“I didn’t mean—” she began, but he quickly cut her off with two fingers pressed to her lips.
“This is better anyway,” he said with a shrug, pulling her forward and stopping only when his body was pressed all along hers. “I’ve been dying to kiss you.”
? ? ?
Sunday was long and boring and seemed to stretch on forever. Gavin had to work, and Delilah did her best to stay busy, but her house felt too small, her parents too. . . everywhere. She watched TV and cleaned her room; she arranged all her books by size, then again by color, finally deciding to arrange them by the number and manner of deaths that occurred in each one.
But by late afternoon she was going crazy. She wanted to see him again, wanted to watch him smile in that way that made her stomach do strange things, wanted to run her hands through his wild hair and kiss him again until he looked at her in that savage way that felt positively obscene.
Delilah didn’t normally text Gavin; her thoughts with him were usually too complicated to be contained in a few lines of text. There was also the matter of wanting to hear him speak, in that slow, unhurried way that he had. Gavin didn’t say much, but he rarely seemed to filter the content in person, and Delilah was greedy for his words, preferring the sound of his voice to his stilted, monosyllabic typical-boy-text response. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
Are you home yet?
Thankfully, his response came only a few moments later. Have to stay late.
How late is late?
An hour or two?
Delilah considered this. She craved his company, but she had to admit she also craved the way she felt like she left this world and walked straight into another one when she went to his house. Would it be ok if I went over? I could wait for you.
She held her breath while she waited for Gavin’s reply, the longest minute of her life so far. Uncertainty crawled under her skin as she wondered if her request was strange, or inappropriate. She liked the idea of being alone inside the house for a little while. She liked the idea of experiencing what Gavin had all these years.
You sure?
She smiled as she typed. Definitely.
? ? ?
Delilah waited until her parents went out for the night. She watched as her mother quietly got ready, applying her practically nonexistent makeup and just a spritz of Jean Naté. Not too much, she’d always said.
Her father puttered around the house, straightening things that didn’t need to be straightened while the evening news droned on in the background. So boring, she thought, and so completely different from where I want to be.
Delilah followed them to the front door and waved as they backed out of the driveway, noting the way neither one looked up at her as they drove away. As soon as their blue sedan turned the corner, Delilah was off like a flash, grabbing the spare keys from the hook in the laundry room and sprinting out into the fading daylight.
? ? ?
With her father’s car parked safely on the street, Delilah approached the gate.
Nothing looked different in the muted dusk light; the house was still a strange collage of colors and sizes, half the yard just as green as the other half was dead. The walkway leading to the front porch was as unusual as the building it belonged to—a winding path of earth-toned pavers, a sprinkling of colored glass and assorted bottle caps thrown in for good measure. Above the house, pink and purple clouds hung like cotton candy.