Page 91 of XX Love Affair

“Have you seen a woman come through here?” she asked a young mother helping her toddler eat a snack. “Gym clothes. Big curly hair? Looked like she was being chased by the demons of her past?”

The young mother almost dropped her son’s plastic container of Cheerios. “I… think so? Someone like that went that way.” She pointed to the trail leading into the woods. “Is she okay?”

Delia shook out her cramping hand. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

She jogged at an easy speed through the woods, searching every person she saw for signs of Helena’s existence. Not once did Delia question what she was doing. All that swarmed her consciousness was the uninhibited need to track down Helena and ensure her safety. Even if the police are about to blow up my ass.

But Delia couldn’t think about that right now. As she swerved her head from one side of the trail to the other, she thought she saw Helena numerous times: in the twenty-something with her golden retriever, in the one-half of a couple attempting to identify a species of fern, in the teenager sitting atop a large rock and taking pictures with her phone. As the sun softly filtered through the tree cover, announcing that twilight was on the horizon, Delia realized she had no idea where she was and had left a mess behind her.

She turned a corner on the paved trail, coming upon someone leaning against the wooden guardrail on a bench crossing a creek. At first, she didn’t recognize Helena, who doubled over with her curly hair dipping toward the creek, her gym shorts clinging to the back of her muscular thighs as she desperately attempted to keep her loud crying to a minimum.

“Helena!”

Her head jerked up. Yet the fight or flight response alighting behind her eyes burned into a deep, golden confusion as it dawned on her that she looked at Delia Benoist, a woman who should not be all the way out in Olympia let alone in this wooded park at sunset.

“Oh, my God.”

“Are you okay?”

The creek tinkled beneath the bridge. Birds chirped in earnest as they prepared to turn down for the night.

And Delia gasped in metered pain as she clutched her right fist to her chest and pretended she hadn’t done something she might later regret.

“What are you doing here?” Helena asked.

“I found out that she was stalking you out here.” Delia slowly approached, afraid to scare Helena off when she was already on such high alert. “I was the one who sent the bodyguard. But when she still wasn’t leaving… I decided to come out here myself. Talk to her like an adult and tell her to stay the fuck away from you. Some women speak that language.”

She eventually dropped her bruised fist to her side. Helena’s eyes widened.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, well… some women speak other languages.”

Helena eased away from the barrier. “You flew all the way out here? For me?”

The more Helena turned toward her, the harder Delia found it to maintain eye contact, as if locking gazes would curse this moment. More like make me realize what a fool I’m being. “I had to do something,” she muttered while a heavy leaf fell atop her shoulder. “Regardless of how I felt about things ending, I couldn’t leave things off with that woman stalking you to the point you couldn’t even leave the house. How are you supposed to go to school?” She said that with such finality that she sounded like Helena’s concerned aunt. “I mean, well… you know what I mean!”

Helena made way for a jogger plowing down the path with headphones over her ears. “How did you know all of that?” It didn’t take her long to figure it out. “Did Coach call you?”

Coach? That must have been Brynn. “She was worried about you. And herself, of course. Nobody wants a stalker with boundary issues looming outside their house.”

It looked like Helena was about to walk toward Delia, but she backtracked at the last second, going the way the jogger went before coming upon a stump large enough for her to sit on. The trees above her rustled in the breeze. Her hair likewise flitted in the air.

“It’s my fault,” she said when Delia approached. “Getting involved with dangerous people like her, lying to you, putting Coach in danger… all of it. I really am a child.”

There was no other stump for Delia to sit on, but she made do by crouching toward the pavement once she was by Helena’s side. Her fist hurt more than her knees, and that said something when she wrapped her arms around her legs and remembered why she wasn’t supposed to sit directly on the ground.

“You’re not a child,” she said. “You were doing what you thought was right for you.”

Helena scoffed. “I immediately fucked off to hook up with strangers in a nightclub. Very mature of me. Totally no repercussion.” Was she sniffing? Crying? Maybe not full-on sobbing, but Helena rubbed the back of her hand against her eye, a motion that made Delia’s pulsing fist jealous. Jesus, I punched a woman. That crazy reality slowly dawned on Delia, who had never struck someone in her life. “What did I think was going to happen? It’s shocking I never ended up in the hospital… or at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.”

“You have decent street smarts,” Delia said. “When I was your age, I knew a lot of rich girls who got into a whole heap of trouble because they were so sheltered that they made Bubble Boy look well-adjusted. We’re talking kidnappings, abusive boyfriends who beat them within an inch of their lives, sexual assault, and drunk driving…” Delia sighed. “I was a lot like you. Going in head-first with only some instincts to keep me out of the heinous stuff. I got lucky. Like you, I never ended up in the hospital or at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Did you have an older woman stalking you after you left her, though?”

“Remember Lyse Donald-Clair? From the garden party?”

“No way…”

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