Page 64 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
“That’s—”
“A preference?” She raised an eyebrow.
I closed my mouth. After being teased when I was much younger about hating my food touching, I’d spent years trying to make my food habits less noticeable.
Goldie pointed between us triumphantly. “Oh my God, you two have been obsessed with each other sincechildhood.”
Delaney choked. “No.”
“Absolutely not,” I said at the exact same time.
Goldie slapped her hand down on the table, making the dishes on the table clatter and Martha jolt. “They’re even answering in sync. Gladys write that down.”
“Already writing,” Gladys said.
“What are you writing?” Delaney’s voice squeaked on the last syllable. “Is anyone going to stop her?”
Glamma scratched behind Coco’s ears. “No.”
Delaney crossed her arms over her chest and glared around the table. “I hate all of you.” Her nose scrunched, making the sentiment entirely unconvincing.
Goldie lifted her wineglass. “We love you, too.”
Glamma set Coco down and folded her hands. “One last question. What is one thing you respect about the other person?”
Delaney’s mouth snapped shut, and I racked my brain for an answer. Anything. Any answer at all. But this question hadn’t been asked during our separate sessions. I was not equipped for it.
Silence spread between us.
Delaney’s eyes narrowed—bracing, probably, for something efficient and impersonal she could be annoyed about.
“She makes people feel seen,’ I said, not able to look away from her. “She can be in a room full of people, and somehow every single one of them walks away feeling as though they were the only one that mattered there. She leads with—” I stopped, working to find the right word. “—with generosity. Even when she doesn’t have to.” Delaney was honest and direct, and always led with love in her interactions.
With everyone but me.
Goldie set her wine glass down very carefully. Martha’s hand rose to her mouth. Gladys’s pen moved so fast across her page it was practically generating heat.
Delaney stared at me. My instinct was to look away—file how I knew that, process it later, somewhere she wasn’t watching. I’d said it out loud. All of it. I hadn’t meant to. And now she was right there filtering through my words. Instead, I held her gaze.
Martha cleared her throat. “And what about you, Delaney?”
Delaney continued to hold my gaze. “He remembers things.” Her lips pursed as she said it, like she hadn’t meant to vocalize that thought. “Little things. Things people mention once andforget they mentioned. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it. He just—” she stopped. “He pays attention.”
No one said a word.
Glamma broke the silence, rising with the unhurried elegance of a woman who’d just won a very long game she’d been playing for years. Her pearls caught the candlelight, and she tucked Coco under one arm. “That was absolutely perfect. I believe we’ve worked up an appetite with all that honesty. We’ve outdone ourselves tonight, ladies.”
Delaney exhaled—long and unsteady, the kind that had been held in too long.
So did I.
Goldie was already up, bangles chiming, reaching for the wine bottle and accurately reading the room. Martha pushed back from the table with the careful dignity of someone trying to hold back strong emotions. Gladys winked at Delaney on her way past, earrings swinging. “I think you need wine more than the rest of us.”
“I needsomething,” Delaney muttered.
And then the room was empty, except for the two of us.
The quiet that followed was different than it usually was between us. Less of a stand off. More the strange, held stillness after a storm breaks—when the air doesn’t know what to do with itself yet.
