Chapter 22
Darcy.” I woke up and felt Russell’s arms around me. He kissed my bare shoulder and I smiled without opening my eyes.
“Hi,” I said, cuddling back into him. We were under my sheets—we’d tossed the blanket off at some point; I’m sure it was on the floor somewhere—fitted together like two spoons. I sighed and snuggled down deeper into my pillow. Sleep was just around the corner, and I was sure I could fall back into it in just a few seconds. And when I woke up, Russell would be there. How wonderful was that?
“I think we need to wake up,” he said, even though I could tell from his voice he’d only just woken up too. “We should probably get going?”
My eyes flew open—just like that, reality crashed down on me. It was dark in my room, and I sat up with the discombobulating feeling that comes with oversleeping—when you’re not quite sure where or when you are. I looked at the clock on the bedside table—it was nine at night. Which meant I only had half an hour, at most, before I needed to leave for the airport.
“Oh, god.” Russell was absolutely right that I needed to get up and start getting myself organized. But instead, I just lay back down and rolled onto my other side, so I was facing him. I twined my feet with his and just took him in for a second—he was right there, sharing my pillow, his hair sticking up in all directions from where I’d been running my fingers through it. “You’re right,” I said with a sigh. “We should go.”
“Yeah.” He ran his hand up and down my back, letting it rest on my hip. I somehow knew that the second we got up and had to start dealing with the world again—bags, car, airport—all of this would be gone. We were in a tiny bubble, a kingdom we’d made in my room. And when we got out of the bed, there would be conversations to have and things to decide and this magical moment would be over.
I reached across and stroked his cheek, and Russell smiled. “Remember this morning?” he asked.
“Vaguely.” I ran my thumb over his cheek, tracing the constellation of his freckles.
“I said I had a dream about you. And you asked me what it was.”
“Oh, right.” That was when it had seemed so incredibly intimate to see Russell in his bedroom, in his element. And now here he was in mine, with his arm around me and nothing between us. “So what was it?”
He opened his eyes and looked right into mine. “This,” he said with a smile, half disbelieving. “That we were just sleeping next to each other, and I woke up and reached out for you and you were there.”
I wound a strand of his hair around my finger. “That was the dream?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I guess I just thought it would be something more… exciting.”
He turned his head so that he could kiss my hand. “There’s nothing more exciting than this.”
We just looked at each other for another moment, our heads sharing a pillow, and suddenly I wondered—should we have done this just as I was leaving? It had seemed absolutely right and romantic a few hours ago—but was this the absolute worst timing? A beginning and an ending, all mixed up together?
“We should get going,” he said, even as he made absolutely no move to get up.
“Yeah,” I agreed, equally not moving, and he smiled. But then reality hit me like a wave as I looked around my room. My suitcase was half packed on the floor by my desk, and the sheer amount of stuff I had to do in the next half hour was suddenly overwhelming. “I still need to finish packing.”
“For college? You haven’t packed?” A second later, Russell shook his head. “Sorry—didn’t mean for that to sound judgmental. You haven’t packed!” he repeated, now making this sound like a fun idea.
“I guess I thought… if I didn’t pack, maybe I wouldn’t have to go?” I sighed, and grabbed my robe from where it had been flung over my desk chair. “It won’t take me that long.” I pulled open my closet, flipping through my dresses, looking for the warmest ones.
Russell pulled his T-shirt on and stood up, now—disappointingly—dressed. “Bathroom?”
“Just down the hall.” I pulled three dresses off their hangers, almost at random, and dropped them in my suitcase. I grabbed a pile of T-shirts and placed them in my bag, then pulled out pajamas, underwear, socks… with every item I tossed in my bag, it was like the reality of what I was heading to was getting sharper, and the dreaminess of what we’d just had was starting to fade away. The whole last day had been a respite from all of the reality that was now rushing toward me like a wave, all the more jarring because I’d been pretending it wouldn’t happen. But maybe, I reasoned as I threw in a Milligan Concepts sweatshirt and my favorite sweatpants, it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I could even start to see it as an adventure.
“Can I help?” I turned to see Russell leaning against the doorframe, and smiled automatically when I saw him, like a reflex.
“I think I’m okay.” I took my makeup bag off the counter and added it to the suitcase, then grabbed two of my favorite Kelly Tipton novels from my desk and placed them inside too. “Nearly there.” He walked a little farther into the room and I raised an eyebrow at him. “I assume you’re already packed up?”
He shook his head. “You can’t in our house. The cats don’t like it when you take out suitcases, so we all avoid taking them out until the last minute.”
“What… do they do?”
“Unspeakable things. You don’t want to know.”
I laughed at that and started pulling out my jeans. Were five pairs enough? There would also be, I reasoned, stores in Connecticut. Probably.
“You did Mock Trial?” I looked up from my suitcase to see Russell looking at the plaque I’d gotten at graduation.
“Oh—yeah,” I said. “All four years.”
“Huh.” Russell leaned forward to look at it more closely, and I realized that we hadn’t talked much about this—who we were only a few months ago.
“What—I mean, what did you do? At school?”
“I played lacrosse.”
“Lacrosse?” Somehow this didn’t make any sense with the Russell I thought I knew. “Really?”
“Absolutely. And I was in the band as well—I played piano for all the musicals. Guitar, too.…”
I nodded. “Right.” That made more sense to me—but it was like I’d just realized that there was a lot more of Russell than I’d seen so far—like I’d just been downstairs in a house that had whole other wings and rooms. I gave the suitcase one last look, then zipped it up. I was really not sure if I’d packed properly, but I told myself that I could have my dad send me anything I’d forgotten that was essential.
“All set?” Russell crossed over to me and helped me lift my suitcase.
“I think so? Hopefully?” I glanced at the clock on my dresser—if I was going to make it to the airport, I really needed to leave. “I should see how long an Uber’s going to take.”
Russell shook his head. “What do you mean? Of course I’m going to drive you.”
“Oh—that’s so nice, but—”
“Darcy.” Russell shook his head, like this should have been obvious. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh.” I smiled at him, and it felt a little bit like someone had just hit snooze on our goodbye—that we’d been able to push it off, at least for a little bit. “Well—thank you. That’s really nice of you.”
He leaned over and gave me a kiss, and we lingered there for just a moment. “Five stars,” he said when we finally broke away, winding a strand of my hair around his finger. “That’s all I ask.”
Twenty minutes later, I’d gotten dressed and we’d loaded my suitcase into the car. I’d emptied out my canvas bag of the stuff I’d needed for Silverspun and instead put in my wallet, phone, phone charger, laptop, and sweater for the plane. I’d also added my Nighthawks sweatshirt to my suitcase. I wasn’t going to wear it in front of Russell, but I also wasn’t going to leave it behind.
“Is that everything?” Russell asked me as he shut the back of the Bronco.
“I think so.” I dropped my bag onto the seat and glanced back at the house. I knew that time was ticking, but I needed just one more moment. “I’m just going to lock up. Be right back.”
I ran across the lawn and up to the front door—but then opened it and stepped inside. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened by the next time I was in this spot, a semester of college under my belt. Who would I be then? I didn’t even know that Darcy, but in three months’ time, she’d be here. The house would be the same, but I wouldn’t.
I took the stairs up to my room two at a time, and quickly smoothed the covers over my bed, picking up the blanket from the floor. Then I reached under the bed and pulled out the shoebox with the picture of my mother in it. It was the two of us—I was standing on the sidewalk, reaching up for something, as my mother smiled at whoever was taking the picture—my dad, probably. Her hands were holding tight to mine, like she was never going to let me go.
I looked at it for just a moment longer, then glanced around my room. I saw my copy of Theseus’s Sailboat on my bookcase and grabbed it. I tucked the picture inside and headed downstairs.
In the kitchen, I paused. It seemed impossible that a few days from now my dad would be doing his crossword puzzle like usual, only I wouldn’t be there to help.
A line from my namesake song—that I now knew both the true origin of, and that it was my mother who’d helped give it to me—floated through my head. Has there ever been a day when Darcy wasn’t here? Like it or not, starting tomorrow, it would be what was happening.
I grabbed the Milligan Concepts notepad from where it always lived on the kitchen counter, and wrote a quick note.
Thank you for everything.
I love you.
Darcy
I propped it up against the TV—the place where we’d always left messages for each other—and headed for the door. I locked it behind me and rattled the doorknob once to make sure.
Then I tucked the book under my arm and hurried across the lawn to where Russell was waiting by the car.
“Ready?” he asked when we were both inside, ignition on.
I looked back at the house, taking it all in. Trying to freeze it in my mind. The whole time I’d been going through the admissions process, all my recommendations and applications and paperwork, the reality of and then you leave the only home you’ve ever known had somehow not really registered with me. But of course this was happening. There was no other way for it to go—but I let myself feel it for just a moment, this goodbye that was always going to happen, one way or another.
And when I’d gotten my fill, I turned to Russell and gave him a slightly quavery smile, and nodded. “Let’s do it.”