Chapter 19
Deli
Aunt Mo cupped her hands around her mouth and called over the crash of a small wave, “It’s good for you!”
“That cannot be true!”
Deli’s voice was swallowed up by the sea.
She clutched her robe around her body, shivering in a bathing suit on a rocky Scottish beach in February.
It had only taken them a harrowing climb down the rickety staircase protruding from the sheer face of the cottage’s cliffside to get there.
Beside her, Aunt Mo’s robe and swimsuit were folded neatly on a fallen tree that called the crescent sliver of coastline home.
Deli wondered for the first time if the whole Scotland thing had been, perhaps, too impulsive. Maybe her mom had a point, and she should have stayed instead of drowning in the frigid water on day one. Maybe she should have stayed with Trey.
Trey.
She set her jaw against the cold. Back home she’d have to sew a life together out of the scraps of the one she’d ruined.
She was here to get enough distance so she could see the whole picture—find a way to fix all the things that went wrong.
This was the only place Deli could think of to go that wasn’t a part of the massive knot she needed to untangle.
She could figure out how to repair whatever had happened with Chloe.
And Trey . . . She couldn’t just stop loving him after so many years because of one bad night and one wrong girlfriend.
Love didn’t quit that easy. And neither did she.
And maybe, she thought, they’ll miss me.
Deli’s aunt was a pale circle topped with an orange knit cap bobbing and beckoning in the water, and Deli hugged her matching cap to her chest with dread. “Wild swimming,” as Aunt Mo had explained, was a tradition for all new arrivals in Scotland to get in touch with the land.
Though you’re welcome to keep the suit on, she’d said. Leave the full monty for the pros. Then she’d left Deli shivering speechlessly on the shore as she stepped out of her suit and splashed into the sea.
Deli knew what her mother and grandma thought about Aunt Mo’s general being, but she remembered feeling like her aunt was her favorite person in the room before she’d gone away.
Plus, Aunt Mo had excellent taste in pet names, which almost made up for her taste in friends. Deli tugged her cap over her hair.
This is a fine way to die, she thought as she waded into the icy water toward the woman she hoped was kindred. By the time she was closing in, she was numb from the neck down.
Aunt Mo swam toward her. “Glad to see you’ve got it in ya!”
“Got what in me?” Deli managed through her trembling jaw.
Aunt Mo winked. “What it takes.” Maybe Deli’s mom was right, and the aunt she remembered as a little kooky was truly one french fry short of a Happy Meal. Aunt Mo spun in a circle, grinning. “You get used to it. It’s good for circulation.”
Deli tried to breathe through the cold. “Is losing feeling in your nipples good for circulation too? Cuz that happened three minutes ago.”
Aunt Mo laughed. “No, but it does wonders for your character.”
Deli forced a smile. “Oh, good. More character development.”
Aunt Mo’s eyes narrowed so slightly Deli thought she might have missed it, flicking across points in Deli’s face. She suddenly remembered how it felt when she was little and Aunt Mo was the only adult in the room who truly noticed her.
She wasn’t sure she liked being noticed anymore.
“Is everything alright, Deli?” There was such an unexpected sincereness in Aunt Mo’s question Deli sucked in salt water and began to cough. Aunt Mo frowned. “I think this was enough for your first dip. You’ve gotta take it in doses. Head on in and I’ll be right behind you. Take this for me?”
She handed Deli her hat and dipped completely under the water.
Deli swam in and scrambled through the rocky sand for her robe. She was trying to squeeze every drop of salt water from her hair when Aunt Mo called from behind her, “Toss me that towel?”
Aunt Mo emerged from the ocean completely nude, like Aphrodite being born from a clamshell.
When Deli’s mother was sunbathing, it was an act of striving—displaying her triumph over her body’s pursuit of softness, and there was always a sharp undercurrent of comparison. Like whenever Lorraine’s body was on display, Deli was being stripped down, too.
Aunt Mo, on the other hand, might not have even known she was naked. Her body was rippling and relaxed, soft and gentle—moving like she was still playing in the waves. There was no comparison or competition, only ease and joy. There was just . . . being.
Something in Deli’s head whispered, Run.
“Is there something in my teeth?” Aunt Mo smiled and tied her dripping hair up into a knot on her head.
“Sorry!” Deli squeezed her eyes shut and tossed the towel. “Here! Sorry!”
“Oh, please, it’s only a body. We’ve all got one, and they all change.”
If someone had asked Deli to choose the person least likely to be her grandmother’s daughter, she would have chosen this pink-nosed, tangle-haired, barefoot woman who hadn’t asked Deli a single question about her sudden arrival at the edge of the world.
The climb back up the cliffside was a smidge less harrowing since the rain had stopped. At the top, Aunt Mo suddenly took Deli’s hand. She had the same freckle above her right eye that Deli did.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Deli. I am so glad you’re here.”
Deli’s smile turned to cardboard on her face. Aunt Mo had said it so casually. Like it wasn’t an intimate moment. Like it was an everyday sort of thing to do.
Deli fumbled for words. “I, um. Can I have a minute?”
“I’ll go start a bath for you. One must dethaw post-dipping.”
Deli watched her aunt walk happily back toward her cottage, pausing only to marvel as a gull flew overhead. Despite the cold making a play for her bones, Deli took a deep breath and faced the sea.
She thought she might have come out here before, when she was a kid. In fact, she thought she might have almost fallen. She took a big step back.
Deli didn’t know how long she stood there listening to the water rush in and out of the rocks below, stirring up fine sand that settled between each push and pull of the tide—counting the number of days it had been since she’d spoken to Chloe.
She sifted through what she knew about her connection with Trey—the kiss, the desperate way he looked at her moments before his new girlfriend would take Deli’s place.
She stared at the hands she used to pull a feeling from the air, translate it into flowers, and send it off as a clear message to someone needing an apology, an answer, a reminder of their worthiness to be loved.
Deli didn’t know if she was making a huge mistake or if she’d find her answers. She didn’t know how long it would take.
But as she started back for the little cottage completely empty of the people she’d chosen to build a life beside, Deli did know, for the sake of love, she had to try.