Delilah Green Doesn't Care(Bright Falls #1)(104)
Josh sighed. “Your whole life, you’ve been putting people first, Claire. Your mom. Astrid and Iris. Me. Ruby. It’s okay to take something for yourself.”
His words sounded like wisdom, like truth. They sparked something inside her that felt a whole lot like hope, and in any other circumstance, Claire might’ve agreed. But she’d already tried. She’d tried to take something for herself when she’d asked the woman she maybe loved to stay, to figure things out together.
And Delilah Green had left anyway.
But even though it was impossible to have what she really wanted, she liked this—her and Josh standing out on the deck he built himself, her head on his shoulder while they talked about the possibility of love.
Chapter Thirty-One
DELILAH WAS SURE she was about to throw up.
The sun was setting, casting a golden glow over Gansevoort Street, and a breeze blew over her skin, finally giving the city some relief from this mind-numbing summer heat. She was dressed in her favorite black jumpsuit, her hair big and wild, curls defined to within an inch of their lives with all manner of gel and curl crème. Her makeup was spot-on, if she did say so herself. Smoky eyes and winged eyeliner, a dark red lip that made her feel powerful and sexy, like a creature of the night in some paranormal romance novel.
Except this wasn’t a romance. Because as she stared up at the Whitney, a towering gray building, all modern lines and glass, that she’d been inside of a million times before and twice since returning to New York nearly two weeks ago, her stomach churned like it regretted her last meal.
She swallowed, inhaled, then swallowed again, but nothing was making her feel calmer. Tonight, Queer Voices launched at the Whitney. She was ready. She’d been working her ass off since she got back to New York. She’d even gotten Michaela to cover her shifts at the River Café. After her fee for the Parker-Hale wedding dropped into her Apple Cash account two days after leaving Bright Falls—no email from Astrid about it, no text, just a chunk of change that was rightfully Delilah’s anyway—she’d pushed all worries of money and rent out of her head and gotten to work.
Ten pieces.
That’s how many photographs the Whitney wanted, and by the time she’d returned to New York, she’d had one week to prepare before the museum needed everything for framing. Those seven days had been a blur—barely eating, catching cat naps on her couch, constantly poring over her existing body of work for pieces that showed the world who Delilah Green was, niche and all. But she’d done it. She’d even worked on a new piece, a shot she’d taken in Bright Falls after the camping trip during those long couple of days before she’d taken Claire roller skating. She’d gone out to the falls, about ten miles outside of town, a woodsy area where Bright River pooled under a series of small white waterfalls that cascaded down from a rocky cliff. She’d brought her tripod and her camera, then proceeded to spend the entire day lost in hundreds of shots of the natural world, herself in a soaked white blouse the main subject.
“Wow,” Alex Tokuda had said as they’d stared at the photograph five days ago when Delilah had dropped everything off. Delilah had named the piece Found. She wasn’t sure why, but it’s the only thing that popped into her mind when she’d finished editing the shot she’d chosen.
“This is . . . powerful,” Alex said, tilting the large rectangle of photo paper this way and that. Their hair was short and dark, and they wore a maroon suit with a silk black blouse, chic as hell. “Painful, even.”
“Yeah” was all Delilah could think to say, but inside, she felt as though she was made of glitter, a feeling that only increased as Alex had continued to sift through her ten pieces, commenting simply but authentically.
Later that day, when she’d returned alone to her fifth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn, the space a mess of clothes and food wrappers, half-drunk glasses of wine abandoned on side tables for more nourishing gulps of water, she’d grabbed her phone and opened up to her texts with Claire.
A thread that had been silent for a week.
Her thumbs hovered, desperate to reach out, but unsure what to say. What was there to say? The bet with Astrid, of course, was stupid. It was mean and selfish. Even though Astrid hadn’t taken it, and as soon Delilah and Claire started up their affair, Delilah rarely thought of those spiteful words she’d spoken to Astrid in her Kaleidoscope Inn room again.
Still.
It looked bad, she knew. When she thought about the trip, played every moment out like a movie, studying herself like an aspiring actress studied Hepburn, she saw it.
Her constant snarky comments.
Her meanness.
Her lack of care.
The way she lashed out at Astrid any moment she could, and for what? For revenge? For fun? It was no wonder Claire had let her leave, let her walk right out of Wisteria House and Bright Falls without a single question. Delilah didn’t blame her, she supposed. She’d made every effort to ensure everyone in Bright Falls knew she didn’t give two shits about them.
And she didn’t.
But now, as she looked up at the Whitney, her chest felt strangely hollow. There was excitement there, of course. Professional excitement. Artistic excitement. This-could-change-everything excitement, which was no small thing. But she couldn’t stop or ignore this tugging around her heart. The wish for something more. Someone, perhaps.