Track 26 Delilah #2
“So why didn’t you just break up with me?
” The question bursts out again, frustrated and hurt.
“You proposed to me, Sam. You planned almost our whole wedding. You were the one who kept talking about what we were going to do next together. Why didn’t you just call it off?
” Something occurs to her then, and she feels suddenly sick.
“Was it—was it because you thought I was better than you? Musically?” Sam looks away from her, a rush of color coming into her cheeks, and Delilah knows.
“You kept saying it wasn’t the right time for me to do a solo album, you got your manager to back you up, you—” Delilah laughs and presses the heels of her hands against her eyes.
“God, Iris is going to be so fucking smug.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Wasn’t it?” Delilah pulls her hands away. “You knew this was supposed to be my chance. That everything I wrote for this album was supposed to be about you. About us. And I’m supposed to believe that you just coincidentally chose to pull the plug on everything right when I was finally going to—”
“To what?” Sam’s eyes flash with something like triumph. “To finally show everyone how much better than me you were?”
“To feel like something was mine,” Delilah snaps back.
“To make something that wasn’t about making money or doing what people expected or fitting into a box or changing what I cared about to make the executives happy.
It was never about being better, Sam, it was just about—” She breaks off, swallowing hard.
“It was just about making something that felt like me. Messy and fucked up and weird, but still worthy of being cared for. Being loved. Because you made me feel like I was worthy of that.” Her eyes burn, and she blinks hard, refusing to let the tears fall. “I guess I was wrong.”
Sam exhales, long and slow, then stubs her cigarette out on the table between her legs. She leaves it there, wiping her hands on her jeans and then twisting her fingers together. “Of course you’re worth it, Delilah, God. I never…” She rubs her forehead. “Fuck. This is such a mess.”
Delilah pulls a knee up and wraps her arms around it. She feels drained and exhausted as a dehydration headache starts to pound at her temples and nauseous misery makes her stomach churn.
She thinks of Emmett, and thinking of Emmett just makes her feel worse.
She wants, selfishly, to have just one more minute with them—to tuck herself against their side and feel the steady, solid calm of their presence, see the surprising flash of their grin.
They did more to make her feel calm and settled and seen in ten days than Sam did in five years, and she misses them like a lost limb.
She didn’t feel that way when Sam left, she realizes. She was hurt, and angry, and sad, but she didn’t miss her.
Finally, Sam says, “I’m sorry about your album.”
“I rewrote it.”
Sam glances at her, eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”
“Twice.”
“Twice—Jesus, Del.” She lets out a sharp bark of laughter, pressing her face into her hands. “Do you have any idea what I’d do to be able to write like that?”
Delilah doesn’t answer that. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to do anything with it.”
Sam looks startled. “What? Why not?”
“It’s not—” Delilah picks up the almost empty package of cigarettes, stares at it for a moment, then puts it down. She wishes she had something to do with her hands. “It wasn’t right.”
“What, the music?”
“No, the music was good. Great. I just…It’s not…
” She chews her lip, then reaches over to unzip her backpack.
She pulls out her songwriting notebook and flips it open, then starts to hand it to Sam, trying not to think about the last person she handed it to and what had happened next.
She pauses at the last second, Sam’s fingers an inch from the paper.
“Steal these and I’ll murder you, and no one will ever find your body. ”
Sam rolls her eyes but takes it without a word, holding it with the same delicacy someone else might use to cradle a newborn baby, and Delilah could almost still love her for that. Her eyelashes flicker as she scans the lyrics and the lines of musical notations, turning pages with care.
Delilah makes herself look away instead of reading over Sam’s shoulder, since there’s nothing she could see in those words that she hasn’t already gone over a thousand times.
Instead, she pulls her backpack into her lap and takes things out of it to rearrange them more neatly, just to have something to do.
Her hand closes on the now familiar leather of Jacob’s journal, and she pulls it out automatically, letting it fall open on her lap. She traces her fingertips over the spidery writing, the fading paper. She hadn’t mean to keep it, but it was too late to give it back to Emmett now.
Thinking about Emmett makes her chest hurt, enough that she puts a hand to her sternum, rubbing hard. She remembers what the stone spreading over Emmett’s skin had felt like, rough through their clothing, and has to close her eyes so that she doesn’t cry.
She can’t stop wondering where they are now. What they’re doing. If they’re still them, or if they’ve already—
“These are really good,” Sam says.
Delilah takes a deep breath, steadying herself until she can open her eyes without having to blink back tears. “I know.”
“No, I mean—These are really good, Delilah.” Sam looks down at the pages, her expression unreadable, and then shakes her head.
“This kind of high-concept stuff—I know you used to talk about it all the time, but I never really understood what you meant by it. I think I get it now. All extended metaphor and story—it’s cool.
” She taps a finger against a stanza, almost thoughtful.
“I like this character, the—this golem thing. It’s interesting. ”
“Interesting,” Delilah echoes. “Yeah.”
“Why doesn’t it have an ending?”
Delilah frowns. “What?”
Sam shrugs, closing the journal and holding it out.
“You’ve written out this whole story, but the last song ends without showing whether or not they turn to stone,” she says.
“I mean, I guess the mystery can be fun, but…it kind of changes the energy of it, when you don’t know whether it’s a tragedy or a love story, you know? ”
Delilah opens her mouth. Closes it. “I…”
“Can I ask you something?” Sam waits for Delilah’s helpless nod. “Did you stop the story because you didn’t know how it ended, or because you did know how it ended, and you didn’t want it to?”
Sam’s question reminds her so much of their years of late-night writing sessions, when they’d pore over lyrics and music and arrangements and sample tracks, that despite everything, Delilah feels a sharp pang of nostalgia.
How many nights had they spent sprawled on the floor of a studio, surrounded by scribbled-over notes and takeout containers and highlighters and discarded cardigans, barefoot and tipsy on the cheap wine Delilah unironically loves and Sam always drank without complaint?
How many hours had they spent throwing ideas and edits and new harmonies back and forth?
How many times had Delilah worked herself into a frenzy, trying to get everything just that tiny bit closer to perfection, until Sam finally said something that opened up a new possibility or made her think about things differently or pissed Delilah off so much that she solved the problem herself, only to look back and find Sam grinning at her like that had been her plan all along?
That’s the thing about Sam. Every now and then—and apparently even now—she knows how to ask exactly the question Delilah needs to hear.
Head spinning, Delilah takes the notebook back with trembling hands to avoid having to answer. The movement jostles Jacob’s journal, sending it sliding off her lap. She grabs for it, but a few loose pages fall out before she manages to catch them. “Shit.”
“I’ve got it.” Sam jumps off the table and quickly picks up the pages before the wind can blow them away, and hands them back with care. “Here.”
Delilah swallows. “Thanks.” She smooths them out, scanning the familiar words, and then stops, because those words—aren’t familiar. The writing is Jacob’s, but this page must have been folded away. She hadn’t found it before, and that means maybe even Emmett hadn’t seen it before, because—
Because it’s not just a new page of notes. It’s a new page of notes—and a map.
“Delilah?”
Delilah snaps her eyes up. Sam is watching her curiously, brows raised, gaze flickering between the paper clutched in Delilah’s hands and the battered folio underneath it. “Are you okay?”
Carefully, very carefully, Delilah slides the page back into Jacob’s journal, then closes it. She takes a slow, steadying breath, and then looks back at Sam. “You owe me a favor,” she says. “Probably many favors, but, like, at least one. Right? We can agree on that?”
Sam grimaces, but she doesn’t argue. Just shrugs one shoulder and nods.
“Good,” Delilah says. She puts Jacob’s journal, and her own, back into her bag, and then holds out her hand, palm up. “I need to borrow your car.”