Everyone has seen them at the gym, at the juice bar, at the Friday night bonfire where Samson lifts the picnic table with one hand and Delilah laughs so hard she almost drops her phone. Everyone texts about Samson\u2019s hair\u2026. How it\u2019s always perfect, how it falls in waves down his back, how it probably smells like coconut and wild honey. Everyone wonders if he uses conditioner, if he\u2019s ever had split ends, if he\u2019s ever been weak.<\/p>\n
Everyone watches Delilah watch Samson. She\u2019s always leaning in, whispering, her nails tracing the edge of his ear, her lips close enough to brush his jaw. Very ASMR. Everyone says Delilah is dangerous, that she\u2019s too pretty, too clever, too much. Everyone says Samson is dumb as a rock, that he\u2019d let Delilah braid his hair and tie him to the bedpost if she asked. Everyone laughs. Everyone has thought about tying Samson to the bedpost at least once.<\/p>\n
Everyone follows Delilah\u2019s Instagram. She posts stories of Samson sleeping, Samson flexing, Samson eating grapes off the vine. She posts cryptic captions: \u201cWhat makes a man strong?\u201d and \u201cSecrets are best kept between lovers.\u201d Everyone screenshots and speculates in group chats. Everyone wonders what Samson tells her in the dark, what he dreams about when his head is in her lap.<\/p>\n
Everyone sees the new post: Delilah, scissors in hand, a lock of hair coiled around her fingers. The comments explode. Everyone says it\u2019s just a joke, that Samson would never let her cut it, that it\u2019s probably a filter. Probably AI. But the next day, Samson shows up at the gym with a hat pulled low, his shoulders slumped. Everyone pretends not to notice, but everyone notices.<\/p>\n
Everyone hears the rumors: that Delilah got a brand deal with a razor company, that Samson cried in the locker room, that someone saw Delilah leaving town in a silver car with the windows down and her hair blowing wild. Everyone says she was always going to leave. Everyone says Samson should have known.<\/p>\n
Everyone sees Samson at the bonfire the next Friday, alone. He doesn\u2019t lift the picnic table. He doesn\u2019t even look at it. His hair is gone, his eyes are small and red. Everyone avoids him, but everyone watches. Someone hands him a drink. Someone else asks if he\u2019s okay. He shrugs. He says he\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n
Everyone waits for the comeback, the redemption arc. Everyone expects Samson to grow his hair back, to hit the weights harder, to post a thirst trap and get a thousand likes. But weeks go by, and Samson just gets quieter. He stops coming to the gym. He stops coming to the bonfire. Delilah\u2019s Instagram goes private.<\/p>\n
Everyone talks about what happened. Some say Delilah was paid off. Some say Samson was cursed. Some say it was just a haircut, that he\u2019ll be fine. But everyone remembers how strong he was, how the ground seemed to shake when he laughed, how Delilah\u2019s hand looked in his hair. Everyone misses it, just a little.<\/p>\n
Everyone knows the story, but no one knows how it ends. Not really. Everyone wonders if Samson will ever come back, if Delilah will ever post another picture, if anyone will ever be that strong or that beautiful again. Everyone tells themselves they wouldn\u2019t have fallen for it, that they would have kept the secret, that they would have been different.<\/p>\n
And lately everyone has been wondering if Samson will show up at the gym, naked except for a ragged towel, and bang on the walls hard enough that the whole damned thing comes down on top of everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone says Samson is dumb as a rock, that he\u2019d let Delilah braid his hair and tie him to the bedpost if she asked. Everyone laughs. Everyone has thought about tying Samson to the bedpost at least once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-zary-fekete"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22763"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23731,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22763\/revisions\/23731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}