Chapter Sixteen
Shawn
I wasn’t sure what I was doing here. I didn’t want to be here. I knew that, but where I really wanted to be, I wasn’t welcome anymore, probably by anyone.
Therefore, I found myself here, on Dalilah’s front stoop, trying to think of reasons to get her to give me another chance, while also trying to escape another slap to the face.
Even though a few days had gone by, I was still fairly unsure of exactly what had happened that night.
There was definitely something going on between Valerie and I, but that was likely to never happen again. Then I was the one who Dalilah decided to stalk and I still ended up being the bad guy.
How did that work out?
I might not have been able to come up with any plausible answer, but still, after a few long days of the silent treatment, especially given my family situation, I could certainly use a friend. At this point, I cared very little about where that friend came from.
That was the ultimate decision that led me here.
My mother didn’t care about me and I couldn’t face Valerie, at least not yet and certainly not to talk about us, or me and Dalilah.
I felt similarly about my stepmother at the moment and so, that only left Dalilah; which was sad in and of itself, but at least I still had one person.
That is, if she ever answered the door.
I felt slightly impatient and antsy. I was scared that she would turn me away, just like everyone else had; and even she herself had a few days before, but in lieu of going crazy, I decided that I had to try.
I knocked on the door again and once more fell into my waiting stance. I shuffled the imaginary dirt with my foot and looked down a lot, trying my best to look sorry, just in case she was peering through the peephole, deliberating about answering the door.
She made me wait quite a while, but when she finally answered the door, her face was anything but pleasant. “What do you want?”
“Hi Dalilah…” I answered carefully, smiling disarmingly.
“What do you want?” she repeated brusquely.
“I want to talk to you.”
“About what? Because if you are not willing to talk to me about what really happened the other night, then I have no interest.”
I felt my shoulders lower and I sighed before I threw my hands out, unable to hide the fact that I was angry. “Really, Dalilah? Do we have to talk about this? Can’t we just forget it?”
“No,” she answered simply and moved to slam the door once again.
Without thinking, I put my hand in the way and stopped the door before I insisted toward her shocked expression, “Listen, absolutely nothing happened!”
“Then why won’t you just tell me?” she demanded, which caused me to sigh.
I realized then that if I was going to make this plan work, I was going to have to put aside my foolish sense of pride, which told me that it was none of her business what we were talking about and give her an explanation that she might be able to understand. I bowed my head and looked down at the ground. I kicked the invisible dirt again and sighed. “Um… It’s my mother…Well, my stepmother. She isn’t well. Valerie knows how close we are and so, despite our current feud, she wanted to tell me in person what was going on with her, so that I was aware.”
It was a boldface lie, but what other choice did I have? I shrugged and stared back up at her, trying to find the pity in her eyes.
She was quiet for a long time, until finally she answered. “Oh…I’m sorry.”
“Yeah…” I answered, “So, I would appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to anyone. None of us really wants that to get out.”
“What’s the matter with her?” Dalilah asked briskly.
I shrugged again. “That’s the weird part; the doctors have no idea.”
Dalilah was silent for a moment and then, she asked carefully, “Is she…okay?”
“I hope so,” I answered, now feeling slightly guilty for what I was saying about Valerie’s mother. But that was the best explanation that I could come up with, besides the truth as to why two estranged friends would be meeting like we did and staying as close as we were to one another. She seemed to respond well to it.
She nodded and even gave me a hug. “I’m really sorry. I know that you two are close…”
I waited, but for once there was no snide comment or snicker in her tone. She just spoke normally to me, as though she really did have a heart that wasn’t always overpassed by her brain in order to get something that she really wanted.
This was probably a ploy and I accepted that. In fact, I was fairly certain that somehow, this would likely come back to haunt me. But I still didn’t want that idea to ruin the feeling that I was getting; the illusion that she was actually caring about my feelings, instead of just herself.
I had to do a lot of that lately, but my biological mother had always and continued to give me good practice, so I had learned well. At the very least, my mother gave me that.
I nodded “Yeah…Thank you.”
“Well, if you need anything…or want to talk, even though I know that you probably don’t, but if you do, I am here for you.”
“Thanks…”
“And don’t worry about a thing.” She smiled at me. “Your secret is safe with me. Unlike everyone else that you seem to have in your life, I would never betray your trust.”
I stared at her strangely for a moment before I tried to figure out what she meant by that. I wasn’t sure though and so, once again, I simply opted to take her at her word. I smiled and pretended, at least for the moment, that nothing negative was going to come out of this experience. I pretended that she was really a person who cared for me and respected my wishes.
Deep down, I knew that wasn’t true, but like a lot of things in my life, I decided that “here’s to hoping” was the only way I was ever going to find true peace, even if it was only for a moment.
Even still, that moment passed rather quickly, when she, apparently deciding that we had mourned for enough time, said, “So, what do you want to do today?”
At first, I was slightly taken aback at her brusqueness, but then I remembered, not only was that just the way Dalilah always was, but I was also basing our entire interaction on a lie. So it probably didn’t really matter how she reacted to it.
At least she’s reliably crazy and careless with feelings, I thought to myself as I smiled, happy to have gotten at least one person back in my corner.
“I’m kind of hungry…” I mentioned, realizing now that I was so distraught over the past few days that I hadn’t eaten much.
“Sure. You can take me to that new hibachi grill.”
“What? Isn’t that place expensive?” I demanded, slightly shocked. “I don’t have…”
She interrupted me immediately. “You never tell a girl that you don’t have the ability to fulfill her desires, in any capacity. That is strictly for her to decide.” She smiled in more of a devilish way. “I’ll be ready in five minutes.”