‘Every Year After’ presents a story told in two parts and timelines. In the retrospective past narrative, Percy Fraser is a teenager whose family vacations at Barry’s Bay every summer. This is when her paths cross with the Florek brothers, and she forms a lifelong bond with Sam. A few years in, Percy begins inviting her best friend from back home, Delilah, to these trips, adding a new dynamic to the fold.
Years later, Percy grows into a woman in her 20s, who hasn’t been to Barry’s Bay in years, ever since her brutal breakup with Sam. Yet, a twist of fate pulls her back into Lake Town, where she reunites with the Floreks but also her former best friend, Delilah, who is now a near-permanent resident in the area. Over the years, Delilah has gotten married, which hasn’t stopped her from having an extramarital affair with Charlie Florek. Similarly, Jordie, Sam’s best friend, still continues to carry a torch for the married woman. Naturally, this leaves Delilah’s love life fairly convoluted.
Jordie’s Persistent Crush on Delilah is a Comforting Constant For the Latter
Delilah has always been a charming and beautiful girl who knows the social power that she holds. From their first meeting, at a local bonfire, Jordie remains the ideal manifestation of the various boys who are beguiled by her. Nonetheless, even as a teenager, she only has eyes for one boy: the older Floreck brother, Charlie. As the years pass, not much changes. Delilah marries a man she isn’t in love with, but with whom she makes a smart match. Inevitably, their relationship falls apart, compelling them to seek time away from each other. This is what brings her to Barry’s Bay, where she throws herself into helping out with Sue Floreck’s funeral while vying to gain ownership over her restaurant, The Tavern.
During this time, Delilah also ends up striking up an affair with Charlie, which remains restricted to risky randevouzes and hook-ups. Still, eventually, as past mistakes and the terror of a lonely future creep up on the latter, he begins to wonder if the two of them could have an actual chance at romance. Nonetheless, despite chasing after Charlie all her life, Delilah knows he is not the kind of man she can settle down with. Moreover, he has always been more of a fantasy than a reality she can settle into. In many ways, Delilah herself is the same for Jordie. Although he harbors a lifelong crush on her, there’s no real compatibility between the two. At least not in the way he finds with Chantal, Percy’s new best friend from Seattle.
Therefore, in the end, Jordie ends up with Chantal. However, in the finale, when Delilah sees them together, a peculiar frown overtakes her features. This seems out of place since she has never really shown any outward attraction and affection for the other. Yet, her disappointment isn’t necessarily a reaction to Jordie as an individual. Instead, it’s grief over the loss of what he represents. Despite being fierce and confident, Delilah has always been uniquely aimless in what she truly wants from her love life. She marries the wrong guy for the wrong reasons and gets divorced in her 20s. Afterward, she tries to discover herself by putting herself out in new and scary ways. Through it all, she could at least rely on Jordie’s schoolboy crush on her. Nonetheless, she knows that now that he’s with Chantal, that ship has sailed, perhaps for the best.
Delilah is Queer But Keeps Her Sexuality Unlabelled
Throughout the show, Delilah appears to be a straight young woman whose storylines revolve around the romantic and sexual relationships she has with men. Early into her introduction her crush on Charlie Floreck is established, while the version of her in her 20s is revealed to have a husband off-the-bat. Therefore, there’s no real reason to assume she might be anything other than heterosexual. Nonetheless, in the aftermath of her divorce, when we truly get to see her return to the dating scene, even if for a short while, a different truth emerges. In the epilogue montage, when Delilah, Percy, and Chantal are in a bar in Seattle, the divorcee is seen making out with a woman, presumably her new partner.
Afterward, while Delilah and Percy work on The Tavern, whose renovation they have undertaken as a joint venture, she talks about the future of her love life and includes both men and women as possibilities. Either way, she just seems to be on the hunt for someone who can understand and appreciate her for everything that she is. Therefore, it’s fair to conclude Delilah is either bisexual or queer in a way that involves attraction to multiple genders. Whether or not this is a realization she has had all her life or one she stumbles across after the end of her marriage remains ambiguous. Nonetheless, in the event of a second season, fans can expect her queer identity to become a more prominent aspect of her storyline.
Read More: Every Year After: Is Barry’s Bay Based on a Real Town?
