My Heart for Yours

6. Delia

6
Delia

 

There's a clatter of voices, and a group of people I know comes in the door of the diner, but already I'm pushing hard to remember names. How does a single year cause near-amnesia?  Nelson, Rachel, Kelly... It's amazing how much they've all changed in a year, or maybe that's me. No asking, no questioning—the booth in front of me and behind me are now filled. Tobin's gone silent.

I'm still confused. Is it losing his brother that's making him so stoic? I figured the next time I saw Tobin, he'd chew me a new one. Maybe he doesn't care enough anymore to even be angry. That thought hurts me in a way that it shouldn't. Not for a girl in love with someone else.

"Hey, y'all!" Rachel says. "It's like prom flashback, right? Cause we're all dressed up."

Tobin shifts his weight and looks like he'd love to throw a peppershaker across the room. I want to smack her.

"Oh." She touches Tobin's shoulder from behind him. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I mean..."

Tobin's face falls. I rub the inside of his calf with my foot under the table, because that's what I've always done when I want to tell him I'm sorry without words.

His head snaps toward me, and my foot drops to the floor as my cheeks heat up.

This is so weird. To be close to him, but not close to him. To know that he isn't mine to touch anymore. All of the history that we have, and yet we sit here almost like strangers. All of the little moments that we've shared—the way that he used to smile when I'd kiss that certain spot under his ear, the way he'd trace circles on my bare skin after we'd made love—and I can't even tap his leg?

Rachel gives me an apologetic frown from behind Tobin as she tucks her short, brown hair behind an ear.

Everyone starts asking me questions about living in D.C. and what it's like now that my dad's a senator.

I nod and smile and give the polite answers to questions I've been asked a million times. I've been coached on how to answer. The fake repetition is suffocating and makes me want to scream. Inside, I think I am.

I hate it. That's what I want to say to them. I want to tell them that my dad is now an even bigger ego-maniac than he ever was, if they can believe that. And I thought there was pressure smiling for cameras at the little Louisiana campaign picnics we used to have, but those were nothing. Nothing like the supposed 'informal' barbeques, press releases, and the awful realization that I was lower than low when I started at my new school. No one cared that my dad was a senator.

Everyone's daddy was a politician, a businessman, the owners of places like Costco, shareholders in Neiman Marcus. Delia Gentry was a nobody. I've worked so hard to show people that I was somebody, all I can think is that with all that work, I'm still nothing.

The voices around us are louder and the laughter's grating against my nerves.

When I glance at Tobin again, he's still and his eyes are almost pleading. I know I need to get him out.

"I'm tired. Can you take me home?" I figure this time, its okay to tap his leg with my foot under the table.

I open my purse and start to pull out my wallet, but Tobin gives me the usual, don't even think about it look. He never once let me pay for anything while we were together, and even in this weird situation we're in now, it doesn't look like he's about to start. I wonder how much of what happened between us was because of his pride...or mine.

He tosses a few bills onto the table and jumps up standing without a word—I'm sure he's as desperate to leave as I am.

All I can think about as we drive is that first night when I invited him to meet me on Becky's dock. And he actually showed up. Something about Tobin made me feel brave. It was that he had that same energy as Eamon, but with a bit more common sense.