“Thanks for the cookies,” he said, crossing the gleaming floor and reaching for a plate already piled with fresh-from-the-oven chocolate-chip cookies. His favorite.
House wouldn’t have made cookies if it had heard Gavin talking about his mother; instinctively, he knew it. But TV didn’t turn on. Piano didn’t play. He found a glass of ice-cold milk on the counter and carried them both to Kitchen Table, taking a seat and trying not to think. His unease didn’t come from a sense of fear, but rather that something had happened the day before, and both he and House were walking on eggshells.
The entire feeling made Gavin think of a housewife who discovers a secret about her husband but doesn’t tell him immediately, instead letting him give himself away slowly, one word at a time, waiting until he makes a mistake. He just wasn’t sure which of them—he or House—was the one with a secret.
Chapter Sixteen
Her
For the next few weeks, their relationship felt a little homeless. Gavin didn’t want to take her back to his house, and she insisted her parents would never let the two of them set foot in the door together. So they wandered the streets of their small town, talking about favorite candies and horror novelists, about movies and giant trees. He would sometimes kiss her on these walks—small touches and the occasional sharp nibble—but Delilah was almost constantly thinking about how she could find a way to press the front of her body all along the front of his. It was a tight sort of desperation that came from liking him more with every new piece of himself he shared and also needing to know that she stood a fighting chance if he ever had to choose between her and the house.
She looked up and noticed they’d reached the place their walks always ended: her house. This was the point when, in their new routine of wandering, he would ask her a question and she would answer, stretch for his last kiss of the day, and then walk inside to stare at the wall until she could clear her mind of him enough to focus on her homework.
What his question would be each day had become a game. On the days she demanded kiss after kiss on every street corner, he would end their walk with something innocent—Do you prefer red or green grapes? But on days she was wrapped up in talking, or thinking, he would invariably reel her in with something like, Do you ever sleep bare, without a stitch of clothing on?
When he’d asked this two weeks ago, his eyes had become so black and his voice so low that Delilah’s skin caught fire and her soul slid from her body into his.
She’d finally answered, “No. But now I will.”
But one drizzly Thursday, when her house rose out of the street so abruptly, and Delilah was neither overly hungry for him nor quietly thoughtful, Gavin leaned down, licked her bottom lip before kissing it sweetly, and asked her where her parents were.
She looked up, realizing the blue Chevy wasn’t at the curb and the gold Cadillac wasn’t in the driveway, and said, “I have no idea.”
It wasn’t like the three of them had mastered the art of comfortable dinnertime discussion where future outings were shared. Her parents expected her to be home by sunset, do her homework, and wash the dishes after dinner. She expected her parents to cook and then watch the nightly news or read worn copies of romance novels. So she didn’t have a clue why both parents appeared to be gone, but nor did she waste another second. She grabbed Gavin’s hand and pulled him inside. For some unknown reason, she wanted him inside her house this time.
His fingers shook a little around hers as they walked through the living room, dining room, and kitchen. He seemed more afraid of accidentally touching anything than she had been when intentionally touching things in his house, which, to be honest, Delilah found a little funny. Nothing here would reach out and grab him, tickle him, or shudder beneath him. Nothing, that is, except Delilah herself.