Chapter 39 Deli
Deli
Deli stood outside her new friend’s home in the pair of Graham’s sweats she’d changed into in the back of the van, muddy clothes balled up in a bag, and she felt . . . wrong.
She missed her old friend. The one whose initial would grow old beside hers carved into the bark of a sycamore tree.
Chloe had witnessed all the small and different people Deli had ever been, and she’d loved them all. She had been a little girl in Deli’s house, too. And Chloe had the only front row seat to Deli’s many micro-heartbreaks from loving Trey Evans.
Was it asking a lot of her best friend, to answer the phone and watch her person fall to pieces over something she couldn’t fix?
Deli had done the same—passing notes about second-grade breakups, sobbing along with sad songs in first cars, bringing blankets and pad thai to eat on the floor of first apartments.
But maybe Deli’s hurt weighed too much. Maybe Chloe couldn’t bear to carry it anymore.
Maybe Deli had been so absorbed in her own heartbreak she’d missed something unforgivable in Chloe’s life. Now it had been weeks since she’d spoken to her best friend. It had been months since they’d been normal. And it felt like Deli’s fault.
She shifted from foot to foot, trying and failing to adjust under the ache of missing Chloe—the heaviest thing of all.
Blair’s front door swung open as Deli raised her fist to knock.
A short, round girl who looked about ten with two long braids the color of new pennies and brilliant French-blue eyes stared at Deli from behind a screen door.
A sick, sweet taste filled the air as Deli remembered another round little girl in this town—pigtails too tight, but not tight enough for her mother.
“Hi,” the girl said, stone faced.
Deli always felt like she’d say the wrong thing and ruin children forever. “Hi.”
“Who are you?”
“Uh . . . I’m Deli? I’m . . . Is your mom home?”
The girl put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. “She might be. Depends on what you want.”
Despite her general discomfort with kids, Deli did appreciate their audacity.
“Hmm.” She put her hand on her chin. “I don’t like doing business with people whose names I don’t know. You’ve got mine. Seems fair I get yours.”
The girl smirked. “Shouldn’t have given yours so easily, then.”
“How do you know Deli’s my real name?”
“You would lie to an innocent child?”
“I would lie to a freakin’ prison warden.”
“Oh, so you’ve been to prison?” She tilted her head with a gotcha smile.
Deli playfully narrowed her eyes. “Not yet, but I’ve still got time.”
“Penny!” Blair’s voice rang from inside. “Has someone come round?”
“Yes!” Deli called at the same time Penny yelled, “No!”
Deli whispered, “Tell the truth, Penny.”
“Just a felon, Mum! Straight from jail, by the looks of her.”
“Then ask her in, Penelope! She’ll be in need of a good meal!”
Penny stepped back. “Some mum you are, having your child open her home to a criminal.”
Blair carried a daunting pile of laundry past with a smile and called, “Come in!”
Penny put her hands in the air as Deli slid past her into the narrow entryway. “I don’t have any money!”
Deli scrambled for a comeback appropriate to toss at a child who was actively and effectively roasting her. “Oh, cuz you spent it all on . . . manners school?”
“MaNnErS sChOoL?” Penny mocked.
Blair appeared and planted a kiss on Penny’s head. “That would be a good idea.”
Penny rolled her eyes, but Deli caught her smile as she disappeared down the hallway.
“Hi,” Blair said.
“Hi,” Deli replied.
“So, you’ve met Penny.”
“She’s an excellent guard dog.”
“She did bite a babysitter once.”
“For failing her riddles three?”
“For telling Pen not to sing along while they watched Mulan so the babysitter could ‘hear the songs.’”
“I’d bite her, too.”
“Yes, Andrew and I are very proud.” Blair looked her up and down. “Is this your baking outfit?”
Deli smooshed her lips together. “There was a mud incident.”
Blair raised an eyebrow. “Local hazard.”
“It would seem,” Deli said. “So . . . baking?”
“I hope you stretched.” Blair ushered her in. “It’s gonna be a marathon, Chef.”
“Yes, Chef!” Deli saluted as she followed Blair into a small, thoughtful kitchen that Blair moved through like it was an extension of herself. She glanced at the clock and winked.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere?”
Deli retraced the mud incident and aftermath in her head. “Yes. Do you have—”
Blair uncorked a ceramic white bottle with a pop. “Rock Rose Gin is your favorite, no?”
Deli’s mouth fell open. Chloe still had to ask what Deli wanted at the bar every single time, even though she always ordered a gin and tonic, and Chloe always ordered a vodka cran.
“How did you remember that?”
Blair clinked a few ice cubes into a highball glass. “I just paid attention.”
Deli shoved her hands into the pockets of Graham’s sweatpants, and her fingers brushed against something. She pulled out a wad of paper that might have gone through the wash. It was a brochure for a Highlander tour. She squinted at the photo.
Blair handed Deli a fizzing, rosy drink. “Cheers.”
Deli took a sip and thrust the brochure at Blair’s face. “Is that—wow, that’s a good G and T, thank you—is that Graham with the guy from The Highlander?”
Blair glanced. “Erm, looks like it, yeah.”
“Are they standing outside Lachlan’s pub?”
Blair picked up her own drink and took a long sip. “I think that was a long time ago. Graham just uses the photo for advertising.” She clapped her hands together suddenly. “What do you know about cakes, Miss MacDonald?”
Deli peeled her eyes from the brochure, though the image of Billy S. Burns and Graham’s easy familiarity turned in the back of her mind. “I know that a stodgy cake is a sin against God.”
“Correct.” Blair snatched the brochure from Deli’s hand and shoved it into a drawer behind her. “You’ll be needing both of your hands.” She tossed her a balled-up wad of fabric. It unfurled into an apron.
Grandma Rosemary used to bake when Deli was very small.
She’d spend hours showing Deli how to mix dry ingredients into wet, how to beat an egg white, how to measure brown sugar.
Even when Deli messed up, Grandma Rosemary fixed it.
She snuck her cookies in her backpack when her mom came to get her.
She’d been so elegant, in heels with a neat apron and a glass of sipping wine.
Grandma Rosemary made it seem effortless.
Deli, on the other hand, only needed two gin and tonics to end up coated in flour with a streak of chocolate batter across her forehead like Rafiki had hoisted her over Pride Rock.
Penny strolled by and casually called Deli a chimney sweep.
“Could be worse.” Blair shrugged. “She called Lachlan a ‘grumpy old turnip.’ He moped around for a full week.”
Deli laughed while the smell of vanilla, chocolate, and blackberry whirled through the kitchen. “I’m with Penny. He’s like if Oscar the Grouch got out of his trash can and inherited the deed to a Scottish pub.”
Blair swirled her glass while the ice cubes worked up a gentle fizz. “You’ve been getting special treatment.”
“Special is one word for it.”
Deli did quick math based on Penny’s age. If Lachlan and Blair were mid-thirties, they must have been together quite young. Maybe even high school sweethearts.
She’d been in love with Trey when they were that age, too.
It had eclipsed her world. Like he was a star and she a chosen celestial body in his orbit.
What kind of wanting did a young and brooding Lachlan Scott wrap his first love in?
What must it have been like for Lachlan and Blair to be able to touch instead of being locked in a gravity loop—always circling?
She wondered how it would have felt to have the boy she’d loved with all of her young heart span light-years to crash into her, too.
Deli only knew how to be the thing that orbits.
“Blair?” she asked. “What is the deal with Lachlan?”
Blair’s pocket buzzed. She said that Andrew texted to say he wouldn’t be home in time to give Deli a ride, as originally planned, and then placed a call to Aunt Mo.
“There!” Blair topped off Deli’s drink as she hung up. “Ride secured.”
“Sublime.”
“Anyway, Lachlan has a good heart.”
Deli’s guts felt liquid. “You know, he doesn’t even know me, and he’d already decided that I . . . what?” She heard her voice get a little louder. “That I was unwelcome at my own grandpa’s home? That I wasn’t good enough for Aunt Mo? Or for him?”
Blair nodded while she stared at her feet.
“But then! Then he’ll snap into, like, übernice Lachlan, and he’ll be all concerned about my ankle or my head wound or something—like what?”
Blair managed to sneak in a quick, “Well, a head wound is something anyone should be concerned about.”
“Who made him the boss of me? God, I’ve never met someone so . . .” She didn’t know what to call Lachlan. “So . . . ugh. You know?”
“Ugh,” Blair repeated with a little grin. “Ugh, indeed.”
Blair pointed to a photo hanging in the hallway.
In it, her younger self smiled, her long copper hair whipping around her face like a sheet of fire—a force of nature.
It captured who she had been then, which told Deli more about who her friend was now.
It was easy talking to Blair. Easy to know her.
“Lachlan took that photo. He inherited a camera when he was a boy, and he took to it like it had always been a part of him. He loved to take portraits. Every single one he developed was like some sort of magic. Lachlan could raise that lens and see you—really see you.”
Deli knew what it was to translate someone else into a tangible truth—to transform yearning into a bouquet, to slip guilt into a glass vase.
More than once, a soul had stumbled into the shop and told her of their person—who had gone, or who had come—and she had magicked their heart into something beautiful for one human to hand another. The photo in the hallway was like that.
And Lachlan had taken it.