Chapter 8 Deli
Deli
“Hey, this is Chloe! Leave a message, and I’ll text you back.”
Deli waited for the beep of Chloe’s voicemail while the stoplight outside Trey’s building tinted her dashboard red.
“Hey, Chlo. I don’t know if you saw my texts, but I’m here and I’m sort of freaking out. Are you okay?” She was dreading asking the next question. “Did I do something to upset you? If I did, I’m really sorry. Please call me back. I’m getting worried.”
She set the phone down and spied the shiny corner of a photo peeking from her bag in the passenger seat.
Deli twisted to grab her emergency floral design kit and fished out the clear tape.
She lined up the torn edges of a pub far away and of the little girl she’d been the best she could, and taped the backs. She checked the clock: 5:03.
Deli chased away the gnawing feeling in her gut.
It didn’t matter if her mother or her best friend or everyone she worked with didn’t think Trey would ever love her.
It didn’t matter that other people didn’t understand their timing or their chemistry.
It didn’t matter if the stars wouldn’t align or the planets were in retrograde.
They didn’t know him like she did. No one knew him like she did.
At 5:07, Deli was knocking on Trey’s door. It swung open with a gust that rustled the fabric around her calves, and there was Trey—Trey, with his smooth chest so tan against the white button-up, his eyes glinting the same blue-gray of his sport coat.
“There’s my girl.”
“Wow,” Deli said, nearly swaying on her feet. “You do clean up nice.”
“Me? Look at you! Where’s this girl been hiding?” He wrapped his arms around her waist and made a sound of exertion in her ear as he struggled to pick her up.
“Put me down, Trey!”
He set her down as she tugged at the sleeves on her dress and forced a chuckle, hoping he hadn’t heard the edge of sudden panic in her voice. Trey stepped backward into the apartment, gesturing with a hand.
The smell of sundried tomatoes, garlic, and cream wafting from the stove chased the beginnings of an unpleasant thought from her mind. Trey beamed at her and nodded. “Your favorite.”
It was her Grandma Rosemary’s Tuscan chicken recipe—not that Grandma Rosemary had made it in many years, but Deli must have cooked it for Trey a thousand times.
His apartment was even more meticulous than normal. Not a thing was out of place except an eruption of royal blue, indigo, and electric aqua petals on the table.
Her fingertips brushed a few of the vibrant blooms. “Delphinium?”
Trey’s Southern drawl and grin lifted his voice. “That’s the one you like, right?”
Delphinium was her favorite—a joyous endorsement of lightness, hilarity, and wit. It was a flower for the openhearted. She hoped finding it for the first time between her and Trey was a good sign. “I can’t believe you remembered.”
“Of course I remembered. I listen to you, Deli.” He made a mock-hurt face, like she’d accused him of something awful. A little game, just for her.
“Is that right?” Deli tried to cover the blush in her cheeks behind her bag as she lifted it over her head and set it on the counter.
Trey watched her from the corner where the countertops met, hands braced against the smooth tile, head dipped just slightly. She felt the snow-blinding touch of his eyes move up and down her body. Heat leaped to highlight its wake on her skin.
She wished she remembered what it felt like when he’d kissed her. It had happened so fast.
“You know I listen to you,” Trey said.
His gaze sent Deli’s blood rushing through her chest, her fingers, her lips. It was completely unreasonable how quickly Trey Evans could undo her.
He glanced toward the stove. “I’m not sure if I made the sauce right?”
“I have to taste it.”
Trey stilled but didn’t pull away as Deli squeezed into the space beside him and their arms brushed. She forced herself not to stare at the spot where their bodies shared warmth.
Deli wished she’d found another word for taste as she retrieved a spoon in the kitchen she knew by heart, dipped it into the sauce, and raised it to her mouth. She could barely stand the intensity as Trey watched her move, their bodies inches apart.
“What do you think?”
Deli slipped the spoon into her mouth. It tasted mostly of hot cream and acrid burned garlic, but she couldn’t tell him. He was waiting with a look so vulnerable she rarely ever saw it—a glimpse of a little boy who was desperate for praise.
There was nothing she wouldn’t do to make him feel alright. “It’s perfect.”
“Do you remember the first time you made this for me, Deli?” He was still whispering, their bodies still so close together and so charged he could shock her with his touch. “We were only, what? Seventeen? We were at my house and were gonna order pizza.”
Deli remembered the way Trey’s father had stormed into the room, red-faced and screaming while he waved Trey’s English test in his face, like it had happened that afternoon.
“He was so mean to you.”
“Mmhmm.” Trey nodded. “And you said, Don’t worry. You can come to my house.”
Deli smiled at the memory. “‘And I’ll make you something better than pizza.’”
In silence louder than Deli had ever heard, Trey reached up and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. Shivers rippled across her skin like a shock wave as his fingertips danced at the place her cheekbone met her hairline. She could feel her pulse in her lips.
“You’ve always known exactly the right thing to say, Deli. That’s why you’re my best friend. There’s no one like you.”
Her phone’s buzz from somewhere deep in the bag on the counter ended the moment.
Trey pulled back and slipped his hand in his pocket as she took a few halting steps away from him, doing all she could to keep from gasping for air.
She reached for the bottle of wine set out next to two empty glasses on the counter. “Shall I?”
“Hmm?” Trey looked up from his shoes and blanched. “No!” He lurched toward her. “No, that’s, uh . . . Don’t open that.” Trey noticed his hand hovering between them and ran it sheepishly through his tousled hair. “It’s supposed to pair perfectly with dinner.”
The man never stocked his fridge with two different types of beer, much less wine to pair with the dinner he was cooking. Her heart pounded with the newness of him.
“Apologies, my good sommelier.” She gave a panic-move half bow.
“Luckily, I snatched a bottle from Lorraine that pairs perfectly with the end of long weeks.” The contents of the tote shifted as she pulled the bottle free.
She spied a missed call from her grandmother on her screen as Dating For Dummies and the box set of The Highlander slid onto the sparkling tile.
Adrenaline shot through her as Trey picked up the book and Deli realized what was about to happen.
“What’s this?”
“Trey. Give it.” He held it high above their heads as she reached for it.
“Dating For Dummies?”
She came off her tiptoes and stared at a single fingerprint marring his spotless stainless steel fridge. “Just . . . some motherly advice.”
Deli watched foggy, jumbled emotions collide in Trey’s eyes like clouds vying for sky. His smile vanished.
“You haven’t met someone, have you?”
Heat prickled up her neck. “I’m not exactly trying to date right now.”
“A shame.”
His words nearly knocked the air out of her. She took in every detail of him, desperate to find and repair the invisible thing tainting the night with such strangeness. She spoke slowly and softly. “What do you mean, ‘a shame’?”
Trey did not speak softly at all. “It was a joke.”
Jealousy had always been a weird color on Trey.
In the fifteen years that they’d lived their lives side by side, there had been a few moments when Deli had managed to wrestle her feelings for him into a jar, set them on a shelf, and have a crush on someone else.
But whenever she even mentioned the name of another boy, Trey’s hurt would crystalize into envy.
It didn’t matter that Trey had countless flings that never quite reached a labeling level. Deli wasn’t capable of loving without offering her whole heart, so she was not allowed to want someone else.
If he hadn’t kissed her, she might have thought it was unfair. But she knew his jealousy was proof of life for the thing she wanted most in the world.
Good, she thought. Jealousy is a good sign.
Trey didn’t meet her eyes as he tossed the book onto the counter. Instead, he grabbed the box set of The Highlander, with its strapping, shirtless man wrapped in tartan on the cover. He held it up between them and glared at her. “Do you watch this, Delilah?”
Deli flinched at the name.
The gift skidded across the counter with an indignant flick of Trey’s wrist. “I can’t believe you watch this garbage.”
Her mind was racing, trying to pin down the thing going wrong and right it. Trey was a complicated person. He didn’t always act in alignment with what he felt. It was far from the first time Deli had to pick through the rubble of a moment to find evidence of what was really upsetting him.
But, standing in his kitchen on sore feet as the sauce thickened into gravy, Deli couldn’t quite draw a straight line between their secret kiss, her favorite things, his whispered memories, and . . . the evils of The Highlander?
She reached for humor and hoped it would soothe whatever was roiling just under Trey’s skin. She really put some mustard on the words. “Oh, yeah. A man in a kilt? Wielding a sword? Mmm, Mama! Sign me up!”
He looked at her like he’d never been more disappointed in someone in his life, and then he saw the photo—roughly taped back together, peeking out from the bag.
She made a sort of involuntary move toward it, but Trey was faster.
He pinched it between his fingers, scanning the cheery strangers in a holiday card, and his eyes snagged on something.
Someone.
“Who is this?” His fingernail creased the fragile paper near the man behind Aunt Mo.