her palms hard enough to draw blood, so she grabs their hands instead.
Her grip is too tight, probably, but they don’t so much as flinch.
“Sorry,” she says, when she can manage words again. “I’m sorry.”
Emmett flexes their fingers in hers. Reluctantly, Delilah loosens her grasp enough that they can slip one hand free, but they don’t go far, just reach to stroke her hair back from her sweaty face. “Why? Did you sabotage the van when I wasn’t looking?”
It’s a joke, and she knows it, but Delilah squeezes her eyes shut again all the same.
“No,” she whispers, miserable. “I didn’t sabotage the van.”
Emmett’s quiet for a moment. “Did you sabotage something else?”
Delilah drags in another breath, then picks her head up.
“I didn’t find a way to get you out of it.
” Emmett gives her a bewildered look, and Delilah puts her free hand on their chest, where she knows that, under their shirt, the stone has spread up to their sternum, scant inches away from their throat. “I didn’t find a way to save you.”
“Oh.” Emmett’s expression softens. “Delilah, that’s—” They smile, but it’s small, sad, so close to pitying that Delilah feels sick. “I didn’t really think you would.”
“You don’t understand,” she says, her throat tight. “Emmett, I didn’t even—I wasn’t even—”
“It’s okay.”
Something in Emmett’s voice makes Delilah look at them. Really look at them. They’re leaning across the center console to hold on to her, and this close, she can see the faintest lines of strain around their eyes, the slightly grayish tinge to their skin.
She looks at them, and she sees, and she knows.
“You’ve already given up.”
Emmett sits back, letting their hands drop away.
Delilah feels cold without the touch. They turn away from her, looking out through the windshield, and there’s a patch of stone peeking out of the collar of their shirt, spreading even as she stares at them, creeping upward until it’s high enough to touch the pulse at their throat.
“I’ve been getting tired,” they say quietly.
They brush their fingers over the climbing stone, swallow visibly, and shake their head.
“It was always a long shot, Delilah. And it’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?
You can call someone, get them to pick you up out here, and I can—I can stay. I can stay here.”
They don’t sound sad. They don’t sound resigned.
“So—what?” It comes out as a bark, sharp and bitchy and mean, and she hates herself for it. “You get to go off into the sunset and die, and I have to keep showing up and working and—” Living, she wants to say. “Were you even going to tell me? Or was I just going to wake up and find you—”
“No,” Emmett says. They reach for her, but she draws back, and they freeze in place. “Delilah, no, of course not. I would—” They wince, but say, “I would have left, before that happened. I wouldn’t have made you see.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Emmett flinches. “Wouldn’t it?”
It suddenly feels absurd to be doing this in the van, still wearing her seat belt.
Delilah unbuckles and shoves her door open, all but falling out onto the road.
Her feet tingle when they meet the ground, radiating pins and needles from being curled under her legs for so long.
She stumbles away from Roscoe, away from the highway, barely keeping her footing, gravel and sand crunching under her shoes.
Everything around them is patchy grass and brush and seemingly endless desert, and Delilah stares out at the horizon like it holds all the answers to every question she’s too afraid to ask.
Emmett’s door opens and closes. They don’t say anything, but Delilah feels them behind her.
She says, without opening her eyes, “I stole your story.”
Silence. A car flies past them, close enough to the shoulder that the wind whips Delilah’s hair into her face. She pulls her cardigan more tightly around her.