7. Darcy
CHAPTER SEVEN
darcy
A month into Boston living and I already have a cafe with a chai tea latte I’ve claimed as my favorite, a regular corner table by the window, and a barista named Liv who no longer asks if I want the blueberry scone and just bags it as soon as she sees me walk in.
The little coffee shop on Tremont is warm and cozy and full of people who don’t care where I came from.
The black picture-frame windows in front fog at the edges where the heat inside meets the stubborn chill outside.
Afternoon light spills across scratched oak tables and white painted brick walls lined with mismatched art deco prints.
The espresso machine hisses behind the counter in familiar bursts that cut through the low chatter, and someone has Ingrid Michaelson playing softly over the speakers.
A month ago, nobody in here knew my name.
Now my life smells like burnt sugar and espresso.
I’m not complaining.
It’s a small thing. But lately I’ve become weirdly protective of small things.
By three, the afternoon rush has softened into a comfortable lull. A graduate student is half-asleep over a textbook in the corner, one AirPod dangling loose. Two women in wool coats split a lemon loaf near the window. Liv wipes down the pastry case, already mentally clocked out.
I’ve been here since ten with my laptop, a sketchpad, and three different color palette options for a client that rejected my first two rounds. I am trying not to take that personally.
My phone buzzes against the table.
Bex
Okay, status check
are the men downstairs still being aggressively attractive or has everyone calmed down?
I smile despite myself. Bex has spent the better part of the past four weeks demanding updates on Tyler’s face, Tyler’s biceps, and the increasingly mythical older brother like she’s suddenly Magnum P.I.
Darcy
Tyler, unfortunately yes. Mack remains suspiciously fictional.
Bex
If I had two hot brothers living downstairs I’d already have a spreadsheet. And spread legs.
Darcy
This is why you’re not allowed near me unsupervised.
Bex
Wrong! This is why you need me there.
Liv glances over from behind the counter.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Just being cyberbullied.”
She studies me for a second before deciding she doesn’t want details and goes back to wiping down the pastry case.
Bex
So, what’s the tea? What else is happening in Darcy’s 2.0 era?
I hesitate.
It’s not like there’s nothing to tell…there’s actually more than I’d like to admit.
Tyler has threaded himself into the edges of my routine so naturally it would be easy to miss if I wasn’t paying attention.
Which I absolutely am not.
A few weeks ago I mentioned in passing on the stairs that the breakfast nook got weirdly drafty in the afternoons.
That night he showed up with a container of New England clam chowder from a place around the corner, a loaf of bread still warm through the paper bag, and weather stripping for the windows.
He had set the soup on my counter like he was dropping off federal secrets.
“Not as good as mine,” he’d proclaimed when I stood there in shock. “But good enough to keep you from freezing to death.”
He’d then spent the next forty minutes leaning half out my kitchen window in the dark, cursing at stubborn adhesive, while I held the flashlight and laughed so hard I nearly dropped it.
The part that blows my mind is that I can’t even point to the moment it happened.
One day Tyler was just the guy downstairs, and then he wasn’t.
The man is like sunshine in human form—and I know better than to stand too close if I want to avoid getting burned.
Still, I haven’t moved back.
Just call me Icarus…
Darcy
No developments. Just settling in.
Bex
Darce…
Bex
You moved into a brownstone with two firefighter brothers living underneath and all you’ve got is, “just settling in?”
Darcy
I’m sorry my life isn’t a Netflix original.
Bex
It could be. You’re just ignoring the plot.
Darcy
That’s because the plot sounds expensive.
Darcy
Emotionally.
Bex
That’s quitter talk.
Bex
Call me later. I need a full update on your life.
Bex
And your furniture.
I send back a thumbs-up and set my phone face-down. The cafe hums around me while I finish the last edits on my mockups.
By four o’clock, I’ve reread the same email three times without absorbing a single word of it, which feels less like professionalism and more like a sign from the universe that I’m done for the day.
Or burnout.
Either way, I close my laptop, pack it up and shrug into my coat.
The air still nips at my face while the sun does its best to take the edge off.
I leave my puffer unzipped on the walk home, which I’m chalking up to optimism or stubbornness.
The South End is doing that early-spring thing where it’s not quite warm enough to justify it but everyone is acting like it is anyway.
Someone walked by in shorts earlier. I respect the optimism.
I tip my face toward the sun for half a second and notice I’m still smiling when I let myself into the house.
By the time I make it upstairs and push open my apartment door, I’m already digging my keys out of my pocket.
It still catches me sometimes.
The navy blue couch under the oversized windows, velvet shining in the afternoon light. My paperback is face-down on the coffee table where I left it this morning, the spine already broken from use.
A month ago, none of this existed.
I drop my tote by the couch and head toward the French doors, shimmying out of my coat. My bed finally arrived five days ago and I’m still not over it—the cream comforter rumpled from this morning, one corner kicked loose when I overslept and answered a client email half under the covers.
Mine. Actually mine.
I reach for the bedroom doors—
CLANK.
The sound snaps through the apartment hard enough that I stop mid-step.
For a second, I just stand there.
Then comes a scrape. A muffled curse. Something heavy shifting from the ensuite bathroom.
My stomach drops.
Someone is in my apartment.
Call Tyler flashes through my head instantly. Luckily, it’s followed by the realization that I would rather throw myself down the stairs than become the girl who calls her hot landlord every time something goes wrong.
Which leaves me with option b.
I grab the nearest weapon, which turns out to be the wooden spoon drying beside the sink.
Great.
I tighten my grip anyway.
“If I die,” I mutter, moving back toward the bathroom, “Bex better delete my ebook highlights.”
The bathroom door is cracked open. I edge closer, pulse hammering, and catch a glimpse of the white subway tile through the gap. Then I see movement beneath the vanity.
I get the back of him first—his dark red T-shirt stretches across broad shoulders, the fabric pulling at the seams in places that feel less like a design choice and more like a surrender. Ink winds up one forearm and disappears beneath his sleeve.
One hand braces against the cabinet frame while the other turns a wrench without any urgency whatsoever, like there’s nowhere else he needs to be and nothing about being discovered in someone else’s bathroom concerns him.
I tighten my grip on the spoon.
“What the hell?”
He stills then sets the wrench down and leans back slowly, turning as if he’s only just become aware someone else is in the room.
Oh my.
Unless Tyler has a second absurdly attractive brother nobody bothered to mention, this has to be Mack.
The same green-hazel eyes as Tyler, only sharper. His face is rougher too—dark hair cropped short, a beard kept close enough to show the shape of his jaw underneath, which is doing things to my composure.
And my pelvic floor.
He’s older by a few years and broader everywhere that counts, the kind of solidness that comes from years of actual work instead of recreational gym selfies.
But where Tyler walks into a room like he already knows everyone, Mack looks like he walks in like he doesn’t care to.
He slowly rises to his full height. And keeps rising.
I stare up at him through my lashes one beat longer than I can reasonably blame on shock.
He looks like he could ruin your life and make you thank him for it, which was deeply inconvenient given my current state of high alert and the fact that I was holding a wooden spoon as my defense weapon of choice.
The corner of his mouth shifts. Not a smile exactly, but more like he thought about smiling and decided against it.
He wipes his hands on a rag hanging from the cabinet door, movements calm and efficient, and when he speaks his voice seems to settle into the room before the words do.
“You’re dripping.”
That’s an understatement.
I clear my throat.
“That somehow explains even less.”
He glances toward the sink then back at me.
“Had to fix the drain.”
“You can’t just come into my apartment.”
“No?”
“No.”
One dark brow lifts. Like he’s trying to figure out whether I’m serious and the possibility that I might argue genuinely hadn’t occurred to him.
He nods toward the spoon.
“That for me?”
I cross my arms in defense, spoon still in hand.
“This was all I had.”
His mouth twitches again.
“Good to know.”
I should be embarrassed. Instead I’m annoyed, mostly because he’s making my body do things it shouldn’t do when confronted with a stranger in your apartment, and that feels like a flaw in survival instincts.
“How did you even know about the sink?”
He leans one shoulder against the doorframe, close enough that most people probably would’ve taken a step back. For most of my life, I would’ve been one of them.
I stay where I am just to make a point.
“That drain’s been temperamental since before you moved in.”
“You knew about it?”
“I was planning to replace the trap. You signed the lease faster than my brother makes bad decisions. Couldn’t get to it in time.”
I narrow my eyes.
“That still doesn’t explain why you couldn’t tell me.”
His expression doesn’t change.
“I fixed your sink.”
“You appeared in my bathroom.”
“I had a key.”
“What if I were home?”
“I knocked first.”
“I could’ve been in the shower.”
A small smirk curves the edge of his mouth. Brief but devastating, sending an electric pulse shooting between my thighs as I think about this man catching me naked in the shower.
My vagina betrays me yet again.
“You weren’t.”
I clear my throat to try to stop the flush from rising up my cheeks.
For a second, his reserve seems to slip, and I already hate what the sight does to me.
“You’re Mack—”
“Mason.”
The correction is quiet and deliberate, with about six feet of distance packed into one word.
Asshole.
“Right,” I say. “Mason. Sorry. Tyler talks about you like you’re either Batman or a sleep paralysis demon, so I wasn’t exactly working with a clear picture.”
“Sleep paralysis demon feels harsh.”
“Breaking and entering feels harsh.”
He nods at the spoon.
“And you were planning to, what? Fight me with a kitchen utensil? Deadly.”
He squints, his voice laced with sarcasm.
“You still could’ve texted. Called. Sent a carrier pigeon. Smoke signal. Literally anything.”
He studies me for a beat, his attention steady enough to make me want to look away.
I don’t give him the satisfaction.
“You’d have worried about it all day.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
“It only took twenty minutes.”.
“That isn’t the point.”
“No,” he says evenly. “The point is your sink works.”
He moves to pack up his toolbag.
The conversation should be over, but the urge hits before I can stop it.
To call after him. To tell him it’s fine. To whatever version of myself makes things easier for everyone else.
“Sorry, I just—”
His eyebrows knit together.
“You don’t have to apologize for being surprised there’s a six-foot-three stranger under your sink.”
I stop, the words still sitting uselessly on the tip of my tongue. That wasn’t the response I was expecting. I look at him. The tattoo winding beneath his sleeve, wrench loose in one hand. The way his attention never wavers even when his face gives almost nothing away.
His gaze drifts past me into the living room. The look only lasts a second, but it feels like he’s seeing the apartment for the first time and realizing someone actually lives here now.
“Place looks good.”
“Thanks.”
He nods and starts toward the living room before coming to a stop. It takes me a second to realize I’m still standing in the doorway.
His eyebrow lifts.
“Oh.”
Heat burns the back of my neck as he turns slightly to pass through the narrow space between us, one shoulder brushing the doorframe as he slips into the bedroom and back out the French doors.
“You got a real wrench?” he calls over his shoulder.
“Yes,” I call back trailing a few feet behind him.
“Use that next time you decide to arm-wrestle your faucet. Or suspect someone of breaking and entering.”
“I did not—”
He stops near the kitchen and levels me with a look that suggests he’s already made up his mind on the subject.
“You did.”
I stomp toward him, stopping close enough that I have to tilt my head up to see his face.
“I watched a tutorial.”
“That explains a lot.”
“Do you talk to everybody like this or am I getting special treatment?”
He pauses at the front door and looks at me, the corner of his jaw tightening before smoothing out again.
“Lock your door, Darcy.”
“What?”
He nods toward the deadbolt.
“You forget sometimes.”
“How do you know that?”
His emerald eyes hold mine for a second.
“Same reason I knew about the drain.”
A moment later the door is shutting behind him, leaving me standing in the middle of my apartment alone, wooden spoon still in hand and my head spinning from whatever the hell that was.