Page 34 of The Castaways
Thom and Faith were at one end of the boomerang bar with their sixteenth or seventeenth vodkas, and Greg was at the other end brooding over a Sam Adams draft. Delilah had seen Greg’s brooding act a million times before; he used it like a petulant twelve-year-old girl.If I make moody, faraway eyes, someone will ask me what’s wrong.Delilah had meant to storm out of the Begonia after closing without a word to anyone. But she was just drunk enough to want another drink. Greg was dopily sitting there and Delilah could not control her urge to vent.
She took the stool next to him, asked Graham for a glass of cabernet, and whispered viciously, “I just don’t get it.”
“I know,” Greg murmured.
“Have you been… talking to her?”
“Sort of,” he said.
“Sort of!” Delilah said. She sounded like the indignant wife, the shrew. She was supposed to be the cool girl, the one who could take any news and shrug it off.
“She came in to talk right before she graduated,” he said. “And we decided to mend the fence.”
“Mend the fence,” Delilah repeated.
“Put everything behind us. She asked for forgiveness.”
Delilah narrowed her eyes. “She’s a liar.”
Greg sipped his beer. The mooniness was disappearing. “Well, she’s not twenty-one.”
“No shit,” Delilah said. “And you made me let her into the bar. I could be fired for that. The Begonia could be shut down.”
“Oh, please,” Greg said.
“I just don’tgetyou,” Delilah said.
“Sure you do, Ash.”
“No,” Delilah said. “I don’t. Were you telling me the truth about that night with April? The whole fucking truth?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Nobody believes me.”
“I would like you so much better if you just admitted you were lying. I wouldn’t even care if you said you fucked her that night. Just as long as you told me the truth.”
“Tess feels the same way,” Greg said. “But I have nothing to add or detract from my story. It stands. And at this point, it is dried up. It isburned, Delilah. There is no reason to talk about it any further.”
“Except that April came in tonight.”
“Like I said, we mended the fence.”
Delilah’s head was spinning. Graham, behind the bar, was a hologram. Thom and Faith were studiously pretending to watch a rerun ofLaw & Orderwhich was playing on the TV over the bar, but really, Delilah knew, they were listening to every word. She didn’t care. She put her head down on the bar.
“You have no idea how much I love you,” she said.
Greg rubbed her back, but his touch lacked intention. “Sure I do, Ash,” he said. He finished his beer and set the glass down with some purpose.
“Will you play for me?” Delilah asked.
“Not tonight,” he said. “Tonight I have to get home.”
Right, she thought. Big anniversary tomorrow. He had made it by the skin of his teeth through year number twelve.
He stood to leave and Delilah stood as well, thinking,Change your mind! Stay here! Play for me!Would he change his mind? Sometime before he reached his car, would he call out to her?
