Page 24 of The Obsession

Delilah laughed. “No! God, people always think working at the library is all about moving books around on shelves, but there’s so much more than that. I do a lot of cataloging, actually. And Lisa likes to teach me to ‘hustle,’” she laughed again when she said the wordhustle. “So she gets me to call all these suppliers and pit them against one another to get the lowest possible price for the goods.”

“Do you often have to work on weekends?”

I’d thought I was being really subtle, asking her about the call, but Delilah glanced at me and her eyebrows scrunched up a little.

“Not really,” she said, after a moment. “Lisa was texting because she couldn’t find one of our old order forms. It’s really not a thing—we’ll figure it out on Monday.” Then we reached the clearing, and Delilah gasped. She hurried ahead of me. “Oh my god!”

I jogged to catch up with her. Her joy was so contagious. We were at Monkey See Monkey Do, an obstacle course built high in the treetops. In other words, Delilah’s version of Disneyland. Even from outside the boundaries, we could see various zip lines and wood bridges crisscrossing the tall pines. Shouts and hoots filled the air, infecting us with energy. Delilah’s face was that of a kid given an all-access pass to a real-life gingerbread house. I’d known she would love it ever since I saw those pictures of her with her dad, climbing trees and going on massive hikes. She reached for her wallet.

“Don’t bother, I’ve bought us discount tickets online,” I said.

“Discount tickets!” she said. “My two favorite words.”

“In that case, they were fifty percent off,” I whispered, taking a step toward her.

Delilah fanned her face. “God, there is nothing sexier than hearing the wordsfifty percent off.” She laughed then, as though realizing how close we were standing to each other—close enough that I could see each individual eyelash—and her cheeks bloomed with red, her gaze skittering awkwardly from mine. She turned around and walked ahead without looking back.

I’d miscalculated there, gotten too close too soon. I’d known better, I’d promised myself to let her take the lead, and yet…fucking hormones, I swear. God, how could I have been this thoughtless? It had taken months to get to this point, to create the perfect date, and here I was letting my teenage-boy hormones get the better of me.

The awkwardness lingered as we strapped on our helmets and other safety gear, and I fought the increasingly violent tangle of snakes in my belly. Had I ruined the day completely? I’d been so taken in by Delilah’s old pictures, swallowed by the flashes of the old Delilah, that I forgot the past two years of her life. She’d just survived an extremely abusive situation with a man twice her size. The last thing she needed was some guy coming on too strong. God, I might as well call the whole thing off. I might as well crawl into a hole and die. I—

“Hey, why so serious?”

I looked up to see Delilah waggling her eyebrows at me.

“You scared of heights? You chicken?” She put the backs of her hands on her hips and clucked at me.

The snakes in my belly evaporated and were replaced once more by feathers. I could cry, I was so relieved. I hadn’t ruined everything after all. A grin melted across my face. “Let’s see you put your money where your mouth is.”

“Okay… Ten bucks says I beat you to the end of the course.”

“Ten? Make it twenty,” I said.

“Done.”

“Shake on it?” I asked, and as she came close to shake my hand, I tugged on her hand and swung her behind me before running toward the first obstacle, hooting as I went.

Behind me came a laugh and a cry of “hey, no fair!”

The next hour or so was a tangle of laughter and gasps for breath as we raced each other through dizzying heights, our feet scampering across narrow rope bridges, the ground exhilaratingly far away beneath us. We screamed like toddlers high on Halloween candy as we grabbed hold of ropes and took stomach-turning jumps, the sense of free fall taking our breath away, Delilah’s hair streaming behind her as she flew past me. My senses whirled; I caught Delilah’s scent here and there, bewitching among the dense redwood smell that hung heavy in the air. I was finally getting to experience the real Delilah. Not Scared, Beaten-Down Delilah, not Angry Delilah, but the true Delilah, the beautiful, fearless core of her.

We went so fast that there was no room for fear, no time for doubts or second-guessing. The adventure park workers reminded us time and again to slow down, to take our time enjoying each course, to “take it all in, man,” but Delilah was like a gazelle that had finally been uncaged, and all I could do was follow her lead. She beat me by a good ten seconds and punched the air with a whoop.

“I let you win,” I gasped.

Delilah laughed. “Okay, old man.”

We both collapsed under a tree and stayed there for a while, watching people as they went past the finish line, our breath slowly coming down from its breakneck speed. I wanted to sit closer, to feel her heartbeat slowing down to match mine, but I stopped myself just in time.Slow and safe, I reminded myself.

“That was amazing,” she said.

I shook myself from the tendrils of anxiety and grinned at her. “I know, I’m pretty impressive like that.”

She snorted. “You mean the part where you almost fell off the bridge or the part where you nearly missed the net and almost crashed into the tree?”

“Oh, okay, Miss Forgot-to-lock-the-safety-catch-and-almost-fell-to-your-death.”

We mock-glared at each other for a few moments before Delilah laughed. “I think this just goes to show we’re both dumbasses who would put our lives in danger to win twenty bucks.”

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