Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 119548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
Nana had smiled before falling asleep, clutching the scan picture in her hand.
And Deli? She’d barely left my side. If everyone thought we were inseparable before, it was even more true now. If she wasn’t at work, she was like my own little moon, permanently hovering somewhere in my orbit.
She’d tried to hide it at first, but on the second day, I’d told her to just sit next to me and lean on me if she needed to.
In hindsight, I should have realised what I was letting myself in for. I knew better than anyone what kind of person she turned into when she was upset, but I hadn’t quite been ready for the intensity of her neediness.
Sleeping. Eating. Working. Heck, even merely breathing was an activity worthy of needing to be near me.
And as much as I hated everything that was causing it, I couldn’t help but savour the closeness. Delilah was unapologetically clingy towards me, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
I was her safe place, the one person she could truly unravel around, and the more I was on the receiving end of her trust and her touch, the more I realised the truth.
I was in love with her.
My best friend.
My wife.
The other half of my soul.
But these feelings—these rich, deep feelings that unfurled a little more each day—were not something I could share. They grew a little more every time I saw her smile, like a flower turning and opening towards the sun.
I couldn’t tell her, though. We hadn’t even revisited what had happened the day after Nana was admitted to hospital where I’d almost given in to my darkest desires and taken our friendship past the line of no return.
How could I tell Deli I was falling in love with her right now? When she was losing one of the people she loved most?
Telling her didn’t help her. It did nothing but alleviate me of the pressure of keeping those feelings to myself. It would be nothing but selfish to make my changing emotions her responsibility right now, and I wouldn’t put such a burden on her when she was already struggling.
No.
For now, I would keep this deepening love to myself. I would keep it safe. Cherish it. Protect it.
I wouldn’t fight it. I would let it bloom however it wished, and I would deal with it when the time was right.
And if that time never came, then so be it.
There were so many unsaid things between us that one more didn’t make much of a difference. As far as I was concerned, they could all stay unsaid if it meant saving our friendship.
Nothing in this world was worth losing that.
Not even telling her that I’d only gone and fallen in love with her.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table. The screen lit up with an incoming call, and Aunt Bonnie’s name registered on it.
I muted the television and reached forwards to pick it up. “Hi,” I answered. “What’s up?”
“Fred?” Aunt Bonnie’s voice was thick with emotion. Thick, exhausted, and resigned—the kind of aching pain that made me freeze.
And somehow, I knew.
I knew what she was about to say to me.
I sat bolt upright. “What’s happened?”
“Delilah didn’t answer,” she said quietly. “I don’t think… I don’t think I can tell her, Freddie. She needs to come to the hospital.”
My stomach plummeted, and a vile ball of nausea rolled through me. “Is Nana—”
“Not yet. But it’s coming. The doctor thinks she’ll be gone within twenty-four hours.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” I replied, hanging up as I jumped to my feet.
Shit.
I had to tell my best friend her grandmother was on her deathbed.
Anger flitted through me. Why was this on me? Why did I have to be the one to break her heart? The frustration didn’t last long, and it quickly dissipated into sadness.
Aunt Bonnie had called me for one reason and one reason only.
She couldn’t do it.
She had nobody to lean on. Nobody to pick up the slack when she struggled. She’d been a single mum almost our entire lives, and I knew she wasn’t palming a job off on me. She wasn’t asking me to pass this on to make her life easier.
She was saying, “I need your help. I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”
I was angry because I knew I was the one who’d have to see the heartbreak on Deli’s face. I’d see the one thing she’d hide from everyone else. That had always been the way, but now, that pain hurt even more.
I paused just outside Deli’s room. The door was cracked open a couple of inches, and she was sitting at her dressing table, drying her hair, humming a song I couldn’t identify if they told me the name of it on the radio.
For the first time in days, she was happy.