magdelena 'del' rhodes
man, it's all been forgiven. swans are a-swimmin'. i'll explain everything to the geeks. all the very best of us string ourselves up for love.
“hey, so not to totally be a nosey nancy or anything, but that silver fox in the corner over there has been very boldly checking you out for the last twenty minutes,” april offers coyly, attempting some semblance of subtlety as she nods at nearby voyeur. “you could be their long lost relative and they’ve come to offer you millions —— or they’re building the courage to ask you for a drink. not a bad thursday night either way if you ask me.”
.
del has spent the last twenty minutes alternating between checking her phone – nearly dead – and nursing her beer – already warm. in another life, she may have been the kind of person who was capable of walking into a bar alone and making friends. in this one, she had learned the bartender’s name, and failed so completely at looking busy that she started to skew toward looking like she was stood up. when someone spoke, her eyes widened slightly, trying to match the other woman’s subtlety in her sidelong glance. the look, she quickly reasoned, was not for her. her present company seemed like the far more likely possibility. del let out a breath of laughter, shaking her head. “i like your optimism,” she started, small grin curving her lips. “but he kind of looks like my high school algebra teacher. all yours, if you want him.”
MAIKA MONROE, CIS WOMAN, SHE/HER – There goes MAGDELENA ‘DEL’ RHODES checking into the Golden Motel. The THIRTY year old is a CLERK AT PAGETURNERS from HILLTOP, OH. I think they are WELL-MEANING but I heard that they can also be DUPLICITOUS. ROOM 110.
(trigger warnings: death, car accident)
a true cautionary tale of parents staying together for their kid, only to the absolute detriment of everyone involved. growing up, her whole life had been a sort of pretending. a one-man show for an audience of none. she saw the life she wanted in classmates, saw the parents she wished for in the drop off and pick up zones. so she pretended they were hers. she had always been good at losing herself in another life.
her parents did love her, she thought. they just had difficulty navigating that love in their hatred for each other. her mom liked to take her to movies after school sometimes when her dad came home early. her dad took her for ice cream whenever her mom was out later than either of them expected, and drove around until magdelena fell asleep in the car. it wasn’t until she was older that she realized he was hoping she would be too tired by the time they got back to their double wide to hear the subsequent argument through the paper thin walls. he wanted it to work so badly that del pretended it did.
she found real solace in a neighbor. a boy next door called eric. eric, the first person to tell a young magdelena that her name sounded like an old lady, and declared that he was going to call her del. she let him, and by the end of their first summer as friends, she barely answered to anything else from anyone.
eric was her best friend, and she’d spent most of her life being in love with him. del always thought he knew – thought there would be a day when she finally worked up the courage to say it. they were always together, the two of them. all through school, where there was eric, there was del. he punched her first boyfriend when he caught him kissing another girl under the bleachers. when her dad died, eric was the only one who was able to reach her. he took her for ice cream, ordering rum raisin – a flavor she’d always hated as a kid, but had been her dad’s favorite. after, he drove them around until his car ran out of gas. pushing the old corolla up the hill was the first time del laughed since he passed, tears streaming down her face until she was no longer sure what emotion was pouring out of her.
they went off to the same college, his u of o acceptance letter hanging on her wall, and hers on his. everyone assumed they would end up together one day, even as they both protested. she wondered if her objections rang more hollow than his. nothing had ever happened between them – nothing more than holding hands in the way kids do on the playground with someone they met only moments ago. that was alright by del. she suspected one day she would be the best man at his wedding, and when she smiled, she would mean it.
but eric left her, too. the summer after graduation, he was killed in a car accident. it was on impact, she’d been told. like it was supposed to lessen her grief. like there was anything inside her that could find comfort in a world without eric. he had been eleven days older, and by nature, eleven days wiser, he’d insisted when they were kids. the twelfth day after he passed was the hardest – the day magdelena rhodes became one day older than eric would ever be. she was just twenty-two, and the only person who had ever really known her was gone, and all she had left of him was a sweatshirt that was starting to smell more like her and less like him.
it was on the twelfth day that del did something that would shape the rest of her life going forward. she found a support group online. a tiny little forum where a group of lost people tried to navigate their grief together. she felt like a person outside of her body when she started to type – watched herself build someone new in the hollow place del had once filled. she watched as lena rivers took shape, a photojournalist from boulder who lost her fiancé. she hadn’t expected to need her for long, this fictional woman who let her hide in her shadow. someone who was brave enough to say everything she’d choked on. someone who wasn’t afraid. against her better judgment, in her clawing desperation, del made a friend. it was after the first time they stayed up messaging back and forth all night that she should’ve told the truth – but she didn’t. even as their IMs turned to texts, and texts turned to calls. even when their messages were the only thing that got her out of bed some days – even when they crawled out of their grief together.
it took del eight years to decide it was time for the truth. in a moment of uncharacteristic boldness, she backed herself into a corner she couldn’t get out of. she quit her job at the library in hilltop, and she packed her car to go to new orleans. passing through, she’d said. it had been what she intended, anyway. she booked a room at the motel with no hard out, picking up the first job with books and a ‘now hiring’ sign.
still, she hasn’t found the courage to send the ‘i’m here, let’s meet up’ text. one step at a time.
FUN DUMB STATS:
Birthday: June 30, 1992
Zodiac Sign: Cancer ☉ | Cancer ☽ | Libra➶
MBTI: ISFP
Enneagram: Type 2
Temperament: Melancholic
Moral Alignment: True neutral
Element: Air
WANTED CONNECTIONS:
person she’s been catfishing for the past eight years
