Chapter 22
Deli
There were some moments in life, Deli had found, where things were so unlike what you thought they would be that you had to just . . . lean in.
Recounting to Aunt Mo the events leading up to her arrival had been exhausting and quietly shameful. She’d spent the past several days in a sort of half-there daze between the jet lag and the waves of emotion from the compounding trainwrecks of her life.
Nothing felt stable, not even Chloe, which was a new and terrifying feeling.
Deli couldn’t make her aunt understand the connection, history, and dynamic between her and Trey or her and Chloe—and she knew they both sounded a bit one-dimensional.
She didn’t have the energy to go into all the tiny details, even though her gaps in information left gaps in empathy for her two closest people.
But she was so tired of trying to explain herself and her choices under someone’s microscope.
Luckily, Aunt Mo didn’t ask for reasons or explanations to pick apart like Deli’s mom or grandmother would have. She didn’t cast judgment. She just . . . listened.
When Aunt Mo said they needed a night out, Deli hadn’t pictured a talent show with strangers in a pub owned by a man who might have despised her. She certainly could have never pictured Douglas.
Douglas in his mini kilt, doing what he was doing in front of her.
The sounds of a didgeridoo pealed through the small pub, accompanied by ritualistic chanting and synth waves Deli suspected Douglas had composed himself.
The man’s thin arms were waving bonelessly next to his cue-ball head.
He leaped from foot to foot, holding the other aloft like a flamingo and cooing.
“Interpretive Dance,” he’d called it. What he was interpreting, Deli had no idea.
Her best guess was “the exquisite agony of being trapped in a human body.” And he was nailing it.
“This is why my kids can’t come to Talent Show Night anymore,” Blair whispered beside her. They giggled.
In the few minutes she’d had at the pub, Deli had decided she liked nearly everyone there. Apart from the bartender, who seemed to be going after the world record for glowering.
“I feel like I should look away, but I can’t,” Deli whispered as Douglas writhed. “It’s . . . beautiful, but haunting.”
“That’s Douglas’s sweet spot. Ow!”
Hannah, the quiet older woman with silver braids past her chest, mimed a shhh with the finger she’d used to poke Blair in the side, then gestured back toward Douglas, who was scooting across the floor like a dog with frustrated anal glands.
Douglas’s display came to a close as the yowling instruments receded into the sound of pure synth. He perched on the arm of Graham’s chair, chittering like a squirrel, while Graham, the only man in The Wallflower’s Crown wearing a full-size kilt, smiled up at him, enthralled.
I’m a tour guide, lass. It’s the uniform. Plus, Graham had said, his burnt umber eyes and fiftysomething face lighting up with his smile, I get more tips this way.
Cheers erupted as Douglas took a bow with little beads of sweat collecting along his brow. Andrew, Blair’s partner, with ash brown hair and soft blue eyes, hooted from the dark.
“Your best by far, Douggie!” Aunt Mo chimed in. “Inspired!”
Douglas stoically walked through the crowd, blowing kisses without smiling, until he disappeared once more into the bathroom.
Graham took to the stage next and displayed his strength, laughing at himself as he picked up heavier and heavier things. For his finale, he snuck behind Lachlan and hoisted him, eliciting a roar from the crowd so loud Deli could have been convinced a hundred people were cheering, not a handful.
Hearing Lachlan really laugh for the first time took her by surprise.
It felt like the time Chloe had insisted she try a gravity blanket—heavy, comforting, and sure.
His face was so open, and something tugged at the back of her head again like it needed escape, but she couldn’t reach it.
Their eyes met as Graham set him down, and something caught between them.
Then Lachlan shook his head like he was clearing it and shot her a glare that said What are you looking at?
Teenage moody ninja assclown, she thought.
Next, Andrew played a dinged-up acoustic guitar so gently Deli almost didn’t realize how expertly his fingers flew along the fret.
“Is that how he stole your heart?” Deli asked Blair.
She kept her eyes glued to Andrew with her chin in her hands. “It certainly helped.”
When he finished, Blair stood, grabbed his face, and kissed him. He held his guitar out to his side, eyes closed, until Graham took it from his hand, which Andrew then wrapped into Blair’s ember hair.
“That’s why yer kids aren’t allowed at Talent Night anymore, ye horny, wee goats!” Douglas called, now in civilian clothes.
Deli turned to smile at Douglas, but Lachlan was right behind him, watching her. In the shadow of the lovers, kissing deeply and unashamed in front of all their friends, his gaze on hers felt intimate. Too intimate. Something molten spread across her collarbone and dripped into her chest.
“Okay, okay!” Aunt Mo jumped up from the couch. “It’s intermission! Which means?”
Many voices shouted in unison, “Truth or Drink!”
Blair looped her arm through Deli’s as everyone rushed the bar.
“Blair, what the hell is Truth or Drink?”
“Deli,” Blair said, her round cheeks still flushed, “it’s exactly what it sounds like.”
The rules were simple. Everyone got a shot of liquor and a beverage. It was popcorn-style, but if someone had already taken their shot they could sip a drink instead.
“Truth or Drink, Douglas!” Andrew growled over the empty shot glass he’d drained after Blair had asked which of their kids he loved the most. She was still cackling as Andrew pointed at Douglas. “What is the largest animal you could take in hand-to-hand combat to the death?”
Douglas leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. “I reckon I could take a kangaroo.”
Graham shook his head. “A kangaroo is as big as I am, Douglas.”
“Aye, and I’ve yet to see a day you’d walk out of the ring with me alive!”
Graham stood in mock outrage. “Prove it, little man!”
“You’ve picked a fine night to die, ye great oaf!” Douglas cried and leaped to his feet.
Graham settled back into his seat and pointed two fingers at his eyes, then toward Douglas’s.
“Truth or Drink . . .” Douglas held the back of his wrist against his forehead, wiggling his fingers. He pointed behind the bar. “Lachlan.”
Lachlan stilled. “I’m not playing.”
Douglas shrugged. “Sure you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
Douglas turned serious. “What do you really want out of life?” A hush fell over the room. Blair stiffened beside Deli.
Lachlan squared his shoulders, his voice going low. “I told you, I’m not playing.”
“Is this”—Douglas swirled his pointer finger in the air of the dark pub—“everything you wanted? There’s nothing more?”
Aunt Mo set her hand on Douglas’s shoulder. “Alright, I think that’s—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lachlan’s hands were pressed flat against the bar, head sunk low between his shoulder blades.
“Has there been no woman since Blair? No leaving since you came home?” He acted unaware of the tension filling the room. “Are you ever gonna give yourself a chance, boy?”
“Douglas.” There was no joking left in Blair’s tone. “Enough.”
“It’s fine, Blair,” Lachlan said.
“Lachlan, you shouldn’t have to—”
“It’s fine.” Lachlan walked around the bar.
Andrew’s eyes were fixed on his lap. Blair’s chest was blotching.
Aunt Mo watched Lachlan with laser focus as he effortlessly picked up a heavy looking chair and set it next to Douglas with a thud.
He straddled it and sat slowly, arms crossed over the back.
Then he reached over, took Douglas’s pint, and growled “Drink,” before draining it in one go.
“Attaboy,” Graham said, clapping Lachlan on the back as the table released a collective breath.
Lachlan set down the empty glass. “I choose Deli.”
Deli’s attention snapped up from Lachlan’s hands in the instant hush. “Me?”
The intensity of his firelight eyes so close to her felt almost searing. Focus, she thought.
“Truth or Drink. What are you doing here?”
Deli swallowed. “What?”
“What, exactly, are you doing in Fearnhall, Deli MacDonald?”
Aunt Mo shot Lachlan a sharp look. Deli’s head felt fuzzy, and she realized for the first time how many drinks had been purchased for her over the evening. Was she on four? Five?
She smiled. “I’m visiting my aunt.”
Lachlan’s eyes narrowed. “After twenty years? With no warning? You just fancied a holiday so sudden you couldn’t buy a proper coat?”
“Go on, love,” Douglas said. “Give us a tale.”
“Aye.” Lachlan’s voice was far colder. “Go on.”
“I . . .”
Deli brought her drink to her lips to opt out, but as Lachlan’s eyes rolled and he made a move to stand, she lowered the cup. She certainly wasn’t going to give Lachlan the satisfaction of seeing her quit. Deli MacDonald didn’t quit anything.
Lean in, she thought.
“I’mhereforaboy,” she blurted in one word. Lachlan lowered himself back into his chair. “I’m here for a boy.”
Over the next twenty minutes, Deli told the circle the truth—not the losing-her-job part or the building anxiety about Chloe or her nagging guilt over leaving her family, but about Trey. How they were soulmates but she’d missed her chance and had to make up for lost time.
“The last time he thought I was moving on, he showed up at my door and kissed me.” She watched a muscle in Lachlan’s jaw move. “So I just thought, maybe if he missed me . . .”
She trailed off as an unexpected wave of hurt washed over her.
“But why here?” Lachlan pushed. “Why Fearnhall?”
Deli felt her cheeks flush. “Um, you guys know that show The Highlander?”
Aunt Mo glanced at Lachlan. Deli could have sworn she looked nervous.
“We’re generally familiar, yes,” Blair said with a cautious smile.
“Uh, right,” Deli continued, trying to recover from the chill in the room.
“Well, Trey had, like, a chip on his shoulder about hot Scottish men and how they didn’t exist and how they made women everywhere have unreasonable expectations, and .
. .” She realized she was rambling and was still keenly aware of Lachlan’s eyes on her skin.
It was like she could feel it, like it was a sunbeam.
“Anyway, I thought . . . Aunt Mo had just emailed me, and I thought that it might . . . I don’t know, make him realize. ”
“Realize what?” Lachlan asked.
Deli had to force her eyes to his. “Realize that he, um . . . loves me, too.”
“So it’s a kilt-wearing Scottish hunk you’re after?” Douglas asked as he grinned.
“What?” Deli’s voice came out high. “No, that’s not—”
“Oh, come now.” Douglas grabbed her hand. “A little competition does wonders for a man’s passions. Give your boy something to really worry about.” Douglas exchanged a quick look with a few members of the table before he winked at Aunt Mo.
Deli felt very peered at, all of a sudden. She wondered how fish survived life being observed through glass their whole lives. Her eyes weren’t moving as fast as her brain, and her face was way too hot. “Where’s the restroom?”
“Through the wonky archway to the right—careful of the step,” Aunt Mo said. “It’s easy to fall.”