“I wouldn’t sit there.” He laughed as she eyed a particularly severe-looking chair at the head of the table in the dining room. “This room has a bit of attitude.”
She expected some reaction from the space, something like a hum or a shiver, but everything was well and truly still, except for the paintings, which she’d actually forgotten. Now standing in the quiet calm of the kitchen, Delilah wondered if this house was anything special after all.
“I can’t tell that the house is. . . different.”
Gavin smiled as he turned and opened the refrigerator, grabbing two bottles of juice. “If you say so.”
“Do you think it will be weird to live somewhere else? Like when you go to college?”
She’d said these things innocently, but the house jerked to life, shaking once so violently and with a terrible groan that Delilah screamed and instinctively sprinted for the door.
The handle was locked, and she stood there, madly rattling the knob until Gavin came up behind her, wrapped his hand around hers, and gently pried her fingers away.
“It’s okay, Delilah.” He curled his hand around her shaking fist and pressed their hands to her stomach. “It’s okay.”
The house had gone still, the rooms no longer shaking or cold. Delilah could feel Gavin’s breath against her ear. She slumped back against him, calming. “It just surprised me.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her hair. Somehow, though, it felt like he was speaking to the house as well as her.
When Delilah turned to look at him, her attention was drawn over his shoulder, at the light that continued to swing over the kitchen table, at the walls that now seemed to pulse and breathe as if before everything had been holding its breath, suspended.
“It was just behaving before,” he said with a small smile. “I’ve been talking about you for a long time, so everyone is excited. I think we’re all a little unsure how to act.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice cracking. “I didn’t mean to upset anyone by asking that.”
She was shaking and wild-eyed when Gavin pulled her in to his chest, wrapping his endless arms around her. She pressed her face against his breastbone, listened to the steady pound of his heartbeat, and for a moment she felt like she was being held by him inside another body, a bigger and much more powerful one. She felt an odd tickling at her thoughts, like shadow fingers pressing in from her temples.
Blinking hard, Delilah shook her head and felt a wild pulse of anger over the violating sensation. In a tiny gust, the feeling was gone.
Gavin ran a long finger up her spine, bringing her immediately back into the moment with him. She’d been spooked by the shaking of the house. That was all.
“Let’s go outside, to the shed,” he said, and Delilah felt his lips move against her hair as he spoke. She wondered what stories his mouth might write across her skin and where he would put them.
“Are you scared?” he asked, very quietly.
Delilah shook her head. She wasn’t scared, exactly. But it was strange to reconcile always wanting the weird and strange and having it groan and shake all around you. It was wonderful to finally see something like this with her own eyes, but she hated to admit that it was also a little frightening to feel the presence of the house press up against her, so close, nearly in her own thoughts. The house was huge and real, and Gavin lived inside it. There must be slivers of her boringly normal parents inside her somewhere, but Delilah wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to wrap her brain around that.
“I just don’t want to do anything wrong,” she said.
The quiet rumble of his laugh rose up from where her cheek rested against him and came out in an exhale over the top of her head. “You couldn’t. I think the house is worried about the same thing. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘it’s more scared of you than you are of it?’ Come on.”