4. Darcy
CHAPTER FOUR
darcy
It takes me three tries to wedge my SUV between a Subaru with a bike rack and a Volvo that looks expensive enough to have opinions about my bumper. By the time I cut the engine, my shoulders are somewhere near my ears and I’m muttering things under my breath that would’ve scandalized my mother.
Mostly straight.
That counts.
Cold drizzle freckles the windshield, the kind that somehow feels meaner in late February. Boston’s version of a welcome mat. One decent afternoon tricks everybody into believing spring might actually be happening and then another week of damp cold moves back in like it pays rent.
The car is packed to the ceiling with boxes labeled in black Sharpie, a few garment bags hooked from the backseat handle, and the ficus Bex insisted was “emotionally supportive” buckled into the passenger seat like a tiny green hostage.
I’ve had it for two years and it has never once asked anything of me except water, which is exactly the kind of relationship I could use more of right now.
My fingers stay curled around the steering wheel.
The apartment is upstairs. Everything I own is in this car. If I wanted to, I could still put it in reverse and drive back to Pennsylvania.
The thought hangs there for a second. Then it’s gone.
My shoulders loosen against the seat.
This is it.
A city that doesn’t know me. A front door nobody else gets a key to. No wedding invitations or parents dropping by with opinions disguised as concern. No carefully edited version of myself trying to keep everybody comfortable.
I look up at the building.
The drizzle has blurred the edges a little, but it still looks exactly the way it did the day I signed the lease—solid, welcoming, entirely unconcerned with anyone else’s expectations.
The sound of my phone buzzing in the cupholder makes me jump in my seat.
Bex
You there???
Bex
Did you parallel park or are you currently six blocks away crying in a CVS parking lot?
Darcy
Rude. I’m parked.
Bex
Did you cry?
I glance back at the building. At whatever is waiting on the other side of that front door.
Darcy
Holding it together so far.
Bex
That’s suspiciously hopeful.
Darcy
I’ll call later.
Bex
Fine. But if your hot landlord happens to appear, act normal for at least ten minutes.
I roll my eyes so hard it almost hurts.
As if Bex hasn’t spent the last four nights demanding a full psychological profile on the man.
How tall was he, be serious about it!
Did he smell expensive or just good?
Was he flirting or are you emotionally concussed?
I’d made the mistake of mentioning the smile. And the forearms. Possibly the cheekbones. She’d reacted like I was reporting a UFO sighting, which, in fairness, wasn’t entirely uncalled for.
Tyler MacAllister had smiled at me exactly twice and somehow both of those smiles were still rattling around in my head like they’d too signed a lease.
I have three freelance branding contracts waiting for me, a city I’ve been navigating from coffee shops all week, and a ficus to keep alive.
I do not have time for this.
I tuck my phone into the pocket of my coat and step into the cold.
The wind immediately snakes down my collar. My olive green puffer rustles as I yank it tighter, the faux-fur hood brushing my cheek while drizzle clings to my sleeves and turns the slush at the curb into a slick ribbon of grime.
Hot.
I’m reaching for the hatch when the front door opens.
Tyler steps out onto the stoop dressed for a day at least fifteen degrees warmer than the one we’re currently having. Charcoal Henley. Sleeves shoved up. In February. I don’t know if that’s confidence or a complete disregard for basic survival instincts.
His jeans are faded, his work boots unlaced at the top like he got distracted halfway through putting them on, and the mist has already caught in his hair.
My gaze catches on the forearms and suddenly I’ve never felt so betrayed by my own body.
“Well,” he says, heading down the stoop, voice easy and rough around the edges like he’s been up for hours and only just found something worth saying. “You came back.”
“Legally binding document and all.”
His grin widens.
“Still. Could’ve ghosted.”
“Tempting.”
He shakes his head and chuckles before stopping at the curb to take in the SUV.
“Jesus.”
“That’s rude.”
“That’s concerning.” He looks at me. “You moving in or starting a witness protection program?”
“To be fair, dramatic exits are kind of my thing lately.”
His grin eases a little but he doesn’t ask or push further.
He jerks his chin toward the car.
“How bad is it?”
“Scale of one to deeply humbling? Probably a seven.”
He glances at the building, then back at me.
“You came alone?”
There’s no judgment in it, just curiosity, but some stubborn instinct in me rises immediately anyway.
“I can manage.”
“That not what I asked.”
He steps closer, just enough that I catch that same clean scent from the first time. Soap and something fresh underneath that I definitely shouldn’t be memorizing.
“Darcy,” he says, like he’s letting me in on something obvious. “You’re standing in the wet cold with forty boxes and what appears to be a hostage plant. Let me be useful.”
“You noticed the ficus?”
He glances at it through the windshield.
“Hard not to. It looks like it’s blinking for help.”
I laugh before I can stop myself — the real kind that I haven’t felt in months. The sound surprises me enough that I almost miss the way his mouth softens around the edges.
Alarm bells go off in my head.
And yet here I am, stepping aside.
“Fine,” I say. “But if you throw out your back, I’m not liable.”
“I think I can manage.”
He reaches for the first box like it weighs nothing.
I watch him do it and have several thoughts I’m choosing not to finish.
The Henley is doing something deeply unhelpful in the rain. The forearms are back. He hooks the box against his hip and heads for the front door without any visible effort, like doing hard labor is a perfectly normal way to spend a Saturday.
Which I’m beginning to think is very much the case for Tyler MacAllister.
I grab a smaller box and follow him inside before my brain can wander any farther off course.
Inside, the house feels different today—less borrowed. My boots leave damp half-moons on the hardwood just inside the door before I catch myself and scuff them on the mat.
Mine, a small voice says.
Or it will be.
Tyler glances back as he starts up the stairs.
“Mack’s on shift, so you’re spared his inevitable lecture about lifting with your knees.”
“Mack?”
“My brother.”
“Oh right. What kind of shift, like ER or something?”
“Firehouse,” Tyler chuckles.
“He’s a firefighter?”
“So am I. He just got the unfortunate burden of being the more responsible one.”
“That explains the ego.”
Tyler barks out another laugh.
“Unbelievable.”
“You asked for it.”
“Fair.”
Somewhere between the second trip and the fifth, we stop doing that careful thing people do when they don’t know each other yet.
The pauses disappear. A joke becomes a story becomes an argument about whether Philadelphia drivers are worse than Boston drivers, which they obviously aren’t because Boston drivers appear to be operating under a completely different set of traffic laws.
Carrying the last few boxes feels less like making conversation and more like continuing one. The whole thing catches me off guard. Flirting, I know how to handle. I have an entire system.
This doesn’t feel like that.
“That’s the last of it.”
I look around at the stacks crowding the edges of the room. The apartment already feels fuller somehow. Less echo, less blank, more…mine.
“Congratulations. You officially own more things than I expected.”
“It feels like you’re judging.”
“I’m mostly impressed.” He pauses. “Don’t move.”
“That’s ominous.”
“Try not to bond with the plant while I’m gone.”
Before I can ask where he’s going, he’s already halfway down the stairs.
The apartment settles around me after he leaves. Rain taps steadily against the windows, boxes line the walls, and the pipes click somewhere in the background while I stand in the middle of it all with my coat still on and my keys clenched in one hand.
For the first time all day, there’s nothing left to carry or sign. It’s just me and my new space. The thought sneaks up on me enough that I have to press the heels of my hands against my cheeks.
Two minutes later, footsteps sound on the stairs again, quick and familiar enough that I know it’s Tyler before he reaches the landing.
He appears in the doorway carrying two brown bottles beaded with condensation and lifts one slightly.
“Locally brewed New England lager,” he says. “Figured move-in day deserved better than lukewarm tap water.”
“Bold of you to assume I wasn’t planning to spiral into a stress nap instead.”
“That’s for after the beer.”
I shake my head, smiling despite myself, and take the bottle from him. Our fingers brush when I take the bottle from him, and my stomach does an annoying little dip.
Tyler lifts his bottle.
“To fresh starts.”
The words catch me off guard, making me swallow before I tap my bottle against his.
“To not immediately regretting it.”
He gives me a smirk.
“Takes at least forty-eight hours.”
We settle on opposite sides of the kitchen counter, beer bottles sweating onto the white quartz between us.
“So,” I say. “How long have you lived here?”
Tyler tips the bottle against his lower lip.
“My whole life, technically. My grandparents bought the place in the seventies. Mack and I took it over a few years ago.”
I glance around the apartment.
“You renovated it?”
His laugh comes out through his nose.
“Eventually.”
“That sounds like a story.”
“It’s mostly a story about drywall dust, three separate trips to the emergency room, and Mack nearly murdering me with a nail gun.”
I lower the bottle.
“A nail gun?”
“In his defense, I was kinda being a dick.”
“Mack sounds like someone with a low tolerance for bullshit.”
Tyler laughs.
“That’s pretty much accurate.”
“But?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he says. “People meet him and think he’s all rules and lectures and disappointed head shakes.”
“And he’s not?”
“Not really.”
The answer comes too fast.
I glance at him.
“He’s got everyone fooled, huh?”
“Something like that.”
I take another sip of my beer.
“Guess first impressions aren’t always that reliable.”
His eyes flick up to mine.
“No?”
I shrug.
“You don’t exactly come off like someone who spends his Saturdays helping near-strangers move in the rain.”
He goes quiet at that as he studies me over the rim of his bottle.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What makes someone pack up forty boxes and a hostage fern and head three states north?”
I’d been waiting for that question since the day I signed the lease. Everybody asks eventually. People I work with. Relatives I barely talk to. The barista at the coffee shop I’d been working from all week who’d noticed my area code when I signed up for the rewards program.
The answer is usually a version of the truth tailored to whoever’s asking.
Tyler just waits. No relief from the question, but no pressure either. He takes a sip of his beer and lets me have the silence if I want it. Which is annoyingly effective.
“It’s a ficus,” I say.
His snorts.
“Freelance design,” I continue. “Branding, marketing. Mostly helping other people look more put together than they actually are.”
“So you’re a professional liar.”
“More like a professional fixer.”
“Sounds like trouble.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
The corner of his mouth lifts.
I take another sip of my beer and look out at the gray city beyond the windows. A few people hurry along the sidewalk below with their heads tucked against the rain.
“It felt like time,” I say after another minute.
That’s all I give him. No Brett or West Chester or the version of myself I left packed in old boxes and swallowed apologies.
Tyler rolls the bottle slowly between his palms.
“Boston’s not bad for disappearing into.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“No.”
The answer comes easily enough that I look at him. His gaze flicks briefly toward the stacks of boxes crowding the apartment before finding me again.
“You strike me as someone starting over.”
For a second, my chest tightens and I forget about the beer in my hand. The apartment is full of evidence. Boxes. New keys. A city I picked because it was far enough away to feel different. And he just looks at the wreckage and somehow sees the part that’s still standing.
I look away first.
“That’s a confident assessment for someone who’s known me less than a week.”
“I’m a fast learner.”
I shake my head, but I can feel myself smiling. The annoying part is that he might actually be.
Three years with Brett and half our conversations felt like I was translating myself into a language he never understood. Tyler’s known me for four days and somehow landed closer to the truth than people who’d had years.
I decide not to unpack that. Mostly because I’m standing in a room already full of boxes.
Tyler drains the last of his beer and pushes off the counter.
“I should leave you to it.”
I nod because I should want space. Instead, something that feels vaguely like disappointment sinks a little. I think he catches it because a slow smirk curves on his mouth.
“Rain check on another beer when you’ve got fewer boxes judging you?”
I glance at the mountain of cardboard.
“I’d hate to disappoint the boxes. They’ve been through a lot.”
His laugh is warm and unfiltered.
He starts toward the door, then pauses.
“Darcy.”
“Yeah?”
His eyes move over the apartment once, then settle on me.
“This place is gonna suit you.”
Before I can figure out what to do with that, he’s gone. I stand in the middle of my apartment, beer bottle still in hand, listening to his footsteps disappear down the stairs.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Mom
Settled?
Dad
How’s the apartment?
Bex
On a scale of one to felony, how hot is he again?
I stare at all three. All three feel loaded for completely different reasons. A laugh slips out as I drop onto one of the unopened boxes by the counter.
I did this. I actually did it.
Three freelance contracts waiting. A city I’ve spent the last week getting pleasantly lost in.
And now my apartment, my boxes, my ficus blinking judgmentally from across the room.
Outside, the drizzle sharpens against the glass, the wind rattling the windows like winter’s determined to get the last word.
I smile to myself, reach for the nearest box cutter, and get to work.