11. Darcy
11
DARCY
I woke up in a strange bed and took a long moment staring up at the ceiling as sunlight seeped in through a window to figure out just where I was. When I felt a slight ache in my knee, yesterday came rushing back.
I was married.
To a man who was currently nowhere to be found.
I sat up so fast it made my head spin. The dizzying sensation wasn’t helped by the sudden intrusion of my mom’s voice crisply telling me that a good wife should never sleep later than her husband. She should rise with the sun, groom herself to perfection, and prepare her husband’s breakfast before he got up.
Well, the sun had risen it had left my tangle-haired, drool-smeared self behind. The one thing I’d been taught how to be my whole life – a proper wife – and I was already failing.
I lurched out of bed, resolving to make up for lost time.
My homeworld of Terratribe II was largely an agricultural planet. My father may have been a politician, but I knew enough farmers to understand that, even with the assistance of robots and tech, they got up ass-crack-of-dawn early. Fallon didn’t seem to have any special technology around to help him, so I had no doubt he’d already been up and at it for a while now. I wondered if he’d skipped breakfast. If he had, I could at least make it for him now.
But when I stumbled into the kitchen, I stopped short.
There was a plate laid out for me at the place I’d been sitting yesterday. Slowly, I inched up to it, staring down to find what looked like two pickled eggs and a slice of some sort of alien bacon.
In the shape of a face.
A smiling face.
There was no sign of Magnolia being up yet, so this had to have been Fallon’s handiwork.
Instead of waiting for me to cook for him, my husband had put two eggy eyes and a bacony smile on a plate. For me.
Was this man for real? Was he actually this happy all the time? What the hell was his deal? I shook my head, mystified but smiling a little bit despite myself.
“Don’t give me that look,” I sternly told the plate. I snatched up the bacon smile and shoved it into my mouth.
By the time I was finished eating, had visited the outhouse beside the house, and had gotten dressed for the day, Magnolia was awake and venturing out of her bedroom.
“How did you sleep?” I asked. I grabbed her a plate from a cupboard and then quickly realized I had no clue where the food in this house was. Huh…
“Really well, thank you! And thank you again for hosting me. I hope I’m not intruding. I’m sure you guys want some alone time…”
“It’s fine. Believe me,” I said.
She gave me a bit of an odd look.
“I mean, I’m just so glad to help out,” I said quickly, hoping it didn’t sound weird. “The whole Oaken-not-showing-up-thing really sucked.”
“Yeah…” She looked so disappointed. For a second, I wished Oaken was the one promised to me. It would give me some breathing room and then Magnolia wouldn’t have to wait around for the husband she so very obviously wanted. But then, that would mean she would be the one married to Fallon. And the idea of somebody else marrying Fallon, even someone as lovely as Magnolia, made my stomach feel kind of wonky.
Must have been the food. Stupid smiley bacon.
“It will be alright,” I told her awkwardly, not sure what else to say to cheer her up. “And, of course, you can stay here as long as you need.”
She smiled, but it looked more like putting on a brave face than actual happiness.
After discovering a door into a cold cellar where most of the food was, I filled Magnolia’s plate.
“I don’t suppose there’s coffee here,” she said with a wistful look around the kitchen.
“Oh. Shoot, I don’t think so,” I told her. “At least, I didn’t see any. Sorry.”
“No worries,” she said, rubbing her eyes a little after she finished eating. “You don’t miss it?”
“Coffee? No. My mom never had it in the house. She said caffeine would prematurely age me,” I explained with a roll of my eyes.
Magnolia’s brows rose.
“You haven’t told me a lot about her, but dang. Your mom is kind of a hard-ass, huh?”
“Hard-ass doesn’t even begin to cover it,” I said flatly, taking her plate to the sink.
When Magnolia retreated to her room to unpack and spend some time reading on her comms tablet, I rolled up my sleeves, tied back my hair, and got to work.
I started with the floors. The kitchen wasn’t bad, considering it had been swept last night when I broke that plate. So I didn’t bother sweeping it, instead filling a small bucket with water. I couldn’t find anything that resembled a mop, and there certainly weren’t any bots to help out, so I got down on my hands and knees, dunked a spare rag, and started scrubbing.
Fallon was probably right. Maybe this was a pointless exercise and the floors would get dusty again tomorrow. But it felt good anyway. I hadn’t done anything remotely useful for him yet, and I was satisfied that at least I’d contributed something to this household so far.
By the time I was done the kitchen, hallway, and the bedroom I (and presumably Fallon, though I wasn’t sure) had slept in, I was sweaty and the bandage on my knee was all nasty and soggy. I peeled it off, hoping Fallon wouldn’t freak out too much. I wasn’t bleeding anymore, so I went ahead and tossed the old bandage in the fireplace without getting a new one.
After the floors, I stripped the bedding from the bed I’d slept in, including a beautiful – though slightly faded – quilt. I plunged the sheets into a fresh bucket of water to soak, but decided against trying to soak the heavy quilt because it would probably take forever to dry. Instead, I hung it over the back porch railing in the sunshine and used the handle of the broom to give it a few good whacks.
I went back inside, looking for my next project to tackle. I had to hand it to Fallon. For one guy keeping this whole place running on his own, the house was pretty neat and orderly. But there were neglected places here and there, and I threw myself at them with a vengeance. I wiped windows, polished counters, dusted shelves and ledges and corners. I finished washing the bedding, hung it out to dry beside the quilt, then opened the bedroom window to air everything out.
Hell yeah. I was a cleaning fucking machine. Killing this wife shit.
By that point, my stomach was growling. Knowing that Fallon had been up hours before me and that he hadn’t yet come back to eat, I decided to put something together for him and track him down outside. After poking my head in on Magnolia and making sure she knew she was welcome to anything in the cellar that she wanted, I grabbed his plate and headed out.
In all honesty, I should have seen it coming. But I’d never had a dog of my own before, so what the hell did I know?
I’d only made it a little ways beyond the porch with my plate of food for Fallon when Sora, apparently lured by the siren song of meat meant for somebody else, came barrelling around the corner of the big barn ahead.
There was no escaping her and certainly no saving Fallon’s lunch. She bowled me over, giving me hot, happy licks all of my face before she started rooting around in the dusty grass for the snacks she’d sent tumbling.
“Sora! Goodness freaking gracious!” I cried, unable to hold back my laughter at her enthusiastic chomps. “It’s a good thing I adore you and that you’re so stinking cute, you menace.”
I stood up and brushed myself off, noting the way the reddish dust was already staining my clothing. Guess I’m doing my laundry next.
“Darcy!”
Another big, cute creature was loping towards me at top speed now, although this one was blond-haired instead of black-furred.
My heart gave an odd little trill at the sight of Fallon sprinting towards me with such a big, goofy grin on his face. And I wasn’t even holding his lunch anymore. So I guessed that big smile was just for me.
“Hi,” I said, feeling oddly shy when Fallon came to a stop. “Sorry. That was meant to be for you.”
“You brought me food?!”
The man looked absolutely delighted. So thrilled with my meager effort. It was like I’d just told him I’d come out here to give him a lap dance rather than offering him a slapped-together plate of cold food from his own cellar that was now covered in alien dog drool.
“Of course,” I replied, a little taken aback by his innocent excitement. “It’s the least I could do. Especially after you put breakfast out for me.”
He beamed, his long fangs glinting in the sun. They looked absolutely lethal and somehow weren’t frightening at all.
“You found it? Good.” His eyes took on a tender white glow. “You need protein to recover from your injury.”
My injury. My God.
“Um. Yeah. Thanks. I also couldn’t help but notice that the food looked very, uh, happy to see me.”
Fallon looked real fucking proud of himself.
“That was a representation of my feelings since your arrival,” he said, chin raised and without a hint of embarrassment. “A self-portrait, since I could not be there to greet you this morning.”
A self-fucking-portrait.
Between this and the porn doodles, he’s a bonafide Van Gogh…
Sora, having powered through Fallon’s lunch like a champ, was now looking for more. Or maybe just looking for pets. Her shaggy black body pranced back and forth in front of me, tongue lolling out. Unable to hold back a smile, I knelt down and vigorously scrubbed her neck and behind her ears.
“You’re very good with her despite never having had a hound,” Fallon remarked, bending down beside me to join in the Sora lovefest. His big body was very close to mine, his bare arm brushing my shoulder.
“I’ve always loved animals,” I admitted.
I blinked. I’d never told anybody that before. There had been no point in telling my mom. She refused to have any sort of animal in the house because of potential messes or hair on the furniture. Telling my mom, or even my father or sisters, that I loved or wanted or hoped for something was always a surefire guarantee that I’d never get my hands on it. Ever.
“How come you never had one of your own? Since they exist on your homeworld?”
I risked a sideways glance at Fallon, wondering if, like I’d come to expect from those closest to me, he was looking to exploit some kind of vulnerability. But his big, handsome face was innocent and open, his eyes darkened from the white I’d seen before.
I stared into those eyes, suddenly entranced by the warmth of the shimmering colour I saw there. His eyes were a rich, dark brown all the way through, with lighter veins branching out from the centre. The exact colour of…
Terratribe II maple syrup.
What are the fucking chances.
“I did have a pet once. Kind of,” I found myself saying. I was shocked at myself. I’d never told anybody about Maple before. “She wasn’t a dog like Sora. She was a cat. I don’t know if you have anything like that here.”
“The word does not translate.”
I waved my hand dismissively. “That’s ok. They’re furry and four-legged like Sora, but a lot smaller and more skittish. They’re super cute. We brought them to Terratribe II from Old-Earth when we first colonized there. Anyway, I found a really young one on the back edge of our property and brought her inside one day when I was sixteen.”
Brought her inside secretly, knowing my mother would lose her goddamn mind if she found out. Which, of course, she did.
“I named her Maple,” I went on. “For the colour of her fur. She was such a tiny little thing. I had to hand feed her.”
Fallon looked right at me with those maple eyes, straight into my human fucking soul, and said, “Why did you not bring her with you? I would not have objected. If the warden is amenable, I will pay to have her transported here.”
No.
That was my immediate, internal response to my guileless husband’s generosity. Instant rejection. That sort of kindness just didn’t make sense. My own mother, when she’d come into my room and found Maple, had immediately dumped her outside somewhere while I’d been at school.
I looked for that cat every single morning and night for an entire year.
“I… I don’t have her anymore,” I said, hating the way my voice wobbled. God, it was only my second day here and I was turning into a complete fucking cry-baby. What was happening to me?
I stood, trying to create some distance between Fallon and me. But the big orange lug just stood right up beside me.
“I’ll go get you some more food,” I mumbled, snatching up the plate from the dust and retreating into the house.