Read The Devil Goes To Heaven :: A Cross (2)

On the drive back, Delilah is writing in her notebook she always keeps on her. I'm contemplating if she likes me or not. I mean—she did kiss me on the cheek. And she does hang out with me everyday; even on the weekends when there isn't any school.

Maybe she's just waiting for me to do something? Maybe she just wants me to make the first move and put myself out there.

But that fucking terrifies me. I can't do that. When I was doing that, I was a self-righteous asshole spreading lies and deceit. When I put myself out there, negativity follows.

How can I be that vulnerable to Delilah when I don't even know what that looks like?

My brain thinks along these lines the entire drive home. When we park in my driveway, my Mom gets out of the car quickly due to her having to use the bathroom badly.

"Okay. I'ma go write this song," Delilah says. She opens her door but I speak up—

"Delilah I—can we talk?" I ask. She closes the door. Her ocean eyes meet mine.

"What's up?" She asks.

"Do—um—Do you—uh—do you—like me?"

"Of course I do."

"I mean—" I take in a sharp breath. "Fuck—Here goes. I like you. Like—like—like you. I have ever since I saw you in that Chick-fil-a. I just. I need to get this off my chest because if I don't I'll never forgive myself if I don't know if you like me—"

Delilah lunges forward, and before I know it her teeth clash with mine. Then her lips. Her soft, elegant lips are on mine and she pulls away.

"I'm sorry," she says with a smile, "Are you okay?" I nod. "I like you too. A lot. I want you, Judas."

Something takes hold of me. I put my hands around her face and embrace her lips with mine. She grabs the side of my face and then finds my nape. Our breath becomes heavier as she pushes herself into me. When she slowly pulls away, a little bit of our saliva strings between our lips. Our foreheads are resting atop each other when she breathes:

"I gotta go write that song."

She kisses me on the lips for one more solace time and leaves the car. I stay in the car, waiting for the burning between my thighs to subside.

Around six in the afternoon, Delilah comes up to my room with her guitar and a strange rectangular box with a speaker and a bunch of buttons on it. She hands me her phone and tells me I'm going to record our first song.

"Our song?"

"You did come up with the name after all," she says in her deep voice. Now that we had our first kiss and it was like that, she could say anything and I would melt like ice cream in a microwave.

"But there is one thing you have to do," she says in a serious tone, "You gotta hit this button with the 'laughing so hard I'm crying' emoji sticker on it when I give the signal."

"Okay. What's the signal."

"Reverse wink!"

"A what?"

"I sing with my eyes closed about eighty to eighty-five percent of the time. So when I open my left eye to look at you, I.E. reverse wink, you press this button."

"You coulda just said when you open your eye."

"That's no fun."

She sits down in my desk chair again and I start getting ready. I turn the flip power button on the box and start to record her with her phone.

"Hello, I'm Delilah Lor and this is my song 'A Cross'."

Short. Simple. Elegant. She forms a cord with her left and the universe stands still, waiting for the angel to sing her song.

She starts to play a mellow, eerie, progression of chords while providing a beat with her finger, which has a ring that's tapping on the wood of her guitar while she's also strumming. The strumming itself again sounds like multiple people playing at the same time. And then the angel starts singing:

"A cross, a cross, upon his back

I'd give it all just to take his place

And if you die, you can blame it on me

I've been tying this noose in my hometown

I wish I had never been born

Then you wouldn't know, and you wouldn't be dead

Poke and prod, they'd just rip me out

It's only paradise as far as I can see..."

She then begins to sing but it sounds like an abandoned wolf howling for its missing pack. Each howl lasts about five seconds, four in total. And at the end of the last howl, she reverse winks at me and I press the laughing emoji button. The box then continues to play what she was just playing as she progresses into a new part of the song.

It's similar to the beginning, but with the beginning in the background and the more amped-up feeling of this part, it sounds incredible.

"There was a time when you would help me see

But now you say the Devil is inside me

And I can try to go back, backwards in time

Were I didn't have you, where I didn't have life

I know you're dying for what I can't perceive

But let me bear this cross so you can stay with me

Please don't leave a man to be

I am gone and forsaken..."

She howls and begins to shred on her guitar. She howls four times once more until she returns back to playing the start of her song. She reverse winks and I instinctively shut the box off.