And Now, Back to You — Chapter no 16

CHAPTER 16

JACKSON

“Wind is picking up now,” Delilah says quietly, a fresh mug of hot chocolate cupped between her hands. She’s looking out the window and I’m pretending not to look at her, trying to study my open laptop instead. But my eyes keep drifting back. The tangle of hair pushed over her shoulder.

The way her teeth bite down against her bottom lip in thought.

I know what her mouth tastes like now.

She kissed me and every voice in my head went silent. Like someone had yanked a cord from the wall.

I clear my throat and shift my legs, my knee bumping against hers beneath the table. The top of it is currently littered with a collection of notes and half-eaten baked goods. The window we settled next to is almost completely obscured by white.

“Snow is coming in heavier too,” I add, digging one fist into my eye. I swear, when I go to sleep tonight, I’m going to be dreaming in barometers and cherry ChapStick.

If I can sleep with Delilah curled up in the space next to me.

Delilah turns from the window. “We’re in the thick of it.”

Yeah. We sure as fuck are.

My phone buzzes on the table.

Send us a picture, Adeline says in our family group chat. We want to see the snow.

Penelope follows it up with a series of snowflake emojis.

I can feel Delilah’s eyes on me while I fumble with the camera app, her amusement growing as I try to get an angle out the window that doesn’t include her or the glare from the giant chandelier in the lobby behind us.

She holds out her hand and I wordlessly hand it over.

She snaps a few pictures of the view—limited though it might be—her tongue at the corner of her mouth. Then she flips the camera around and takes a picture of the two of us. Her, smiling so wide her eyes are almost shut. Me, looking like I’ve just been hit in the head by a falling piano.

It’s embarrassing how much a little kiss has me rattled.

She hands the phone back to me and drops one elbow on the table. “You want to talk about it?”

I drag my hand over my mouth, considering. Normal Jackson would want to discuss it at length, laying out repercussions and all the possible avenues in which something like impulsive kisses in hidden alcoves could potentially ruin our professional working relationship. But that version of myself feels like it’s shoved in a closet somewhere, and I’m not exactly eager to let him out.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. Maybe Winter Storm Jackson can handle things like spur-of-the-moment kisses without thinking too much about it. Maybe Winter Storm Jackson can be fun.

Delilah’s mouth quirks up. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” she says. “I wasn’t exactly thinking.”

“Neither was I. I was talking about corn sweat.”

Her smile tugs a little wider. “Still. I shouldn’t have done it. And I owe you an apology for—”

“You don’t,” I interrupt, slowly closing my laptop screen.

Delilah’s head tips to the side.

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable,” I clarify. “You figured out a way to knock me out of my own head. I’m grateful, Delilah.”

I’m also flustered, slightly smitten, and probably fucked, but I plan to keep that to myself.

She watches me from the other side of the table, looking for the lie. “All

right.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”

I nod. “Yeah, great.”

She stands, brushing her hands against the front of her skirt. “I’m going

to get another scone.”

I survey the table. “We have seven scones.”

“Technically, we have three and a half scones, if you add all the pieces together. And not one of them is blueberry. So I’m going to get one of those.” She collects some of the empty plates and used napkins. “Do you

want more tea?”

“No, I’m fi—”

“I’m gonna get you some more tea.”

She twirls off to the other side of the lobby where Lottie operates a small café and bakery. I watch as she walks right up to the counter, waving to the young attendant behind the desk reading a book. He immediately sets it to the side to talk to her, a furious blush working up and over his cheeks as he nods with enthusiasm.

I turn back in my seat, sending off the pictures of the snow to my sisters and staring at the selfie of me and Delilah. She’s beaming at the camera.

I’m looking right at her.

I darken my phone with a tap of my thumb and flip it upside down on the table.

Delilah and I make a good team. I am also begrudgingly attracted to her.

I’m not interested in denying either of those things.

If I tried, I’m fairly certain she’d call me on my bullshit. I don’t know what that means for the both of us, but I’m trying something new. I’m open to the possibilities instead of trying to map out my options.

“Is that Delilah Stewart?”

I glance up. An older man is standing at the edge of our table. Faded Levi’s, tan boots, a well-loved leather cap clutched between weathered hands. He could be either sixty or two hundred and six. It’s hard to tell. The lodge has mostly been deserted whenever we’ve been in the common spaces, and this is the first time I’ve seen someone who isn’t a hotel employee.

“Uh.” I glance over my shoulder at Delilah, still chatting away with the charmed café attendant. “Yeah. That’s her.”

He lets out a deep, rattling breath.

“Is there something you need?” I ask, my voice sharp. I shift sideways, angling my body between him and Delilah.

“Oh, no. No, I don’t need anything. I just—” He sighs as he gazes across

the room, twisting his hat in his fists. “I’m a—I’m a big fan of Ms.

Stewart’s work.”

My hesitation eases. I recognize that look on his face. It’s the same dopey look I have in the picture Delilah took five minutes ago. He’s another member of the Delilah Stewart fan club.

I grin, my shoulders relaxing. “Oh yeah?”

He nods. “Saw that segment she did on the Trash Wheel coupl’a weeks ago. She’s pretty funny.” He clears his throat and looks down at me. He clocks my smile and immediately scowls. “What are you laughing about?”

“I’m not laughing.” I tilt my head in the direction of the café. “You should go say hi.”

As confident as Delilah is, I don’t think she gets to see enough of this part. How much people love her for everything she already is. I’ve seen the spiderweb cracks that splinter across Delilah’s expression when she faces one of the roadblocks Keith tosses up. How badly she wants to be taken seriously. She says she doesn’t want to be a joke, but I don’t think she understands that to the viewers, she’s never been one.

“You should tell her about the Trash Wheel,” I encourage.

My temporary tablemate immediately starts shaking his head. “No.”

“You could tell her you think she’s funny.”

He looks at me like I’m insane. “Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know. Why are you over here?”

He blinks, confused. “I don’t think I know.”

“All right.” This time I do laugh. “I’ll tell her you said hello.”

He nods. “Good. That’s good.” He doesn’t move a muscle.

I raise my eyebrows. “What should I say?”

“What?” he barks, jumping slightly.

“What should I say?” I repeat slowly.

“Oh, ah—” He runs his hand over his closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair, still staring in the general direction of the café. He’s probably the same height as Delilah. Maybe an inch or two taller. “You could tell her Dustin says hello and, uh, thank you,” he stammers. “Tell her thank you for keeping me company on my trips away from home.”

With that, he spins on his booted heel and marches off, his shoulders hunched to his ears. Delilah appears with a new tray of snacks

approximately twelve seconds later.

“Who was that?” she asks.

I take in the cinnamon bun, pound cake, and three chocolate chip cookies on her tray. “I thought you said you were getting a blueberry scone.”

“I did.” She points to a baked good at the top-left corner. “But then Tom recommended this other stuff, and I had to try it.”

She starts pushing dishes around the table, making room. “Who was your friend?” she asks again.

“Oh.” I glance over my shoulder. Dustin is nowhere to be found. “That was a fan of yours.”

Her face immediately tumbles into a beaming smile. “Really?”

I nod, struck dumb a little bit by the crinkle in her nose and the way her eyes almost completely shut every time she smiles like that. “Yeah. His name is Dustin. He wanted to thank you for keeping him company on his trips away from home.”

“That’s so nice.” She finishes transferring her bounty to the table, then quickly sweeps the remnants of our first round onto the tray. “I like that I keep him company. Like a little pocket-sized Delilah, whenever he needs it.”

I take the cinnamon bun she offers. “Have people always loved you?”

She laughs. “I think you know very well that I’m not universally loved, Jackson.” She collapses back into her chair. “Present company included.”

“I thought we moved past this.”

Her face softens. “Yeah, I know.” She reaches for her scone, then changes her mind and plucks the corner off my cinnamon bun instead. “I’m just teasing you.”

“You’re just—” I nudge the plate closer to her. “Sometimes you feel like a caricature. Something sugary sweet someone whipped up.”

She loses her smile. “Is this your way of telling me we haven’t moved past it?”

“No, no. Listen. I’m—I’m trying to—that didn’t come out the way I meant it.” I reach for her hand and grab it, needing her to understand. To believe me. “You know I struggle when it’s important.”

Her face turns back to mine, hesitant but open. “This is important?”

“It is.” I flip my hand so our palms are pressed together, the length of her thumb lined up against the length of mine. Her nails are painted a pale lavender. The color of the sky in the middle of the summer, right before the sun melts into the horizon. “This is important, Delilah.”

“Okay.” She shifts in her seat. “Keep going, then. I can be patient.”

I know she can. She always is. I try to find the words that explain this feeling in my chest. The one that winds tighter and tighter every time she laughs or grins or brings up an important discussion point about fast-

moving wind systems.

I release an agitated breath.

“You’re like a lamp,” I finally say.

Her normally expressive face is completely unreadable. “A lamp,” she repeats.

I nod. “You—you have this light inside of you that—Delilah, it shines so fucking bright. And I think I’ve hated that about you because I’ve never—”

I swallow, these words harder than the rest. “It’s never been like that for me.

My light’s gone out, or it’s flickering, or maybe it’s a faulty bulb, I don’t know. I’m getting twisted up in this stupid analogy, but sometimes it feels like there’s this brick on the center of my chest. I think I gave everything I had left to the girls.”

Delilah shakes her head. “That’s not true, Jackson.” Her hand squeezes mine. “That’s not true at all.”

“I’ve told you my mother is unconventional,” I say quietly, trying to find the words for the things I never talk about. “The reason I took on the girls is because—is because—”

“It’s okay,” she tells me, the look on her face breaking me into absolute pieces. It makes the ache even stronger. “You don’t have to talk to me about this.”

“I want to,” I rasp. “I just need a second, okay? I want to explain why I’m like this. I want you to understand.”

Delilah nods. “Okay.”

“When it was good, it was really good. But when it was bad, it was—” I flex my fingers in Delilah’s grip, feeling all the places we fit. “My mom had medication she never wanted to take. Appointments she didn’t like going to.

She had trouble keeping track of things like that, so I tried to fill in the space for her. I tried to make it easier. I made charts. Got her those little pill containers. But an eight-year-old can’t fill prescriptions. She could be passionate and excited one day and sad and lethargic the next. She thought excitement could keep the bad days away. She was always chasing it, something bright and shiny to focus all her enthusiasm on. Sometimes, it was me.”

And those were the best days. Cake baking and movies cuddled together

on the couch. Surprise visits where she’d pull me out of school early so we could go to a street festival she saw in the paper. Cotton candy for lunch and a balloon tied around my wrist. But that balloon would almost always lose air. I’d find it shoved under my dresser two months later, sad and deflated.

“But most of the time, it wasn’t. It was something else. She’d find a new hobby or meet someone who promised a new opportunity, and I’d be left behind.”

Delilah’s eyes fracture, and I avert mine to the tabletop.

“I’d beg her to stay, but she’d laugh it off. Say I was too old to need my mommy. Eventually, I stopped asking and just . . . prepared as best I could instead. It’s why I like my routines. I spent a lot of my childhood alone, aware that I was not only unwanted but avoided. I didn’t want that for the girls.”

I grip Delilah’s hand like it’s the only thing holding me above water. I haven’t said any of this aloud in years. Not since I got drunk at a bar with Aiden during a St. Paddy’s Day pub crawl and unloaded on him. Or that first meeting with the therapist Maggie recommended, digging through everything that made me feel itchy and tight.

“You’re always smiling, Delilah. You’re always positive. You have all this shit you’re dealing with, but you find a way to hold it that makes you lighter, you know? I’ve never been able to do that. It’s only ever weighed me down and I think—I’ve had trouble with that. I’ve hated how easy it seems for you.”

She shifts her hand. For one awful second, I think she’s going to pull away. But she just rearranges her grip so our fingers are threaded together.

“You’ve also hated me for my parking,” she says. “It’s okay to admit that.”

I huff a laugh, tracing my thumb over her knuckles. Her smile fades again, and she’s looking at me like she’s just lifted up a rock and found a key hidden beneath. Twisted a knot a different way, and the strings came loose. “It’s not always like that for me,” she says quietly. “Sometimes it’s heavy.”

“I know. But even when you’re hurting, you find a way to glow. You find

a way to make everyone else glow too.”

“Like a lamp,” she says quietly.

“Yeah. Like a lamp.”

Her nose wrinkles and she looks down at the table. She sniffles once.

Then again.

My hand tightens around hers. “Shit. Delilah. I didn’t mean—”

“That’s a really nice thing to say, Jackson,” she manages, her voice tight.

Her eyes find mine, shiny and bright. “That’s—thank you.”

“I mean it,” I whisper.

I let myself hold her hand for another second, then pull away. I busy myself with typing across my laptop, trying not to watch the way she delicately traces the corner of a napkin under one eye and then the other.

She collects herself slowly, fussing with the different baked goods.

Shifting plates, rearranging napkins. Drinking out of my mug, and then hers when she realizes she’s made a mistake. Watching my face to see if I’ve noticed. Breaking off a corner and humming under her breath when she tastes something she likes. She’s lost in thought until she’s not, her face popping up behind my computer screen, her eyes no longer red-rimmed, but just as bright.

“Did you want your scone, or can I have it?” she asks.

“You can have it,” I tell her.

I’m pretty sure I’d give Delilah whatever she wants.

DELILAH STEWART: And a special hello and thank you to our friends at Wolf’s Lodge, helping us ride out the storm.

DELILAH STEWART: You guys make some of the best blueberry scones I’ve ever had.

DELILAH STEWART: What did you think of the scones, Jackson?

JACKSON CLARK: I don’t know.

DELILAH STEWART: You don’t know?

JACKSON CLARK: Every baked good I’ve received has mysteriously disappeared.