Delilah Green Doesn't Care(Bright Falls #1)(49)

Not that she mentioned those specific details to Claire right now. “I took a few pictures of Astrid too, just here and there” is what came out of her mouth, and she left it at that. But she remembered how she hoarded all of her photographs of the girls away, studying them for clues of what made them so acceptable and her such an odd duck. Other than a little bit of makeup and clothes from Nordstrom, she could never figure it out.

“I taught myself the photography basics in high school,” she said. “Ms. Goldstein helped. Then, once I left Bright Falls, I knew I wanted to make it my life.”

Claire nodded, eyes wide and dark as Delilah went on to tell her how she worked nine-hour shifts six days a week at a diner down on Grand Street just to afford her shitty apartment, but on her day off, she would wander the city, memorializing its sensuality, its passion, its queerness. All the things she’d been missing in her life. All the things she’d never had, never even dreamed were possible. It all came tumbling out in a rush of vulnerability and truth.

“And you started doing weddings?” Claire asked, still miraculously interested.

Delilah nodded. “Weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, anniversary parties, birthday parties. Anything I could get, really. I still waited tables—I still do, actually—but events pay pretty well, especially after I got some references. I’ve only been really trying to do the artist thing for the past few years.”

“What do you mean the artist thing?”

“Photographic art, pieces I can sell, series, getting an agent to help navigate the art world. It’s hard to break into though. Really hard.”

Then her show at the Whitney fluttered into her mind, the relief and excitement associated with it. She told Claire about it, how it could be her big break.

“That’s great,” Claire said. “I wish . . .” But the other woman trailed off, brows lowering as she swallowed. Delilah didn’t press her, and soon Claire was moving on.

“How did you know you wanted to make art?” she asked.

Delilah hesitated. The truth was . . . sensitive. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to go there with Claire tonight or ever. There was no reason for her to know. None at all, other than the simple fact that Delilah wanted her to. Still, she wasn’t sure how Claire would react.

But as she hesitated, Claire scooted a little closer and said, “Come on, I want to know.”

So she told her.

“I got my heart broken,” she said.

Claire’s brows popped into her bangs. “You did?”

Delilah nodded, her throat thickening, but the words just kept coming. “I’ve only had one girlfriend. Her name was Jacqueline—Jax—and we met at a wedding I was working. She . . . she was the maid of honor.”

Claire’s mouth parted, and the irony here wasn’t lost on Delilah, the fact that she was spilling her guts to another maid of honor she couldn’t seem to shut up around.

“We moved in together, dated exclusively for two years.”

“What happened?” Claire asked.

Delilah took a breath, wrapped her mind around the words she’d never said to anyone. After she and Jax broke up, there was no one else in her life to tell. Plus it was just embarrassing as hell, the fact that she hadn’t been enough.

The words rushed out anyway.

“I caught her cheating on me.”

“Oh god.”

“With her ex. Whom, apparently, she’d never gotten over.”

Claire covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh god.”

Delilah nodded. “I was out of town for another wedding I was shooting. But the wedding got canceled—groom’s cold feet—so I came home early and found her . . . well, she was in our bed and she wasn’t alone.”

The memory was still fresh and bright, like a high-res photograph. Jax—the only woman she’d ever loved and actually thought about marrying someday, creating the kind of family Delilah always dreamed about but never had—in the apartment they shared with her head between Mallory Prescott’s legs. Delilah still remembered the vision of Mallory’s blond head tossed back, her mouth open, and her aqua-painted nails curling around Delilah’s own fucking pillow as she came.

“Apparently, it wasn’t the first time,” Delilah said. “She’d been cheating for months, trying to figure out how to dump me, and I just couldn’t see it.”

“Jesus,” Claire said.

“Anyway,” Delilah said, desperately wanting to get the conversation back on track. “I needed to get out of the city for a while, so I came back to Bright Falls. I thought . . . I don’t know.” She hadn’t felt like being alone. That’s what it had been, and she stupidly imagined the familiarity of Bright Falls, the family she had there, however odd and distant, might soothe some need in her she couldn’t articulate. It hadn’t. Astrid had been busy with her own life, and Isabel . . . well, Isabel was obviously very put out about finding Delilah on her doorstep, blaming some Junior League event she was hosting for why Delilah just couldn’t possibly stay at her own house. It was the first time Delilah had had to check into a hotel in her hometown.

Turns out, it wasn’t the last.

“I just needed a change of scenery,” she said. “Brought my camera, walked around town hoping for some . . . I don’t know. Inspiration, I guess.”