Chapter 7
“My arrrrm. Get offfffff.” Darcy’s voice is coarse as sandpaper and way too close to my ear.
Uuuuggghnnnnn, I gargle in response, trying to push her away, eyes still closed. My palm makes contact with something that feels like her jaw.
“My arm is asleep! Get off it!” She pushes me right back, and I fall like a sack of bricks to the floor.
Uuuuggghnnnnn, I repeat when I can breathe again, head pounding.
“Sorry,” Darcy says, eyes peeking over the edge of the mattress. “All right?”
I wave her away, dragging my useless body to my own bed and clawing my way up. I pull the quilt over my head and turn on my side, squinting through the crack at Darcy’s similar form. We’re both the worse for wear, her eye makeup smeared in dark rings, pink hair sticking up in frizzy angles.
“Hi,” I whisper, voice scratchy.
“Hi,” she echoes back, gaze fixed on me.
We stare at each other for a moment, a bright triangle of sun slicing through the window between us. The night floods back, memories glaring in the morning light, the replay of every touch creating a spike through my chest that’s terrifying in its intensity.
I can’t … I can’t believe we did that, that any of last night was real. It’s like a fever dream, like sense and reason gathered their things and fled my brain, my body overtaken by a mindless want. I feel it still, that want, morphed and changed but pulsing under my skin nonetheless.
What is this? What do I do with it?
Darcy’s lips part, eyebrows dropping. She sucks in a breath, but the trill of her phone cuts off whatever she’s about to say.
Her gaze flicks to her nightstand, confused look hardening to one of panic as she takes in the name lighting up the screen.
Reaching out like she’s about to stick a fork in an outlet, she palms the phone, staring at it for another few rings before answering the call.
“Mum?” Her voice drips with apprehension, face twisting like the word is sour on her tongue. She blinks twice as she listens to her mum, Doreen, on the other end. “Sorry. Yeah. I’m fine. Just waking up.”
Silence.
“I mean, it’s only nine here. Not like I’ve wasted a—” She sits up, tucking her messy hair behind her ear as tense lines form across her forehead and between her eyebrows.
“I’m not taking a—” Her mouth slams shut for a moment as she grimaces.
“I’m not taking a tone,” she says through clenched teeth. “I’m just saying I—”
Silence again, her energy draining away and eyes glazing over. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—Okay. Sorry. I know. I’m sorry.”
More of that heavy silence.
“It was a joke. I wouldn’t have worn it if I’d known they’d be taking pictures. I…”
Darcy flinches as her mum’s fussing grows so loud I can hear it across the room.
“I really am sorry. I didn’t—” More indecipherable yelling. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m so—” Darcy swallows, biting her lower lip as she hangs her head. “Okay. Yeah. Talk to you soon. Sorry again. Lov—”
Darcy pulls the phone from her ear and stares at the screen, lips blanching as she presses them into a fine line. After a moment, she clicks the screen off, tossing it on her pillow.
Tension lingers in the room and, because I’m a dumb bitch, I have to break it with sarcasm. “That sounded like a lovely chat.”
Darcy shoots me a pained look, then blinks away, shaking her head as she lies back down.
“What was she on about this time?” Darcy’s mum calls her regularly, but it’s always to let Darcy know about a new way she’s let her parents down.
“The paper back home printed the profile on us,” Darcy says numbly. Sigrún arranged an interview with our hometown newspaper a few weeks ago, trying to drum up some local pride as if Connor wasn’t their new golden boy they’d be feasting on for years.
“What’s so bad about that?”
Darcy sets her jaw, letting out a long breath through her nose. “They took pictures from the video call, and I’m wearing my SLUTS’ RIGHTS shirt.”
I snicker. “I love that shirt.”
“I know you do. You gave it to me.” She fixes me with a look so angry I choke on my remaining laughter. “Mum called to let me know I’m the town slag and have embarrassed her and Dad to no end.”
“Christ, it’s just a shirt,” I mumble, anger rising in me.
I hate Doreen, I really do. Darcy shines so brightly, but a few choice words from her mum snuff her out like a candle.
It’s a crime against nature to smother someone so vibrant.
“It’s not like they published a video of you giving a foot job to Father Joe or something.
Even then … sexual autonomy, et cetera, et cetera. ”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Darcy says. “Would rather not ruminate on what a fucking disappointment I am.”
My heart sinks. She’s usually pretty good at bouncing back after a call and compartmentalizing her parents’ cruelty, but I feel her slipping away like water through the cracks between my fingers.
“You okay?” I ask gently, moving off my bed and padding to hers. I expect her to scoot over, make room for me like she usually does, but instead she tenses.
She looks at me, pain lining her face, eyes lingering for a beat too long on my mouth, sending a rush of heat through me. Her frown deepens, and she squeezes her lids closed. “Don’t feel well.”
I stare at her, echoes from last night ghosting through my head—the grip of her hands on my hips, the rasp of her breath against my chest, the softness of her kisses on my skin—and those heady delights tangle with the utter insanity of it all.
What the hell were we thinking? Why the fuck did I, a straight woman, hook up with my similarly straight best friend? Why am I a tangled mess of emotions I can’t parse out when the only thing I should be feeling is regret at indulging in such a bizarre, careless whim? What is wrong with me?
I let out a deep breath through my nose, trying to steady my racketing pulse.
I need to calm down. Granted, I’ve never been calm in my entire life, but now would be an excellent time to try it out.
Maybe this isn’t as big a deal as I’m making it out to be.
I have a tendency to catastrophize things …
just ask my ex; he’s probably releasing a whole studio album on that next week.
I mean, truly, what’s a little … kissing and heavy petting and … and shared orgasms between friends … right?
Shit.
Uninvited, I crawl onto her bed, sitting cross-legged at the end near her feet.
I anticipate her usual response of poking my thighs and knees with her toes until I pick up one of her feet, massaging her arch until her head rolls back and she lets out a tiny sigh of relief.
Instead, she snatches her legs up, tucking her knees to her chest as she lies on her side, wrapped in her bedsheets.
I wonder if she can smell me on them. Fucking hell, I’ve gone mad.
I clear my throat, searching for words that will somehow make this less horrifically awkward, but none come.
Plucking at invisible fuzz on my pajama shorts that I changed into sometime in the middle of the night, my eyes snag on a small maroon spot blooming on my inner thigh.
My blood turns to smoke when I realize it’s Darcy’s thumbprint, her mark on my skin.
A few inches away the stain of her other fingers show where she gripped my legs.
Every kiss crashes through me as if Darcy were touching me right now, and I flinch, closing my legs and hugging my knees to my chest in the hopes that if I make myself small enough, I can stop whatever scary emotion is trying to crack through me.
I let out a deep breath, screwing up my courage and closing my eyes as I attempt to face the mess of it all head-on. “So, uh, last night…”
“What about last night?” Darcy asks in an even tone.
I blink at her, trying to figure out the subtlest phrasing to remind her that her fingers were in me and on me in ways not particularly usual for us. “Umm … just that last night was—”
“Such a laugh,” Darcy says, offering a bastardized example of the noise. She brings her blanket more tightly around her. “I really loved that bar.”
More blinking.
“What’s wrong with you?” she says, twisting her mouth into a tight smile. After a beat, she does extend a leg, nudging my shin. “Are you super hungover?”
“What? No. I-I’m talking about…” I make a jerky gesture between us and the bed.
Darcy’s eyebrows furrow with her frown, like she’s digging deep into her memory, then her eyes widen. “That’s what you’re on about? Oh my god, don’t be silly.”
Confusion and an odd sense of panic has my heartbeat pounding in the crooks of my elbows and down to the tips of my toes. “Silly?”
“I mean, yeah, sure, that was definitely a weird way to end the night. But…” She shrugs. “We were probably both just lonely, or whatever. Not a big deal.” Her tone is light and airy, but her face is a hardened mask.
I blink again, my lips parting. I’m suddenly … empty. Blank. All of my feelings deserting me except for a tiny knot of dread in the pit of my stomach. I’ve been here before, and the mortification makes me want to keel over.
The first time Connor and I had sex, I cried.
I’d built it up in my head, and the moment felt huge and emotional for me.
I caught him rolling his eyes as soon as he pulled out and dealt with the condom.
He left while I was asleep and when I tried to talk to him about it (in what was an admittedly alarming state of weepiness on my part), he stared at me with horror.
When I finally calmed down enough to swallow my gasps and wipe the snot from my nose, he said, “Christ, Cubby. Try not to be so fucking earnest all the time. It’s just sex. ”
Just sex. That’s all we ever had, truthfully.
And that’s all this was too.
The idea of reliving that kind of embarrassment makes every muscle in my body tense and tears claw at my eyes. Last night I was lonely and stupid and made a really dumb decision because of it, and Darcy and I should never ever talk about it. What would be the point?