“Are you asleep already, Lilah?”
I ignore her, deepening my breath for good measure and fighting the urge to rub my legs together like a cricket to relieve the building ache between them.
The horny stage of pregnancy has most definitely arrived and though the object of my desires issharing my bed, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
Fuck war. This is hell.
The mattress dips beside me, and Ivy whispers good night as she shuts off the light. I lay there in complete stillness, praying for sleep that never comes.
And unfortunately, I don’t fucking come either.
11
JAM IS JAMMIN'
IVY
The smell of strawberries has seeped into my nostrils. It is permanently singed in my nose hairs. It is embedded under my fingernails. It will never, ever leave. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to smell anything but strawberries for the rest of my life.
I’m not complaining, though. Delilah always smells like strawberries. As long as I can still detect the scent of her skin, I’m okay with the world’s most okay-est fruit being the one thing my senses can pick up on for eternity.
Delilah and I have been working all day to prepare for tomorrow’s farmer’s market. Hours of washing, hulling, and crushing whole strawberries, melting them into syrup with sugar, lemon juice anda pinch of cayenne pepper—Delilah’s secret ingredient that gives the jam a kick—then boiling the mixture while stirring constantly, ladling the hot jam into jars and letting it cool before slapping a ‘Delilah’s Famous Strawberry Jam’ label on the front is no joke. I’ve hunched over clients for eight-hour tattoo sessions that have wreaked less havoc on my lower back. But the job is done, the jam is being refrigerated and Delilah will have more inventory to sell tomorrow than she ever has before. She’ll still sell out, though. She’s just that good.
“Lilah, baby, you’ve got to pick a lighter substance to sell. Can you start baking artisanal marshmallows or something? Hauling those crates of jars to the fridge in the garage is going to kill me.”
I plop down in the seat across from her at the kitchen table, waiting for her to laugh at my stupid joke or even correct it and tell me you cook marshmallows, not bake them, but no. Delilah just continues to stare at nothing. She’s been spacey all week, ever since Earl showed up at her parent’s house and dropped the whole baby bomb. And I get it, I really do. For weeks the pregnancy has just been our thing, like we were two kids keeping a secret that we only talked about in the privacy of our treehouse under the cover of nightfall.
Now it’s out in the open—her parents know, herdaughter knows, and given the way her body is changing, it won’t be long until everyone in town knows. All this change and uncertainty would shake up any person, but Delilah especially. She’s never done well with unpredictability, so I know she’s got to be freaking out inside.
I just wish she’d talk to me about it.
“Alright, Delilah. Jam is jammin’, ready for the farmer’s market. Want to move on to phase two ofOperation Goodbye Earl?” I ask. My tablet is on the table, so I open it up to the notes app and flick the stylus between my fingers.
“Sure,” Delilah shrugs, noncommittally.
“We don’t have to. In fact, we don’t have to do any of this if you don’t want to. I think the glitter and the pink hair dye did enough emotional damage to last a lifetime. One of the moms at camp drop-off this morning told me Earl was wearing a baseball cap when she picked her car up on Wednesday, which is weird since he has an aversion to hats. I think that means that hair removal cream is doing its thing, too.”
“It's not enough,” she mutters, running her finger absentmindedly through a bit of leftover sugar on the table, shifting the white crystals back and forth in circles.
“Alright then, Loathsome Lilah. Clock in, let’s getto work.” Damn, I don’t even get a dirty look for trying to bring back ‘Loathsome Lilah’. She’s really in her head.
I tap the end of my stylus on the table as if I’m clicking open a pen. “We’ve already ruined Earl’s first great love—his hair. It’ll take him months to grow back what our Nair has already stolen from him and even if it doesn’t all fall out, what’s left on his scalp will be tinted pink and orange for eternity unless he shaves his head. Now, I looked into it, and going full crazy-angry-country-singer on one of Earl’s ugly white boy cars will most definitely end with us behind bars, especially since he’s totally on to us now. I say in lieu of taking a Louisville Slugger to his headlights and carving your name into the leather seats, we continue with leaving him stinky little gifts under the seats.
“I think some steak from The Dugout is a good call, since it already smells like a fart when it’s fresh and will only get worse with time. But if we want to be economical, there’s some canned tuna from the late eighties in the back of Grandma Millie’s pantry that we could open up. Though that might cause a nuclear reaction that Fox Hole isn’t prepared for. If we can catch Earl’s car outside the town limits, it’s worth the risk.”
“You know what would really drive Earl nuts?”Delilah says, giving no indication that she’s been listening to me at all.
“What’s that, Lilah?”
“If you and I were together. Like,togethertogether. That would be a blow to his pride that he would never recover from, and then we’d have hit all three points on our plan.”
“Oh yeah, that would fucking kill him,” I snort, jotting down ‘fake date a hottie???’ in my notes. “I’m pretty sure Earl despises me more than anyone on this planet. Too bad you’re not into women, or we could really rot him from the inside out. Are there any men in town that he hates as much as he hates me?”
Delilah doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and when I look up, her gaze is fixated on my mouth. I think I might be hallucinating because I almost swear that I can see heat blazing in those big brown eyes that I know like the back of my hand. I can almost feel the fire singing my skin as her eyes drop from my mouth to my chest, down to where the collar of my tank top dips between my barely there cleavage. And when her lips part just a millimeter, I think I have to be imagining that quiet, sharp intake of breath.
I must be going crazy. Either that, or all this fresh, small-town air is going to my head because there isno way in hell that my very straight, very pregnant best friend is checking me out right now.
“Lilah,” I say, my voice betraying me with its breathy tone. Her eyes snap up to meet mine, her pupils dilated as she chews on her bottom lip.
