The Dating Intervention: Book 1 in the Intervention Series (38 page)

Maybe Ms. Gazelle had just returned from an exotic trip to her home in the Sahara and had called Jake right away.

This is exactly why I need a backup. If I had someone else to focus on, I would be able to forgive Jake’s transgression at the rodeo dance. But is it really a transgression? No. No, it’s not.

He can see whomever he wants.
 

So why am I so down in the dumps about it?
 

If she had her phone, she would text Summer and Josie, begging them to let her recreate her backup system.
 

On second thought, why did she need their permission? They didn’t even have to know. As far as she was concerned, it was a no-fail system. Okay, so it had failed the one time. But that was only once in seven years.

Delaney noticed the flecks of toothpaste that spotted the bathroom mirror. Looking up, she saw cobwebs had formed on the light fixture. Big clumps of Pixie’s hair had gathered in the corners of the floor.

Tomorrow, she would set everything to rights. She’d scour her house until every surface shone, maybe even plant some flowers. Most importantly, she would re-launch her old system. The new phone had to wait until Monday. Living in a small town meant everything was shut down on Sundays except churches and the grocery store.

She considered starting an all-night cleaning frenzy, but quickly dismissed it. Her eyes were dry, her legs felt heavy and her brain couldn’t take any more. At two a.m., she fell into bed and was asleep within seconds.

Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny in blatant contrast to Delaney’s mood. Although the spring morning barely registered forty degrees, Delaney flew through the house like a hurricane and threw the windows open.
 

“Time to freshen up,” she muttered to Pixie, who sat on the back of the couch blinking in the bright sunlight, looking as irritable and miserable as Delaney felt.

As she poured her coffee and put a slice of bread in the toaster, she glanced at the computer several times. Should she check her FindLove.com profile and see whether Jake had written anything?
 

No
, she told herself quite firmly.
I’m over it. Totally over it
.
 

The idea persisted and she began composing notes to him in her mind (
I thought it was love! What the hell were you thinking? You showed me the
hockey
movie
).
 

The very next moment, she considered logging into her FindLove.com profile to search for other handsome, witty fish in Juniper’s sea, but then she remembered that Summer and Josie had her log ins and would probably spy on her. She unplugged her computer.
 

Most every Sunday, Delaney sat at her tiny kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the Sunday paper. Not this morning, though. Instead, she set her mug, still steaming, on the counter, put on some Shania Twain and began to clean. Rubber gloves on, hair in a messy ponytail and sweat glistening on her face, Delaney began a deep purge.
 

Why had she let Jake get to her so much? She set the contents of her fridge on the kitchen counter, separating out moldy leftovers and jars of food that had expired a year (or in some cases, two) ago. She cringed when she saw the sticky residue something had left on one of the refrigerator’s shelves. Jake was dreamy, yes. He had nice – no, great – muscles in his back and forearms. He smelled good. He had made her feel, if only for a short time, that monogamy in dating was possible. That was the reason she’d let him get to her.
 

How had she not noticed the stench from the fridge before this? With her nose buried in the crook of one elbow, she carried the trash out to the trashcan, shuddering as she dropped it in. While she squirted toilet bowl cleaner into the toilets, she remembered dancing with Jake at his new art studio. She could practically feel his calloused hand in hers, her cheek against his chest. She scrubbed the first toilet vigorously, even as her angry tears fell into the bowl.
 

A couple of times, she’d even imagined him proposing to her. He had turned her into
that
girl: a quivering mess of neediness. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, flushed the toilet and squirted cleaner into the bathtub. It was fine. She’d made mistakes before. But this time, it felt different. It
was
different. She’d been sure Jake liked her. Positive.
 

Delaney Collins was no dummy, though. She could handle rejection. Heck, she’d been the Queen of the Rejected in middle school, even while Josie reigned in a distant land as the Queen of Courtship. The very same sixth-grade boys with teeth too big for their faces who had torn up the candygrams Delaney sent them, had brought Josie flowers, offered to carry her bright pink backpack and held doors for her. Oh, yes, if Josie Garcia walked by, these boys – heinous creatures who broke Delaney’s pride day after day – practically trembled with nerves induced by some strange middle school hormone.
 

Delaney Collins could take it. She’d bounced back, right? So what if she still had nightmares about Joe Jansen announcing to their entire pre-algebra class that Dumb Dumb Delaney was a Dumb Dumb Dork and then holding up the note she’d written him, pointing first to her message:
Would you like to go to the movies with me this weekend?
and then to his response:
NO WAY
scrawled heavily across the bottom of the page? So what if the entire class screamed in hilarity, pointing at Delaney?

The adult Delaney realized then that she was about to scrub the porcelain off the bathtub, so she rinsed it before starting on the counter. Kitchen, bedroom, living room, closets … nothing was off-limits to Delaney Collins. She’d scrub every fleck of dust, every smear of grime, right out of this house. “And right out of my life.”
 

Once she was done inside, she moved on to the garden.

Last year, Summer had convinced her to install flowerbeds in front of the house.
 

“They’ll be cheerful,” she’d said at the time. “Welcoming.”
 

Standing in front of the shriveled, crispy mass of what, for a week or so last summer, had been a colorful collection of snapdragons and some other flowers whose names Delaney couldn’t remember, she doubted very much Summer would describe the garden as cheerful.
 

Depressing, maybe. Or terrifying. Or just plain ugly.
 

Delaney suppressed an evil cackle as she moved toward the flowerbed with her gloved hands outstretched. She couldn’t deny a creepy feeling of glee at ripping the parched remains of cheer out of the dirt at the roots.
 

Ah, yes, it felt good to yank them right out of the ground. Plant after plant. Nothing survived the vengeful attack. Not a twig, not a stem, not a single crumbly leaf. What had Summer been thinking when she talked Delaney into planting a garden? She should have known Delaney wasn’t capable of nurturing anything. Anything at all.
 

Not even a relationship guided by the supposed wisdom of her two best friends. What had gone wrong? She’d followed their stupid, sage advice … for the most part. It should have worked out. It
should
have.

By lunchtime, Delaney had pulled all the dead plants, along with a slew of dead weeds, out of the flowerbeds and stuffed them into a garbage bag. Her arms ached, the backs of her legs ached and her fingers hurt.
 

At least the front of the little bungalow looked somewhat more orderly, she thought as she stepped back to survey the results of her work, but still … it looked drab in the weak sunlight. Parched, shriveled weeds no longer stood sentry near the front door, but now all that looked back at her was an empty flowerbed. Completely empty.
 

She felt like crying again, so she yanked off her hat and the gloves and stomped inside.

The doorbell rang. Delaney, whose entire upper body was lodged under her bed, jumped. She hit her head on the bottom of her box spring, muttered, “Shit!” and slithered her way out, her hands full of rogue hair ties, bits of paper and loose socks.
 

The tiniest bubble of hope formed, somewhere deep below the surface. Was it Jake, coming to grovel for forgiveness? Heck, she thought, he didn’t even have to grovel. At this point, a quick round of begging would do. The little hope bubble grew a tiny bit bigger as it rose toward the surface.
 

Delaney dumped everything in a pile on the floor, rubbed the bump that was forming on the top of her head and took a quick glance in the mirror on her bedroom door.
 

Well, if it was Jake and he’d really come to grovel, her appearance would be a test of his undying love. Although she’d pulled her hair into a messy knot on top of her head, shorter blond wisps had fallen down all around her face, framing it in greasy hanks. Last night’s makeup (applied with precision so she’d look doe-eyed for Jake) was smeared beneath her eyes and her holey gray sweatpants and blue sweatshirt sagged at the knees and elbows.
 

She shrugged at her reflection and went to answer the door. The hope bubble, which had doubled in size, burst before reaching the surface.
 

“Mom,” Delaney said.
 

“Wow. Don’t look so happy to see me, honey.”
 

“Sorry. I was just expecting—”

“I hope you weren’t expecting company, looking like that,” Camille said. She hooted with laughter.
 

Delaney stepped back to let her in.
 

“Funny, Mom. What are you doing here?”
 

Camille didn’t answer.

“Sorry. Want some water or something?”
 

She closed the door, but couldn’t stop herself from glancing at the street, first. A few days ago, she probably would have felt all warm and gooey about the glossy new leaves on the trees, but today she only growled at them before turning the lock.
 

“No, thanks. I just stopped by to see if you wanted to have lunch.”
 

Delaney flopped down on the couch. “Did you think about calling, first?” she snapped. She immediately regretted it. “Sorry.”
 

“Actually, I’ve called and texted several times, but when you didn’t answer, I thought I’d stop by.” Camille put her hands on the back of the couch and looked down at Delaney. “What’s going on, here?”
 

“Nothing, Mom. I’m just cleaning, okay?”
 

“Don’t get snippy with me, young lady.”
 

“Sorry.”
 

“What’s going on, here?”
 

Delaney jumped off the couch and stalked into the kitchen, where she got herself a glass and filled it with water. “Last night, I went to the rodeo dance with the girls and we saw Jake there.”
 

“Oh, that was nice. Did the two of you dance?”
 

“
No
, as it happens, we did not dance. Jake was too involved with some other girl to even notice I was there.”
 

She took several gulps of water and slammed the glass down on the counter. Camille looked surprised for an instant, but she quickly regained her composure.
 

“Let’s go to lunch,” she said.

“I tell you the guy I’m totally smitten with has spent an entire evening with another girl, and all you can say is, ‘Let’s go to lunch’?”
 

“Honey, what do you want me to say? With you in the mood you’re in right now, there’s nothing I
can
say without you eating me alive. So, let’s go to lunch. And have a cocktail.”
 

“Now you’re talking.”

***

“What is this place, the Senior Citizen Hideaway?”

The East Coast decor inside the Castaway Cafe, all lighthouses and fishing boats and lobsters, did nothing to improve Delaney’s mood. Nor did the clientele. Everyone in there, with the exception of the staff, had false teeth and Velcro shoes.
 

“I’ll order you a Bloody Mary,” Camille said.
 

“Is this where you and Dad come to get your senior discount, or what?”
 

“They have good cocktails.”
 

Delaney stared at the stained white tablecloth, the pink and red carnations in a slim crystal vase. She pinched a petal off a red one, rolled it between her fingers.
 

“Yep, they’re real,” she said.
 

Camille shook her head, reacting in the same way she probably had to Delaney’s outbursts at age four. In an obvious attempt to lighten the mood, she said, “So, I noticed you pulled the weeds and plant carcasses out of your flowerbed.”
 

“Yeah, I figured it was bad juju having all those dead plants at my front door.”
 

“Let’s replant them,” Camille said.
 

“You’ve been drinking already, haven’t you?”
 

When the waitress approached, Delaney noticed nothing about her other than the bright blue eye shadow smeared across her eyelids. She stared at it, transfixed, as her mom ordered Bloody Marys.
 

“Make hers a double,” Camille said in an undertone, tilting her head toward Delaney.
 

The waitress nodded and walked away, and Delaney picked up the conversation where they left off. “Not gonna lie,” she said. “I thought about it. But Mom, I kept those last flowers alive for what? A few days? A week, maybe? It’s premeditated murder to buy more.”
 

“You need the practice.”
 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”
 

“Just what I said. Planting a garden is like being in love. It takes work. Practice. But with a little nurturing, things blossom.”
 

“Seriously, Mom? That is so cliché my ears are bleeding.”
 

The waitress returned with her blue eye shadow and the drinks. Delaney sipped hers in relative silence, pausing between sips to crunch on the piece of celery. “This is good, Mom,” she said. “Good idea. Nice and peppery. Really puts a spring in your step, I’ll bet.”