1. Darcy
CHAPTER ONE
darcy
Morning arrives in pieces.
First, the stale hiss of the hotel heater kicking on before dawn. Then the soft scrape of tires on wet pavement twelve stories below. Then my own eyes blinking open to an unfamiliar ceiling with a water stain in one corner shaped vaguely like Rhode Island.
For a second, I have absolutely no idea where I am.
The room is washed in that flat gray-blue winter light that makes everything look like somebody forgot the final coat of paint. My neck aches from sleeping half-curled on top of the comforter with one sock still on. My hair has formed some kind of hostile knot near the base of my skull.
Then it all comes back—Boston, the apartment tour, the six-hour drive from West Chester with everything I own crammed into the back of my salt-coated Tiguan and no ring on my finger.
I stare at the ceiling.
My lungs expand like they’ve been waiting for permission.
I roll onto my back and wait for the other half of the bed to shift, but it never does. I do a quick scan of my own chest, like checking for damage after a near miss.
Still here. Huh.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand.
Mom
Call when you can.
Dad
Drive safe.
Bex
Did you make it or did you join a cult?
Bex
No wait, become a truckstop stripper?
Bex
BET IT ALL AT A SKETCHY ROADSIDE CASINO???
The corner of my mouth twitches despite myself. Apparently, Bex remains Bex. And my sense of humor survived, which feels promising. I answer her first.
Darcy
Alive. No cults. No financial ruin.
The typing bubble appears instantly.
Bex
Okay but your failure to deny “truck stop stripper” feels telling.
I roll onto my stomach, cheek pressed to the cool side of the pillow.
Darcy
Please. If I were going to have a public spiral, I’d at least make it chic.
Bex
Obviously. You’d find a way to make a breakdown look editorial. There’d be a whole aesthetic. I’m a little jealous, honestly.
Darcy
Exactly.
Bex
So no weird roadside awakening? No diner waitress named Jo changing your life? No suspiciously attractive stranger helping with your bags?
There it is. My best friend’s particular gift for making the absurd sound weirdly plausible.
Darcy
Unfortunately, no. Just me, three lanes of rage traffic, and one deeply inappropriate trucker.
Bex
Honestly? Still kind of iconic.
I set the phone down before I can think too hard about why that conversation made me feel better.
The room is aggressively average—tan carpet, one sad armchair by the window, a desk chair upholstered in that vaguely scratchy navy fabric every chain hotel buys in bulk, the faint smell of industrial detergent and stale heat. It’s perfect.
I stretch out like a starfish just because I can. Small victories. I’m taking them.
Yesterday feels both blurry and painfully sharp.
My mother cried when I left. The wounded kind of crying that somehow made me feel like I’d committed a personal offense by choosing something she didn’t understand. Twelve hours ago, she stood in the kitchen and folded her arms like disappointment was a posture.
“Boston?” she had said. “Darcy, be serious.”
I kept taping boxes. My fingers shook so badly I had to peel back the first strip and start over.
“It’s not forever.”
“Then what is it?” Her voice had pitched up slightly. “A tantrum? You’re twenty-six, not sixteen.”
I knew she wasn’t right. I also knew that knowing someone isn’t right has never once stopped me from wanting their approval anyway, which is a personality flaw I’m actively workshopping.
My father had been quieter, which was somehow worse. He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, shoulders rounded in that way that has always meant keep the peace.
“Your mother’s just worried.”
I laughed out loud at that one, because worried wasn’t the word for what sat on my mother’s face.
Worry implied fear for me. What I saw instead looked a lot more like logistics—the quiet calculation already running behind her eyes, the mental guest list rearranging itself, the inevitable book club postmortem on why her daughter had walked away from a man everyone adored.
“I’m not asking for permission.”
The words felt unfamiliar the second they left my mouth, like I’d reached for something that hadn’t belonged to me in a long time.
My mother jerked her head back at that.
“That’s obvious.”
The silence afterward stretched long enough to make my stomach start to turn before my father, gentle as he always is when things go jagged, stepped in.
“Well. You know we’re here if you need anything.”
I nodded, because what was I supposed to say to that? That being there and showing up aren’t the same thing?
I packed the rest of my life into cardboard boxes while Brett conveniently found somewhere else to be.
Some stupid, bruised part of me had hoped—just once— he’d show up when it mattered, even if I didn’t actually want him there.
That he’d see me carrying boxes full of our shared life out the door or see my side of the closet emptied out and decide I was worth fighting for.
Instead, he texted:
Brett
Let me know if you need the Netflix login.
I sat in my parked car with my forehead against the steering wheel and let out one cracked sound that was almost a laugh. Not the breakup or the ring—the Netflix password.
That was the thing that made it final.
The drive itself is a different story.
I hit the GWB at exactly the wrong time and ended up locked in bumper-to-bumper traffic for so long that the heat in my car malfunctioned and got stuck on nuclear.
Twenty minutes later, at a dead stop on I-95, I was wrestling my way out of my coat and ratty Penn State sweatshirt until I was sitting in leggings and an oversized tee I’m pretty sure doesn’t actually belong to me.
A trucker two lanes over watched the whole thing with the focused appreciation of a man at a buffet. To my own surprise, I stared right back and raised my middle finger. He looked thoroughly shocked for about a second before tipping an imaginary hat.
That made me snort.
I’d spent four years making myself smaller in public spaces, and apparently all it took to break the streak was six hours alone in a car and a minor heating-system failure.
By the time I cleared New York and the Hudson spread out beside me—gray and ugly and somehow glittering anyway beneath the weak winter sun—I had the windows down despite the freezing air and was scream-singing the bridge of “Silver Springs” like Stevie Nicks herself might materialize in the passenger seat and harmonize.
The cold bit at my face. My voice sounded cracked and too loud. My eyes watered from the wind. I didn’t care about any of it.
My butt cheeks had gone completely numb as I crossed into Providence, but I found a tiny diner off the highway with a faded red sign and a decommissioned seaplane bolted to the roof like somebody’s long-lost fever dream.
I ordered pancakes at the counter and drank coffee so bitter it could strip paint. The waitress called me “honey” twice. Nobody there knew I’d ended an engagement. Or disappointed my family. Or cried in the parking lot of a rest stop in New Jersey.
To them, I was just another woman passing through. For some reason, that felt like a gift.
And now I’m here.
I push myself out of bed, find my other fuzzy sock trapped beneath the comforter, and pad to the bathroom.
The mirror gives sleep-creased cheeks and hair that’s fully committed to chaos. But there’s color in my face I haven’t seen in months. I linger there longer than is probably healthy.
I rinse my face and head for the window, parting the thick beige blackout curtains that every chain hotel is apparently contractually obligated to provide.
Boston opens up below in shades of steel and glass. Brick buildings shoulder against newer towers. A strip of pale winter sun catches on rooftops still damp from last night’s rain.
My breath catches at it.
I glance at the time. Apartment tour in two hours.
The same apartment listing I’ve been opening late at night for the past month whenever I needed proof there was still something out there worth wanting. Not just because of the exposed brick or the stupidly perfect morning light in the listing photos.
Well, not just because of that.
Also because the lease would only have my name on it. My first front door that nobody has a key to unless I hand one over myself.
The idea makes something in me sit up a little straighter.
It’s just a tour.
A meeting. A person with access to rental applications deciding whether letting me loose in Boston is a good idea.
Which the jury’s still out on.
I pull on a soft cream sweater, dark jeans, and brown boots. Twist my hair into my favorite tortoiseshell claw clip and swipe on some mascara. The girl in the mirror still looks like she slept in a hotel room with one sock on. But she’s looking back at me instead of past me.
My phone buzzes.
Bex
Please tell me you’re wearing something hot but approachable.
Darcy
I’m touring an apartment, not seducing the leasing office.
Bex
You don’t know that.
I shake my head and throw on my puffer jacket, tucking my phone into the pocket.
Outside, Boston is cold, bright, and unknown.
For once that doesn’t feel like a threat. It feels like a dare.