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.