Page 85 of XX Love Affair

“See? You’ve got more self-awareness now too.”

“Guess so. It sucks. I miss just having fun in my twenties.”

“Listen to us… we sound so old.”

“Like the old biddies at the country club. The ones who tell me to cover up when I rock my favorite bikini by the pool. Not my fault they’re jealous that I turn heads wherever I go.”

“You do have that power.” Delia was always envious of women like Tiffani, who came out of their mothers with an appearance powerful enough to bring others to their knees. Delia wasn’t ugly by any means, but her height coupled with a less feminine style made it difficult to stand out. She had to rely on her acerbic personality and throwing around money to make friends and get laid, two things that came to define her by the time she was fully grown. Maybe Helena had been a wakeup call to do better with the rest of her adult life.

The August heat reached a pitch that kept everyone, even women like Delia, inside. Between her condo and the office, she stayed in her car until she reached any destination and insisted on only meeting up with family and friends if it was in the evening. That went double for the weekend when she wasn’t assured air conditioning would do enough to keep her cool.

So when her father was in town again, Delia urged him to book a suite with blackout curtains. It was the only way she would come over to visit.

“What’s got my Deely so down?” Despite Delia’s efforts to keep her countenance glowing around her father, he saw right through the façade. At least she had an excuse on lock.

“Broke up with my girlfriend. That’s all, Daddy.” She left it at that. Not who she was dating, why it ended, or how it made her feel.

“‘That’s all?’ Sounds like a big deal to me. Breakups are never easy.”

Neither are divorces, but I skipped past that. Delia accepted a sparkling water from her father and sat with him at the dining table in his hotel suite. She planned on keeping the visit brief – especially when she saw Emma’s luggage loitering outside the bedroom door. Anymore, Delia never knew when her younger stepmother was traveling with Eustace. Sometimes she stayed back in New York. Other times, she appeared.

“I’d rather not think about it. I’ll move on eventually.”

Her father took that to heart and droned on about his own life. The work, the play (so much pickleball that Delia’s eyes watered in boredom,) and the vain attempts at starting an urban garden on his penthouse terrace. Oh, Eustace Benoist was not growing his own onions and tomatoes. He didn’t even care about herbs. When Eustace bemoaned how hard it was to get anything to grow on his New York City terrace, he meant succulents. Don’t know how you screw that up, Dad, but at least you’re trying. Delia tried to see the positive in people’s activities. Her dad wanted to add some greenery to the world. That was definitely not the man who had raised her and spent most of his time in a corporate office or on the golf course.

One of his friends in town called him to touch base on their tee time the next morning. While Eustace went into the other room, Emma was chased out of the bedroom, her eyes rolling and a disconcerted frown marring her porcelain-like face.

“Hi,” Delia said, distracting herself with her phone screen.

“Hello.” Emma was a bit put out wearing nothing but a sleep shirt that came down to her mid-thigh and nary a bra beneath. Yet she donned a baggy sweater that screamed she kept it around for “freezing cold rooms” and kept her chin held high as she perused the suite’s kitchen for a snack. She went with barely salted, non-buttered popcorn out of a bag. “Do you want some?” she asked her stepdaughter.

Delia shook her head.

Emma sat at the other end of the dining table, the hard bowl of popcorn clattering loudly enough to jerk Delia’s attention away from her Instagram feed.

“What’s it like?” she asked her stepmother.

Emma glanced at her as if Delia had broken a silent contract to not speak outside of pleasantries. “What?”

“Being with someone so much older than you.”

Emma flushed with embarrassment, a lump traveling down her throat. “I’d rather not talk about that if it’s fine with you. Trying to relax this evening.”

“I’m not trying to be belligerent or make you uncomfortable. I genuinely want to know, and you’re the only one I know in that kind of… relationship.”

“Yes. With your father. Who cheated on your mother with me.”

Right in the kisser, huh? “I’m willing to move on from that if you are.”

Emma couldn’t look more tired if she stayed up for three days straight. “I’ve never had a problem with it. Understandably, most of your family did.”

“I mean… no, we’re not going to talk about that.” Delia put down her phone and forced her shoulders to relax. “I want to know what it’s like from the younger woman’s perspective. You’ve been with my dad who is like… ancient, all right? Since you were eighteen. I don’t even blame you for it. You were a kid.”

“Yes,” Emma calmly said. “I was. But I’m not anymore.”

“When do you think that shift happened?”

“Huh?”

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