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27

DELILAH

I ’ve been awake for hours, watching the sun move across the room. Everything looks the same and the window is closed, but my muscles are sore. I can’t look away from the walkway connecting the disused building to our house and the twisted parts of me sink, not seeing the familiar figure that comes out in the dark.

His last words repeat in my head like an echo.

“ You did.”

I hurt Asher, that’s why he has that pained jagged line etched into his flesh. I sink into the sheets as the pain of literally stabbing him in the back adds to my guilt. It weighs my body down, and I can’t move. I just lay there, watching the sun cast different shadows against each surface.

My phone buzzes on the pillow beside me, and I slowly turn my head without looking away from the window until I’m forced to. But lying beside my phone is a rose. The petals aren’t the velvet soft ones found in nature that wilt and die. They’re made of sheet music. My sheet music from when I was a child that I’d recognize anywhere. I still check the corners that have been curled and folded over for my initials.

Each petal has been made individually and the curl has been manufactured in varying patterns to make them all unique, exactly like a real rose. I gently lift it, careful not to disturb any of the petals in fear of it falling apart, and tilt my hand to see that the petals are made up of a different composition. They all contain my initials in the margin since I used to be obsessed with claiming what I had created, stamping it as mine. I’d do it to everything and without the full sheet I don’t know who I dedicated the piece to.

My guilt grows further as my phone buzzes again with Asher’s call coming through. Keeping hold of the rose, I sit up and answer while trying not to stare at it.

“Hi,” I whisper, unable to get the weight off me.

There’s no sound in the background of his call, and he hesitates before asking, “Do you need me to come home?”

The weariness in his voice has tears springing to my eyes, and I tilt the phone away from my mouth so he can’t hear me. It doesn’t stop the emotion, but it gives me time to choke it back. Bringing the phone back, I keep my voice low as I lie.

“No. I miss you and I was really tired last night. I think I called you, but I was half asleep.”

He laughs to himself lightly and speaks without any knowledge of how much I’ve betrayed him. He tells me his worries because I’m his wife and that’s what people in healthy relationships do. All the while, I stare at the proof of another man being in my life, in our home, hoping he’s left something to tell me he’s coming back.