Chapter 5 Deli
Deli
Deli and Trey stepped inside Mama Mia’s. The lasagna-scented air hit them like an Italian grandma’s saucepot.
She straightened a drooping peppermint carnation in the cheap hostess-stand arrangement and cleared her throat. “Reservation for MacDonald?”
The hostess tapped manicured nails against the glass of her phone.
Trey spoke behind her. “I believe our party is already here and seated.”
At the sound of his voice, the girl looked up and threw a hand over her mouth—eyes going wide with recognition. A few years after Trey’s breakout acting role on a long-running soap opera, he was booking better and better projects and awing more and more hostesses.
The girl giggled beneath her hand. “Um, follow me.”
She led them down a narrow, winding hallway of red-and-white-checkered wallpaper, black-and-white photos of Italian celebrities, and more Catholic paraphernalia than the Vatican’s gift shop.
The hostess darted away as they arrived at the coveted Pope Table—the epitome of class and decorum at Mama Mia’s and the only table you had to reserve in advance.
A ghastly attempt at a papier-maché bust of some forgotten pope spun under a plexiglass box in the center of the round table, warping the reflections of Deli’s parents and grandmother where they sat in various states of agitation.
Her mother, Lorraine, shifted to face her, and she could feel the threat of unpleasantness in the air like static electricity.
Deli’s eyes flicked through the clues—Grandma Rosemary’s nearly empty wineglass, her father’s soft chin as he contemplated the ceiling, her mother’s steepled fingers with baby-pink acrylics touching at the tips.
Deli stood a little straighter without choosing to.
Lorraine’s smile didn’t touch her eyes. “Oh, Delilah! You’ve decided to join us!”
Delilah. Deli sighed in her head as she sat next to Trey. Her mother had chosen a pretty, princess name for the pink-ballet-slippered daughter Deli never became.
“Sorry, Mom,” Deli said, snuffing out the tension in her voice with sincerity. “Work’s been rough. Valentine’s Day.”
Lorraine let out a scoffing sort of laugh, shifting her gaze around the table to call the small group to attention.
“I’m always amazed people spend so much money to have someone plop some flowers in a vase.
I mean, just go to the store, get a reasonably priced bouquet, and put them in water yourself. It’s laziness, right?”
Trey looked nervously down while Deli’s dad, John, looked nervously up—comrades in silence. Grandma Rosemary caught Deli’s eye for a beat, then pursed her lips. “Please, Lorraine—”
“It’s Laurie, Mom.”
“Well, whatever your name is, I’ve seen you try to ‘plop some flowers in a vase,’ and we both know they end up looking like hockey sticks jockeying for space in a garbage can.”
Lorraine rolled her eyes. “All flower ‘arrangements’ look like that.”
Deli loved her work. She understood flowers in a way she couldn’t explain—the truth of their meaning and sentiment.
While other people wrote in ink, Deli could write in petals.
She knew how to transform a person’s intention into an arrangement and send it as a physical declaration.
Her designs communicated so clearly that it seemed impossible, but she did it so well she’d gained a knot of loyal customers who swore Deli could work magic.
Each bloom was a sentence in a carefully penned letter, each color or petal a confession, each thorn or stem a curse.
She didn’t know how or why, but Deli seemed to have been born knowing a secret language, and she dearly cherished its poetry.
“Well, Mom, it is an art form.”
Her mother’s smile went stale. She moved on. “And where is Chloe?”
Deli swallowed down the sick, hot feeling at the base of her throat as she realized she’d never heard back. “I’m sure Chlo’s on her way.”
“Bless her heart,” Grandma Rosemary chimed in. “She’s just a doll, that girl.”
“Sure is, Grandma.”
Trey shifted in his seat and pressed his leg against hers under the table. It caught Deli off guard, and as his eyes found hers, a betraying heat blotted her skin.
“Um, are you Trey Evans? I’m, like, such a fan!”
The hostess was back, standing in the entry to the Pope Table’s divine alcove with her hands clasped together beneath her chin.
Deli watched Trey flip the switch that transformed him from the sandy, sly boy she loved to a professional late-night talk show guest. He beamed at her, and her fake eyelashes fluttered like scared caterpillars caught in a mean gust.
“I just love you in Chestnut Gardens, like . . . you’re definitely the hottest guy on that show. Seriously, all my friends agree that you’re the hottest one, and—”
“Darling, ask for your photo and move along.” Grandma Rosemary’s voice cut through the fan’s sentence like a knife.
Deli’s mom looked appalled. “Jesus Christ, Mom!”
Grandma Rosemary’s eyes flicked to Deli’s before she tipped her glass to her lips and waved dismissively. Lorraine snatched the stemware from her mother’s hand, effectively stopping her from a rather graphic attempt to get every last drop.
“I’m sure Trey won’t mind,” Lorraine said with a smile.
“No, no, that’s okay . . .” the poor girl mumbled. She backed out of the claustrophobic room, well and truly Rosemarried.
The pope spun around steadfastly, but if Rosemary felt any shame, it stayed between her, God, and a vanished merlot.
Deli scanned Trey’s face for discomfort as their server stepped lightly into the room. “Can I get you another glass of wine?”
Rosemary calmly said, “Yes,” while Lorraine nearly shouted, “No!”
Lorraine forced a smile. “My mother should not be served another drop. And I’ll take whatever has the most alcohol.”
“Sure,” the waitress said, “and your food will be out shortly.”
Deli wondered which family-style meals had been ordered in the few minutes she and Trey had been late.
“You know what, Lorraine?” Grandma Rosemary sighed as she slowly refolded the cloth napkin in her lap.
Deli’s mom hated being called Lorraine, so Deli referred to her as such, exclusively. As long as Deli was Delilah, Laurie MacDonald would be Lorraine. Deli wasn’t exactly proud of it, but a vindictive gremlin danced a jig in her brain whenever her grandmother used Lorraine instead of Laurie, too.
Lorraine answered, “What, Mom?”
“You should consider that I’ll be dead someday. And you’ll wish you had been kinder to your mother.”
Lorraine’s eyes narrowed and her hands balled into fists as she glared at her mother. Rosemary simply pantomimed fear and shared a worried look with His Holiness before crossing herself.
Trey’s eyes went wide. Deli tried and failed to smother a cough from wine gone down the wrong pipe, and she felt her mom’s attention snap to her like a rubber band.
“Are you okay?” Trey scooted his water toward Deli and patted her back. Deli’s awareness split between her mother’s ramping anger and the new place Trey was touching her. “Here,” he said. “Drink.”
The waitress breezed in as Deli was catching her breath, and left a fresh glass of red in front of Lorraine. Deli’s father appeared to be counting the cobwebs.
A small, dangerous smile tugged at Lorraine’s artificially plumped lips. “Can we dispense with the drama, Delilah?”
Deli looked down. “I was just choking.”
Chloe’s special ringtone sounded from Deli’s bag. She rushed to find it, filled with sudden visions of car crashes and axe murderers causing her BFF’s demise.
“Put your phone away, Delilah.” Baby-pink nails tapped impatiently on the table. “Don’t be rude.”
Grandma Rosemary snaked a hand toward Lorraine’s wineglass and dragged it back toward her, winking at Deli over her mom’s shoulder.
“I . . .” Deli began, but she trailed off as she read Chloe’s message.
Hey. So sorry, I’m not gonna make it tonight.
Deli squinted into the blue light and typed back.
Oh, that’s okay. Are you alright?? Do you need anything?
Her mother spoke more loudly. Sharply. “Delilah?”
“Who’s hungry?” Their waitress materialized and lowered a heaping bowl of noodles onto the table. “Fettuccine Alfredo?”
John came to life like a Chuck E. Cheese animatronic with a finger in the air. He reached for the jumbo serving spoon and smiled at Lorraine. “I’ll take a scoop! Pasta, honey?”
The cresting confrontation in Lorraine’s face sputtered and died as she turned to her husband to loudly declare, “You know I’m trying to be good, John . . .”
As they all filled their plates under the welcome distraction of her mother’s tirade against carbs, Deli realized how very tired she was.
She took deep breaths through her nose. She should have just stayed at the shop instead of stealing a few hours to try to celebrate before she had to work late into the night.
She’d be there till the sun came up, writing love notes from one valentine to another and sending them off with red roses, again and again.
Trey’s hand found her thigh.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” Deli whispered back.
“How’s your lasagna?”
She still hadn’t tasted the forkful she’d managed to grab from one of the family-style platters. “Not sure.” She chuckled weakly. “How’s your fettuccine?”
“Saucy.”
She felt like every bit of her had been reverse-big-banged and was now coiled, thrumming and threatening to explode, under his palm. She willed her voice to stay nonchalant. “Saucy is . . . good.”
His grin grew wider. “Saucy . . . is great.”
No one knew that Trey was touching her under the table, teasing goosebumps into her skin. For one tenuous moment, it was just the two of them together in the swirling chaos of the night. A team.
Chloe’s chime sounded again.
I’m fine. Just came down with something. Hope you have a good night!
Deli couldn’t count the number of times she’d gone over everything she’d said or done in the last six months, searching for the moment she’d messed up and upset Chloe enough for things to change. She summoned the list in her head again and started at the top.
Trey interrupted her inventory of possible mistakes. “Hey? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. She clung to the feeling of Trey noticing her when no one else did. “It’s just Chloe.”
Trey rolled his eyes. “What now?”
A wilted petal in Deli’s heart broke away. “She’s sick.”
Before Trey could respond, Lorraine’s voice made them both jump.
“MOM!”
Lorraine’s eyes were glued to Grandma Rosemary’s red lipstick, left like a neon sign on the rim of her freshly empty wineglass.
Lorraine lurched for the evidence, shaking the table with the effort and sending Deli’s half-empty glass teetering in what felt like slow motion to empty its contents into her lap.
Lorraine turned toward the sound of Trey’s chair screeching against the floor as he kicked away from the splattering scarlet mess. She took in the blossoming stain on Deli’s brand-new dress, never to be worn again.
“Well, that’s never been my favorite dress of yours, darling. Perhaps your grandmother will buy you a more flattering one, considering she’s to blame.”
Deli closed her eyes and wondered whether her mother would have noticed it was new eventually. She stood and slipped down the hallway. She thought someone might follow her, but when she looked over her shoulder, she was alone.
Her footsteps echoed in the bathroom as she felt the first traitor-tears start to well.
“Hey,” someone said from behind her. “Need some help?”