He couldn't remember a time when Delilah Finnigan wasn't overtly flirting with him. Perhaps sometime before she was eleven or twelve, though he wouldn't bet on it. As long as he could remember her, she was batting her eyes at him and saying extremely inappropriate things. But he was never receptive to them. He wasn't interested in having anything to do with his best friend's little sister.
Most of the time, he just ignored her, rolling his eyes and avoiding looking at her directly. There were a few times when he'd snapped at her, telling her to cut it the fuck out. Other times, when he felt especially mature and like he had his shit together, he'd try to explain to her exactly why nothing would ever happen between them.
"No, Del, I don't want you to take your top off," he explained to her calmly, as she sat on the edge of the pool in her backyard. It was the summer after he and Collin had graduated from high school and Delilah was barely fifteen. Her string bikini left very little to the imagination to begin with and now, when Collin went inside to get some drinks, she had offered to show him her boobs. "Please don't take anything off, this is really inappropriate."
"Geez, I don't get why YOU are always so appropriate. There are probably a ton of guys your age who would jump at the offer," she told him, squinting against the sun.
"That's fine and what you do with them is your business, but nothing is going to happen between you and me. This is really fucking uncomfortable! I don't see you in this kind of way, do you understand?" He tried to explain to her. She pursed her lips, placing her hands on the concrete behind herself and leaning back on them. Possibly, she was trying to push her non-existent breasts further out, but it did nothing for him. Chris never saw Del as anything sexual. She was just this girl.
He saw less of her when he went away to college and wasn't hanging out as much at the Finnigan house. And yet any time he was around, at winter break, over the summer, she was right back to the same games as always. Del was nineteen when he and Collin graduated from college and she was once again trying to seduce him at the graduation party that their parents threw for Collin.
"I think you just keep getting hotter and hotter the older you get," she told him, sipping from a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade that she wasn't old enough to drink yet.
"Why don't you have a boyfriend, Del?" He asked her, trying to understand why her interest seemed to lie solely in him.
"Umm," she licked her lips, sticking a hand into the back pocket of her short denim cut-offs. "Sometimes I have a boyfriend, just not at the moment. I'm not a virgin, if that's what's holding you back," she winked at him.
"No, that's not what's holding me back," he replied flatly, just as Collin approached them.
"What's holding him back is that you're like his sister from another mister," Collin delivered, laughing at his own joke. "You don't dip your pen in the family ink." Collin was probably half in the bag at that point and was the only one who cracked up at his jokes. Del rolled her eyes at her brother.
"I think you're missing out Chris," she smirked at him. "I actually know what I'm doing."
Once Collin had his own place though, there was really no reason to hang around the Finnigan family house anymore and he hadn't seen Delilah in several years. He never asked about her, though Collin sometimes volunteered information about his little sister without being asked. Besides being a relentless and unyielding flirt, Del was apparently also super smart. She had finished undergrad a year early, had her Master's Degree at 22, and quickly climbed to project manager status at the software company where she worked. All that Chris had to say about that was 'good for her.'
He didn't recognize her right away when he got the first glance of her at Collin's wedding. It's been years since he's seen her. Her honey brown hair was long and styled in loose waves, the strands from the front pinned back with a jeweled clip. She wasn't in the wedding party - Collin's fiance had a slew of sisters and cousins and friends and she had enough trouble choosing among them, without getting Collin's sisters involved too. Del wore a short, strapless cocktail dress that accentuated her breasts and narrow waist and flared out into a full skirt over her hips. Her makeup was done in that perfect 'barely there' way that made her look fresh and glowing. He only recognized her in context because she was standing with her two much older sisters, Annie and Bevin.
He watched her from afar for a bit, pondering over whether he'd actually be into Del now if she weren't so intense and overbearing. She was definitely beautiful. Her long, toned legs looked amazing in the strappy heels she wore, disappearing under her short dress. And then she spotted him and the old flirty grin was spread over her face.
"Oh my god, Chris, being all grown up totally agrees with you," she peeled away from her sisters to come closer to him. She looked up at him, placing her hands on her hips and blatantly ogling him head to toe. "Man, you just keep getting hotter. You fill out that suit as if it's been made for you." She reached a hand and smoothed it down his lapel.
"It's tailored," he replied curtly. He wore suits to work daily so it made sense to invest a bit more into them, since he was able to afford it.
"Damn," her gaze shifted down and he felt super uncomfortable for a moment until he realized she was looking at his hand, not his crotch. "How has no one snagged you up yet and gotten a ring on that finger?"
"I see you haven't really changed, Del," he stuffed his hands into his pockets. Her mouth dropped open in a mock shocked expression.
"What are you talking about?! I take offense to that! I have grown at least two cup sizes since college," she cupped her boobs in her hands, over her dress to accentuate them.
