Chapter 11 #2
Moreau just sighed, while Del ignored them all and went over to Melody to ask if she was in school, if she liked LEGOs, if she had any other cousins, if she could swim… The list went on and on, but Melody seemed to enjoy the attention.
“Okay, come on, let’s go into the kitchen and set the table,” Anna announced. “You too, Serial Killer.” She grinned broadly in response to Moreau’s dark glare. “So, where did she hear that nickname?”
Moreau grabbed Anna by the shoulders and steered her toward the kitchen. “Knowing that would be far too dangerous for your mind,” he informed her, holding the door open for Melody and Delfina before disappearing inside with Anna.
Fox wanted to follow them because Lilly’s gaze sent an uncomfortable, albeit pleasant, tingle down the back of his neck, but he didn’t get far.
“Wait a second, Austin,” Lilly murmured, holding him back by the arm.
He was wearing a t-shirt, and her warm, still incredibly rough fingers – had she been working in the workshop today? – felt like a tiny stun gun sending electric shocks up his arm.
“What’s up?” he asked coolly, taking a step back so her hand fell from his bare skin.
“I brought you something,” she murmured, groaning as she heaved a bulging bag off the floor.
“Photo albums from the last ten years. I thought you might want them. And this –” she opened the bag and pulled out a slim binder containing dozens of crayon drawings “— is a collection of Delfina’s work!
Unfortunately, she finds art boring, and glass is only cool if she’s allowed to break it.
” She chuckled softly. “I was secretly offended for weeks, but whatever. If she’d rather swim, I’m not going to stop her.
Oh yeah, and there’s this.” She pulled a USB drive from her pocket and handed it to him.
“What’s this?”
“It has videos from the last decade. I thought…” Hesitantly, she tucked her hair behind her ears. “Well, at least you can watch her grow up a bit.”
Blinking, he took the drive, the bag, and the folder and placed them on the chest of drawers to his right, his voice tightening. “Thanks. That’s…kind of you.” His voice sounded more wooden than Captain Hook’s leg.
“You don’t always have to sound so surprised, you know,” she said, amused. “I told you I…I want us to be friends.”
He almost laughed.
He wanted to be friends with her about as much as he wanted to put his hand on a hot stove.
The same scenarios kept replaying in his mind. In both, she was lying on her back, breathing heavily, for completely different reasons.
And both were unwanted.
The kitchen door opened, and Anna poked her head out. “Fox, why don’t you show Delfina and Lilly around the house?” she asked, her gaze shifting nervously between them. “We’ll take care of the food. Delfina is dying to see the pool.”
Grateful that he didn’t have to respond to Lilly’s last comment, he nodded. “With pleasure. And tell Devreaux to come down and help.”
Showing the two of them around the house took almost half an hour. They first went into the huge garden, then to the pool, which Delfina admired for a full ten minutes, and then his inquisitive daughter insisted on seeing every room. This included the pantry and his bedroom.
He wouldn’t have minded being alone with Delfina. But the fact that Lilly was there and that there was something in his bedroom that he had moved out of the kitchen, especially because of her, made him uneasy. But his bedroom was big, the not-so-well-hidden object incredibly small…
“Is that a chandelier?” Delfina asked immediately, gasping dramatically, as if the dozens of crystals above her head revealed some incredibly exciting secret.
He made a face. “I’m afraid so. It was here when I moved in.”
“Cool. The house too. It’s verrry big,” she said.
“I wanted to have enough space for my whole team.”
She nodded as if that was obvious. “I’m going to buy a house for my whole swim team, too,” she stated confidently. “With a pool! But I don’t need a room with grass in it.”
He chuckled. “You mean the pool table?”
“Yeah, that. We don’t have a pool table.”
“We can't play pool,” Lilly reminded her.
Oh, neither could he, but Charkov loved pool and had been homesick, so Fox now owned a pool table.
“Right.” Del pursed her lips and nodded before looking at him and asking unabashedly, “Are you rich?”
He laughed. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Do you have…more than a hundred thousand dollars?”
He nodded.
“Wow. Do I get an allowance then?”
Lilly snorted loudly. “Okay, Del, that’s it for the tour.”
Grinning, Del looked up at her mother. “I’m just saying!” She turned back to him to say: “Mom isn’t rich,” in a loud whisper.
Lilly visibly suppressed a smile, but apparently couldn’t argue with her daughter. “We've always had enough, Del. It was sometimes tight…” She avoided his gaze. “But always enough.”
She spoke firmly, as if she had to prove to him that she didn’t need a pool to be happy.
“Yeah, yeah,” Del said, before adding, “You know what Mom always says?” She giggled. “She’s not rich in money, but rich in ideas and imagination.”
“Oh yeah,” Lilly confirmed seriously, stroking Del’s head. “That’s what fills my account.”
He could imagine that.
“Okay, I’m done. We… Oh, Mom, look, your favorite animal!” Del exclaimed suddenly, pointing to the shelf next to his king-size bed.
Fuck.
He scratched his neck uncomfortably, his back stiffening, while Lilly, surprised, asked, “What?” turning…and then she froze.
He sighed inwardly. So she had seen it.
“Dinner’s ready,” Moreau said at that moment from behind them, leaning against the doorframe.
“Oh, good, I’m starving,” Delfina exclaimed, running out of the room and bounding down the stairs.
Lilly, however, didn’t move. She was still standing in the middle of the room, staring at the small glass figurine on the top shelf next to his bed, where otherwise only books were stacked.
“Are you coming?” Moreau asked sharply.
Lilly didn’t even seem to hear him. “You kept it,” she remarked, astonished, walking slowly to the shelf, and standing on her tiptoes, she reached for it. The thin sweater rode up her waist, revealing a narrow strip of skin that Fox felt deep in his stomach before he even saw it.
Well, it was a hot day, even for a Californian October. The temperature was clearly going to his head.
“Is that dolphin yours?” Moreau asked, and when Fox turned, he noticed him scrutinizing him with his eyes narrowed.
“I made it,” she mumbled, finally taking it off the shelf, and her shirt slipped back into place.
Moreau stared at him. “Interesting.”
No, it wasn’t. It had been sitting in his house for ten years as a memento of their night together. There was nothing special about that. He was about to tell his best friend exactly that…when he realized he’d left, leaving them alone.
Great.
He cleared his throat and leaned against the wall. “Are dolphins really your favorite animals?”
She nodded and turned the glass figurine over in her hands.
“So Delfina’s name is…”
Lilly laughed loudly and turned to him. “Oh, her name…yeah.” Still holding the glass dolphin figurine, her shoulders trembled. Carefully, tenderly, as if she was afraid it would break, as if she wanted there to still be something – anything – between them that was intact.
“Well, in my defense,” she said, grinning and holding up her hand, “I was on a lot of painkillers. Giving birth is only half as fun as it always looks in the movies, and I kept putting off naming her, in case you…” She paused and glanced at the dolphin in her hands.
“Well, in case you’d gotten in touch and wanted to have a say.
” She cleared her throat. “So there I was, drugged up, in a hospital bed with a baby in my arms, and the nurse wanted to write down a name. I really wanted to give her an Italian name so she wouldn’t stand out so much at kindergarten and school, so I consulted my good friend Google, and then…
there it was: Delfina. She looked like a dolphin, and I remembered the figurine I gave you… ”
“This one?” he asked softly, nodding at her hand.
She swallowed hard but was still smiling.
“Yes. So…the name seemed fitting. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the painkillers wore off that I realized I’d been googling Spanish names instead of Italian ones.
Delfina is quite common there. Not at all in Italy.
” She snorted, amused. “But by then it was too late. She was Delfina. There is a silver lining, though: She’s convinced that just because of her name, she can swim faster than everyone else. ”
He lowered his gaze and smiled. “I like the name Delfina. It’s special. I wouldn’t have objected.”
“That’s nice,” she replied warmly. “Why did you keep the figurine?”
Because I couldn’t let you go. I’m not sure if I ever did.
Because the evening with you was like a vacation from my misery and gave me hope.
“Well, I wanted to collect the millions you promised me,” he replied dryly, “when you became a world-famous glass artist. So, what do you think this thing is worth today?”
She laughed…and this time he smiled back.
It was too contagious. “Fifty bucks, for sure! Though obviously, you don’t need any more millions, Austin.
” She glanced up at the chandelier. “You know, now that I think about it, you should have tipped me a lot more back then, at the restaurant. Millionaires tip thirty percent, not twenty.”
“I was preoccupied.”
“Yeah? With what?”
He raised an eyebrow and let his gaze slowly travel to her lips and back to her eyes. “You know what,” he murmured.