CLAIRE FLOPPED ONTO the bed, her head pleasantly fuzzy, a smile still on her lips from the fun night.
Well, mostly fun. Thinking about Astrid made her stomach hurt, but the wine was helping keep the ache at a distance.
So was the fact that Delilah was in the bathroom right now, changing into . . . whatever she slept in. Pajamas? A nightie? Nothing at all?
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. She’d already completed her nightly routine—teeth, face, lotion—and was now keenly aware that she was wearing a pair of sleep shorts and a tank top with no bra. She hadn’t even thought about it when she was changing in the bathroom a few minutes ago. The wine, the constant laughing at dinner, it had all distracted her from this very moment when she and Delilah would both slide in between the sheets, their skin inches away from each other, and—
Ruby.
She needed to call Ruby.
It was only ten thirty, and she was almost positive her daughter would still be up, probably stuffing her face with raw cookie dough and watching an R-rated movie. For once, she was glad for Josh’s lax rules. She sat up, ignoring the sound of running water in the bathroom, and tapped Josh’s name on her phone’s favorites list. Ruby didn’t have her own phone yet, and Claire refused to cave to her whining about it. She shuddered to think of her daughter on social media, but knew it was coming, looming like a storm just offshore.
“Hey,” Josh said.
“Hey.”
“How’s the spa? Please tell me you got a massage. Or five.”
“Ha ha. And yes, I did.”
“Five?”
She felt a smile tug at her lips. “One, but it was a very good massage. Can I talk to her?”
“Oh, um . . . well. No, not exactly.”
Claire sat up straight. “Excuse me?”
“She’s indisposed.”
“Indisposed? What does that mean?”
“It means she can’t come to the phone.”
There was the hint of a laugh in his voice, and it made her wish she could transcend space and time and strangle him right here and now. Her pulse started racing, her mind swirling with all the scenarios of why her daughter was indisposed at ten thirty at night.
They’re at some wild party with Josh’s baseball bros from high school.
They decided to take a road trip and Josh left Ruby at a gas station.
Josh completely forgot that she was spending the night and dropped her off at Claire’s house and someone kidnapped her off the front porch and now Ruby was in the clutches of—
The bathroom door opened, and Delilah stepped out dressed in nothing but an oversize white cotton tee that fell at mid-thigh, her hair up in a clip. The sight jolted Claire back into the room and cleared her head. Delilah gave her a weird look—Claire was definitely huffing like a hyperventilating rhino—and froze on the spot.
Claire waved a hand as if to say I’m fine.
“Josh, put my daughter on the phone right now.”
“Claire.”
“I don’t care where you are or what the hell you’re doing.”
“Claire.”
“I swear to god, I will take a dull knife to your manhood if you so much as—”
“Jesus, Claire, she’s asleep.”
Claire stilled. “Asleep.”
“Yes.”
“In a bed?”
“Seriously? Yes.”
“In her bed at your apartment?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
She closed her eyes, warm relief spreading through her body.
Quickly followed by a chilly irritation.
“Then why the hell didn’t you just say so?” she said. “Goddammit, Josh.”
“I’m sorry. I was just playing around. I didn’t think you’d freak out that much.”
She let a beat of silence pass, because this guy. She chanced a look at Delilah, who was still standing by the bathroom door watching her with a concerned expression on her face.
“Okay, fine,” Josh said. “Now that I think about it, I probably should’ve realized you would freak out. I’m sorry, really.”
She inhaled deeply for what felt like the hundredth time in the past ten minutes, her shoulders dropping. Delilah must’ve taken that as a sign that things were okay, because she stepped close to the bed and rested one knee on the mattress. Her shirt inched up a bit, which Claire definitely did not notice.
“It’s all right,” Claire said, suddenly exhausted. She dropped her head into her hand and pressed her fingers to her temple.
“Want me to wake her up?”
“No, no, I’ll talk to her in the morning.”
“Okay. Hey, the oven’s off.”
She dropped her hand into her lap. “What?”
“The oven? I . . . I turned it off as soon as I was done cooking dinner. Even before you had Grant stop by and check on me.”
“I didn’t—”
“And Ruby’s been in bed since ten o’clock. I know it’s later than nine thirty, but I figured, summer and all. Ten is good, right?”
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say to all this. Did he want a medal for performing basic parenting duties and pressing a button on the stove? After years of disappearing, staying gone for months, and barely even calling once a week, all in the name of I’m not good for anyone right now?
“Okay, Josh,” she said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
And then she hung up before he could say anything else, setting the phone on the nightstand while she got herself back together.
“Everything all right?” Delilah asked.
Claire closed her eyes just for a second, then looked up and smiled. “Yeah. Fine.”
Delilah narrowed her eyes at her, clearly not buying it. “So he’s a dick, is that it? We need to take him out too?”
“No.” The answer came so quickly. A reflex. Because Josh wasn’t a dick. Not by a long shot. This would all be so much easier if he was. “He’s just . . .” She shook her head. “He’s a guy who had to grow up too soon.”
Delilah pulled a face. “No sooner than you had to.”
“I know. But I’m . . .” She closed her mouth, unsure why she was making excuses for him. She didn’t mean to, but she knew that her relationship with Josh, Ruby, this little oddball family she had, wasn’t as simple as Josh being a jerk and ghosting. It was a hurt-layered, terror-filled, love-for-your-kid-addled mess.
“You’re what?” Delilah asked. “The mom? The woman? So that means you have to give up your whole life and he doesn’t?”
Claire looked at her, a spark in the other woman’s eyes that felt suddenly addictive, like sitting by a warm fire after a year in a frozen wasteland.
“Maybe,” Claire said softly, her cheeks burning with the admission. “I know it’s not the right way to think about it, but I . . . well, all he did was have sex with a faulty condom. I’m the one who grew Ruby in my own body.”
Delilah pursed her lips and tilted her head at Claire. “All the more reason you deserve good things.”
Her voice was so soft, so intense, it was like the world stopped spinning for a second. Claire could only stare at Delilah, her simple words swelling Claire’s throat. She’d never been great at putting herself first, at going after the things she wanted. After all, she adored her daughter, couldn’t imagine life without her. What else was there to go after?
But as Claire stared at Delilah, want curled in her belly, so strong her mouth watered and her chest ached with some emotion she couldn’t even put a name to.
“Do you want to talk about this?” Delilah asked, breaking the spell.
Claire huffed a laugh. “Not really, no.”
“Then we won’t.”
She didn’t say it like it was a relief, or like she didn’t want to talk about it in the first place. She said it gently, like she understood hard things and how, even though talking about them could be therapeutic, the words themselves were a labor and, sometimes, one just didn’t have the bandwidth for them.
Claire nodded and met Delilah’s eyes as the other woman took a large banana clip out of her hair, wild tresses haloing around her head. Claire meant to offer a smile of thanks, but a laugh burst out of her instead.
Delilah flinched.
Claire clapped a hand over her mouth, then spoke through her fingers. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. It’s just . . . you . . . your . . .” She waved her free hand around her head, indicating Delilah’s hair, which was huge. No, what was bigger than huge? Gigantic. Ginormous. Her curls had frizzed in the evening air, but she must have clipped it up to wash her face, and now that it was set free again, it seemed to have a mind of its own. She looked like she’d been electrocuted.
Delilah’s eyes lit with realization, but still she smirked and folded her arms across her chest, which drew attention to the fact that she was, most definitely, not wearing a bra.
A fact Claire did her best to ignore, locking her eyes on her Bride of Frankenstein hair.
“What’s wrong, Claire?” she said, her voice a teasing lilt.
Another laugh escaped.
“Do I have something on my face?” Delilah patted her cheek, before smiling and pulling at her locks, stretching them out even bigger. “Oh, that. Yeah, do you have a hair tie I can borrow? I left all of mine in the Kaleidoscope Inn’s floral hell, and all I have is this clip.” She held up the black clip, then tossed it into her suitcase.
Claire nodded. “It looks amazing, just for the record.”
“Sure it does.”
“It does. It’s unique. Not like my boring straight hair. I always liked your hair when we were teenagers.”
Something flickered in Delilah’s expression, but it was gone just as fast as it arrived. She cleared her throat. “So, a hair tie?”
“Oh yeah.” Claire motioned to her own suitcase on a chair in the corner. “I know I have some in my toiletry bag, but I think there’s one or two floating around in there too. I never leave home without them.”
“A lesson I should learn,” Delilah said, heading toward the turquoise-and-navy-striped suitcase, and Claire felt a spike of anxiety. Everything in her bag was organized, folded neatly. Claire was pretty sure her underwear was tucked away in a zippered pocket, and she hadn’t brought her vibrator—
Her spine snapped straight.
Because she hadn’t planned on packing her vibrator. It hadn’t been on her list, but then she’d thought about how she’d be at a five-star spa and vineyard, enjoying a room of her own and probably trying very hard not to think about a certain big-haired, blue-eyed woman she couldn’t for the life of her figure out.
She’d tossed the thing in last minute.
“Delilah, wait, I’ll get it—”
“Oh. Wow.”
Crap.
Delilah turned around, a black satin hair tie in one hand and Claire’s bright pink California Dreaming Malibu Minx vibrator in the other.
Claire’s face ignited. She knew a lot of people used vibrators. Hell, Iris had gifted her the very one that Delilah now held, raving about its abilities. Iris even forced the thing upon Astrid and asked often if it was collecting dust in Astrid’s nightstand drawer. But Jesus Christ. Of all the people to find her sex toy, clearly well used if Claire packed it for an overnight trip, it just had to be Delilah Green.
“Um . . . that’s . . .” Claire trailed off, unsure of how to play this. She knew her cheeks were bright red, and she could feel the sweat beading on her upper lip.
But then Delilah smiled and nodded. “Oh, I know. I’ve got the same one. Amazing, isn’t it?”
Then she tossed California Dreaming back into Claire’s suitcase and piled her hair on top of her head, wrapping the tie around her messy locks with a snap.
