Amelia leaned forward and kissed my cheek.
She gasped, quickly turned and ran back into her house, shutting the door behind her.
I grinned and walked down the steps and stepped over Amelia’s drunk father.
I touched my cheek.
How the hell could a girl leave me this happy in a world of hell?
Chapter 28
The List and the Heart
NOW
(Amelia)
“Did you see your article online?” Grace asked me as she dipped a tea bag into a steaming mug.
“No.”
“Didn’t Bel email you?”
“Probably. I didn’t check it. I don’t check it.”
“You don’t care?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s just… I don’t know.”
“She told me she talked to you about doing other things.”
“Not really interested at the moment,” I said.
I was completely focused on sliding a pen through my thumb and pointer finger, letting it hit the table and flipping it over to do the same thing.
Over and over.
A notebook was open and next to me, but nothing had been written.
I was stuck in a thought I couldn’t make sense of.
Not to mention I was unable to get the look on Josh’s face out of my head as he dropped me off to get my car. That little headstone at the cemetery was something important to him. And when I saw the Del, I instantly wrote this intense story that wasn’t true. I had jumped hard and Josh was pissed at me.
“Amelia, what’s going on with you right now?”
“Nothing,” I said. “This is just how I write.”
“You’ve been sitting there for an hour.”
“So? You don’t know what goes on in my head.”
“So, you’re working?”
“Totally,” I said.
Grace smirked. “I don’t believe that for a second. Maybe you should face your fear.”
“Of?”
“Everything. Go into a bookstore. Face the fear that you should have been there. Or call up your old agent and yell at them. Or just write whatever is on your mind. You’re actually free, Amelia. There is no pressure on you to write. So write whatever you want.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t know the ending.”
“Make it up. That’s your job.”
“Not this ending…”
Grace raised an eyebrow. “Is this because of Josh?” She switched eyebrows, trying to get me to laugh. “Are you hot for him?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re lying to me.”
“You have no idea where that goes. Maybe I should have never showed up to that gallery and tried to interview him.”
Grace didn’t respond.
She just frowned.
That part was true.
If I hadn’t gone there, I wouldn’t have stepped right back into Josh’s world or back into the world of how I used to feel. Even if my body still tingled and ached in a certain way, the path was steep with twists and turns that seemed to never end.
And what was I supposed to do? Keep going after him, demanding more and more about his life? I’d forever look like a cheap writer begging for a story and that’s not what I wanted.
“What are you working on?” I asked Grace, wanting to change gears a little.
“I have a call in a few minutes. Wonderful woman. Going through a rough patch. She’s worked in health and fitness her entire life. Got injured and was set back and feels useless now. Her husband left her for a younger woman too. She’s terrified of what that is going to do for her image. So, I’m helping her mend. All the way around.”
“Wow. That’s hard.”
“It’s life, Amelia. Life is hard.”
I glanced around at the cat pictures on the walls. Sometimes Grace would say something that really mattered, but then I’d look at the cat stuff and it would just creep me the hell out.
“I’m having her make a list of five things on her mind each day,” Grace said. “Something small to start with. So she can tackle each thing. One by one. And it doesn’t have to be positive. I’m not going to ram that down her throat. We need to face the good and the bad. All the time.”
I leaned forward and saw the page.
Just five blank lines that were numbered.
My eyes then met with Grace’s.
I knew exactly what she was going to say next, but I was saved by her phone ringing.
“There’s my call,” she said.
She stood with her notebook and mug of tea. She hurried down the hall to her bedroom.
I glanced over at my notebook and sighed.
I leaned to my left to make sure Grace was out of view.
That’s when I made my first mark in the notebook.
A list of one through five.
“A list of five things on my mind today,” I whispered.
What do I write now?
Why am I so afraid to write?
Who is Delaney?
Who is Josh?
Who is Delilah?
I stared at the list and shook my head.
So many different things…
Yet they all felt like they were connected.
I’ve touched your tears, whether you know it or not. I’ve touched your pain. I’ve gotten so close to it, I could feel the pain too. There was this dream I had of you. I had this beaten up car. A real piece of junk. But it always started on the first try. It had an engine. Some gas. Some music. And one night I started that car and came to get you. You were waiting for me, sitting on your front steps. Your knees were gently knocking together as you bit on your nails, worried about me not coming. You weren’t worried about leaving. Just about me not showing up.
Your bag next to you.
That was it.
That was your life.
And now it was going to be my life.
We had nowhere to go and nobody to go find.
It was just us.
The road.
Burning gas.
Singing songs at the top of our lungs, sounding horrible, but it didn’t matter.
When we’d go down hills, we’d hold hands then you’d put your hands into the air and yell like it was a roller coaster. Over bumps, I’d speed up, so you’d lose your stomach. I didn’t need those bumps though. I felt that way each time I looked at you.
On the highway you’d roll down the window and let the wind play with your
