Kiss of Death | Bo Chow x OC
an: if y'all like this I split it up into parts (I had planned to do that anyway)
Clarksdale, Mississippi — Summer, 1932
The train screeched like a dying hog as it pulled into Clarksdale Station, kicking up dust and judgment in equal measure. Delilah stood before it in a pressed cream traveling coat, cinched at the waist with a dark leather belt that matched her heeled Mary Janes. Her hat sat low, casting a shadow over her brow, but it couldn’t hide the Harlem in her. Not her posture, not her perfume. She smelled like northern freedom and southern trouble.
Delilah had always been light-skinned if you were nice about it. High-yella, if you were anybody she had grown up around. they used to call her behind her back and sometimes to her face. She had the kind of beauty that made people talk sideways: dark curls pressed into soft waves beneath her hat, red lips lined just so, eyes rimmed in something smoky that wasn’t coal dust. She looked like money. She looked like sin. She looked like she’d changed.
And she had.
Delilah gathered her two leather suitcases under her arms, the one on the left a tad more hefty than the right—money, dirty and thick and folded into silence. A Harlem man’s money. A dead Harlem man’s money. A man who learned too late that Delilah never played house unless she planned to burn it down behind her.
The walk from the train station to her childhood house was long and hot, but she didn’t complain. She never had. Cypress trees reached out like they remembered her. The wind stirred with a familiar groan. There was nothing left of her mother’s garden, only tall grass and dry patches, but the porch still stood, sagging under the weight of ghosts.
She unlocked the door with the spare key still hidden under the third step and walked inside, greeted by dust and memory. Everything smelled of old wood and regrets. Her room upstairs still had the flowered wallpaper and chipped vanity mirror. She dropped her bags and, after making sure every curtain was drawn, pulled the money from its hiding place.
She didn’t trust the walls, so she unscrewed the back panel beneath the floorboard near the hearth—where her mother used to hide her wine during prohibition—and tucked the envelope deep inside. She kissed her teeth and pressed the board back into place. “Ain’t nobody finding that but the devil,” she whispered.
By sunset, she was walking the red-dirt road back into the Delta heart, passing cornfields and swamps, her stride long, her skirt swaying like jazz notes in a humid room. She wore a soft yellow dress—bias-cut satin with thin straps, a slight plunge at the chest, and a hem that flirted with her calves. Her heels left half-moon prints in the earth.
The new juke joint, Smoke Stack Lightnin’, sat just off the old railroad, its grand opening promised for that night. It buzzed like a live wire. They said the twins—Smoke and Stack—had put their whole souls into it. Painted it red with bootleg money, stolen alcohol, and blues prayers.
They were outside when they saw her.
“Well, I'll be damned,” Stack hollered. “Ain’t that High-Yella herself?”
“Delilah DeVaughn. Back from Harlem like a bad dream,” Smoke added, whistling low.
She smirked and hugged them both. “Y’all still runnin’ your mouths before your brains catch up.”
“Still runnin’ this town too,” Stack said, pulling a cigar from behind his ear. “You comin’ tonight?”
Delilah smoothed her dress. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Preacher Boy Sammie stood on the porch, one foot still tapping to a silent rhythm. “You back for good? Or just to haunt the walls like your mama?”
Delilah tilted her head. “Maybe both.”
Inside, Mary and Annie saw her next—older now, but still sharp as tacks. Annie grabbed her hands, Mary just rolled her eyes and muttered, “Mm. She still think she better than the rest of us.”
Delilah only smiled. “Ain’t better. Just different.” It took Mary a moment but she returned the smile. Annie gathered her into a hug and for a moment she felt safe.
And then came him.
Bo Chow.
He stood near the shadow of a cypress, smoking slow, shirt open just enough to make a woman forget her own name. His eyes tracked her with the same hunger Harlem men had. But his smile? That wasn’t Harlem. That was hell.
He didn’t speak at first. Just took her in like he’d never seen flesh move so sweet.
“You didn’t write,” he said finally.
Delilah tilted her chin, defiant. “Wasn’t much to say.”
Bo took a slow drag and exhaled through his nose. “You came all this way just to stir the dead?”
“No, sugar,” she said with a dangerous lilt. “I came to see who was still breathin’.” Before she knew it was late in the afternoon and Delilah had made herself comfortable on a sack of rice. As dusty light danced through the small windows Delilah unashamedly watched as Bo stood by a crate of canned goods, scribbling in a ledger. There’s a quiet rhythm to the moment—the clink of glass bottles, the whir of a ceiling fan, the low hum of the radio playing gospel in the next room.
"You ever think about leaving this place, Bo?" Delilah had asked so politely but Bo knew better. It was more innocent than polite.
Bo paused in his writing and smiled wryly, "Every other Tuesday. Ya just got back you plannin' on leavin' us already?" Delilah chuckles—soft, a bit surprised. She fiddles with her necklace, eyes wandering to the shelf lined with soy sauce, tea tins, and cornbread mix.
"Only Tuesdays?" Delilah scrunched up her nose playfully as Bo heaved out a labored sigh. "That’s when the shipments run late and the roaches think they own the flour bin."
Delilah giggled and then gave her own sigh and she gazed at Bo with a newfound appreciation and with the love that still stood their for ages. "Folks around here—don’t always say it out loud, but we see you. You treat us decent. That’s rare currency these days."
Bo finally looked at her and made his way towards her sitting on his own sack of rice across from her. He rubbed the back of his neck contemplating his next set of words. "Grace used to say the same thing. Said we’re not just selling rice and vinegar. Said we’re buying time."
Bo talked about her like she was dead when she really wasn't. She was still across the street serving the whites but the way they avoided each other now, you would have thought they had the plague. They had split a little over a year maybe two if her sources were correct.
Delilah tilted her head at him and Bo wanted to sink into the rice. "Time?"
"Time for folks like you and me to breathe before the world catches us again. She believes in…small mercies."
Delilah looks at him for a long beat. The walls are thin in Mississippi—between races, classes, lives—but here, in this room, they both seem to exhale.
"You ever get scared, Bo?" The man with the golden skin scanned Delilah’s face before answering, "Every morning I open that front door."
Delilah in turn smirked at that, "One of the many things we got in common, Bo."
A pause. The radio cuts to static. Bo frowns and taps the machine. They both glance toward the front of the store—something feels…off. A flicker of unease passes between them.
"Stay a little longer, Delilah. Stay for as long as you can. Just until the sun finishes falling." Delilah knew that plea of his had a hidden meaning he didn't want to say. God forbid a man begs for something from a woman in broad daylight.
But in the end like always she indulges him. She nodded slowly, gaze steady, voice low. "I ain’t in a hurry to meet the dark tonight."
