Chapter 20
DARCY
It's second period, AP English. Jay Gatsby has been murdered, and I am standing at my whiteboard thinking about Finn's hands on my body. Finn's mouth on my body. Finn's body in my body.
The memories flood me in a high-definition, surround-sound, this-is-not-safe-for-public-school way.
I'm mid-sentence about the funeral nobody attends, dry erase marker raised, when my mind helpfully supplies the exact sound Finn made when I sank down onto him.
The marker just hovers there while twenty-six teenagers wait for the end of a sentence I no longer remember starting.
"Ms. Gable?" Ryan James, voice pitched with real concern. "Are you all right?"
"I'm excellent, Ryan." I cap the marker with authority and turn to face the class. "Where was I?"
"The funeral. You stopped in the middle and smiled at the whiteboard."
"I did not smile at the whiteboard."
The whole front row exchanges grins and laughter. "You totally smiled at the whiteboard," one of them adds.
Someone must have turned up the heat in my classroom, because suddenly my face feels like it's been lit on fire. "Everybody open your books to page one-ninety-two."
I redirect us to the last page, because that's the job.
The class discussion that follows is actually good.
We get to the green light Gatsby believed in right to the end, the wanting of a thing across the water.
A girl in back of the class says it's romantic.
Ryan James says it's delusional. I stand there feeling personally qualified to referee that debate because I'm also wanting something I probably can't hold on to in the end.
I manage to keep my body and my brain in the same room for whole minutes at a time.
But the sensory ambushes keep coming—little flashbulbs with no respect for state curriculum standards.
Finn's hands shaking on the knot of my dress.
His mouth, giving and commanding between my legs while I gripped the couch cushion and lost hold of all my vocabulary.
The weight of his arm over me at two in the morning, like I was something he needed.
By the time the bell rings, Ryan James is looking at me the way TSA looks at an unattended bag. Not that I can blame the kid. I'm a seasoned educator. I shape young minds for a living. Today, I'm living for a fire drill.
The hallway between second period and lunch is a gauntlet.
The front-office ladies go quiet when I pass and then very loudly discuss the weather.
Coach Reyes gives me a thumbs-up for no stated reason.
Our custodian, a grumpy, gray-haired man who has not made eye contact with me in six years, tips his chin like we share a secret, and I realize with a full-body flush that my blasé attitude this morning when I glibly told Finn I didn't care if my busybody neighbor saw him leaving, has returned to bite me in the ass.
I make it to lunch anyway.
Annie is already in her classroom. I find her sitting on the edge of the stage with a salad in a plastic container, and she has very clearly been waiting all morning to have this conversation with me.
The drama room smells like paint and old costumes.
I sit down next to her and open my yogurt like a person with nothing to disclose.
"So," Annie says.
I stick the spoon into the cup and begin stirring. "So?"
"Mrs. Johnson opens her flower shop at seven-fifteen."
"Does she."
"She does. And at approximately seven-thirty this morning, a certain tall, criminally handsome man came down your stairs wearing yesterday's jeans and, per multiple corroborating sources, no shirt under his jacket.
" Annie stabs a crouton. "The town is calling it a walk of shame.
Personally I refuse to see anything shameful in my best friend finally getting properly laid by a man who looks like he knows what he's doing and then some. But I'm only one vote."
I laugh. "I'm not confirming anything."
"You don't have to confirm anything. It's written all over your face.
But in case there was any doubt, Betty at the pharmacy confirmed it.
The UPS guy confirmed it, but he's only going off hearsay.
" She points the fork at me. "I can't believe you didn't personally confirm it with me the second you arrived this morning. Truly, I'm wounded."
My phone buzzes on the stage between us. Then buzzes again.
"Is that Cathy?" Annie asks, leaning in to get a look at my screen.
"It's Jules," I say, then I realize it's a group chat.
Jules: DARCY GABLE. I just heard that a man TRIED TO SNEAK out of your apartment at dawn and got caught by MRS JOHNSON.
Cathy: He didn't sneak. I heard he said hello to her and tipped a hat he wasn't wearing.
Jules: Did you bag your billionaire last night, D?
I snort-laugh, almost choking myself on yogurt. "Oh, God. Jules is calling Finn 'my billionaire' now. This is terrible."
Annie tilts her head at me. "Well, is it true? Are you and Finn Bardot a thing now?"
"No! I don't know." I bite my lower lip. "I mean, I don't think so. More to the point, I don't know if he thinks so."
"Want me to ask Evan?"
I gape at her. "Only if you never want me to speak to you again."
I type back to Jules and Cathy that I am at work and there is nothing to tell, which is half-true, at least. I put the phone face-down.
Annie watches me do it and says nothing, which from Annie is a five-alarm event.
When I look up her face has gone from theatrical to open and sincere, and just mine.
My best friend since we were eleven, sitting on a plywood stage, waiting.
"Okay," I say. "Maybe there is something between us."
"Obviously! The man can't take his eyes off you whenever you're in the room, and based on the gossip mill today, last night all but seals it. You like Finn Bardot." She sing-songs the last part, looking far too delighted.
I go quiet, and she reaches over and takes my hand. That's how I know she's already seen the other thing—the thing underneath. Because Annie Felder has been reading me since before either of us could drive.
"You clearly do like him, so why do you look like you're doing sad math in your head?"
"Because I am doing sad math." I put down the yogurt.
"He doesn't stay, Annie. That's not me catastrophizing, that's his actual life.
He's got a company in Manhattan and land in Colorado and a whole world where he's Finn Bardot," I say, using air quotes around his name.
"His life has a departure date on it somewhere even if I haven't seen the ticket.
I keep catching myself counting his time here in Mattichogue like a prison calendar and I hate it. "
"Okay," Annie says slowly. "And?"
"And I know how this goes." My voice stays level, which I'm proud of.
"A man with somewhere better to be enjoys the town for a while, and then one morning he's gone, and everybody's very sorry, and the woman gets to spend a few years being known by the awful thing that happened to her.
I watched my mother do it. Front row seat, remember?
" I pick at the yogurt lid. "She kept his coffee mug in the cabinet for three years, Annie.
I used to shove it to the back behind the good glasses, and every week it migrated forward again. Three years. I'm not doing it."
Annie is quiet for a second. Then she sets down her salad, turns to face me fully, and takes my other hand too, so I'm caught.
"Number one," she says. "Your father leaving was the single dumbest transaction in the history of this town. He traded Clara Gable and you for a woman from a title company and a condo in Sarasota. That is not a story about your worth, Darcy. That is a story about his character."
"Annie."
"Two. You are not your mother, and it is not eighth grade, and you're allowed to notice the difference.
Your mother got left with a kid and a mortgage.
You are a thirty-year-old woman with tenure, a master's degree, great hair, and a man who—according to the entire eyewitness record—walked out of your building this morning looking like he won a medal.
" She squeezes my hands. "And three, you are the best person I know, far better than anyone else in this town including me, and I love myself a lot. "
I laugh, which was probably her whole intent.
"When does he actually leave?" she asks. "Has he said?"
"No." I look at my hands. "That's almost the worst part. Nobody's said it. There's just this thing we're both not looking at, sitting in the corner of every room, holding a boarding pass."
"I'm not saying don't be careful," she says, gentler. "I'm saying be accurate. What if he's in it this far, too? What if the man is sitting in that vineyard right now doing his own sad math?"
"He isn't." I say it fast, like a reflex, because the alternative, hope, is worse. Hope is just another side of fear. "Finn has a whole life outside of this town, Annie. He’s got a dream project waiting for him in Colorado. He already left Mattichogue once, and stayed gone for years. He’s still searching for something he hasn’t found. "
"How do you know he hasn’t found it? He seems pretty into you from what I’ve seen."
I shake my head, too afraid to consider it. "Men like Finn don't rearrange a whole life for a hometown schoolteacher after just one week."
"Uh-huh." Annie starts counting on her fingers. "Let's review. You were so sure he was leaving the Monday after the auction. He didn't go. He showed up to trivia night—"
"Because you and Evan conspired to get him there," I point out.
"Immaterial," she says, without losing her stride.
"He walked you home that night in front of the entire pub. Then he spent most of the day with you Saturday hiding from his own party, after which, on Sunday, he showed up at the library so he could ask you out on a date to Windows on The Bay, which requires a reservation, which means he planned it. And this morning he strolled out of your apartment in front of God and Mrs. Johnson like he couldn’t care less who knows you two are together now.
So, sure babe. No evidence of rearranging going on at all. "
"You're supposed to be on my side."
"I am on your side. And that means pointing out when you're being ridiculous. How am I doing so far?"
I shrug. "I guess you're not wrong."
"No, I'm not. And here's one more item for the tally, since I'm on a roll. After a night of glorious debauchery, which I'm deducing from the color in your cheeks right now, he not only met your womanly needs but exceeded them. By a lot."
"All true. And he made me coffee and breakfast," I murmur, because I'm still floating over the idea.
Annie's brows climb all the way to her hairline. "He. Made. You. Breakfast."
"Yeah."
"That, my friend, is not a man itching to ditch you."
I want to believe her. I want to believe it so much it scares the crap out of me.
And here's where I could tell her the rest. That it's already too late. That somewhere around midnight when we were tangled together on my couch I looked up at Finn and knew. I don't say it out loud. Out loud makes it real.
"Men like Finn have an exit built into everything," I say instead. "It's not cruelty. It's just how they operate. It's their architecture. And I'm not going to be the woman standing in the driveway acting surprised when he's gone. I can't let myself be that person."
"So what's the plan?" She says it the way she'd ask a freshman where the script is.
"The plan is I enjoy this for exactly what it is.
" I hear how reasonable I sound. I'm a professional explainer; I can make anything sound like a syllabus.
"Right now, it's real, and it's good, but it's temporary, and I'm not going to let it get any deeper than it already is.
That's it. That's the whole plan. I hold the line. "
Annie looks at me for a long moment, and I can see her deciding whether to fight me on it.
She doesn't. She just pulls me sideways into a hug that smells like paint and her terrible cafeteria coffee, and holds on one beat longer than a normal hug, which is Annie language for I love you and also I give this plan two weeks.
"Okay, babe," she says into my hair. "Hold the line."
Hold the line. That's it. That's manageable.
I've held lines my whole life: red-pen lines, lunch-duty lines, the fire-drill line, the line at the DMV the year my registration lapsed.
I am, if nothing else, a woman with excellent line discipline.
This is just one more line, and all it requires is that I don't let a six-foot-two gorgeous, magnetic and wounded man with careful hands, a lethal grin, and a body I could explore for decades any further into my heart than he already is.
Too late, a reasonable little voice whispers in the back of my mind. I tell that voice to go to the back of the class.
The line, Gable. Hold it.
But even as I demand it of myself, I can feel my grasp slipping.