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looking for you,” I said, already walking away.
    I pulled into my driveway and barely had the car in park before I was stripping out of the suit jacket, throwing the tie on the front seat. God, it was sweltering. I unbuttoned the blue shirt with the stripes, tore that off too. Would’ve stripped off the undershirt, too, except I saw Delaney standing on my front porch.
    I slammed the car door and marched up the front steps, not even looking at her.
    She held her phone out between us, like a shield. “Kevin called me,” she said.
    “Kevin called you,” I said slowly. So much for him understanding me. “Did he also tell you I wanted to be alone?” I ran a hand through my hair. Looked at her nails, which were cut extra short. At her jean shorts, which were probably pants at some point, because they were frayed at the bottom. At her white tank top, which was loose and had buttons, but the topones were undone. Her hair was twisted off her neck, held up by a clip.
    “No, he just … He said you left and he wanted me to know and I said I’d make sure you were okay, because he was worried. So here I am.”
    I brushed past her, up the front steps, not looking at her face. Opened the front door, felt the blast of cold air through my undershirt. Saw Delaney’s long legs still standing on my front porch while I was sweltering in black dress pants. “Why are you dressed like that?” Accusations layered under accusations.
    She looked down at her outfit, like she was confused. “Because it’s nine thousand degrees?”
    “Why weren’t you there?” And when she didn’t respond, didn’t even let the air out of her lungs, I said, louder, “Even Maya was there.” Which had nothing to do with Delaney at all, and she knew it. What I really meant was that Delaney had done more for Maya than she’d done for me. That Maya wouldn’t know any of us yet if it hadn’t been for Delaney twisting her frown into a lie, saying, “Welcome to town,” when Maya stood in her backyard, watching us, watching her house. Everything for a stranger who had a parent who was about to die. Nothing for me. I gritted my teeth and asked her again. Demanding she tell me. “Why?”
    “So you could yell at me? So you could kick me out of a room again?”
    “It was my father’s funeral.”
    “You made it perfectly clear that you didn’t want me—”
    “How the hell do you know what I want?”
    I felt her pause. Everything pause. “Do you want me tocome in?” she asked, and everything shifted in her face. It was painful, how much I could hear in her question. Questions layered under questions.
    I didn’t answer. I wanted part of her to come in, I wanted to scream at a different part of her. She stepped onto the hardwood, barefoot, like she had been the night he died. Her toenails were still purple. Too close.
    I put a hand up. Tried to think. Tried to clear the anger. Tried to remember all the fights we’d had, and recovered from, our entire lives. “You were right not to come,” I said. I would’ve done to her what Janna had done to her at her brother’s funeral. I would’ve blamed her. I would’ve hated her.
    “I need some space,” I said. An empty house. An empty head. I needed not to think of her, I needed to have a memory without her in it.
    I saw her spin on her toes, turning to leave. She put her hands on the doorjamb and paused for a second. “I need to tell you something,” she said.
    I wanted silence. An empty house. I didn’t want to hear her. I couldn’t even look at her. She didn’t get to stand here in cute summer clothes while I was at my dad’s service. She didn’t get to stand here trying to make things right when she’d completely betrayed me. She didn’t get to stand here at all.
    “No. No, you don’t. You needed to tell me something. Before . Right now, you need to get the hell out of my house before I throw something against the wall.”
    She didn’t look at me. She walked away. No, she ran.
    She ran