My eyes flash. “Well. I imagine you’re tired from your . . . exertions this afternoon.”
A muscle tics in her jaw. “If all you’re going to do is insult me, I’m going to go.” She curls her hand around the edge of the book and starts to close it. It feels like the world closing in on me.
“Wait,” I say softly.
The book opens again, and she smooths the page flat.
“You have no idea how hard it was to see you doing that,” I confess.
“It’s just for a little while. Until we can come up with an excuse to stage a breakup.”
There is a voice at the door—Mrs. McPhee. “Delilah?” she calls. “Who are you talking to?”
Immediately the world goes dark as Delilah shoves the open book beneath the covers of her bed. “No one,” she says. “Jules.”
“Which is it? No one, or Jules?”
“Jules,” Delilah answers, flustered.
“Are you guys having a fight? I heard yelling.”
“We were arguing about something stupid. What movie to see this weekend. No big deal.”
There is a hesitation. “It sounded like a lot of shouting for just a movie.”
“We’re both PMSing,” Delilah says. “I’m totally exhausted, Mom. Can’t you see I want to sleep?”
There is a sound of the door closing, and suddenly Delilah’s face comes into view again.
“That was rather harsh,” I murmur. “What’s this ‘PMSing’?”
“You don’t want to know,” Delilah answers. She glances away from the book. “I wonder if my mom realized that my phone’s plugged into the wall at my desk.”
“So?”
“It makes it considerably harder to be having a conversation with Jules.” She sighs. “How long until my mother thinks there’s something wrong with me again, because I’m obsessing over this book?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll try to be quieter next time I yell at you.”
This, at last, makes her smile.
“When he touches you,” I ask softly, “do you think of me?”
Delilah’s eyes are like molten gold. “I think of how he’snotyou,” she replies. “Of how no one ever could be.”
I stare up at her. She’s my sky, my whole universe. “Tell me about your day,” I say.
The next morning, I decide to turn over a new leaf. Baking clearly isn’t my forte, art isn’t quite in my wheelhouse, and apparently stalking doesn’t qualify as a hobby. So, borrowing some equipment from Scuttle and Walleye, I head to the beach to try my hand at fishing.
No sooner have I cast my line than Marina surfaces, her tail slicing through the ocean. “You know, fish have feelings,” she says reproachfully.
“So do plants,” I point out. “How was your kelp salad this morning?”
In a huff, she dives beneath the surface. For a few moments, I enjoy the sun beating down on the crown of my head, and the lull of the waves, and the distant cries of seagulls circling overhead. It feels good to stretch my muscles as I reel in and cast again. This . . . this is something I could get used to.
My solitude is shattered by the wet, messy, barking arrival of a tornado of fur, which knocks me to my knees and proceeds to slobber all over my face. “Humphrey!” I hear. “Heel!”
Immediately the dog sits, his tail still quivering, so that he is moving closer inch by infinitesimal inch. His tongue hangs so far out of his mouth it nearly brushes the sand.
