Page 19 of Hunter or Hunted

But four hits in, and my eyes were still wide open. When I tried to shut them, the bluish moonlight still trickled in, and sleep wouldn’t come.

Finally, I flipped over my phone and checked the time. 4 A.M.

I’d gone to sleep sometime around 7. That put me around nine full hours. No way would my body let me fall back to sleep. Even if it would, I wasn’t sure I wanted it. Why? So I could wake up again in an hour, after another nightmare? A worse one, maybe?

By 4:30, knowing I wouldn’t fall back to sleep, not wanting to either, I sat up. I’d given up social media when I moved here. Never opened a new account on anything with my new name. Of all the times I had missed the infinite scroll, this ranked highest. I would kill to fall into the endless abyss of silly cat video followed by silly dog video followed by random recipe I would save but never try.

The vigil wasn’t until noon. I had nearly eight hours to kill. And nothing to do.

As I stood, the memory flickered in my mind. When I walked into the kitchen, and I stood in the same spot from the dream, I was back there all over again. Holding Delilah while she held me, blood dampening every inch of my skin, crying in one another’s arms.

What I wouldn’t do to go back to that day. When we were just two girls, sitting on the couch, talking about our pain-filled pasts, but dreaming of the future. Imagining the good life with the good men and the good kids. Promising to make her the delicious, spiked hot cocoa when she was old enough to legally consume it.

She would never be old enough to legally consume it.

Throat so tight I could hardly pull in a breath, the tears burned my eyes and beaded over. I stared at that spot on the sofa where she had sat, and my stomach rolled and rumbled. Just looking at it was a punch through the chest. Because she would never sit there again.

She would never get to try the hot cocoa. Not really. But I could bring it to the vigil. I could pour her out a cup.

So that’s what I did. I mixed the cream and cocoa and sugar on the stove, then scaled to a larger pot. I added in the whiskey and a bit more sugar to balance it out. A pinch of salt, a few stirs later, and my kitchen smelled like a chocolate shop. Yellow and pink lit up the sky out the window.

But the clock said 6:08, so I had six more hours to go.

That was enough time to make a cake. Maybe not the type of occasion one makes a cake for, but I had nothing else to do, and I couldn’t sit with my thoughts much longer, so I mixed up my gooey chocolate cake recipe. Then I grabbed the marshmallow fluff from the cabinet and mixed it into a vat of Swiss meringue buttercream while the cakes baked. I added a touch of whiskey. Not enough to get anyone drunk, but enough to balance the cake with the hot chocolate still warm on the stove.

She’d eaten my chocolate cake once. That one had a peanut butter filling. Delilah had said it would’ve been so good without the peanut butter and with sprinkles on the outside.

So I looked in the cabinet, but only a spoonful of sprinkles remained at the bottom of the jar.

That was okay. The cakes were still baking. I had time.

I took some of the icing and piped it into little strands on a sheet of parchment. I popped it in the fridge, prepared to cut it into little dots.

But as I waited for the sprinkles to set, and the cakes to bake, and the sun to rise, and the time to pass, that bottle of whiskey beside the hot cocoa stared at me.

It wasn’t like I attended a vigil for a friend every day. Wasn’t this the perfect opportunity for a drink before breakfast?

I poured one and shot it down my throat. The hot burn in my belly was warmer than those butterflies who’d danced around the fireplace inside it last night. It softened the edges of my vision in heartbeats. My stiff shoulders loosened the slightest bit.

But then Delilah’s face with a bullet through her forehead flickered through my mind.

The bottle still stared at me, and I stared back.

Why stop at one?

8

GWEN

Taking a sip of cocoa with one hand, I sunk the ladle into the pot. Once filled to the brim, I lifted it and poured the steaming, fragrant liquid into one of three three-gallon stainless steel carafe. I had already filled the first, one ladleful at a time. I still had two full pots to transfer.

After Simone picked me up from my cabin, I sat in the back seat nursing the two full pots and single carafe while Junie held the cake in the front seat. We came to Main Street, where Rhiannon was already outside, setting up chairs. Chairs we would sit in while we mourned Delilah.

Toting the vessels of hot cocoa, I asked Rhiannon if I should serve it directly from the pot or if she had something better. Thus, the carafes. She ushered me to the back of the cafeteria, showed me to a cart, I loaded up the cocoa, then brought it out here. To the reception area of the rec center.

On a foldout table to my left, half a dozen trays of pastries and finger sandwiches lay out. My carafes and cake took up a table of their own.

Quiet pop music pulsed nearby. Whether from outside the glass doors or inside the cafeteria, I couldn’t say. I couldn’t say much of anything. Every time I’d tried so far—when Simone asked me how I was doing or when Rhiannon thanked me for the food—my throat swelled, and I choked.