Chapter 14
Synthy whirs and neon signs greet us we walk into the arcade, nostalgia heavy in the air.
Brick lines the walls of the large space, a well-stocked bar and overstuffed couches and chairs in a corner for board games, everywhere else a maze of pinging machines surrounded by people.
Harry buys us wristbands at the counter, chatting up the woman as she runs his card.
“I know we’re technically here for work,” he says, sidling up behind us and slinging an arm around our shoulders. “But what if, and hear me out, we take a well-deserved break and hang out for a bit.”
Darcy and I share a quick glance then look up at Harry, saying in unison, “Drinks on you,” before beelining for an open booth.
Darcy slides in on one side. I move to sit next to her, then hesitate, noticing she hasn’t left the space for me she normally does, her palm flattened on the seat like a blockade. I stare at her hand, unease pulsing from the knot in my stomach.
Then I blink, and her hand is on the table, hips shifted over slightly, enough that there’s technically room for me and I’m making up problems in my head.
I glance at Darcy’s face, but her expression is flat and unreadable.
In a jerky movement, I sit across from her, back ramrod straight, feeling awkward and clumsy and invasive for instinctively trying to glue myself to her side.
“This is weird,” Harry says, dropping the drinks on the table and sitting next to me, shoulder to shoulder.
“What is?”
He flicks a finger between me and Darcy. “You two sitting opposite. You always sit next to each other.”
“We don’t always sit next to each other,” I argue, panic cresting in me like Harry’s uncovered some great secret.
“Didn’t know we had seating assignments,” Darcy replies.
Harry rolls his eyes at our combative tones, taking a swig of his beer. “Christ, forget I said anything.”
We sip our drinks in silence for a few minutes, Harry completely at ease, arm slung over the back of the booth and fingers toying absentmindedly with some of my flyaway hairs. His eyes make a lazy circuit of the arcade, a smile here and there when someone at a machine wins.
Darcy’s inscrutable—bored being the closest thing I can decipher.
Which is so not her. She’s never bored, always filled with something to say, some joke to tell, an endless well of excitement for life.
I don’t recognize the apathetic person across from me, peeling the label of her beer bottle off fiber by fiber.
“What’ll you do?” Harry asks, interrupting our quiet. “When we make it big, I mean. What’ll be the first huge thing you do?”
Darcy perks up. “Like what would we spend money on?”
Harry shrugs. “Sure, if that’s what you fancy. Whatever big, outrageous thing that we can’t do now that maybe we’ll be able to if we make it.”
Darcy chews on her lip, eyes bouncing to me then back down to her beer bottle. “I gotta think. What’s yours, Harry?”
Harry’s grin is wide, color flagging his cheeks. He drags a hand through his hair, gaze turning inward like he can already picture the moment. “I’d pay off me mam’s house for her first chance I get.”
“The one she’s currently in?” I ask.
He nods. “It’s tiny, I know, and could be in a much better part of town, but she loves it.
Loves her flowers in the windows and her bright yellow door and all her paintings she’s hung on the walls.
” He’s quiet for a moment, like he’s taking a tour of the house he spent his adolescence in, smile soft and proud.
“It was the first place I think she felt fully safe when she finally left me dad. I’d want her to know it’s hers forever. ”
Emotion scratches at my throat and behind my eyes, and a quick look at Darcy lets me know she feels similarly overwhelmed with affection for Harry.
“Then I’d get myself an absolutely deadly flat of my own,” he continues, face lighting up and voice rising. “Tons of bedrooms, incredible views, a balcony, probably a hot tub? Something real class that’ll get me a ride regularly.”
Darcy and I share a lasting glance this time, both of us rolling our eyes then laughing. “Going from your mum’s flower boxes to you shagging your way through a giant flat was not how I expected that lovely speech to end.”
“Found you sweet for a half a minute there,” Darcy says.
Harry pouts. “You can’t blame a fella for dreaming big.” We boo him. “Fine. Let’s hear your grand ideas. What’ll you do, Darce?”
She takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly through her nose. “God, I don’t know … I suppose I’d go on a trip.”
“Where?” I lean toward her.
She shrugs, eyes back on the table. “The first flight to somewhere new. And another after that. A completely fresh start as often as I want for as long as I want.”
I’m embarrassed that I immediately feel left behind.
“What about you, Cub?” Harry asks, curling his arm around my shoulders and giving me a playful jostle. I force a smile for him, but panic trips down my spine.
I don’t know. I have no fucking clue. And that terrifies me.
How can I not know what I’d want to do if I could do anything? How do I not have a pie-in-the-sky fantasy to blurt out? The only thing I can think of is that I’d keep making music. And, given the chance, I’d follow Darcy on that trip.
Fuck, I’m pathetic.
“I’d pay Oliver to write a book,” I come up with.
My brother has one of the most wonderful minds ever made, filled with an understanding of color that’s nearly sacred, his explanations on its theory spiritual in intensity.
“And any publishing costs or whatever to actually get it made. Share his genius with the world, let everyone else catch a glimpse of the beauty he sees in everything.”
“Hell, I’d chip in on a project like that,” Harry says.
“Me too,” Darcy adds.
I nod and smile, but I feel hollow, buried and separate from my friends who know themselves in a way I’m jealous of.
We finish our drinks in quiet contemplation, then Harry drums his hands on the table, pulling me out of my daze. “Break time’s tragically over, I think.”
He slides out of the booth and marches straight for Street Fighter II. I watch him go, wanting to curl up in the booth and never leave so I don’t have to go back to pretending.
“No rest for the wicked,” Darcy says sarcastically as she watches Harry melt into the game.
“Poor fella must be knackered from all that hard work.” I snort, picking at the calluses on my hands as I try to scrounge up the energy to follow him.
“Come on,” she says after a moment, standing from the booth, smile perfectly in place.
It feels like a gut punch. “Go at least pretend to have fun so I can take a picture and then kick your ass at table tennis.”
I search for a clever response, but only manage a nod, trailing after Harry, wanting so badly to be as fine as she is about everything.
I’m robotic at first, questioning every move I make, looking down at the scene from above my body, dissecting myself like I know I will be in the comments. I feel my brain wasting away, dissolving into this gooey obsessive blob that’s leeched onto social media like a parasite.
I shake myself, trying to claw out of the pit. It would be foolish to waste this precious time I’ve been handed with my friends. I loosen up even more when Harry buys us another round of drinks after I demolish him at Frogger.
“Bet you a fiver I’ll beat you at air hockey,” I say to Darcy, nodding my chin toward the table in the back. Harry lets out a dramatic gasp.
“Pft.” Darcy shoots me a challenging look, the vicious curl of her mouth into a smile making my heart beat double time. “You’re on.”
I lose, of course, but none of it matters, the three of us yelling and cheering over the synthetic noises, the flashing lights making us glow. Skee-Ball, Galaga, Pac-Man—we work our way through all of them, laughing and trash-talking.
Every so often, I catch Darcy taking photos, and I remember that’s why we’re actually here. But I’m taking photos of her too. And Harry. All of us having a good time like we used to before things got messy and so brutally public.
We eventually make it to the pinball machines, and I lose all sense of time, place, and self as competitiveness boils through me.
I haven’t blinked in god knows how long, my eyes wild and vision fogged with focus.
I claw into the sides of the pinball machine, my middle fingers tapping the buttons like mad to keep the silver ball in place.
I’m vaguely aware of Darcy breathlessly cheering me on from somewhere over my shoulder, Harry pacing behind as he watches my rise to victory.
I’m so close to beating his score. One hundred points away. If I can just keep the ball in play—
A cool stream of air shoots directly into my ear, and I jump, screaming in the process and slamming against the top of the pinball machine. I watch in horror, nose pressed to the greasy plexiglass, as my little silver ball of victory zips right between the flippers.
I blink, trying to recalibrate, every light suddenly so bright my eyes water. My gaze lands on Harry, his body curved toward me, smile villainous, mouth about ear level.
“You rat!” I scramble to my full height, then lunge toward him. “You dirty cheater!”
Harry laughs, sidestepping my attack. I spin on my heel and jump on his back, arms slung around his neck, wanting to wring it.
“All’s fair in love and pinball, Cub,” he wheezes, more from how hard he’s laughing and less from any actual strength I’m bringing to this fight. He squirms from my grip, spinning me in front of him and grinning down at me.
“You’re evil.” I try to fix my indulgent smile into a scowl.
“Maybe so,” Harry says with a laugh, hands cupping my cheeks as he drops his forehead to mine. “But I’m also a winner.”
I let out an indignant growl, making him laugh even harder. “Can you believe this shit, Darcy?” I say, still mock-frowning at Harry, hoping to loop her into the swell of playfulness that feels like old times.
She’s silent for a beat too long, and I slide from Harry’s grip to look at her. Her eyes are fixed on the ground, mouth a thin line, something almost crestfallen scoring her features. A sudden knot of guilt lodges itself in my throat, and I don’t understand why it’s there.
“Darce?” I prod. She blinks, giving herself a quick shake, then looks at me, smile luminous as always. But it doesn’t quite meet her eyes or crease the dimples in her cheeks.
“I think I got the shot,” she says, passing her phone to me and Harry. Our bodies are still close, and her gaze bounces from our faces to Harry’s arm lazily wrapped around me. I take the phone, but find it hard to look away from her face, hoping to unearth something there.
But her expression is smooth and serene. It’s only my own fucked-up feelings that has me seeing anything different.
“That’s a great one,” Harry says, resting his chin on my shoulder as he looks at the screen. I drag my eyes from Darcy to the picture glowing at us, Harry’s forehead and nose brushing mine as we both laugh. The knot in my throat tightens, and I swipe to the next.
Darcy took a bunch—in the heat of competition I forgot we actually had a purpose besides having fun—and they all capture Harry and I giggling or smiling in some capacity.
We look … well, we look like a couple. A happy couple. The kind you’d find on some aesthetic Pinterest board or in a rapid-fire reel that makes your teeth ache with how much you want that kind of happiness in your other half.
“These are so fucking cute,” Harry says with a laugh, one large hand giving my arm a gentle squeeze. “Probably doesn’t speak well of my romantic history, but fake dating you is easier than any real dating I’ve done.”
I’m not sure why my stomach bottoms out like it does, the rest of my body clenching up like a fist.
But he’s right. Harry is nothing but easiness. He’s funny and charming and so kind it makes my head spin. Everything would be so much less painful if these romantic feelings weren’t fake, if I wasn’t so … so … stuck on some huge giant mistake made in the desperation of my loneliness.
Harry is the type of person I want to want. Why can’t that be all it takes?
“Ah. That’s class,” Harry says, brushing my finger away and sliding back to the previous image.
He zooms and my breath catches. The picture shows me on his back, wrapped around him in a blur of limbs, my grin the only part of me in focus.
Harry’s smile could melt even the coldest heart, so genuine and earnest as he turns to beam at me over his shoulder.
My pulse picks up as I look at the picture, the happy, carefree us. The version of me that untied the protective mask of numbness for the evening. I wish I could be her all the time.
“If the bass doesn’t work out, photography might be your calling, Darce,” Harry says.
I pull my eyes from the photo and catch her look.
Her smile is tight again, arms wrapped around her middle as tension radiates from her.
I have the impulse to gather her to me and hold her until she relaxes.
Awkwardness is so far removed from our dynamic that witnessing it feels like swallowing down the wrong pipe—sharp and unnatural and scary.
She’s not supposed to feel awkward around me.
I mean us. She’s not supposed to feel awkward around us.
“I don’t know about you two, but I’m beat,” Harry says with a yawn. None of us have fully adjusted to the time zone yet. “Wanna head back to the bus?”
Darcy gives a half-hearted shrug, turning to follow Harry toward the door. After a few steps, realization hits her, and she pivots back to me, hand out for her phone.
Desperation tears through me, and I squeeze her phone tighter. I can’t let it go. Can’t let her go. If she walks out of here now like this, with this gloomy cloud eclipsing her usual sunshine, I worry I won’t be able to fix whatever is wrong.
Darcy frowns, waving her hand and forcing a laugh. “May I?”
I start to shake my head, then realize how juvenile it is that I’m keeping her things from her. Slowly I extend it to her, ideas tripping over themselves on what I can do to salvage this night. I drop the phone in her palm and, without missing a beat, she turns toward the door.
Then it hits me. Her Achilles’ heel.
I grab her wrist, spinning her back to me, her expression harried and confused. “I’m not ready to go back yet,” I say, stepping toward her, into her space, our toes touching. “Let Harry go ahead.”
She blinks a few times, eyes skimming down to our feet, then up the length of my body, a frown fixed on her mouth. “And we do what? Not getting the impression this town offers much in the way of nightlife.”
I lean in even closer with a conspiratorial smile. Her lips part, color inking across her cheeks as one eyebrow flicks up in curiosity.
“It’ll be our little secret,” I whisper. Hand still on her wrist, I squeeze gently. “Let’s get some ice cream.”