At 5:30, I gave up and took Ruffy for a walk around the parking lot. The sky was just starting to lighten, that gray pre-dawn glow that makeseverything look uncertain. A trucker was filling up at the gas station next door. A woman in scrubs was getting into her car, probably heading home after a night shift.
Normal people living normal lives. Not running away from rock star ex-boyfriends before dawn.
We went back inside. I showered (the water pressure was terrible, but at least it was hot) and changed into fresh clothes from my hastily-packed bag. The mirror showed me exactly what I expected: red eyes, blotchy skin, hair that had given up on life.
A woman who’d driven all night to hide from her problems.
The cemetery opened at eight. I grabbed a bad cup of coffee from the gas station next door and waited in the parking lot until the gates opened.
Dad’s grave is in the older section, under a big oak tree. The headstone is simple, just his name, the dates, and the words “Beloved Father.” I picked those words. Mom offered to help, but I said no. I said a lot of things back then, most of them unfair.
“Hey, Dad.”
I sit down on the grass. It’s still damp from the morning dew, and I can feel the cold seeping through my jeans almost immediately. I don’t care. Ruffy settles beside me, his head on my lap, watching me like he’s waiting for an explanation.
Fair question, honestly.
“I messed up,” I tell the headstone. “Again. I know, I know, you’re shocked. Delilah making bad decisions and running away? Unprecedented. Alert the press.”
The headstone doesn’t respond. Obviously. But I keep talking anyway, because that’s what I do when I come here. I talk to Dad like he can still hear me, like somewhere out there he’s listening and shaking his head at his disaster of a daughter.
“There’s this guy. You’d remember him, actually. Levi Cole? The one I met the summer I was seventeen? The one I cried about for approximately six months after I left? You told me I was being dramatic and I told you that you didn’t understand love and then I locked myself in my room and listened to sad music for a week.”
A squirrel runs across a nearby headstone. Ruffy’s ears perk up, but he’s too tired to chase it.
“He’s famous now. Rock star. Platinum albums. The whole deal. You would have loved it, or hated it, I’m not sure which. You always said fame was a trap for people who didn’t know who they were. But Leviknows who he is. That’s the problem. He’s the same person he was twenty years ago, just with better hair and a private jet.”
I pick at a blade of grass, pulling it apart piece by piece.
“He came back to Twin Waves for his brother’s wedding, and we…reconnected. That’s the polite way to say it. The honest way is that he walked into my flower shop and my entire brain short-circuited and I’ve been a mess ever since.”
The morning sun is starting to filter through the oak tree’s branches, casting dappled shadows across the grass. It’s beautiful, actually. Peaceful. The kind of place where you could almost believe everything was going to be okay.
Almost.
“It was going really well. Scary well. The kind of well that should have been my first warning sign, right? Nothing that good ever lasts. Not for me. Something always goes wrong. Someone always leaves. Or I leave first, which I guess is the same thing in the end.”
I think about the pier. The fish that smacked Levi in the face. The way we laughed so hard we could barely breathe, the way he lookedat me when he told me about his mom, like he was handing me something precious and trusting me not to break it.
I broke it anyway. That’s my specialty.
“There was this photo. Him and some pop star. Mia Monroe, you wouldn’t know her, she got famous after you died. She’s basically what would happen if you put glitter and ambition in a blender and gave it a record deal.” I sigh. “She was hugging him and it looked like they were together. Like he’d moved on to someone shinier and more his level.”
The words taste bitter in my mouth.
“I saw it and I panicked. I didn’t even ask him about it. I didn’t give him a chance to explain. I just packed a bag and left like a coward. Like I always do.”
Ruffy makes a soft sound, not quite a whine, not quite a sigh. More like agreement.
“Yeah, I know. You don’t have to rub it in.”
The words hang in the morning air. Saying them out loud makes them sound even worse.
“That’s what you always told me not to do, remember? When I was a kid and I’d get scared about something? You’d say, ‘Delilah, talk about it. Don’t let it fester.’ And I’d roll my eyes because you were my dad and what did you know?” I wipe at myface with the back of my hand. “Turns out you knew a lot. I just didn’t want to listen.”
A car drives past on the road beyond the cemetery gates. I watch it until it disappears around the curve.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper. “I’ve never known how to stay. When things get hard or I get scared, I just…leave. And then I end up somewhere like this, talking to a headstone, wondering why I can’t seem to get it right.”
