The Ballad of Darcy and Russell

Chapter 9

I hadn’t known what to expect from a rock star’s lawyer, but I had not expected C.J. First of all, I’d expected her to be a he, which I was retroactively ashamed of.

Internalized misogyny is a real thing, Didi sighed. It’s something we could all work on.

C.J. was all business, and seemed to speak faster than most people, her words coming out at a rapid clip. She’d walked right over to the table and started pulling documents and a laptop out of her bag, talking over Russell, who was trying to make introductions.

“Not necessary. I assumed you were Darcy,” she said, giving me a curt nod. “How are you?” But she didn’t wait for my answer, just took a seat at the head of the table and took out a phone, already starting to dial it.

“Well—I’m sorry to ruin your night, C.J.,” Russell said, the tips of his ears turning red. “I hope you didn’t have plans.”

She waved this off. “The thing about anniversaries is that you have them every year,” she said, and I saw Russell’s eyes widen in dismay. She placed her phone in the center of the bus-table, right on the A in Starline. “We’re just waiting for my assistant to get on; she’ll be taking notes.”

Russell frowned. “Why?”

“Just so that we can all be on the same page,” C.J. said smoothly. “So that there’s no confusion later… Sarah, are you on?”

“Here,” the same voice I’d heard on the phone outside the Silver Standard piped up. “How is everyone?”

“I feel terrible about all this,” Russell said, glancing down at his watch. “It’s after ten—I’m so sorry to ruin your night.”

“It’s not ten,” C.J. said, sliding on an oversize pair of glasses. “It’s after one Sarah’s time. She’s in my New York office.”

“Oh no,” Russell said, looking horrified.

“It’s fine!” Sarah said through the phone, her voice bright. “I made some coffee. It’s all good.”

“Babe?” a guy’s voice—sleepy and confused—sounded through the phone. “Who are you talking to?”

“Sorry,” Sarah said quickly. “That was just my partner. He’ll… go away now.”

C.J. rolled her eyes at the phone. “Well, take the call in the other room, Sarah.”

“Right!” Sarah said, her voice getting a little higher. “The other room! We totally have one of those. I’ll do that now.”

“Okay,” C.J. said, lifting a legal pad out of her pile of papers and looking from me to Russell. Even though she had a laptop out, I kind of liked to see legal pads being used by an actual lawyer. This was my first encounter with one who wasn’t on TV. “Let’s begin.”

Ten minutes later, we’d gone through all the hotel stuff, and I was hoping that this was getting close to wrapped up. I wasn’t tired yet—somehow—but my stomach was growling, and it seemed like a while ago that we’d eaten the tacos.

“So to recap,” C.J. said, tapping her pen on the legal pad, “You first entered the Silver Standard to use the restroom. Which isn’t trespassing, by the way—the lobby is open to the public, with no signage that the restrooms are for guests only. What you did next is dicier, but given that you didn’t refuse to leave and complied with all that was asked of you, in addition to offering to purchase a room—they’re not going to have much of a case.”

“Really?” Russell asked, relief sweeping over his face. “They’re not going to press charges?”

“Well,” C.J. said, giving a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t have a crystal ball. But I’d be very surprised. The Silver Standard is part of the Pinnacle hotel chain, and your dad has agreed to play three songs at their corporate retreat next month, as well as do an hour of meet-and-greets. So! Everyone is happy.” She paused for a second. “Well—maybe not your dad. But given what you’ve both told me, I think we’re in the clear, and you aren’t going to have to show up for a Nevada court date anytime soon.”

“That’s great!” Sarah said from the phone, speaking around a yawn.

“Sarah,” C.J. admonished.

“Right,” Sarah said. “I’ll get some more coffee.”

“Now,” C.J. said. She set aside her legal pad and opened up her laptop. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Oh,” I said, glancing over at Russell. Wasn’t that what we’d just been doing? “Um…”

“What do you mean?” Russell asked. “Aren’t we done?”

“Almost,” C.J. said breezily. “Just a few more things to clarify and then we can all go our separate ways, as charming as this has been.” She looked from me to Russell, giving us a smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “So you two had quite a whirlwind tonight! Quite the sudden romance.”

I felt my face get hot. As embarrassing as it had been to go over everything that had happened with Russell in my head, I hadn’t realized how much worse it would be to have to talk about it with a stranger in a business suit. And her paralegal, on the phone. (And possibly the paralegal’s boyfriend.)

“Well,” Russell said, and his face was bright red now. He looked exactly how I felt, like he was willing the floor to open up and swallow him whole. “I’m not sure how that’s, um… relevant?”

“Well, your dad pays me to look at all the angles, kid,” she said, giving him a smile that seemed genuinely sympathetic for just a moment. But then she turned to me, and all kindness was gone. Even though it was quite cold in the Saturday Night Falls conference room, I could feel my palms start to sweat. All at once, I knew that this woman didn’t like me—and that she was not on my side. “Now, Darcy,” she said, emphasizing my name in a way I didn’t love. “You said you met Russell tonight at the bus station.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, glancing across the table at him. “I… That’s what happened.”

“You’d never met before?”

“No,” Russell said, sounding as baffled by this as I felt. “We hadn’t.”

“You’re both based in LA,” she said as she pulled something up on her laptop and scrolled down.

“No, we’re not. Russell’s in Ojai…” My voice trailed off as I looked over at him. He was staring down at his hands and I realized that he’d been lying about this, too. “You don’t live in Ojai,” I said, not phrasing it as a question.

“Let me see,” C.J. continued, scrolling on her laptop. “You live with your father, your mother is in England…”

My head snapped up at this, and I looked at Russell, suddenly realizing that he must have told Sarah the paralegal this when he was on the phone with her. For a second I thought about correcting this, but then I let it go. Why should I be setting the record straight when Russell was lying to me left and right? “You and Russell are both the same age, the same grade, and you do have a mutual friend in common, according to your social media accounts, Darcy—Willa Curtis.” I leaned forward to try and look at C.J.’s laptop screen. But the sides of buses are really long, which meant this table was too.

“How do you know Willa?” Russell asked me.

“We volunteered together.” An image of Willa—blue hair, quick laugh, septum piercing—flashed across my mind. It had been a beach-cleanup project, and we’d been paired together. She was from Harvard-Westlake, one of the private schools in LA. Which, I realized a second later, probably meant Russell went there too. Knowing that he was actually a lot closer to where I lived, to people I knew, was making me feel his deception all the more strongly.

“Oh,” Russell said. “Willa’s in my class. Or was, I guess.”

“So not total strangers,” C.J. said with a nod.

“But wait—why are you looking at my social media?”

“Your accounts are public, aren’t they?”

“Well… yes.” I swallowed hard. It had never occurred to me that what I put online would be of any interest to someone who didn’t already know me. It was all so personal and specific—pictures of Didi and Katy. A series in which I reviewed my daily lunch sandwich in a fake French accent, giving them a number grade with wildly shifting parameters. Way too many shots (according to Didi) of the jacaranda tree at the end of our street. Who else would care about these things?

But I truly got now what it meant for my accounts to be public. It meant all the stuff I’d put out there, intending it only for my friends, could be accessed by anyone with an internet connection and an interest in finding out about me. And this lawyer apparently had both.

“Why are you looking into Darcy?” Russell asked. “I thought you were just here about the hotel.”

“My job is to protect the interests—and mitigate the legal exposure of—Wylie Sanders,” C.J. said. “And, by extension, Russell here. And now,” she said, looking at me over her glasses, “we need to figure out where you fit into the picture.”

I blinked at her. “What… what is that supposed to mean?”

“You said you’d never met Russell before tonight. That you didn’t know who he was.”

“I didn’t! He didn’t tell me who he really was. In fact, he told me his dad was a structural engineer, he lived in Ojai, and his name was Russell Henrion.” As I spoke, I was getting mad all over again.

“And you believed this?” C.J. asked. She gave me a smile that clearly said, Nice try, kid. “Because I understand you’re a Nighthawks fan, right? According to a number of public comments you’ve made. As has your father, I believe. It seems like he’s also a fan—Edward Milligan.”

“Ted,” I corrected automatically, then felt my stomach plunge. It was like my dad had suddenly walked in here, which was honestly the last thing I wanted. It was one thing for C.J. to know basic facts about me—it was another for her to be digging up things about my father. Because I hadn’t ever told Russell my dad’s name. I was pretty sure about that.

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” Russell said, staring at C.J. “What’s going on?”

C.J. took off her glasses and folded them, then turned to Russell. When she spoke, her voice was softer, like she was breaking bad news. “While we’ve done a good job of keeping you kids out of the public eye, you still can find information and pictures if you’re so motivated. And Darcy here is an admitted Nighthawks fan.” She turned and looked at me, her expression stony. “Which leads me to believe that she was not as in the dark as she claims.”

“What?” I still felt like I was a beat behind. “You think I knew who Russell was—and pretended not to?”

C.J. nodded, looking relieved I’d finally caught up.

“Why would I—”

C.J. let out a short laugh and gestured around her. Like she was pointing out everything surrounding her—the conference room, the gold records on the walls—and the penny dropped.

“You think,” I managed to get out, my voice a hoarse whisper, “that I was trying to—to trick him?” I could feel my face burn, and I didn’t know how this had happened. I was the one who had been wronged here. He was the one who had tricked me!

“Darcy didn’t know who I was,” Russell said, his voice low and serious. “And for you to imply—”

“Then let’s not imply it,” C.J. said. “We can just say it straight-out. I’m finding it awfully coincidental that a huge Nighthawks fan runs into the son of her favorite rock star and then just happens to lure him into a compromising situation in which she has leverage for a potential financial windfall.”

I closed my eyes for just a moment, like I could make this go away. My mind snagged on the word lure. It wouldn’t stop reverberating in my head. Like nothing else that had happened with Russell and me tonight actually mattered. This lawyer—and her paralegal, on the phone—thought I was someone who had lured him to a hotel pool, not because I’d liked him, but for some kind of payday.

I felt suddenly like I needed to take a shower. The most personal thing that had ever happened to me was being dragged out into the light to be discussed by strangers. It made everything feel tainted. Like if my memories of tonight were on a piece of paper, it had just been crumpled up, and I’d never be able to get the creases out again.

“I didn’t do that.” My voice was shaking wildly, with some combination of anger and shame that was making it very hard to keep things together. And I knew I was about three seconds away from bursting into tears, which was the last thing I wanted.

“Nobody cares about me,” Russell said, and I saw his face was bright red. “They care about my dad, but nobody has any interest in what his kids do.”

On the phone, Sarah let out a quick laugh. “Sorry,” she said immediately. “That was unprofessional. Carry on.”

“Kid,” C.J. said with a sigh, “we’re living in a clickbait world, you know that. The pictures from Mallorca with Montana? You saw what happened there.”

“My older sister,” Russell muttered to me.

I realized two things in quick succession. The first was that—of course—Russell wasn’t the only child he’d pretended to be when he wanted to have something in common with me. And the second was remembering the scandal, and how when it had broken and made headlines, I’d read the story like it was entertainment.

“She was photographed jumping off a yacht that didn’t belong to her,” C.J. explained.

“Naked,” Sarah supplied from the phone. “Sorry—I just thought it might be relevant.”

“One of Montana’s so-called friends took pictures and sold them to DitesMoi,” C.J. said, shaking her head. “And it didn’t matter if anyone hadn’t heard about Montana Sanders before then. All you needed to hear was that Wylie Sanders’s daughter was behaving badly off the coast of Spain to get people to click on the article. Not to mention what happened with your friend, young man, earlier this year.”

I looked over at Russell, who was staring down at the table, his shoulders tight.

“So I hear about this,” she continued, gesturing to me, “and naturally—”

“No,” I interrupted. I could feel the first hot tear threatening to tip over, like it was balanced on a precipice, and I tried to will it back. “I didn’t do anything like that. I wouldn’t.” I crossed my arms in front of me, trying to hold myself together.

“I just—”

“Stop,” Russell said. He sounded angrier, and more serious, than I had yet heard him. “Enough of this. I lied to Darcy about who I was. I was the one who deceived her, not the other way around.”

I saw C.J. take a breath, like she was going to refute this, but Russell kept going.

“We met at a bus station,” he said. “She didn’t know who I was—I didn’t tell her who I was. We were both stranded there and we started talking. We ended up walking around, and getting to know each other…” He took a shaky breath. “We had a really wonderful night. It was… great.”

“That’s so romantic,” Sarah sighed from the phone.

“It really is,” her boyfriend agreed.

“Sarah!” C.J. said sharply.

“Right. Sorry.”

“So we’re done talking about this,” Russell said, a note of finality in his voice. “Nothing that you’re implying happened. Okay?”

C.J. looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “All right,” she finally said. She glanced over at me, and I tried to glare back, but I felt my lip wobble and looked down at the metal, covered by a layer of lacquer, reflecting off the lights in the conference room.

“So can I go?” A second after I said it, I wondered if I even needed to ask permission. Maybe I could just get up, walk out, and start putting some distance between myself and this whole horrible situation. Could she actually stop me?

“One last thing.” She flipped through her papers, then slid something across the table to me, followed a second later by a pen. “I’m just going to need you to sign that.”

“What is it?” Russell asked as I picked up the paper. NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT was printed at the top. My name and address had already been filled in, and there was a little yellow sticky flag on the bottom of the page pointing to where I should sign.

“Standard NDA,” C.J. said, her eyes on me. “If Darcy really has no ulterior motive here, she won’t mind signing it.”

“She doesn’t need to do that,” Russell protested.

“I mean, you’re right,” C.J. said with a small shrug. “It’s totally her choice. Absolutely. But. If she decides not to sign, all the strings we pulled to get you two out of trouble at the Silver Standard would no longer apply to her.”

I looked up at C.J. sharply. “What?”

“We’re happy to help as long as we’re all on the same team. But if we’re not…” She spread her hands, like there was nothing she could do.

“Fine,” I muttered as I picked up the pen and uncapped it with shaky hands. Not telling anyone about this seemed like a great idea, frankly.

“You don’t have to do that, Darcy,” Russell said, looking from C.J. to the phone, like somehow Sarah could help him from her apartment in New York. “If Darcy says she’s not going to talk about it…”

“That’s sweet,” C.J. said. “But we don’t take people’s word for it in my line of work. And I mean, let’s be logical. You two have known each other for—what, four hours? Five?”

I looked across the table at Russell, then away again. Even though it was basically what I’d thought to myself on the helicopter, it somehow sounded worse coming from C.J. Like I’d been stupid to think anything different.

“Four hours isn’t enough to know a basset hound,” she said, “let alone a person. So I think it’s better for everyone to just get it into a legally binding document.”

I shook my head and scrawled my signature on the bottom of the paper. I pushed the paper and the pen back across the table to her and stood up. “I can go,” I said, not exactly phrasing it as a question.

C.J. nodded. “We’ll be in touch if anything comes up.” I was about to ask how, when I realized that she probably had all the information on me that she needed. After all, she’d known my address and my dad’s name and who I’d done ninth-grade community service with. My cell phone number was probably already in one of her files somewhere.

I unplugged my phone, then shoved the charger across the table at Russell. “Darcy—” he started, but I just shook my head.

I grabbed my bag and walked down the conference room hallway, the way we’d come in. I no longer wanted to stop and look at every single thing in the trophy cases and on the walls. I felt like I’d just seen behind the curtain—the machinations of how someone got to stay this successful, this long. They hired lawyers who were available late on Sunday nights to make problems go away. And who cares how it made people feel? This—this empire, everything hanging on the walls—was what needed to be protected. Not something as insignificant as someone’s feelings.

I reached the lobby area, and saw the elevator where we’d come in. I looked around, then spotted a door a little farther down. I hurried toward it, pushed through into the cool night air, and took a deep, shaky breath.

My feeling of relief to be out of there only lasted a second, though, as I looked around and realized I didn’t know what to do next. I was on a flagstone path, with gravel in between the paving stones. There were small, subtle lights lining the walkway. Toward the right, I could see the main house, the one I’d spotted from the top of the helipad.

I glanced to the left and took a few steps in that direction. There was what looked like a small parking lot and a long driveway that presumably led out to a road that would finally get me out of here. Could I just go? I didn’t have my stuff, but my phone was at least a little charged now. Maybe I could just leave my duffel behind. I wasn’t sure if there was anything in it that I desperately needed, or that couldn’t be replaced. If it meant I didn’t have to stay here any longer, I was willing to give it all up.

But I’d only gone a few steps before I remembered the tent—the one I’d borrowed from Didi and Katy. It was somewhere in the house, and I couldn’t go back to Raven Rock without it.

I turned and began to walk in the direction of the main house. I wasn’t thrilled about knocking on Wylie Sanders’s door and demanding my stuff back, but I was also just done. I’d been insulted and humiliated and pressured into signing a legally binding document. If there was one more embarrassing thing to get through tonight, so be it. Anything to get me out of here, so I never had to see—or think about—any of these people ever again.

“Darcy.”

I turned around and saw Russell standing behind me. “I’m so sorry about that.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know… I thought it was just going to be about the hotel. I never thought that she… she would…”

“Well, she did.” I hated that my voice was shaking again, that I felt like I was going to cry.

“But I don’t think that,” Russell said quickly. “And I’m sure my dad doesn’t, either. He just pays her to do stuff like that.”

“Oh, well in that case, it’s fine. That makes it all better.” I walked a few steps away, fighting back the tears that were threatening to spill over, then turned back to him. “So you live in Ojai, huh? Only child? Structural engineering?”

He stared down at his feet. “We used to live in Ojai. And my dad always wanted to be a structural engineer. He still talks about it sometimes. Says he’s still building bridges—just the musical kind.”

I shook my head, not about to be charmed by any of this. “You could have told me the truth, you know. Even if you didn’t want to tell me about your dad, you didn’t have to make up the rest of it. What was even the point of that? Just to mess with me?”

“I’m so sorry, Darcy—”

“Yeah,” I interrupted, cutting him off. “So you’ve said. But since I can’t believe anything else you’ve told me, forgive me if I can’t believe that, either.”

Russell stepped back, a hurt look on his face. “Look, I’ve apologized over and over again. I defended you in there. I don’t know what else you want.”

“I don’t want anything from you!” I snapped. “I just want to go. I’m pretty sure you’ve done enough.”

“Okay,” Russell said, his voice rising. “Sure. I mean, all I did was get us out of a situation where we could be in jail right now. I just got us out of Jesse and back to Vegas. So you’re welcome for all that.”

“You didn’t do anything!” I yelled. “You just called your dad, and he did all of this. Don’t pretend—”

“Would you prefer I hadn’t?” Our voices were coming out raw and angry, overlapping, like we were throwing daggers at each other, pretending we didn’t hurt where they connected. “Did you want to be in jail somewhere in Nevada right now? Just so you can prove some kind of point?”

I glared at him; the logic was making me even angrier. “No.”

“And I wasn’t going to bring it up, but—” He stopped himself a second later, and looked down at the paving stones.

“But what?”

“The pool was your idea!” he said, all in a rush. “You were the one who suggested breaking into it. You were the one who wanted to swim—”

“So this is my fault?”

“Oh, did I not make that clear? Of course it is! Who else’s fault would it be, Darcy?”

I swallowed hard, feeling my cheeks flame. “Okay, fine, but you could have said no. You do have some choice in this matter. You didn’t have to go along with it, you know.”

“Well, I did! Because I liked you!”

It was like we both heard the past tense at the same time. And I knew that it shouldn’t have bothered me—I was leaving! I never wanted to see this guy again!—but that didn’t change the fact that it did.

“Well, then I’m sooooo sorry. Clearly, this is all my fault. What was I thinking? And I’m so grateful for your celebrity dad, and his millions of dollars, and his lawyers, coming in to rescue us. Thank you so much.” I spat out the last word.

Russell nodded, folded his arms, and looked away.

I folded my arms too. I was breathing hard, already regretting some of the things I’d said.

“Right,” he finally said, his tone cool. “Sure.”

“I just want to go home.”

“So what’s stopping you?” It was like Russell was trying to sound tough… but not quite pulling it off.

“Well. My stuff has disappeared. And I don’t know where I am, or how to get out of here.”

“Your things are in the house,” he said, nodding down the path. “And if you want to leave, we can get you a car into Vegas. But you could also stay in one of the guesthouses.”

Oneof the guesthouses. The phrase seemed to hang in the air between us for a moment, and he must have heard it too, because the tips of his ears turned red and he looked down at the ground.

“That’s not necessary.” I decided I was going to be formal and businesslike and just get through this. It was the same way I’d handled any conversation I’d had to have with Gillian in the run-up to school starting.

“Fine,” Russell said, matching my tone.

“Fine.”

“This way.” He pointed toward the house and started walking down the path. He was striding fast, not slowing down or waiting for me like I knew he would have done earlier tonight. But who cared? I didn’t need for him to wait for me. In fact, the faster we got to the house, the faster I could get out of there.

But as we got closer, I slowed, then stopped short—shock piercing the red fog of my anger.

It wasn’t like I’d never seen nice houses before. We lived in Los Angeles, the land of impressive homes. But I’d never quite seen anything like this.

The garage looked more like an airplane hangar. The house itself seemed to sprawl on as far as I could see. It was a mix of dark wood, steel, and glass, like a cabin crossed with a supermodern house—but somehow it worked. It was, above all, impressive. The kind of house that was designed, even though there was nothing gaudy about it, to let you know just how wealthy and important the owner was.

Russell walked toward the front door, still not waiting for me or looking to see if I was behind him. I hurried to keep pace—but then stopped short and just blinked at what was before me. There was a Jeff Koons balloon dog on the lawn. Fifteen feet high, purple, and reflecting the moonlight and the lights that lined the driveway.

The Broad museum in downtown LA had put on a Koons exhibit last year, and my dad and I had gone. We’d both loved the balloon dogs the best, but I had never seen his work outside of a museum. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that you could own something like this. Art that was also in museums, the stuff that everyone else only got to look at for a few moments. But some people got to have it and see it whenever they wanted.

For just a second, I thought about our house in Raven Rock. The way that I could see the neighbors from my bedroom window, the way that my dad and I would sit on the front steps in the morning and wave to all the dog walkers and runners passing by. The creaky stairs and uneven floors. The slightly peeling paint my dad kept promising to get touched up but never actually did. Nobody was ever going to put it on the cover of a magazine. And the closest we’d ever come to having lawn art was when we put out Boney, our Halloween skeleton.

And as I tore my gaze away from the priceless art and climbed the front steps to stand next to Russell—but not too close—I was getting angry and embarrassed all over again. I’d talked to him about loans and trouble paying for college, assuming we were somewhat on the same page. Standing on the threshold of a mansion, I felt just how stupid I’d been.

Russell reached out and knocked on the door. “I went to Silverspun with my dad,” he explained after a moment. “So I don’t have my keys.”

“That was the friend you went with?” Russell gave a short nod, and I realized the fight he’d mentioned must have been with his dad. But I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of asking any follow-ups.

Russell sighed and knocked again, harder this time. “Come on,” he muttered.

“Isn’t that a doorbell?” I asked, nodding toward it, trying to move things along. After all, this house was huge, and the door was probably made of three-feet-thick reclaimed oak or whatever.

“Yeah. It’s—embarrassing.” He winced, then pressed the doorbell—and the first verse of “Darcy” started playing—Darcy, tell me why / a love song ain’t nothing but a lie. It was much louder than normal doorbells.

“Wow.”

“Yep.”

Only a little while ago, I would have made a joke about how it was playing my song. But that moment was over. So I just looked straight ahead and made my plan. Surely Kendrick or Bella or someone would answer the door, and I’d grab my stuff and leave. If I was lucky, I could be heading for the Vegas bus station in under ten minutes. And then this night—and everything I’d gone through—would finally be over. It could move to the past tense, as opposed to something I was still in the middle of, struggling to get my bearings.

I took a breath, about to suggest Russell ring the bell again, when the door was flung open.

“So.”

I blinked at the man who’d opened the door. He was barefoot and dressed all in black—black jeans, black leather belt, black cashmere Henley. He had on a huge, chunky silver watch, and rings on four of his fingers. He had long silver hair and was taller than I’d expected.

Wylie Sanders was standing in front of me.