“That’s your thinking noise,” I say.
“Do your problems have to be worse?” he finally asks.
“Our problems are worse,” I point out.
“But do they have to be?”
Something about the question makes me uneasy, so I stand, take our empty mugs, put them in the dishwasher. I check that the light in the oven is off, that the croissants are still looking alright.
“They’re old wounds,” Caleb finally says, after a long time. “You could stop pouring salt into them.”
Could I?
My impulse is to tell my brother to fuck off, that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That he can’t possibly understand, but I swallow the words and don’t say anything.
“Do you want any more cookies?” I ask, pointing. “I’m gonna pack those up to take to the brewery tomorrow.”
Caleb grabs two more, one with each hand.
“Those croissants ready yet?” he asks.
“Still rising.”
“Any chocolate ones?”
“The fuck do I look like, a bakery?” I ask, and he laughs.
“Figured I’d try,” he says.Chapter Forty-EightDelilahThe text said the party was in the back yard, so I park on the street and walk around Lainey’s house, six-pack in one hand. It’s quieter than I expected, but maybe this is the quiet kind of roller derby party.
But when I get there, it’s nearly empty. Just the fire pit and two people, casually talking.
Then I stop in my tracks.
“Wyatt?”
“You’re right, she is alive,” he says to Lainey.
He grins, leaning back in his wooden chair, a beer bottle to his lips.
“I had no choice,” Lainey says, straight-faced and solemn. “He arrived shortly before you did. I’m sorry.”
Wyatt laughs, his head back, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, and Lainey glances over at his reaction, the tiniest smile on her lips.
“What?” I ask, baffled from two directions at once: that Wyatt is here, and by that weird thing Lainey just said.
“She just called me Darth Vader,” Wyatt says.
“Lainey, be nice to Wyatt,” I tell her.
“He liked it,” she says.
“No, I didn’t,” Wyatt says. He’s grinning.
“What are you even doing here?” I say, putting the beers I’m carrying down on a table, then sit next to Lainey, leaning in toward the fire.
“I volunteered to make sure you were alive and all right,” he says. “Since you’re ignoring me, my sister, your sisters, and Aunt Vera. Do you know how many women you’ve worried?”
I grab a beer. Lainey hands over the opener, and I pop the top off, take a drink, lean back in the wooden chair.
“Sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “I just… I needed a minute.”
Wyatt sighs.
“Why?” he asks, sarcastically, and I snort.
“I love them, but they’re a lot,” I admit. “Have you ever had to tell them you broke up with someone? They act like you’ve chopped off your own foot.”
Wyatt just makes a grunt of disapproval.
“Anyway, we colluded to get you over here,” Lainey says. “It seemed better than taking your picture with today’s newspaper.”
“They’re not that worried,” I say.
Silence.
“Right?”
“Olivia swears that last weekend she was awakened at four in the morning by a crash and a scream,” Wyatt says.
Next to me, Lainey’s lips thin by a hair as she looks into the fire.
“She wasn’t,” I tell him, rolling my eyes. “She was on the warpath all weekend, though, and I’ve got no idea why. Hormones? Altitude? Too many hormones for the altitude?”
“Not how any of that works,” Lainey says.
“But you are okay, right?” Wyatt asks, leaning forward slightly.
“We just got in a fight,” I say, waving the beer bottle. “A word fight, I mean. Verbal? Whatever means we screamed at each other a bunch without any physical violence.”
Wyatt nods. Lainey’s still looking into the fire, stone-faced, but then she glances at Wyatt, then at me, then seems to snap out of it and take another sip of her beer.
“I’ll call Vera tomorrow,” I promise, then sigh. “I’m sorry, I just — it’s been the shittiest week…”
My phone chirps, and I jump. There’s a split second when my heart leaps, but then I pull it from my pocket and see Ava’s name.
“Shit,” I mutter.
Wyatt’s craning his head around to see the screen.
“Did you somehow just summon her?” he asks.
“No, it’s Ava,” I explain. “I’ll call her back —”
“Answer it,” Wyatt demands.
The phone chirps again.
“Answer it. Delilah. Answer it.”
“It’s the sweet baby angel, just answer it,” Lainey says.
I stick my tongue out at both of them, then answer it.
“Hey,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “I’m really sorry I haven’t —"
“Delilah?”
Ava sounds weird, like she’s out of breath or something. I sit up straighter, give Lainey and Wyatt an alarmed glance.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can I come over?” she asks, her voice wobbly.
“To where?” I ask, stupidly. “Are you okay?”
There’s a long, long pause.
“Thad and I had a fight,” she says, miserably, then sniffs. “We were out of pasta, and tonight was supposed to be spaghetti night and so I said I’d get some on the way home from work, but then I had to stay a little bit late and I forgot —”