Chapter 30
“I miss my mums,” I admit quietly as we lie on blankets in the backyard a few hours later, staring up at the vast expanse of stars. “Does that make me, like, a giant baby? Aren’t twenty-something-year-olds supposed to enjoy independence?”
I hear the soft rustle of grass as Darcy turns to look at me. “I don’t think so. I miss your mums too. Beatriz always made me the best pastel de nata.”
I smile at the memories that flood me: M?e in the kitchen rolling dough, the house filling with the decadent smell of pastries and sugar, Darcy and I hovering by the table like rabid animals waiting for her to tell us it was finally cool enough to eat.
I rub my aching chest. “I think I’ve been avoiding how homesick I’ve been. This has all happened so fast, and I wanted to be an adult and handle it all myself but I … I kind of miss them taking care of me. Are you homesick at all?”
Darcy lets out a laugh that’s equal parts brittle and bitter. “More so for your home than mine, but no, not really. I … Never mind.”
“What?” I nudge her with my shoulder.
She lets out a shaky breath, pursing her lips as she looks at the stars. “I never really miss my home. It was more a house than anything, you know? I never felt … wholly comfortable there. Like I couldn’t ever let my guard down.”
“What about at my house?” I ask, bones aching for how desperately I want Darcy to have the comfort she deserves.
I feel her shrug. “Yes and no. Your mums have always been so good to me, and obviously I love Oliver like he’s my own brother, but I don’t know if your house is exactly where I get the feeling of home either. I think home is more … I don’t know. It’s dumb.”
“What?” I press, rolling on my side until I’m stretched against her.
“It’s so cringey.” She giggles, throwing her arm over her eyes. “You’re going to laugh at me.”
“Probably, yeah.” I pull her arm away, making her look at me. Her smile is bright and vulnerable as she giggles again. I place a kiss to the center of her palm.
“I feel at home with you,” she says, biting the corner of her mouth.
“I feel … Christ, I don’t know … free. Like I can actually breathe around you.
Like something in me unlocks when it’s just us, a realer version of me breaking through the surface after going so long without air.
I’ve always felt that way, even when we were little. You’ve … you’ve always been my person.”
She looks at me shyly, eyes downcast, mouth pressed into a precious pout like she’s holding back saying more, like saying that took everything she had. I’m so full of love for her—it’s so big, so unearthly—I don’t know how to articulate it, where to put it, and words fail me.
So I kiss her instead, one hand in her hair, the other at her heart, both of hers gripping my shirt like if she lets go, we’ll float away.
“And you’ve always been mine,” I say against her lips.
She smiles into the kiss. “I know.”
We pull apart eventually, letting the calm heaviness of night cradle us as we look back up at the stars. Darcy stirs next to me, hips shifting as she fishes something out of her back pocket.
“Come here,” she whispers, gathering me to her. She tucks my head between her shoulder and jaw. I nuzzle closer, placing a kiss to the soft skin of her throat. I see a flash of light through my closed eyes.
“Needed to capture the moment,” she murmurs when I turn my head to look at her phone hovering over us. I reach up, bringing the screen closer.
The picture is grainy and a little blurry and nothing close to flattering.
The tip of Darcy’s nose is the same color pink as her hair from the night’s chill, her mouth stretched in an outrageous smile that’s almost clownish, the red-eye adding an extra jolt of energy to the scene.
I, on the other hand, have my face smooshed against her neck, hair wild and ratty, somehow looking both serene and absolutely feral for her.
“We look delirious,” I say with a laugh, zooming in on her grin. “I love it.”
“How’s the forced social media detox going?” Darcy asks as she clicks her phone off, dropping it on the grass between us.
I let out a deep breath through my nose. “Good? I think? I mean, it’s only been like thirty-six hours since you sent my phone to its watery demise so it hasn’t been that long.”
“That’s longer than I’ve seen you go without checking in months.”
“Fair. Pathetic, but fair.” I watch the dark outline of a cloud pass across the sky, blinking out some stars. “I’m surprised I don’t feel the urge to check more. Maybe it’s because I physically can’t? The silence is the weirdest part, though.”
“What do you mean?”
I pick at my nails, trying to form the right words.
“There’s this constant snag on my attention, part of my brain always facing the screen and the endless stimulus of it.
Not being able to check makes me feel off-kilter, a nagging sensation that I’m forgetting something important …
It’s almost like an itch? One deep in my chest I can’t scratch. It’s not comfortable.”
Darcy turns her head to look at me, but I keep my eyes fixed on the stars as I continue.
“At any given moment, I’m in the middle of fifty conversations in DMs and text messages and emails and Snapchats and it’s all so much and yet nothing at all and I don’t understand how I can talk to so many people all the time and still feel so …
alone.” Darcy reaches out, grabbing my hand.
“It’s become this huge, uncontrollable thing,” I whisper.
“I don’t know how it got so out of hand but it’s this vicious cycle of refreshing app after app over and over and most of the time, there won’t even be something new to see, but I can’t stop.
It’s this fear of being out of the loop, of missing something.
Of being alone with my thoughts for a minute.
I can’t even go to the bathroom without checking something. ”
“I’m sorry it’s become this bad, Cubby.”
I swipe at my watery eyes. “S’not your fault.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry for your hurt. I can’t imagine how hard it’s been.”
“Why do you think it’s not like this for you?” I ask, feeling embarrassed, like something is wrong with my wiring for needing validation so badly. She’s quiet for a moment, and I find the courage to look at her.
Darcy licks her lips, staring up at the sky as she thinks.
“Maybe it’s because I wasn’t drowned in it like you were?
I use social media, obviously, but I never had a big presence.
I like seeing what other people post but I’ve never felt the need to share much about myself, mainly because it never felt real or authentic.
More like I was … I don’t know, perpetuating some version of myself I was already burnt out from upholding with my parents and stuff.
But not posting much means I don’t get as much engagement, and I don’t get the extreme high of the serotonin hit you do with how massive your reach has become.
It’s easier to avoid becoming addicted to something if it doesn’t create much of a high for you in the first place. ”
“I never wanted to be like this,” I whisper.
Darcy makes a cooing noise. “I know, love. And I don’t blame you for it becoming the trap it has.
Anyone under the scrutiny you suddenly were would have a fucked-up relationship with the internet.
The entire foundation of social media is designed around hooking a claw into the psyche.
It’s human nature to want to be known … I just don’t think we were meant to be known in such a curated, digital way. ”
I nod. “It’s kind of sick. We aren’t allowed to be vulnerable and flawed. Everyone talks about being ‘real’ on social media and all that shit but at the end of the day, we show moments of softness in the most artificial ways possible.”
“Have you thought about giving it up altogether?” she asks.
I nod, letting out another heavy breath.
“I have, yeah. Part of me really wants to, maybe just to see if I even can. But the other part of me is terrified of … I don’t know, irrelevance?
Like if I stop posting, people will forget about me.
Us, as a band. Like any footprints I’ve made will be washed away in an instant.
That sounds really conceited but … yeah. ”
“It’s not conceited. A lot of pressure has been put on you to carry our digital weight. This whole thing has programmed you to feel that way. But you could think of it in the opposite.”
“Whatdya mean?”
“Think of it from the mysterious angle. People love a mystery, especially from someone they had so much access to. If you suddenly stop, people will be rabid for whatever pieces they can get.”
I blink, envisioning this version of my life where I shrug off this boulder of obligation on my back, watch it roll down the hill, people chasing after it.
A version of life where I don’t have the compulsion to curate moments to gain the most clout and chase likability. Give myself the freedom to simply be.
“Could you imagine?” I say, propping up on my elbows to look at Darcy. “Just … not posting? Even deleting the account?”
“You could do it,” she says, shrugging.
“Oh, you know what would really be the ultimate way to go out?” I say, a delicious thrill shooting through me.
“A blaze of glory posting screenshots of Connor’s most horrible texts?”
I laugh, rolling my eyes. “That would be good, but no. I post that horribly lovely photo you took of us. No caption. No tags. Just us unhinged in love and I log out forever. My final footprint on the internet. Me, truly happy, hard-launching our relationship then digitally disappearing forever.”
Darcy jolts up to sitting, and I grin at her excitement. I only need a hint of encouragement from her and I’ll do it.
“Cubby, no,” she says instead, voice harsh and loud. Even in the moonlight, I can see the color drain from her face, the panic splash across her features. “You absolutely can’t post that.”