Page 47 of Deliah
“You alright, bab?” she asked one afternoon, sliding a mug across the kitchen table.
“Yeah,” I lied, wrapping my hands around the warmth. “Just tired.”
She gave me a look—thatlook. The one mums give when they know you’re full of shit but aren’t ready to push.
I caught up with a few old friends, too. Laughed in the right places. Took the selfies. Wore the makeup. But I felt like I was watching it all through glass. Like none of it was really touching me. When I finally met up with Aneeka, I cracked. We met at our local pub. Same table by the window. She walked in with that familiar chaotic energy, wrapped in a giant scarf, cheeks pink from the cold.
“Deliah!” she beamed, arms wide open. “God, it’s so good to see your face.”
I hugged her tight, and for a moment, it felt like something inside me clicked back into place. But the second we sat down, it all came spilling out.
“Jay ghosted me,” I blurted. “Just fucking disappeared.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What? When? How? What do you mean disappeared?”
I told her everything. The season ending. The airport. The promises. The silence. Every raw, ugly detail I hadn’t even been able to tell my mum. By the time I finished, her hands were clenched around her tea like she wanted to throw it across the room.
“What the actual fuck…” she muttered. “Are you joking? That little prick.”
I let out a shaky laugh. “I know. It sounds insane, right?”
“No, it is insane,” she snapped. “Who does that? Who says I love you and then just evaporates?”
I looked down at my drink, eyes stinging again. “Maybe he did it because he loved me.”
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t know… Maybe he knew he couldn’t change, and this was his way of freeing me. Like… maybe it was mercy.”
Aneeka stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “Deliah,” she said gently, “don’t romanticise abandonment.”
I shrugged. “It’s just... I have to believe it meant something. Otherwise, what the fuck was I doing all that time?”
She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You were loving someone who didn’t know how to be loved. That doesn’t make you stupid. That makes you human.”
I nodded, but the knot in my chest only grew tighter.
The truth was—I had tried to reach him. Of course I did. I called. Messaged. Sent voice notes at 2 a.m. that I deleted five minutes later. I searched the internet like a woman possessed. Typed his name into Google. Instagram. Even Facebook. Scrolled old friend lists. Clicked on mutuals I hadn’t spoken to in years. But nothing. No posts. No photos. No tags. He was gone. It was like he never even existed. And I didn’t even know why I kept looking. What did I think I’d find? An answer? A confession? A fucking apology?
Grief doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it just sits there—quiet and cruel—gnawing away at who you used to be. I started picking myself apart. Analysing every fight. Every kiss. Every I love you. Maybe if I hadn’t nagged so much. Maybe if I’d just trusted him. Maybe if I’d been more chill. Less needy. Less me. I was ashamed. Ashamed of what I’d allowed and of how small I’d become. I’d spent so long twisting myself into knots trying to be enough for him, I didn’t even recognise myself anymore. The bright, loud, chaotic girl who took Spain by storm? She was gone. I couldn’t even remember what she felt like. My confidence had been stripped bare, one gaslight at a time. Like death by a thousand cuts—only I kept handing him the knife. I wanted closure. I wanted something. But all I had was the haunting knowledge that sometimes, the people who swear they love you the most… are the ones who leave you bleeding without even looking back.
I had to do something. Anything. I couldn’t sit in my childhood bedroom forever, haunting myself with old voice notes and what-ifs. So I started walking. Aimless, slow, bundled up in my oversized coat with the hood up and my headphones in. I’d wander for hours. Through town, through fields, down streets Ihadn’t walked in years. Just me and the sound of my boots on the pavement. Me and the ache in my chest. Me and the cold air, sharp and clean, clouding into little ghosts every time I exhaled. I found strange comfort in it. It helped me think. Or helped me stop thinking—I’m still not sure. But either way, it helped.
As Christmas crept closer, something inside me began to shift. Not all at once. Not in some dramatic, cinematic breakthrough. Just… a quiet thawing. The sharpness dulled. The grief stopped feeling like a blade and started to feel more like a bruise—still tender, still there, but no longer splitting me open. It lingered like a shadow, but it wasn’t the only thing in the room anymore. And slowly, other things started creeping in. The sound of my own laughter, unexpected and real, cracking through the fog over cheap pints in pub gardens under plastic heaters. The smell of roast potatoes crisping in my mum’s oven, like she was trying to cook the sadness out of me with goose fat and rosemary. Even Baileys in hot chocolate started to feel like its own love language. Warm, familiar, a little bit indulgent—maybe I deserved a bit of sweetness again. And for the first time in what felt like forever, I didn’t feel like I was pretending to be okay. I was still hurting. Still healing. But I could feel something blooming in the pain. Hope, maybe. Or the version of me I thought I’d lost.
I even went on a date. A guy I’d met briefly in Spain messaged me out of nowhere. He said he was also home for the holidays and asked if I fancied catching up. I agreed. Big mistake. He picked the loudest bar in town, wore jeans that were way too tight, and kept calling me “baby girl” like we were in some kind of budget mafia romance. By the time I got home, I ordered a kebab and cried laughing on the phone to Cherry about it.
She couldn’t believe everything I told her about Jay. Well, actually, she could. But she didn’t say that. She just listened.
“He’s a ghost,” I said one night. “It’s like I was in a relationship with a fucking mirage.”
“I knew something was coming,” she admitted gently. “I just didn’t think he’d disappear like that.”
“Yeah, well. I always liked the dramatic ones.”
She laughed, that sharp Cherry cackle that made me feel sixteen again.
She and Tommy were living together now—in some annoyingly perfect, flash apartment in the city. Granite countertops, floor-to-ceiling windows, the lot. She was glowing. Annoyingly smug. But I couldn’t help being happy for her.
