“I did not screech like a little kid,” Delilah said, standing up and brushing the dirt off her sleep shorts.
“You did. It’s okay.” Astrid blinked at her, a blanket around her shoulders, hair slightly less coiffed than it usually was, and a definite intoxicated gleam to her eyes. Of course it could just be the firelight, but her voice was also a bit fuzzy. Delilah had never seen Astrid Parker drunk. Not once, even during their teenage years when she would watch from her window at one in the morning as her stepsister, Iris, and Claire sneaked out on sleepover nights, meeting boys at Bryony Park a half mile down the road from Wisteria House. Astrid always came back stone-cold sober. So did Claire for that matter. Iris, not so much.
“Just lift the bottom latch and then twist it to the left,” Astrid said, motioning toward the cooler.
Delilah watched her for a second before squatting back down and following her stepsister’s directions. Sure enough, the cooler popped open, revealing a few beer cans floating in a sea of watery ice. She grabbed one and locked the cooler again before walking toward the fire. She settled on a log across from Astrid, far enough away to indicate she was not here to talk. There was just nowhere else to go, not in the dark of night with black bears and god knew what else roaming the forest.
“Spencer okay?” she asked, cracking open the beer. The question popped out, untried and impulsive. She wasn’t sure what Astrid suspected about Spencer’s little, er, problem from earlier. The pepper was odorless and was hard to see against the black cotton of his boxers, especially in the fading sunlight. It would probably look like a little bit of dirt if one peered closely. Either way, Delilah expected at least some backlash, narrowed eyes and some snarky retort, because that’s how the two of them had always interacted, even if Delilah had simply asked about the weather. But Astrid didn’t do any of that. She just sighed, took another swallow of beer, and shrugged.
Delilah watched her, brain automatically calculating what to say next to get under Astrid’s skin, to piss her off, annoy her, passive-aggressively guilt her over one thing or another, all her usual mechanisms for interacting with her stepsister.
She came up with nothing. Astrid looked small, lost even, shoulders rounded and purple half-moons snuggled under her eyes. Nothing a little concealer wouldn’t fix, but still. Delilah couldn’t remember a time she’d seen Astrid look so disheveled.
Her fingers itched for her camera or her phone, the vision of Astrid looking like a character from a horror movie—at least by Astrid’s own standards—almost too heady to resist. She didn’t move though. After all these damned emotions from the last few days, she found she didn’t have the clarity of mind for wicked-stepsister games tonight.
So she didn’t play them. She drank her beer and let the cool summer breeze slide over her skin. She stared into the fire and tried to pretend Astrid wasn’t even there. This proved impossible, however, as in the absence of any bitchy banter, Delilah’s mind filled with all the things that led back to Astrid in one way or another—Claire, Iris, Ruby, the wedding and the money she’d be paid for it, even the show at the Whitney, which just reminded her how desperate she was to be something, someone in this world. Someone who mattered and who people remembered, who people wondered about and sought out, even if they were just strangers chasing the emotions her photographs evoked.
Usually, this line of thinking led to a steely resolve—produce mind-blowing pieces for the Whitney, work harder, think more creatively, forge more contacts with artists and gallery owners, be more, do more, don’t stop until that piece sells or her vision for another series comes to fruition. Now, though, Ruby’s wide-eyed wonder filled her thoughts. The girl’s awe, excitement over creating. Claire slid right in there too, the way she felt in Delilah’s arms, the sounds she made when Delilah touched her, the way she drifted toward Delilah even in her sleep.
Which had to have been accidental. Claire was a snuggler—Delilah knew that from their first night together—and Claire had simply been facing Delilah’s direction. She would’ve burrowed against Iris had she been turned the other way.
Wouldn’t she?
Fuck. Delilah rubbed her forehead and gulped her beer. Fresh air, it seemed, was doing very little to get rid of these goddamn feelings.
“What’s wrong?” Astrid asked.
Delilah’s head snapped up. “What? Nothing.”
Now came the quintessential narrowing of eyes. “Bullshit.”