I chuckled quietly, wincing as it turned to a cough.
I doubted she meant to be funny, but even now, her temper came through something as impersonal as a text. Somehow, it made me feel better—as if I wasn’t such a monster to contemplate such a crazy idea as taking her for my own.
Me: If we do this, we can’t do it here.
Della: I know.
Me: Don’t say you know as if nothing else matters. We need to think about this. You’re in college. When does your course end? You’re with David. How will he take you breaking up with him? What about your job at the florist? We have an apartment and furniture to get rid of. Are you prepared to say goodbye to another home?
It took much longer for me to type such long sentences than Della, and my leg bounced as I pressed send, nervousness trickling through my blood. It wasn’t a simple matter of running like previous times. We had things holding us here. We had bills and people. Or at least…Della did. She was more adult than I was in this scenario, and once again, my mind tripped down memory lane, feeding me images of her young and innocent and untouchable, doing its best to unhinge my resolve that this was what I wanted. No matter how hard.
Della: I’ve already written regarding my course and withdrawn, stating a family emergency. I used part of the rent money to pay for the first semester—which I doubt I’ll get back. But where we’re going, we don’t need the cash. I quit my job a while back. I’m not dating David; he turned me down when he realised I wasn’t over you, and the apartment is easy. Terminate the lease, put our furniture back on the street corners where we got them from, pack a bag and…let’s go home.
My heart pounded as a breeze kissed my cheek, tugging me toward the black spaces where the city lights didn’t reach. The darkness full of leaves and rivers.
Home.
I knew where my home was.
Did she?
Me: Home means no running water, no supermarkets, no roof. Are you sure you want that?
Della: I don’t know if reminding you of a younger me is a good idea, but on the night of my seventeenth and your twenty-seventh, I gave you that tent. Remember what I said?
I groaned under my breath. That was one memory that wasn’t just remembered but polished daily and treasured. She’d let me see behind her fakery that night. She’d painted a future that I’d desperately wanted, even while believing it could never happen.
Me: You asked if I intended to stay here and said we had to start thinking about our future. That you wanted to return to the forest, and that’s why you bought me that tent.
Della: And you asked if I was sure. You made a point to tell me there would be no boys, no jobs, no school. No future out there in the wilderness.
Me: And you set me straight by saying there was no future apart from with me.
I looked at the moon again, tension slipping away. I was torturing myself about wanting Della as deeply as I did when, for so many years, I’d already been living with the same sin. I’d already accepted the mess, even then. And I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise it now. Not when we were so close.
My lips curled into a hesitant smile as my mind raced with everything we’d have to achieve. Every goodbye we had to finalise. Every beginning we were about to embrace.
Standing from the bench and striding toward the apartment, hopefully for the last time, my fingers flew, and I sent.
Me: Pack a bag. We leave in two days.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
REN
* * * * * *
2018
TWO DAYS
Forty-eight hours to delete our entire existence as the Wilds.
Della and I kept our distance while we systematically dismantled our world. She focused on selling, donating, and sorting through her stuff at David’s house, while I lugged our fifth-hand couch up the steps of our place, and dragged it to the same street corner we’d salvaged it from.
My body proved just how badly I’d treated it the past few months and the residual cough from the flu made tasks last longer than I wanted.
I didn’t like that Della had refused to sleep at our apartment, insisting that she owed David too much to abandon him without explaining and they needed a proper goodbye.
The urge to forbid her—the desire to beg her to be with me instead, proved I needed to keep my possessiveness in check. I’d never stopped her from hanging with her friends before.
I wouldn’t start now.
Instead, I threw myself into my tasks, doing my best to tie up loose ends quickly so Della was mine and we could leave.
Scrawling a hasty poster, I announced a one-day garage sale and opened our apartment to anyone who wanted cutlery, crockery, bedding, an ancient TV, decrepit motorcycle, and anything else we couldn’t carry.