Slowly, a smile cracks across his face, and my heart hammers so hard I’m sure he can hear it. My stomach twists. I think I might throw up.
“Delilah,” he says, softly.
Say it, I tell myself. Say it. Say it.
Sayitsayitsayitsayitsayitsayitsayit.
Seth reaches into his pocket. Keeps my left hand in his.
Gets down on one knee, and this cannot be happening.
It can’t. It can’t. I’m vaguely aware that I’m supposed to be happy about this but instead I’m horrified, frozen. Powerless to make this stop.
“Seth,” I say, the word brittle.
He opens a box, the ring inside. Looks up at me with those eyes, the most perfect shade of blue.
“Delilah,” he says, solemnly. “Will you marry me?”
There’s a moment, then, where all the sound drops from the world. There’s a silence beyond silence, still and heavy.
When it ends I’m already shaking my head, pulling my hand out of his. Stepping backward like he’s just offered me a tarantula.
“No,” I’m saying. “No. I can’t.”
He’s frozen. Shocked. I keep shaking my head.
“What?” he says, without moving, that single word full of pain and betrayal. “Why?”
“I think we should take a break,” I blurt out. “Just some time apart so we can think about things and not talk and not see each other, because things have been so bad between us lately and I think if we just took that time apart it would really help. So a break. Just for a while.”
The box snaps shut. He stands.
“A break?”
I nod like a puppet on a string. He shoves his hands into the pockets of the coat he never even took off, looks away. Swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“We can’t take a break,” he says. “I know it’s been rough lately, but that’s temporary, Bird, I’m gonna graduate in May and then I’m coming back and we’ll be together, and we’ll get —”
“Please don’t.”
His knuckles are white around the ring box, and the guilt is huge, overwhelming. A shadow trying to eat me alive.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. I step forward, stop, because Seth is hurt and my urge is to hold him, comfort him, but what do I do when I’m the source of the pain? What do I do when this is my fault for not loving him enough?
He shakes his head. Shoves the box back into his pocket, steps away from me.
“I don’t want to take a break,” he says. “I want our plan, the way it was supposed to be —"
“This wasn’t our plan!” I say, desperately, but Seth keeps shaking his head.
“I can’t take a break,” he says, his face falling.
I swallow hard, and a tear spills down my cheek. I didn’t even realize I was crying.
I want to say a thousand things right now — that I’m sorry, that I didn’t want to hurt him, that I love him but not enough, that I want to keep him but I don’t — but I can’t get any of them through my lips.
“That’s it,” he whispers.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, and he shakes his head like he can shake me off.
“It’s okay,” he says, his voice sounding strange, strangled.
Then he steps forward. Puts his hand to my face. Bends down.
Kisses me for the last time, and then it’s over.
“Goodbye, Bird,” Seth says, and then he turns and leaves the house.
I don’t know how long I stand there, crying. Winona finds me, makes me sit down. I never tell her what really happened.
Then next time I see Seth, it’s eight months later at a dive bar.Chapter Forty-SixDelilahPresent DayThe car ride back feels like the longest car ride in the history of car rides. Thankfully it’s with Ava and Thad, not someone else, and Ava keeps up a bubbly, cheerful running commentary for most of the time, as if she can cover over the unpleasantness of the night before.
She can’t. I feel like hell in the back seat of Thad’s BMW, wishing that we didn’t have to stop at every single vista point and Starbucks along the drive, but somewhere in the back of my mind I know that Ava is, in her way, being extraordinarily kind to me.
I also know that Ava at twenty-two is probably a better person than I was. For all my misgivings, she and Thad seem really good together: she listens, rapturously, to his stories. He laughs at her jokes in a way that suggests he’s besotted. She’s not me, thank God.
When we get to my house, my car’s there. I wave goodbye to Ava and Thad, look through the windows, in the trunk, but there’s nothing to suggest anyone else’s presence. The key is under my welcome mat, and when I step inside, I hold my breath against the tiny spark of hope, buried in my chest.
My house is empty. The spark flares, flickers, dies. No one’s there. Not even a note.