“Sweetie, is everything okay?” Astrid asked, stepping closer to her. “Do you want us to come with you?”
Claire shook her head. “You go hike. Have fun.”
“You heard her,” Spencer said, taking Astrid’s arm. He started walking her up the trail, leather sneakers and all. “She’s fine. Let’s go.”
“Claire,” Iris said, widening her eyes with meaning. “Are you serious right now?”
“I’ll see you back at the campsite, okay?” she said before Iris could say anything else. Guilt swirled in her gut, but still, she turned away from her friend and ran back along the trail.
* * *
SHE BURST THROUGH the trees and into the campsite’s clearing, breathing heavy, eyes searching. Delilah was still perched on top of the picnic table, phone in her hand. Her head snapped up when she saw Claire, brow furrowing in what Claire could only hope was concern and not annoyance.
“I thought you were going to hike?” Delilah asked.
Claire tried to calm herself down as surreptitiously as possible as all the wrong answers flitted through her head.
I wanted to see you.
I was worried about you.
I was worried about us.
But she knew she couldn’t say any of those things. Those weren’t casual answers to Delilah’s question.
“I decided not to,” Claire said. “I’m going to go to the springs and check on Ruby.”
There. A perfectly breezy response. Her voice didn’t even shake.
Delilah nodded, and Claire moved off toward their tent to change into her bathing suit. She ducked under the door flap, zipped it closed, then pressed her fingers to her eyes under her glasses. The tears welled, and she tried to push them back. This was ridiculous. She fought with Josh all the time. And Delilah had every right to stay back from a hike, to stay back from her.
But Claire had never been great with conflict. When she was young, her parents fought nonstop, her mother completely miserable for most of their life in San Francisco. After her father took off and she and her mom moved to Bright Falls, Claire spent years making sure her mother was okay, making their life as smooth as possible, always following the rules as much as she could.
Then she got pregnant.
Even then, her mother supported her—they’d been all each other had for so long—and everything ended up okay. Wonderful even. But then she and Josh started arguing, two stupid kids with huge adult problems, and she always ended up crying when they fought, always ended up feeling pathetic. And now Iris was most certainly pissed off at her for abandoning her with Shit Trousers, so essentially, Claire had just made everything worse. Still, she couldn’t have gone on that hike without doing what she was doing right now—letting a few tears fall to get some release and heaving some shuddering breaths. She just needed a few minutes, then she’d be fine. She’d be ready to find her daughter, ignore whatever Delilah was doing, and figure out a way to make it up to Iris. She’d be—
The tent door unzipped, and before Claire had a chance to wipe her face dry or at least pull her shirt over her head to hide what were probably very blotchy cheeks and red eyes, Delilah was ducking into the tent.
“Oh, hey,” Claire said. Calm. Breezy. Except her voice sounded thick and watery. She turned her back to the other woman, squatting down to unzip her pack and find her swimsuit.
“What’s wrong?” Delilah asked, her voice so gentle it made Claire want to cry even more. Which she absolutely was not going to do.
“Nothing.” She found her red-and-white polka-dot one-piece and clutched it to her chest as she stood up. “Just . . . I think I’m allergic to something out here.”
God, she was getting good at lying.
“Claire, that’s bullshit.”
Okay, apparently not good enough.
She sighed and turned to face Delilah. “I just . . . I had a fight with Josh. It’s not a big deal, but it threw me off.”
Delilah’s eyes went soft. The inside of the tent was hot, humid, despite the coolness in the June air outside. There wasn’t a whole lot of space in here to begin with, and as Delilah took a step closer, Claire swore she felt their breaths mingling.
“What did you fight about?” Delilah asked.
Claire shrugged, her chest tight again. “Ruby. Us. The same thing over and over.”
A little dip appeared between Delilah’s brows, but she just nodded. “What can I do to help?”
Claire didn’t expect that question. Not from Delilah. A nod of sympathy, sure. A joke about the universal awfulness of straight cis white men, perhaps. But not this caring offer, spoken while her arms slid around Claire’s waist and pulled her closer. It made her want to bury her face in the other woman’s neck, breathe in that smell that was all Delilah, sun and rain all at once.