Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was really fucking weird, being in Juliet’s house without being with Juliet.
Then again, everything about today – about the last week, for that matter – had been weird.
Juliet had given Darcy a tour of her whole house, from opening all of the doors on the second floor, all the way down to the music studio in the basement.
She’d put her suitcase in the immaculately clean, well-appointed guest room.
Then, they’d tried to talk about their thoughts for their song.
She’d noticed that Juliet took out the notebook Darcy had given her because she’d written her notes in it. And Darcy just about melted, which had also come with a sharp pang, deep inside. She’d managed to keep it together and, as she’d said, be professional.
Irritatingly, Juliet hadn’t been wrong. They didn’t work so well together when they weren’t on the same page. They’d called it a night relatively early, deciding to try to go into tomorrow with clear minds, and start early in the morning.
She’d taken a long, hot shower. She’d called Emerson and word-vomited all of her thoughts. She’d poked around every nook and cranny in the guest room Juliet had set her up in. And still, when she’d laid in the luxuriously comfortable bed, she hadn’t been able to fall asleep.
She’d come down to the kitchen to make herself some tea, familiar with Juliet’s set up in here. Because she’d made tea in the morning, after a night of perfect, restful sleep in Juliet’s bed.
Where Juliet probably was curled up and sleeping like an angel right now.
She breathed out a long, wistful sigh, as she poured the boiling water into her mug.
“What are my clothes doing here?” Juliet’s voice, clearly worked up, came from behind her.
Darcy startled, jumping back and sloshing the literally boiling water out of the kettle so it splashed up out of her mug, hitting her hand. “Fuck!”
The water spilled onto Juliet’s counter and dripped down to the floor, where she barely managed to get her bare feet back out of the way before she burned those, too.
In an instant, Juliet was next to her. She’d grabbed a dishtowel and reached out to take the kettle from Darcy, quickly setting it back on the stovetop. “Are you okay? Did you get burned?”
Even as she was asking Darcy for the answer, she’d taken Darcy’s hand in hers and lifted it up, examining it carefully.
“It’s fine,” she muttered, wincing through it, as she tried to tug her hand back.
Juliet shot her a dark look, briefly but firmly tightening her grip. “Just stay still.” Still holding Darcy’s hand in hers, she moved to start walking toward the sink.
When Darcy didn’t fall into step with her, she turned to shoot her a baffled stare.
Darcy lifted her eyebrows. “You said to stay still.”
“Oh my god,” Juliet breathed out, narrowing her eyes. “Walk with me. Just – let me, okay?”
Darcy didn’t have it in her to pull away. Even though, “For the record, I’ve been injured a lot worse than this at the bar.”
She used her uninjured hand to point at the faded two-and-a-half-inch scar over the palm of her burned hand, the one that Juliet now had under room temperature water from the sink. The water, admittedly, felt heavenly.
And so did Juliet’s hands on hers, being so… gentle. She’d zeroed in on the spot on Darcy’s hand that had already turned red and would likely start to swell a little. Though she didn’t touch that skin directly, she made sure to target it under the water.
“You hurting yourself worse than this isn’t exactly the winning tale you think it is,” Juliet shot back, but her voice didn’t have any real heat in it.
“I didn’t hurt myself,” she corrected. “The idiot I was working with shoved his box cutter at me with the blade out when I asked to borrow it.”
“Well, I hope he got fired,” Juliet muttered, her eyes narrowing.
“He did not,” she assured with a long-suffering sigh. “Well, not for that. He was giving a lot of free drinks to women, so that did the trick.”
Juliet narrowed her eyes. “I have aloe in the fridge.”
“Juliet, I’m really fine.”
“It’s going to be really uncomfortable when you’re playing guitar,” Juliet mused, her eyebrows furrowing with obvious concern. “You’re going on tour next week.”
And… despite the wringer of emotions Darcy had gone through regarding Juliet this past week, she couldn’t help but soften. So, she allowed herself to indulge in it. She let Juliet bring her to the wooden bench at the kitchen table, then put aloe on her hand, and then a Band-Aid.
“Sorry,” she quietly apologized as Juliet’s fingertips gently pressed down the adhesive edges, her touch making Darcy shiver. At Juliet’s questioning glance, she explained, “If I woke you up. I figured it would be fine to come down to the kitchen.”
“It is fine to come down to the kitchen.” Juliet sighed, leaning back slightly where she sat straddling the bench, facing Darcy. “You didn’t wake me up.”
She bit at the inside of her cheek, looking down at her hand.
Flexing it, testing out the pain level. It wasn’t too bad; she’d experienced a lot worse at the bar multiple times over the years.
Broken bottles, drunken elbows being swung around without any depth perception, the time someone had bumped into her when she’d been cutting the citrus slices. She’d probably be fine for the tour.
Juliet huffed out a sigh, garnering Darcy’s attention. She aimed an intent look at Darcy as she asked, “So, how have you been sleeping? I mean… Jukebox Calamity is officially a hit. That should lessen the anxiety you’ve had.”
Her tone was definitely weird. Like she was trying to sound normal, but Darcy knew all of Juliet’s real “normals” now, and this wasn’t.
She considered the tack Blythe had encouraged her to do. Blythe had been very intense about Juliet all week, and she’d given Darcy her full permission to “do something that would even piss Eliana off.”
Darcy definitely didn’t want to do that; she’d fallen into Eliana’s good graces ever since she’d started hooking up with Juliet and she wanted to remain there.
“Not well. And not because of the anxiety,” she admitted, the words slipping up and out of her mouth, even though she’d told herself that she wasn’t going to do it.
But how could she sit here and avoid it? How could they do what they needed to do – to write a song together from scratch, to dig deep – and avoid their personal shit?
They couldn’t, and she’d been kidding herself to believe it was possible at all. She and Juliet hadn’t avoided a single landmine since before they’d ever even met. They left no stone unturned.
Juliet hummed, narrowing her eyes. “I thought you didn’t want to get into this.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I don’t know what I want,” Darcy found herself snapping back, before she took a sharp breath, the aching feeling in her chest returning and gentling her words, “Other than… it really hurt. You talking to me like I was someone you don’t even know.”
To know that Juliet was capable of it, even, without blinking an eye. That was something she’d been grappling with all week.
She stared at Juliet closely, taking her in. Taking in how her skin was glowing from her bedtime routine, but… she looked tired. Taking in her the tightness in her expression and her posture, even under her silk pajamas.
“Why did you bring my shirts down here?” Juliet asked, repeating the question that had started this whole mess of a late night.
Her gaze was laser-sharp, trained onto the arm of the sofa, where Darcy had put the small stack of folded shirts she’d stolen from Juliet over the last couple of months when she’d come downstairs.
She’d felt like they were mocking her from inside her suitcase.
Darcy followed her stare, swallowing heavily. “Because I was going to leave them there for you. Don’t worry, it’s all been laundered.”
“I don’t want that,” Juliet stated, forcefully – almost petulantly – swiftly turning to face Darcy again.
“You didn’t want me to wash your clothes before giving them back?”
Juliet glared at her. “I don’t want them back! You’re a little thief, and I like it that way. Clearly. Why are you giving them back?” She demanded to know, the tension vibrating through her body as she stared Darcy down.
“Because…” She trailed off, searching Juliet’s eyes with her own. Those dark eyes were so dark, blisteringly intense. “I can’t sleep with you, anymore. It’s not meaningless or impersonal to me. At all.”
Wasn’t that a part of Juliet’s little rules, anyway? If she caught real feelings, it would be over? Maybe it wasn’t, but it should be. Because she couldn’t think of anything with more potential to be messy and painful.
She swore Juliet smiled – right? – before she squeezed her eyes tightly closed, shaking her head, no trace of a smile to be seen.
Darcy didn’t even realize she’d inched forward where she was also straddling the bench facing Juliet, until their knees brushed.
At the contact, Juliet’s voice seemed to creak out of her throat in the quietest whisper, “It’s not meaningless or impersonal to me, either. Okay?”
Her heart skipped a beat, before starting to pound in her chest faster and harder. “Okay,” she breathed out, and… god, she wanted to celebrate that. She wanted to take the relief that gave her and run with it.
But could she? Because what did that mean?
“Juliet, I don’t know what I’m doing here.
You know that,” she let out a breathless laugh, feeling completely out of her depth.
“I don’t know what the hell to do with that.
Does that mean we keep doing what we’ve been doing?
Does it mean you feel like you have to treat me like someone you don’t even know when we’re in public, now? Because I don’t – I can’t do that.”
Darcy wasn’t the actor that Juliet was, and she didn’t want to be.
Juliet’s hands were on her thighs, and she could see how hard Juliet was digging her fingertips in with how they turned white.