Chapter 12
“Dream blunt rotation, go,” Deja says a few hours later as we lounge in our nautical suite, the decor of which has become exponentially more charming and sensical as we pass a joint around.
Despite the rocky start and a few hiccups in the middle, the show was ultimately a success, all of us pressing our sweaty bodies together backstage when we finished. We convinced Kevin to make a pit stop at a dispensary on our way back to the inn, and we’ve been basking in the afterglow since.
“Do they have to be alive?” Skull asks, taking a drag then leaning over to shotgun it into Deja’s mouth, her head in his lap. I’m either very high or it’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.
“Dead or alive. Fictional or real. No rules, just immaculate vibes,” she responds.
He presses his lips together, passing the joint to Kale, who eagerly takes a hit. “Hmm. I would say, Karl Marx, Aristotle, bell hooks, probably Nietzsche … and Deja, of course.”
We blink at him.
“Christ, not sure I’m smart enough to be smoking with you,” Harry says, accepting the joint from Kale.
Darcy laughs so hard she wheezes, resting her head on my shoulder, her giddy sigh tickling my neck.
A thread of warmth traces down my throat, weaving around my heart then expanding with a delicate tickle to my fingertips and toes. I rest my cheek against her hair.
Deja claps with delight. “I love it. I think mine would be Pedro Pascal, Barrack Obama—Michelle too, crucial they come as a package deal—and Jennifer Coolidge, the centerpiece of the kief. Queen of the green. Oh! And Moo Deng. But in like, a totally ethical way, obviously.”
Skull beams at her, placing a soft kiss to her lips.
“Who’s Moo Deng?” Harry asks, voice slow and soft, eyes only half open.
Deja’s jaw crashes open. “Wait, are you telling me you don’t know the joy that is Moo Deng the hippo?”
“Are they a rapper?”
“She’s only the greatest source of serotonin on the internet.” Deja pulls out her phone and types wildly, giggling the entire time. She turns it to us, proffering a series of photos of an exceptionally chunky and adorable baby hippo.
“Wait, Moo Deng is an … actual hippo?” I ask, squinting at the screen as she taps on a video and I watch the hippo try to bite a stream of water, her rolls majestically jiggling.
“Well, duh,” Deja says.
I stare at her for a moment, eyes traveling like treacle from her face to the screen and back, then laugh so hard Darcy’s head bounces off my shoulder. Everyone else joins in until we’re snorting and coughing.
Darcy resettles herself, head in my lap now, eyes closed and smile soft as she continues to giggle. My hands wind through her hair out of habit, feeling the slip of the silky strands against the sensitive skin between each finger.
This position—this closeness—is as familiar to me as breathing, and with my defenses down and brain fuzzy, it hits me like a blow to the chest how sharply I’ve missed it. How I’d do anything to preserve it—take back every moment that pushed her away so I can always keep her this close.
“How about yours, Harry?” Deja asks, choking on the words as she continues to laugh.
“You all aren’t proving to be too bad, yeah?” he says, his smile broad and lazy as he looks around the circle. We boo his easy answer. “Jaysus, tough crowd.” He tilts his head to the ceiling, smile only growing. “Let’s see … Freddie Mercury—”
“Good one,” Kale and I say in unison. If I were sober I’d be disturbed at our shared thought.
“David Bowie. Wanda Sykes.”
“Also good ones,” Deja says.
“Megan Thee Stallion. And … me mam.”
“Your mom?” Kale says.
“Yes, my mammy,” Harry says emphatically, head rolling forward to fix a look at Kale. “She’s the funniest person I know. And Lord knows she deserves to kick back with a joint and Freddie Mercury after raising me and my sisters alone.”
Kale holds up his hands, a serene tilt to his smile. “I respect it.”
“Who’s on yours, then?” Harry asks, nodding at Kale.
He ticks them off on his fingers. “Bowen Yang, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Bailey, Frank Ocean … and Ina Garten. If the rotation devolves into an orgy, so be it.”
“The Barefoot Contessa?” Deja shrieks, bolting up from Skull’s lap. “From the Food Network? You want to be in an orgy with the Barefoot Contessa?”
“Well … no,” Kale says slowly. I admire the fact that he genuinely seems to be considering the question. “I want to be in an orgy with the hot men I named. But I have no doubt that woman can rip cigs like no other and would provide the best snacks to replenish us after.”
“That’s rather brilliant,” I say. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”
Kale tries to roll his eyes, but ends up laughing too hard, his face screwing up into a smile as we join in.
“How about you, Cub?” Harry asks, slipping the blunt to me. I take a hit, the smoke fuzzing my head further as I try to think.
“Elton John,” I say, coughing on my exhale. “Fleabag. Diana Ross. Andrew Garfield because I feel like he’d get all giggly and make out with everyone—”
“So true,” Deja says.
“And Mary, Queen of Scots.”
“Bloody Mary?” Harry says with a guffaw. “Why the feck would you want Bloody Mary lurking around? That’s the start of a horror movie.”
“That’s Mary Tudor, you knob.”
Harry waves me away. “There’s no keeping the lot of them straight.”
“There absolutely is; this has been pounded into our heads since primary school. It’s not like mixing up the random-ass Edwards.”
“Ooh, add Edward Cullen to my rotation!” Deja squeals.
“What about you, Darce?” Harry asks.
I trace the pads of my fingers across her forehead, down the bridge of her nose to the cupid’s bow of her mouth, and her lips curl up at the edges.
Her eyelids slowly lift, and my breath catches in my throat as her gaze locks with mine, her entire body lazy like a cat in sunshine as she lounges on my lap.
She nods toward the blunt, and I hold it toward her.
Instead of grabbing it, she lifts her head a few inches, taking the end in her mouth, her plush lips pressing against my fingers as she inhales, the tip of the joint glowing red, the heat traveling up my arm, circling my chest, flooding my cheeks, dripping low in my belly.
She holds her breath for a moment, and it feels like she’s stolen the air from my lungs.
Without taking her eyes from mine, she tilts her head to the side, blowing out a stream of smoke.
Like it takes some effort to do so, she finally pulls her gaze from me, head dropping back to my lap and neck turning as she looks at Harry.
“Mine is Cubby,” she says, and I feel the stretch of her smile against my thigh.
There’s a beat of silence. “Cubby, and…?”
Darcy shakes her head, the movement rippling through me, a delicate swirl of pleasure that settles between my hip bones. She looks up at me again; my eyes haven’t left her face. She lifts her hand, toying with the strands of my hair that fall around my shoulders as I lean toward her. “Just Cubby.”
Something shifts in my chest, a vital piece notching into place, as everything around me evaporates in a pink cloud, Darcy’s smile and big blue eyes the new axis my world revolves around.
I let myself forget we’re stoned and none of this is real.
I let myself believe, only for a moment, that she means what she’s saying.
That she’s choosing me, out loud and full-throated.
It’s too grand to hold on to for long. It stings like a sunburn as the lightness of the idea drains out of me, dissolving into some alternate, beautiful universe that momentarily butted up against ours.
Despite the pain, I sit there, Darcy’s head in my lap, my attention fixed on her.
At some point we all shift. I’m too lost in those eyes of hers to register it—everyone else retreating to their rooms, Darcy and I curled up like two halves of a heart on the destroyed big bed.
I watch her sleep, the way her eyelids twitch and flutter as she dreams, the rise and fall of her chest and soft flare of her nostrils as she breathes.
I see the toothy seven-year-old I held hands with on the playground and the crying seventeen-year-old I held after her parents kicked her out—that time for dyeing the ends of her hair blue, the time after when they discovered she was on birth control.
I see Darcy, my Darcy, and she’s so beautiful, it hurts.
An ache in my jaw. A crack in my chest. An itch in my hands to touch her.
It hurts so much, I have to look away, turn my back to her as broken tears slip down my cheeks. The afterimage of her glows behind my closed lids like I was staring at the sun, and a small burst of panic flares through me.
How do you ever unsee someone when they’re as bright as Darcy is?