Chapter 1
Poison Ivy
Delilah, sixteen years old…
Delilah. Seductress. Temptress. A treacherous woman. These are just some of the meanings linked to my name. But am I any of them? No, not even close. In fact, I might be the exact opposite.
My mother, on the other hand, is a prime example of these meanings.
She’s a complicated woman, who has a lot of ups and downs. She likes to look sexy and young just as much as she likes to yell when she’s stressed. Whether it’s over bills, her job, or the simple fact that she can’t find the right pair of socks, it seems like hollering is her way of letting all the anger out. But the one thing she never refuses to yell about is men. It’s her cardinal rule: Never let men own you—own them.
It’s not like she’s a terrible mother. She puts a roof over my head. Feeds me. Gives me clothes and spare money when she has it. She pays for me to take ballet lessons, even though I know she can’t afford it. We used to do things together too, but then my father divorced her after twenty-one years of marriage because he didn’t love her anymore. Those were his exact words.
She was forty-one. After three months of being divorced, my father remarried a twenty-six-year-old. Then began my mother’s desperate search for her fountain of youth. Metaphorically speaking.
She discovered it in bars, cheap dates, and one-night stands with men half her age. I honestly have no idea how she does it—how she manages to wrangle some of the guys home that she does—other than maybe she’s living a double life as Poison Ivy, a seductress with a potent kiss that stuns men into a delusional state so she can lure them into her bed.
My mother’s not bad looking at all. In fact, she’s sort of mesmerizing to look at, although I’ve never been able to pinpoint exactly what it is about her that’s so striking. Her hair is still its original honey blond, her skin has minimal wrinkles, and her boobs don’t sag. But she doesn’t look twenty-five either, which is around the age of a lot of guys that she brings home. Like the one she brought home last night. He’s young, maybe not even twenty-five, with shaggy brown hair, baby blue eyes, and a decent-looking face. He’s wearing a button-down shirt, slacks, and a red tie, but the fabric is wrinkly and the clothes are too big, like he’s playing dress up in his dad’s clothes.
I study him as he eats breakfast at our kitchen table—my mother always cooks them breakfast the morning after—trying to read his thoughts as he eats his bacon and eggs, trying to figure out why he ended up here. Trying to figure out how she does it: makes guys give her that stupid doe-eyed look, because the only looks I’ve ever gotten from guys are the you’re invisible look, the not-interested look, and the you’re-such-a-good-friend look. To almost everyone, I’m Invisible Woman.
“Delilah, get yourself something to eat,” my mother says, rinsing out the pan in the sink. She’s wearing a silk robe that barely reaches her thighs, and it’s untied, revealing that she’s wearing a lacy nightie underneath that her boobs nearly pop out of. It’s not a big deal to me though. In fact, usually she only has a bra and pair of panties on, so I’m grateful for the nighty. Plus she looks good in it. If I looked like that, then I’d probably walk around in a nighty all the time too.
“Oh, yeah, okay,” I say, tearing my thoughts away from her outfit and reaching for the bacon on the table.
She raises her brow, giving me a suspicious look, like she’s thinking I’m going to seduce the guy she spent the last night with, live up to my name. But I wouldn’t even know how to if I wanted to.
“What?” I ask her innocently, stuffing my mouth with bacon.
She rolls her eyes at me and returns to scrubbing down the pan, while the guy across from me wolfs down his bacon. “It’s nothing,” my mom replies, turning off the faucet. Then she turns around and glances at the clock on the wall. “Aren’t you supposed to be headed to school?”
I look over at the time on the microwave. “I have like fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, but I have some things to do,” she tells me, staring at her latest conquest like he’s the bacon and she wants to eat him up.
The guy looks up at her, ruffling his hair with his hand, and he’s looking in my direction, but at the same time he’s not really looking at me, more like looking through me. I lean to the side, just to see if I can catch his eye and his attention. I fail epically, and in the end he ends up looking over at my mother. And once again I feel insignificant.
It’s like watching a play and my mom is center stage, the spotlights are all on her. Her eyes meet the guy’s from across the room. Lust fills their expressions. I can almost visualize my mom growing vines of poison ivy on her body that slide across the floor and tie around his legs and arms, binding him to her.