The Ballad of Darcy and Russell

Chapter 3

It was still warm outside, but not too hot. It was August in Nevada, but we were north enough that we weren’t getting true desert heat—it had been warm during the days at the festival, but it had gotten really cold at night. The second the sun had gone down, the temperature had dropped, so much so that I’d been grateful for Romy’s insulated sleeping bags and ended up sleeping in a long-sleeved T-shirt both nights.

“Well,” Russell said, turning in a circle. “Huh.”

I followed suit, looking around. I could see now—in a way I hadn’t been able to tell from the highway—that Jesse must be in some kind of basin or valley. Because we were surrounded on three sides by mountains. They were dotted with green trees—and just looking at them, you could imagine, not too long from now, when they would be white-capped and covered with snow. We’d been able to see some mountains in the distance at the festival—but it was nothing like this.

But despite how gorgeous the scenery was, this didn’t translate to the area outside the bus station. We were at the end of a paved road—I could see the highway just over some fencing, cars zipping by on it. The station had a parking lot with a few scraggly trees planted in the medians between the rows of painted lines. Across from us was a Mobil, and I was momentarily hopeful that we might be able to find a charger there before I realized that there were weeds growing around the pumps, and that the little mini-mart was boarded up. This clearly hadn’t been a functioning gas station in a while.

“What do you think?”

I looked and saw that Russell had walked over to a brown sign that read VISIT JESSE, NEVADA! And then in smaller letters under it, PROSPECTING MUSEUM! HISTORIC DOWNTOWN!

“I think whoever made this sign really likes their exclamation points.”

“I think more signs should do it. Get you really excited about merging ahead! Or exiting right!”

I laughed. The sign pointed to the left, down a paved, dusty road that ran between the bus station and the gas station, away from the highway. “Let’s check it out. I can’t say I’ve ever been to a prospecting museum before.”

“It’ll be a first for me, too.”

We started walking down the road together. There was a sidewalk near the bus station, but it ended when we passed it, and then it was just the road with its yellow line, faded in places. There was nobody else out that I could see, and after having spent the last three days surrounded by more people than I’d ever seen in my life, it was giving me a bit of whiplash.

I glanced over at Russell. There was so much I suddenly wanted to say—so much I wanted to ask—that I wasn’t sure where to start. He looked back at me, one eyebrow quirking up, and I wondered if he’d just had the same thought. “So.”

“So,” he echoed, smiling at me.

I cast around for what to say next. I wanted to just get to the point where we’d gotten all of the small talk out of the way, and we’d talk about…

I realized, startled, that I actually didn’t know how this worked. In all my movies, you never actually heard the getting-to-know-you conversations. They were usually covered in a montage, with some pop song playing over it, and by the end of the montage, everyone was firmly in love.

We were kicking up dust with every step, and I looked down at Russell’s white Chucks. “I’m worried about your sneakers.”

“My sneakers?”

“I mean, aren’t they going to get dirty?” They were gleaming white at the moment, including the laces. How had he managed to keep them so clean during the festival? It felt like everything I owned was covered in a fine layer of dust.

“I don’t mind. I’ll get to take home a souvenir of historic Jesse, Nevada.”

“Still.” I shook my head. “Maybe it wasn’t the day to wear Converse.”

Russell looked over at me with a grin. “Fun fact! Okay, so—”

“Wait—did you just say fun fact?”

He blushed, which I was actually kind of glad to see. It meant that I wasn’t the only one getting embarrassed and turning red around here. And somehow, it made him seem more approachable—not just a guy with perfect teeth and shoes who had everything together. Someone who’d just said fun fact and whose ears were currently bright red.

“Um. Maybe? Never mind.”

“No, it’s good. It’s cute.” A second later, I wondered if I should have said that. It was like I’d just said the quiet part out loud, admitted why we were both out here wandering around together on the pretense of trying to find a charger. Or at least that was why I was out wandering around with him. But I was hoping that he liked me, too. He did, right? Otherwise, why all the eye contact and door holding?

And more than that—it was just a vibe I was getting. A sense from him that he was as aware as I was about the space between us, and when it widened or narrowed. How I was suddenly so much more tuned in to my hands and how near they were to his and how I could have reached out to him without even extending my arm all the way. I didn’t think my stomach would be regularly swooping and dipping—as though I were on a roller coaster only I could see—if he wasn’t feeling some of this too.

He shook his head. “My friends are always making fun of me for them.”

I couldn’t quite suppress a giggle. “For your fun facts?”

“Yes! Just like that. That’s just what they do. In fact, Tall Ben—”

“Sorry, Tall Ben? That seems to imply the existence of Short Ben. Or at least Medium Ben.”

Russell laughed, then took a breath, like this was going to be a story. “Okay, so there are two Bens. We’ve all been friends since fifth grade. And when we were younger, Tall Ben was really tall.”

“I mean, I should hope so. Otherwise it’s false advertising.”

“Well, keep that in mind. It becomes relevant later. So there we were. Russell and the Bens—”

“Excellent band name—”

“But then in eighth grade, Regular Ben started to grow really tall. And now he’s the tallest of all of us. He’s like six inches taller than Tall Ben. But at that point, you can’t just go around changing people’s names. Tall Ben was just Tall Ben.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, we decided to look at it like Starbucks. Where tall is actually the shorter drink.”

“Or you could call the other one Benti.”

Russell burst out laughing, like I’d surprised him. “Oh man,” he said, shaking his head, still smiling as he slung his bag around and unzipped it, took out his phone, and unlocked the screen. “That’s great. I’ll have to tell them—”

“Your phone is still charged?” I asked, surprised.

He looked at it and shook his head, then dropped it back into his bag. “Just died.”

“Sorry about that.”

“You should be. The pun was so good it made me use the last of the battery in an attempt to share it.”

“Well, I’m glad you liked it. Just like the Bens and your facts, my best friends always complain whenever I pun too much.”

“These are the twins?”

“Yeah, Katy and Didi. Because…” I hesitated.

“What?”

“Well—I kind of make a lot of them,” I confessed as I played with my Silverspun bracelets, hoping this wasn’t a deal-breaker. “Didi is always saying how a pun is a joke nobody enjoys. Katy kind of gives me a little grimace whenever I make one, like she’s acknowledging something happened, but nothing good. And my ex, Alex, said every time I made one, I was somehow causing him to get less funny.” Russell laughed. “But I can’t help it! It’s how I was raised.”

“How you were raised?”

“Well, my dad’s in advertising. So it was just the coin of the realm in our house. Puns, wordplay… you need to be good at them to come up with taglines and product names, so it just became second nature. It wasn’t until much later that I realized most people not only don’t find them funny, but actively dislike them.”

“Fools. Ingrates.”

I grinned. “Thank you.” The fear I’d had—that we wouldn’t have something to talk about—was gone. Why had I been worried? This was fun. It was easy, like I’d always known it would be when it was right. We walked a few steps in comfortable silence before I realized something and turned to him. “Wait, what was the fun fact?”

“It’s really okay.”

“No, I want to know! You can’t just dangle a fun fact and then not deliver on it. Fact, please.”

“See, now there’s been all this buildup. It can’t possibly deliver.”

“Um, I think I’ll be the judge of that.”

He looked at me with a half smile, and I smiled back, just reveling in how… right this felt? Like we were throwing a ball back and forth without having to talk about what sport we wanted to play or what the rules were. Just like we both automatically knew. “It’s that Chuck Taylor was an actual person. Converse were essentially invented by him. He was a shoe salesman and part-time basketball player.”

“Whoa.” I thought about my own Chucks—cute, but with practically no support, and not a shoe I ever would have exercised in. “People used to play basketball in those?”

“Converse used to be the official shoe of the NBA! They were huge in the sixties and seventies. In fact, they were basketball shoes before they were… I don’t know…”

“Walk-around shoes?”

“Exactly.”

I slowed, then stopped as I looked around. “I think this might be it.”

“I think you’re right.”

We were at the beginning of a street, what another brown sign—the same style as the one near the bus station—proclaimed as HISTORIC DOWNTOWN JESSE! EST. 1865. On either side, there were low one- and two-story buildings lining the street. They were made of dark red bricks or wood, and seeing this long street—with the mountains rising up behind them—made me feel like I was suddenly living inside one of the many, many Westerns my dad had made me watch over the years.

We started walking down the street—and I could see that most of the buildings had the raised or curved sections above them that screamed stereotypical Western town, like we’d just wandered onto a movie set. But it didn’t look like any of the buildings were general stores or saloons any longer. Some were boarded up, but most seemed to have current businesses in them—A Touch of Class beauty salon, Jesse Chamber of Commerce, This That Resale Emporium. But exactly none of these currently looked open. We passed the Prospecting Museum, which was next to the Stagecoach Souvenir Store—both closed. I realized it was getting later on a Sunday, and it maybe didn’t seem like Jesse was the most happening town to begin with, but still.

We were walking down the center of the street—while there were a few cars parked in front of meters, there was nobody driving, so it felt like this was safe. I found I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d wandered back into another time. The iconography of all the buildings and the mountains rising up all around us were familiar in a way I hadn’t been expecting. It could have come straight out of Unforgiven—except with lines on either side of the road for cars to park, and fire hydrants, and no Clint Eastwood looking for revenge.

“So when they said historic,” Russell said, “it seems they meant it.”

I felt a thrill, deep in my bones, that he’d been thinking just the same thing I had. “I mean, it was right there on the sign. We should have believed them.” I looked around, struck by the quietness of the street. “It’s weird to see it like this, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just—these buildings are probably the original ones! From, like, a hundred years ago, right? In the middle of whatever boom created this town?”

“Gold?” Russell asked, then frowned. “Wait—was gold just California?”

“I… don’t remember. My fourth-grade teacher would not be happy.”

“Did you do the Gold Rush in fourth grade? I’m pretty sure that’s when we did the Spanish Missions.”

“We did that in sixth. I remember it well, because I did a whole presentation in the style of a heist movie, and I called it Missions: Impossible.” Russell laughed, throwing his head back, and I smiled, feeling something warm spread through my chest. “My sixth-grade teacher was not a fan. She called my dad and everything.”

“That sounds amazing. I want to see it.”

“I threw it out. Like, so long ago.”

“Well, that’s just wrong. It should have been preserved for pun posterity. Did you use the Lalo Schifrin music?”

“Uh—maybe? Is that who did the theme song?” Russell nodded. “Then yes. That’s very impressive.”

“What is?”

“That you know the guy who did the music.”

“I heard a lot about him growing up, believe me. It was…” He stopped, and pointed to the side of the street. There was a storefront—dark, of course, advertising something called Silver State Adventures. From the illustrated sign, it looked like it booked mine tours and trips to a nearby hot spring. “So it must be silver, right?”

“This is the problem with having a dead phone. I can’t Wikipedia Jesse, Nevada.” I took a step closer to the store and looked in the window. “But it seems like this town must have popped up in a silver boom? They’re advertising mine tours of something, after all.”

“And I don’t think there were gold mines, were there? Wasn’t it just… people finding gold in creeks? What’s it called—panning?”

We stared at each other, our shared lack of California mineral knowledge becoming clear to both of us. “But… the term gold mine has to come from somewhere, right?” I asked.

“You make an excellent point.”

“And Nevada had to be the Silver State for a reason, right? And that’s why California is the Golden State?”

“I thought—I thought we were the Golden State because of… like, sunshine?” He stared at me, his eyes wide. “Have I gotten this wrong my whole life? I feel like I need to rethink everything.” I laughed at that, and Russell smiled, like he was joining in.

We kept walking down the quiet street, and I tried to imagine what it would have been like 150 years ago, before the (closed) vape store existed, when things would have been at their peak. I tried to picture a town so bustling it couldn’t even have imagined an afternoon this deserted. “It’s funny.”

“What is?”

“Just being here. It’s… like a place out of time, you know?” I was finding my thoughts even as I was speaking them. “I’m just thinking about all the people who would have come here. The ones who showed up from other places, ready to begin again… find a fortune and start over. Become someone else, someone nobody back home could recognize.”

Russell nodded slowly as he looked around—it seemed like he was turning my words over in his head, which I liked. Like he wasn’t just jumping in because it was his turn to talk.

“But that being said, I don’t think we’re going to find an iPhone charger here.”

“I don’t think we’re going to find a telegraph charger here.” I laughed at that, and Russell grinned at me. “Ready for another fun fact?”

“Am I!” I said, making my voice comically enthused. The second after I said it, I worried that Russell wouldn’t get that I was kidding, like my ex, Alex, never seemed to. But he just smiled wider.

“It’s not exactly related to telegraphs—but it’s in the wheelhouse of old-fashioned phones.”

“I’ll allow it.”

“So in the 1940s, people used to call the phone the Ameche.”

“The Ameche?”

“Yeah. The actor Don Ameche had played Alexander Graham Bell in a biopic, and so it became what people said instead of phone.”

“So what you’re saying is that we’re looking for an Ameche charger?”

He looked over at me, a smile forming on his face. “Exactly.”

“That is a fun fact. How does one even come to be in possession of a fact like that?”

“There was this musical about ten years ago—The Game of Telephone. Do you know it?”

“No. But that’s not saying all that much. I only know, like, three.” I meant this as a kind-of joke, but Russell had gone stock-still, his face grave.

“Seriously?”

“Um. Yes? I saw Hamilton at the Pantages. And I’m pretty sure The Music Man, too…” Russell was still looking shocked by this, so I tried to think of any I’d seen put on at school. “Um… the one with the cats?”

“That’s Cats. And that should not be one of your examples. How is this possible?”

“We weren’t big on musicals in my family, I guess. Do Disney movies count?”

Russell shook his head. “No.”

“Oh. Um—sorry. I didn’t realize this was such an issue.”

“It’s not—I apologize. I know I can get a little… It’s what I want to do. Musicals. To write them, I mean.”

“Oh!” His reaction was making more sense now. “That’s so cool. Like Lin-Manuel Miranda?” I was pulling out literally the only musical composer I knew, but hoping it would still get me some credit.

“Yes! Him, Sondheim, Jeanine Tesori, Pasek and Paul, Michael R. Jackson, the Lopezes… it’s my favorite art form.”

“That’s really great.” I took a breath to ask him if he’d be studying it in college—but then a second later, stopped myself. Because I suddenly realized I didn’t know if he was starting school this year, like me.

I’d assumed he was around my age—but there was a possibility he was already in college. Or not in college at all. Or, more distressing, that he was a really mature-looking high school sophomore. I was all at once aware of the knowledge gulf between us, one that hadn’t seemed to have been there with the fun facts and the puns. I didn’t even know where he was from.

But was it such a big deal? In so many of these stories, it didn’t seem super important. What mattered was how you felt. After all, Maria and Tony didn’t know anything about each other before they were declaring their love and inadvertently starting a gang war. “West Side Story!” I burst out triumphantly. Russell raised an eyebrow. “Sorry. I just thought of another musical I know.”

“That did kind of come out of nowhere.”

“I think it came out of somewhere.”

He just looked at me for a second, and then his face broke open in a smile as he got the joke. “I can’t even believe you just said that.” His eyes were on mine, and his face was full of wonder. “Who are you?”

“Darcy,” I said, my voice coming out a bit strangled. “Like the song.” My thoughts were spinning in every direction, and if I’d been in a musical myself, I had a feeling this would have been the moment I would have burst into song.

Calm down. And maybe get some basic facts about this dude,Didi advised, her tone dry.

Unnecessary,Katy insisted, sounding swoony.

We walked in silence for a few paces, and I tried to think about the best way to do this. I was realizing that most of the time when I’d met someone, there had been context. I was usually meeting someone through school, or through a friend—and either way, I had something of a backstory sketched in. I’d almost never just encountered someone out in the world like this, not tethered to anything. The two of us could have been anyone, from anywhere. And while I liked that idea in theory, it also meant I wasn’t armed with baseline facts. But I wasn’t sure how to go about getting them. I didn’t think I could just demand How old are you and where do you go to school? without building up to it a little.

After a moment of silent deliberation, I finally asked, “Are you—studying musicals in school?”

Russell looked down at the ground for a moment. I was about to ask the question again—maybe he hadn’t heard me, or was still reeling from my lack of composer knowledge—but then he turned to me and took a breath. “I am. I got into the musical theater BFA program at University of Michigan. I start next week.”

“Oh, that’s awesome.” I was secretly relieved that he was clearly around my age, and couldn’t help thinking that it was just one more sign that this was meant to be happening. Out of only five people at the bus station, two of us were the same age and had this kind of connection? It meant something.

It means teenagers are more broke than adults,Didi said skeptically.

Ignore her,Katy said with a sigh. It totally means something.

“What about you? Are you going to college?”

My stomach sank, the way it always did when I thought about what would be happening in about a day and a half. “Yeah. I’m going to Stanwich College.” I tried to sound like a normal incoming freshman would, excited about going to school—like Russell had just sounded. I tried not to think about what it would actually mean when I showed up there, or about the note on the brochure that had been sent to me. I pushed all that away and took a breath to begin my explanation, which always seemed to be necessary, since most people on the West Coast hadn’t heard of a tiny liberal-arts college in a nothingburger state. It’s in Connecticut. About an hour outside New York City. Yes, it will be a big change in weather.

“In Connecticut, right?”

“Yeah—you’ve heard of it?”

“My—Montana, a friend of mine, knew someone who went there. She talked about it a lot.”

I nodded, trying to pretend like I hadn’t even noticed that my. I just silently hoped that he was talking about his ex and not a current girlfriend. Because otherwise, would he be out here with me right now? Would my heart be pounding this way if he wasn’t feeling something too? I decided this Montana had to be his ex. It didn’t make any sense otherwise.

“That’s a long way from home,” Russell said, then frowned. “Wait—where is home? I assumed LA, because of the bus, but…”

“LA,” I confirmed, a little bit shocked that we’d gotten this far without establishing this. But I also kind of liked it. It was like, for once, I wasn’t being defined by who I was or where I went to school or the people we had in common. Like I could just be. “We’re in Raven Rock. Me and my dad.” Russell didn’t say anything, which wasn’t that shocking. A lot of people hadn’t heard of our town, a tiny, peaceful pocket in the northeast corner of the city. One main street, farmers market every Friday, and more frozen-yogurt shops than made any rational sense. “It’s about as far east as you can be in LA without crossing into Pasadena. College of the West is there. Basically,” I said with a laugh, falling back on the analogy I’d heard my dad use more than once, “picture Brentwood. Then take away all the assholes, drop down a few tax brackets, and that’s Raven Rock.”

Russell looked down and frowned and I wondered if he’d just noticed how dusty his Chucks had become. “I think I’ve been there,” he said, sounding distracted. “There’s that hot dog place, right?”

“Walt’s?”

“I think so? With the pinball machines?”

“Yes! That’s the one.”

“It was so good.”

“It really is… wait, where are you from?” Was there a chance that he lived in Glendale or Highland Park, just a few towns over from me? It didn’t seem possible. I felt like I would have heard tell of him—this cute, smart, pun-appreciating guy—if he’d been anywhere near my orbit. Russell stopped, stared down at the state of his shoes, and sighed. “I did try and tell you.”

“You did.” He looked up at me and shrugged. “Ah well. There’s something kind of creepy about too-perfect sneakers anyway, don’t you think? Like you can tell they’ve just been boxed away and never worn.” He frowned, like he was trying to call something to mind. “Sorry, you asked me something?”

“Where you’re from.”

“We live in Ojai,” he said, naming a town two hours’ drive outside LA. “Me and my mom and dad.”

“Ojai there,” I responded immediately, which was the joke I made basically when anyone said the name of that town. “Sorry. I bet you’re sick of hearing that.”

“You get used to it. It’s practically the town motto.”

“I can’t believe you live there.” I’d only been once, two years ago, when my dad and I went there to attend his friend Dave’s second wedding. But it had immediately seemed magical—the rolling green hills; the tiny, perfect downtown; the outdoor bookshop; the people riding around on beach cruisers. All at once, I could picture Russell there—biking through downtown, the breeze ruffling his curls.

And the fact that he lived in Ojai meant we definitely didn’t know any of the same people. A second later, I realized how much I liked this. I didn’t want to play who do you know. I didn’t want to find out that Russell knew Katy’s former soccer teammate or Didi’s ex-girlfriend’s sister. We were in a historic downtown in the middle of Nevada, late in the afternoon on a Sunday, with the most beautiful mountains I’d ever seen surrounding us. There was nobody else around, and in the light that was just starting to fade, it seemed like maybe we were the only two people on Earth and that all of this had been conjured just for us.

“So have you always been in Ojai?” He looked over at me and I shrugged. “It just seems like a long drive for hot dogs.”

“I mean, they were really good hot dogs.”

“This is true.”

“We’re in LA occasionally—I think my mom had read about Walt’s somewhere and wanted to make a pilgrimage. But yeah, it’s just the three of us in the same house I grew up in.” He laughed. “Pretty boring, huh?”

I shook my head. I could see it—Russell riding his bike up to a cute cozy cottage, a perfect small-town life. “Your parents are still married?” I wasn’t quite able to keep a note of something—envy? longing?—out of my voice when I asked this.

“Yes,” he said, then hesitated. “I mean… kind of? They’re still together, but they weren’t ever technically married.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure what to say to this. Russell looked over at me and laughed, then started walking again. I fell into step with him, our feet falling at the same time, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“They thought they were. They were on this boat, and got married by who they thought was the captain, but then later they found out it was just a random waiter who didn’t have the authority to marry anyone.”

“I’ve always thought it’s so weird that sea captains have the authority to marry people.”

“You’ve always thought that?”

I laughed but kept going. “Yes! Like, why is it this one job in transportation that gives you this power? Why not train conductors? Or bus drivers?”

“I have never thought about it. Unlike you, who has always thought about it.”

“I stand by what I said!”

“I guess…” Russell tilted his chin up, looking at the sky, like he was thinking. “Maybe it’s because sea voyages used to be really long? And it’s not like on trains, where you’d be stopping in places where there would be ministers or rabbis or judges or whatever. So it was more necessary.”

“But these random ship people couldn’t wait until they got back on dry land? They had to be married in the middle of the ocean?”

“I don’t know. I mean, if you met someone on a ship—and you fell in love—maybe you wouldn’t want to wait. Maybe you’d want your life with that person to start right away.” He turned to me and something about his expression made my heart stutter again.

“I can see that.”

“That’s what my parents thought, at any rate.” I took a breath, to ask more about his parents, what they did, when he turned to me. “What about you? You live with your parents?”

“My dad,” I said with a smile. “It’s just the two of us.”

Russell’s expression suddenly became more careful. “Is—is your mom…?”

“They’re divorced.” I could see that he was waiting for more of an explanation, which I was used to by now. When a mom was the primary care parent after a divorce, nobody thinks anything of it. But when you tell them you’re being raised by your dad, everyone feels entitled to answers, some reason this is all happening.

I thought about going into all of it—but what was the point? It wasn’t even like it was a good story.

My parents met when they were both in college—she wanted to be an actress, he wanted to be a writer. They got married in a courthouse ceremony so Gillian could get on my dad’s insurance—he’d gotten a job at an advertising firm, something to pay the bills while he wrote his novel and she auditioned. They were planning on having a proper ceremony at some point in the future, but that never happened, because a year later, I came along.

The fact that my parents had me when they were twenty-four meant my dad was a lot younger than most of my friends’ parents. Didi and Katy thought it was weird I helped my dad’s best friend organize his fortieth birthday party. “Our parents were older than forty when we were born,” Katy had pointed out.

My dad always said this was part of the problem—that they had been too young to become parents. But whatever the reason, when I was two, Gillian left, going off to pursue an acting career. Since things hadn’t been working for her in LA, she wanted to be free to try her luck in New York, then London. And then five years after she left, she married a British guy. She ended up having three kids with Anthony—pronounced the British way, Ant-ony, like the h was just there for decoration. I saw her intermittently throughout the years, but not often. And people would sometimes make sad faces when they heard I didn’t have a mother, but I’d really never minded it. I barely ever thought about her, and we didn’t keep any pictures of her around. The wedding pictures and early photo albums had, since I could remember, always been boxed away in the attic. The only picture of Gillian I had was in a shoebox under my bed, and I didn’t feel the need to look at it much. You can’t miss what you’ve never had, after all. I’d also never had a dog, or a motorcycle, but nobody seemed to get all upset about that.

The last time I’d spent more than an hour or two with Gillian was when I was seven, and she was performing in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Since then, the times I’d seen her could be measured on one hand, and never very long, the two of us making stilted conversation at slightly too-nice restaurants. She sent me Christmas and birthday presents that I always opened last, alone in my room—knowing that they would be just a little bit wrong. And even when she moved back from London last year, it wasn’t like I wanted or expected anything to change. If it had been up to me, I would have been happy never seeing her again.

But then, this year, it had become very clear that it wasn’t up to me at all.

I looked over at Russell, lit by the fading Nevada sunlight, and I realized the last thing I wanted to do was bring Gillian into this. She didn’t belong here, and a bare-bones CliffsNotes version was all she warranted. “She moved to London and got remarried. They have three kids.”

“Oh!” He smiled at me. “You have half-siblings?”

“Uh—yeah. I guess.” I’d only met Gillian and Anthony’s kids once, at a very awkward dinner a few years ago. Their oldest daughter, Freya, sometimes tried to message me on Instagram, but I hadn’t ever accepted her requests. It wasn’t like we were going to become some happy blended family, so there wasn’t any point. “I don’t really know them,” I said now, shrugging one shoulder like it was just no big deal. “They mostly grew up in London.”

“Heck of a commute.”

“Exactly.” I looked over at him and smiled. “What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“I’m the only kid my parents had. Which was really nice, in a way. It was just the three of us, so I didn’t have to compete with anyone for attention.”

“Yes! Like with me and my dad—we became a little unit.” He gave me a nod of recognition that I thrilled to see. “It did always seem fun to have a big family, though. My friend Maud has three sisters, and her house is always busy and crowded and loud… but in a good way?” I shook my head. “I guess we’ll never know.”

We walked in silence for a few steps, and I could see the end of this street ahead of us. I wasn’t sure what would happen when we reached it, and slowed down a little, even though we weren’t walking that fast to begin with. “Is everyone telling you to prepare for the change in weather?” Russell frowned and squinted up at the sky, and I shook my head. “Sorry—not this weather. I mean, because you’re going to Michigan. Ever since I told people I’m going to Connecticut, all they’re doing is telling me I’m not going to be able to handle East Coast winters.”

“I know! And it’s not like we don’t have weather here. It does get cold in California occasionally. We’ll be fine.”

“Well—I’ll probably be fine. Michigan seems like a whole other level of cold.”

He laughed. “I think I can handle it. I’ve spent a bunch of time in Colorado, and it can’t be that much worse, right?”

“So in addition to fighting off frostbite, you’re going to be writing musicals? At Michigan?”

Russell nodded, his whole face lighting up. “Yeah. They actually have one of the best programs in the country. The top ones are USC, Tisch at NYU, Temple University, and Michigan. You have to compose an original musical to get in, and…” He stopped and turned to me, his brows drawing together. “Wait, why were we talking about musicals?”

“… because you’re studying them?”

“No, before,” he said, the furrow between his eyes deepening. “I brought it up for some reason, and then discovered you’d seen zero musicals—”

“Three,” I countered. “At least. Probably more. Um…” I tried to think back. I secretly liked that there was enough of our conversation to sort through—tangents and information and puns about his friends’ names—that the answer wasn’t immediately apparent.

“Sorry. I know this is annoying.”

“No, I’m used to it. My dad is always doing this—he says that his train of thought jumps the tracks, never to be seen again. We spend a lot of time tracing it back, especially when he’s working on a campaign.” I stopped walking and concentrated, trying to find our way back. “Was it about that guy—the one who played Alexander Graham Bell?”

“Ameche!” Russell’s expression cleared, like the sun breaking through the clouds. “Yes! That’s it. Darcy, you’re a genius. I brought up musicals because I was talking about The Game of Telephone. That’s a musical,” he added helpfully.

“Thanks for that.”

“Anyway, it was all about how the telephone came to be invented, and Don Ameche basically functioned as the narrator.”

“Huh.” I was trying to be polite, in case this was Russell’s favorite musical, but I was having trouble imagining something I’d want to see less.

“It only ran for a few performances in the West End, but I always had a soft spot for it. And, clearly, the Ameche fact stuck with me.”

“So you’re all about the facts, huh?”

He nodded. “And like your dad with puns, my dad is to blame for it. He’s obsessed with Jeopardy!. He never misses an episode. When he’s on the road—”

“Wait, what does your dad do?”

“Oh—he’s a structural engineer.”

“Got it.”

“Building bridges, mostly. So he travels a lot. And when he’s on the road he always makes sure to have Jeopardy! recorded. He’s obsessed. He was even on it once—” Russell stopped talking quickly and looked away.

“He was? That’s so cool! Did he win?”

“Yeah. But it’s not that impressive.”

“I think it is. I haven’t seen it that much, but it always seems really hard to me.”

“I promise it’s not a big deal. The other people he was up against were kind of terrible at it. And he gave all the money to charity anyway.”

“Wow. That’s so nice of him.” The picture of Russell and his family that was taking shape in my head—the cozy cottage, the happy family unit—suddenly added another dimension. Now I also knew they were super generous, too.

I mean, maybe. Maybe he only won, like, a hundred dollars,Didi pointed out.

We had reached the end of the street—a lone stop sign and a discarded Snickers wrapper. “I think our Ameches are out of luck.”

“I think you’re right.”

I twisted my hands together. I wasn’t sure what happened now. I didn’t care that my phone wasn’t going to get charged—I just didn’t want this to be over.

“Wait.” Russell turned his head, his eyebrows drawing together. He smiled at me. “Do you smell that?”

I turned where he had been looking and breathed in—the faint smell of meat cooking. “What are… tacos?”

He grinned at me. “Exactly.”