Page 29 of Deliah

T hat winter, I was a shell—moving, speaking, smiling when it was expected of me.

But underneath, I was hollow. Cracked open in places I didn’t know existed.

I cried for weeks. Mornings were the worst. Waking up and remembering all over again.

That ache in your chest before your eyes even open—the one that whispers he’s gone before your feet hit the floor.

I spent time with my family. I had tea with my mum and let her fuss over me like I was twelve again.

She knew something had happened, but I didn’t have the words. Not yet.

“You alright, bab?” she asked one afternoon, sliding a mug across the kitchen table.

“Yeah,” I lied, wrapping my hands around the warmth. “Just tired.”

She gave me a look— that look. The one mums give when they know you’re full of shit but aren’t ready to push.

I caught up with a few old friends, too.

Laughed in the right places. Took the selfies.

Wore the makeup. But I felt like I was watching it all through glass.

Like none of it was really touching me. When I finally met up with Aneeka, I cracked.

We met at our local pub. Same table by the window.

She walked in with that familiar chaotic energy, wrapped in a giant scarf, cheeks pink from the cold.

“Deliah!” she beamed, arms wide open. “God, it’s so good to see your face.”

I hugged her tight, and for a moment, it felt like something inside me clicked back into place. But the second we sat down, it all came spilling out.

“Jay ghosted me,” I blurted. “Just fucking disappeared.”

Her mouth dropped open. “What? When? How? What do you mean disappeared?”

I told her everything. The season ending. The airport. The promises. The silence. Every raw, ugly detail I hadn’t even been able to tell my mum. By the time I finished, her hands were clenched around her tea like she wanted to throw it across the room.

“What the actual fuck…” she muttered. “Are you joking? That little prick.”

I let out a shaky laugh. “I know. It sounds insane, right?”

“No, it is insane,” she snapped. “Who does that? Who says I love you and then just evaporates?”

I looked down at my drink, eyes stinging again. “Maybe he did it because he loved me.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t know… Maybe he knew he couldn’t change, and this was his way of freeing me. Like… maybe it was mercy.”

Aneeka stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “Deliah,” she said gently, “don’t romanticise abandonment.”

I shrugged. “It’s just... I have to believe it meant something. Otherwise, what the fuck was I doing all that time?”

She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You were loving someone who didn’t know how to be loved. That doesn’t make you stupid. That makes you human.”

I nodded, but the knot in my chest only grew tighter.

The truth was—I had tried to reach him. Of course I did.

I called. Messaged. Sent voice notes at 2 a.m. that I deleted five minutes later.

I searched the internet like a woman possessed.

Typed his name into Google. Instagram. Even Facebook.

Scrolled old friend lists. Clicked on mutuals I hadn’t spoken to in years.

But nothing. No posts. No photos. No tags.

He was gone. It was like he never even existed.

And I didn’t even know why I kept looking.

What did I think I’d find? An answer? A confession? A fucking apology?

Grief doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it just sits there—quiet and cruel—gnawing away at who you used to be.

I started picking myself apart. Analysing every fight.

Every kiss. Every I love you. Maybe if I hadn’t nagged so much.

Maybe if I’d just trusted him. Maybe if I’d been more chill.

Less needy. Less me. I was ashamed. Ashamed of what I’d allowed and of how small I’d become.

I’d spent so long twisting myself into knots trying to be enough for him, I didn’t even recognise myself anymore.

The bright, loud, chaotic girl who took Spain by storm?

She was gone. I couldn’t even remember what she felt like.

My confidence had been stripped bare, one gaslight at a time.

Like death by a thousand cuts—only I kept handing him the knife.

I wanted closure. I wanted something. But all I had was the haunting knowledge that sometimes, the people who swear they love you the most…

are the ones who leave you bleeding without even looking back.

I had to do something. Anything. I couldn’t sit in my childhood bedroom forever, haunting myself with old voice notes and what-ifs.

So I started walking. Aimless, slow, bundled up in my oversized coat with the hood up and my headphones in.

I’d wander for hours. Through town, through fields, down streets I hadn’t walked in years.

Just me and the sound of my boots on the pavement.

Me and the ache in my chest. Me and the cold air, sharp and clean, clouding into little ghosts every time I exhaled.

I found strange comfort in it. It helped me think.

Or helped me stop thinking—I’m still not sure. But either way, it helped.

As Christmas crept closer, something inside me began to shift.

Not all at once. Not in some dramatic, cinematic breakthrough.

Just… a quiet thawing. The sharpness dulled.

The grief stopped feeling like a blade and started to feel more like a bruise—still tender, still there, but no longer splitting me open.

It lingered like a shadow, but it wasn’t the only thing in the room anymore.

And slowly, other things started creeping in.

The sound of my own laughter, unexpected and real, cracking through the fog over cheap pints in pub gardens under plastic heaters.

The smell of roast potatoes crisping in my mum’s oven, like she was trying to cook the sadness out of me with goose fat and rosemary.

Even Baileys in hot chocolate started to feel like its own love language.

Warm, familiar, a little bit indulgent—maybe I deserved a bit of sweetness again.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, I didn’t feel like I was pretending to be okay.

I was still hurting. Still healing. But I could feel something blooming in the pain.

Hope, maybe. Or the version of me I thought I’d lost.

I even went on a date. A guy I’d met briefly in Spain messaged me out of nowhere.

He said he was also home for the holidays and asked if I fancied catching up.

I agreed. Big mistake. He picked the loudest bar in town, wore jeans that were way too tight, and kept calling me “baby girl” like we were in some kind of budget mafia romance.

By the time I got home, I ordered a kebab and cried laughing on the phone to Cherry about it.

She couldn’t believe everything I told her about Jay. Well, actually, she could. But she didn’t say that. She just listened.

“He’s a ghost,” I said one night. “It’s like I was in a relationship with a fucking mirage.”

“I knew something was coming,” she admitted gently. “I just didn’t think he’d disappear like that.”

“Yeah, well. I always liked the dramatic ones.”

She laughed, that sharp Cherry cackle that made me feel sixteen again.

She and Tommy were living together now—in some annoyingly perfect, flash apartment in the city. Granite countertops, floor-to-ceiling windows, the lot. She was glowing. Annoyingly smug. But I couldn’t help being happy for her.

“Come visit in the new year,” she said.

“I will,” I promised. And I meant it.

She wasn’t working anymore. Said she was getting bored. I could tell. She missed the madness, even if she wouldn’t admit it. Tommy had just landed some big new office in Marbella. All the lads were moving with him.

“Fresh start,” she said. “New energy. I think it’ll be good for us.”

She sounded excited. She needed a change, too. Maybe we both did.

Christmas came and went. It was… nice. Not perfect.

Not groundbreaking. But nice. And before I knew it, I was turning twenty-two.

I’d made plans with some of the girls I went to school with—nothing fancy, just a cheap night out at a local dive bar that smelt like spilled cider and stale carpets.

We were half cut by 10 p.m., sweaty from the heat, dancing like we had no pasts and no plans, just noise and neon and sugar-rimmed shots.

I was mid-spin, laughing too hard at something stupid, when the music changed to that one god-awful song I used to hate but somehow knew every word to.

I threw my arms in the air, twirling like some tragic disco princess, phone stuffed down my bra like always.

And then it buzzed. I thought it’d be Cherry, sending some drunken voice note or a meme I’d already seen three times.

Or maybe some irrelevant ex from Spain fishing for attention. But it wasn’t.

“Happy birthday, Deliah. I hope you’re wearing red.”

I stopped. Everything else kept going—the bass, the bodies, the blinding strobe lights—but I just stood there, heart stalling in my chest, phone trembling in my hand.

No name. No number. But I knew exactly who it was.

I hadn’t heard from him in months. Not since that night.

Not a whisper, not a crumb. And yet here he was. In my phone. In my fucking head.

I stared at the screen like it had betrayed me.

Like it had dragged him out from wherever I’d buried him and brought him right back into my bloodstream.

Red. My stomach flipped. I was wearing red.

A backless little dress that clung to me like a second skin—Cherry’s idea, obviously.

“Birthday bitch energy,” she’d said. How the fuck did he know?

My stories were private, locked down tight since the last stalking incident.

I hadn’t even told anyone here about him—he was the thing I never spoke of.

The thing I was trying to forget. But he knew.

He always knew. The message sat there like a matchbook, and I could feel the spark catching.

The ache that I’d spent months numbing with bad decisions and worse men roared back like it had been waiting, patient and smug.

I read it again. And again. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, shaking.

What do you want from me? How did you find me?

Why now? But I didn’t type anything. I didn’t know what to say.

I shoved my phone back into my bra, heart thumping like a fucking drum, and turned to the girls. “I’ve got to go,” I said, already backing away. They blinked at me, confused, half drunk, too deep in some messy rendition of Shania Twain to care.

I didn’t wait for questions. I pushed through the crowd, hailed a cab, and practically sprinted into the house the second it pulled up.

I kicked off my heels in the hallway, tore off my red dress, threw on some oversized pyjamas, and dove into bed like the duvet might protect me from whatever the hell this was.

Then I just sat there. Staring at the message.

Reading it. Re-reading it. Memorising every pixel like it was a spell I didn’t mean to cast.

Happy Birthday, Deliah. I hope you’re wearing red.

My heart was pounding out of my chest—the same way it did before our first night together. Same buzz. Same danger. Same electric, what the fuck is going on feeling. I hadn’t felt that in months. I grabbed my phone again and rang Cherry. She answered on the third ring, groggy as hell.

“Babe?” she mumbled.

“Cherry, have you… have you spoken to Damion?”

She groaned. “No? Why?”

I swallowed. “He texted me.”

Silence. Then, “No fucking way. What did he say?!”

I swallowed again, heart racing. “Happy birthday. I hope you’re wearing red.”

“You’re fucking joking,” she gasped.

“I’m not.”

Then I heard it—Tommy laughing in the background. She had me on speaker.

“You gave him my English number, didn’t you?” I snapped.

“What? No! I didn’t give him shit, Deliah.”

“Liar! You must’ve—how else would he have it?”

“I didn’t, I swear,” she insisted, but I could hear the grin in her voice. Tommy was still chuckling.

“He’s Damion,” he called out. “If he wants to find you, he will. You know that.”

I sank further into the pillows. “I don’t know that. I don’t know anything about him anymore. I haven’t spoken to him in months.”

Cherry cut in, softer now. “Are you going to text him back?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know. That man is a fucking nightmare waiting to happen.”

“Oh, come on,” she teased. “Just text him back. What’s the worst that can happen?”

I let out a hollow laugh. “Cherry… the worst with him is really fucking bad.”

“Well,” she said, yawning, “keep me posted. And Deliah? Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

I hung up and stared at the ceiling, the message still glowing in my mind. I sat up all night thinking. Should I text him? What would I even say? Why now? Why me?

I didn’t need another ghost in my life. Especially not one with a loaded wallet, blue eyes, and a tendency to ruin people like it was a hobby. But God help me… I already knew I was going to text him back.