Chapter 3
Dylan heaved a sigh, his mind was a tangle of scattered thoughts and emotions that tried to coalesce themselves into something communicable.
Delilah waited for a bit, and she broke the ice, "The odds of that event occurring must be astronomical."
That statement cocked his probing mind to attention, "What event?"
She pointed out the windshield toward the southern horizon, "The lightning. That triple strike we both witnessed."
He shook his head in affirmation, unsure of the true answer, "That may be true, I guess."
"The funny thing is I saw the same type of lightning about twenty minutes ago from a window in that old farmhouse back there," she said with a smile as she turned to point out the rear window.
He looked out the back window and the bright bluish light illuminated the house as if it was in the opening scene of some cheap horror film. He heaved another sigh, "You mean the meth house back there?"
"Yeah, the meth house. I saw the first triple strike from a side window there," she stated with a bit of apprehension.
"Why would you go inside a place like that? You could have been poisoned, shot, stabbed or died in a massive explosion!" he replied with a heavy dose of condemnation.
She shrugged, "It is what it is, Dylan. I needed a place to stay overnight and I came out safe and sound."
His lips made the flapping noise of dismay, "Come on, Delilah. You always did shit like that to get a rise out of me."
She just chuckled, "No, Dylan. I never did that stuff to annoy you. I did it because I needed to feel alive, because we needed to feel alive. Somebody needed to be the risk taker in our relationship."
He gaped at her in shock, "Come on, Dee. That's a load of shit and you know it. If I didn't take any risks, I would have run outside of my comfort zone to the playground on the day we met."
She now guffawed, "Wow, Mr. Risky here dodged traffic and left the bounds of his safe zone to go to a different playground. Stop the presses everybody, the world at large must know this earth-shattering revelation!"
Dylan could only take so much razzing. To her surprise, he shut off the vehicle, took the keys from the ignition, opened the driver's side door and leaped out into the raging storm. He unlocked the trunk and procured the bottle of Jack that had been patiently waiting to be imbibed. The look on Delilah's face was of sheer confusion as he sat back in the driver's seat and slammed the door shut.
Even though he was partially drenched, he just smirked and cracked the top off the bottle, "My back tire is blown and the heavens just keep dropping the tears. We aren't going anywhere for a while."
She immediately smirked and tossed her rucksack in the back seat. It was then that she noticed the two-liter bottle of Coke that was still somewhat chilled. She grabbed it and gave Dylan a look that meant that they were on the same wavelength. They cracked the seals on both bottles at the same time. Dylan took a short snort of JD while Delilah took a short snort of Coke, and they passed the bottles between themselves.
"Brings back memories, doesn't it?" Dylan asked rhetorically after a few silent minutes.
"Yeah, plenty for me. Remember the first time we drank this?" Delilah replied with a smirk of her own.
He chuckled at his remembrance of that day as he took another nip of the medication.
"It tasted like burnt ass. Back then you didn't know anything about proper measurement," he answered as felt the alcoholic warmth enter into his blood vessels.
She razzed him some more, "Oh fuck that, neither did you. I remember the next day you brought that Vanilla Stoli shit that you said your mom loves. That crap tasted like melted fried cried mixed with swass."
He gave her a disconcerted look, "Yeah, don't remind me. I don't know why in the hell I made that for us. I must be a glutton for punishment, I guess."
She took a long pull off the JD, "I remember that, your mother was psychotic. I am surprised she had the mental capacity to know that you 'borrowed' some of her stuff."
He took a couple sips of Coke, "That's another thing I'd prefer to forget. She laced into me with the brass end of a belt that night. I mean that woman didn't know what day of the week it was or if I had a teacher's conference, but she automatically knew if I had pilfered her Stoli. She was psychic as well as psychotic."
They switched the bottles around and each took a long pull even though the silence was heavy with despair and they were starting to fly high like a pair of kites.
Dylan heard the voice of Ricky Van Shelton emanate from the radio. He wasn't Roy Orbison by any stretch of the imagination, but the alcoholic spell he put himself under caused him to care less. The words echoed silently in his mind as he turned to the raven-haired beauty. She was more beautiful than he remembered, her face and body could have graced the cover of any high-end fashion magazine.
As Dylan ruminated about her looks, Delilah was contemplating something that bothered her for years. Whenever she had such goofy thoughts, she wasn't one to keep them quiet. She tilted her eyes up and saw him staring longingly at the radio.
"Have you ever wondered how ironic your last name is?" she asked pointedly.
The question surprised him, "No, I haven't because I don't possess a mind as twisted as yours."
These kinds of conversations had been common all throughout their relationship.
She shrugged and smiled, "Come on, Dill. It hasn't bothered you in the least."
He thought about it for a couple of seconds, "I guess it has on some subconscious thought level that I've never probed into. Now that you mention it, it makes sense."
And yet the thought made him more uncomfortable than before.
She continued onward with a hint of disbelief, "Life hasn't exactly been good to either one of us, but the irony of your last name and the state of your life is one that couldn't have escaped your notice."
He felt five inches tall, but he knew she was right.
He gulped and made his thoughts known, "That's why I don't believe in a loving god."
She was taken aback on the surface, but she wasn't all that astounded.
She heaved a sigh, "You can't tell me you've made it this far in life just by chance, Dill."
He shook his head, "I never said that I didn't believe in a god. I believe in a malicious, capricious god. The kind that likes to torture me and you for his own amusement."
But she countered him easily, "Still, you have made it this far and your life has to have changed for the better. I know you and I had to eat equitable amounts of emotional turmoil, and I even question that, but you've managed to overcome some amount of it, at least I'd like think so."
Dylan didn't want to be angry with her, but a large part of his being wanted her to be silent. She didn't know about his past with his bloodsucking ex-girlfriend, nor did she know that his father ran off to Molde, Norway to reunite with a former lover after his mother committed suicide. Dylan stared out the windshield and he noticed that the maelstrom was tapering off. He looked over at Delilah and she'd been sipping on the Jack Daniels as she awaited some kind of answer from him.
"The storm is cooling off. I am going to go change the rear tire." He stated with a heavy, seething breath.
She set the Jack Daniels in her lap and said, "You haven't given me a real reason why you don't believe in a loving god."
Dylan tried to keep his emotions buried as long as he could, but the universe had other plans. Two whiskey, silky male voices had come on the radio and were singing about how they needed somebody to count on being there, somebody who really cared and somebody they could each hold onto.
"Why does the fucking radio always echo my thoughts." Dylan stated as if from nowhere.
Delilah arched her eyebrows in surprise, "What's that supposed to mean?"
Then came the part about how the men had a nasty solitude that needed to be crushed with the help of a lifelong mate.
Dylan grabbed the bottle of whiskey from between Delilah's legs and took a mighty swig. His tolerance had become manly over the past year or so. He then popped the trunk open and got out of the car from there. It suddenly clicked in Delilah's mind as to why Dylan was avoiding her question.
Dylan's head was buried in the trunk as he worked the spare tire out of it's hiding place. He heard the door slam and her footfalls in the soggy grass. He tried to be focused but her presence made that action impossible to accomplish.
She leaned her tight backside against the wet vehicle and had placed the balls of her hand on the rear quarter-panel. He glanced upward and saw her lustrous form against the night sky that was still flashing between blue and black. Even from the diminished angle, he could see how luscious her ass was in those tight blue jeans.
And, like before, his body was starting to betray himself.
But these reasons were hopes that had appeared years before and had been left unfulfilled.
Dylan managed to release the tire from the from its hiding place and he pulled it from the trunk. He placed it by Delilah's feet and retrieved the jack from the trunk. Her lissome figure was blocking the busted tire and he gave her a stern look of displeasure. She blushed as a blast of lightning on the southern horizon illuminated her entire body. The quick flash was enough to erode his façade further. She moved enough to stand by the bumper and she watched him unscrew the jack so the car could be hoisted off the ground. The task was time-consuming and involved a few ounces of concentration. Delilah smirked to herself and played grand inquisitor once more.
"So, why does the radio always echo your thoughts?" she asked as if it was a statement that occurred in everyday conversation.
Dylan stopped unscrewing the jack and glanced up in her direction. Her lovely, stunning figure was bathed in the orange hazard light. As the light blinked on and off, watching her was like watching an odd kind of peep show.
He huffed and stated softly, "I guess it's what I really believe deep down."
She hadn't heard him, "What was that, Dill?"
He huffed once more and stated loudly, "I guess it's what I really believe deep down."
She smirked to herself again, "And what do you believe, Dylan?"
He dropped the tire iron and strolled up to within inches of her face, "I believe in a loving god and the corollaries that follow from it."
