Chapter 26
“I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear,” Darcy says by way of good morning the next day, banging open the door to my room and standing disheveled like a banshee in the frame. It’s absolutely mortifying how much my heart lurches at the sight of her.
I let out a long sigh. “Oh good. I was just thinking, ‘You know what? I haven’t received enough bad news lately.’”
Darcy rolls her eyes. “You don’t have to be reserved all the time, you know. It must be exhausting to be so understated and undramatic in your approach to life.”
She pads across the room to my bed, nudging me over before sliding in next to me and wriggling close. My pulse picks up like the wagging tail of an overeager puppy greeting its owner. Feelings are so embarrassing.
“What awful thing are you here to tell me?” I ask, resting my head on her shoulder despite knowing better. Her gravity is too strong for me to resist.
“We need to work on the love song for the festival. It’s ten days away and we don’t have anything usable.”
“Kindly go fuck yourself,” I say in the sweetest voice I can muster. Her laugh bounces my swollen cheek against her arm and I wince, rolling away.
“Oh Cubby love, I’m so sorry,” she says, turning on her side toward me. Her eyes are filled with worry, hands fluttering close to my skin but not touching.
“S’fine,” I mumble, squeezing my eyes shut. Not from the pain in my mouth, but from the way she’s looking at me. So soft and caring and like my hurt hurts her too. I need to stop seeing things in her face that aren’t there.
“Will waffles make it better?” Darcy asks in a low whisper.
My eyes flash open. “I let you get away with a lot of crap, Darcy Burton, but don’t you dare toy with me about the possibility of waffles.”
She laughs again, nose scrunching up and dimple peeking out. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I saw a mix in the pantry and there’s a Belgian waffle maker on the counter. Place is pretty well stocked with food.”
A needy noise escapes from my throat right as my stomach growls.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” She gets out of bed, taking a moment to stretch next to the mattress, and I instinctively scoot toward her, chasing the warmth she left on the sheets. “I’ll go get started.”
“Meet you down there.”
“One condition.” She plants her hands on either side of my shoulders, leaning close as she traps me with her gaze.
Her breath travels over my lips, and my tongue traces the sensation, my pulse pounding and every nerve ending standing at attention at her proximity.
I lift an eyebrow, trying to be cool. “After I pump you full of sugar, we have to work on the song for the festival.”
“You’re evil,” I whine, half-heartedly trying to roll away. She keeps me caged, grinning as she tickles the tip of her nose against mine.
“The absolute worst,” she says in delightful agreement, then turns and skips out of the room.
Despite waffles being god-tier-level food, they apparently don’t help much with inspiration. We’ve been at it for hours, strumming our instruments and groaning in frustration as nothing sticks.
“This is ass,” I sing, playing a C chord from where I’m sprawled on the oversized chair in the living room.
“You’re just being difficult,” Darcy sings back, plucking her bass.
“No, love songs are stupid and everything is pointless and life is meaningless,” I garble, my face still swollen from the surgery.
“What rhymes with meaningless?” Darcy trills.
“Penis puss,” I respond with bravado. We both giggle.
“Now you’re being difficult as well as disgusting,” she croons.
For once, I’m not being obstinate on purpose.
I know what this song should be, what people want it to be—some deep, meaningful confessional, about Harry and how he’s fulfilled me in ways Connor never could.
It’s supposed to be about a sweeping romance and pale blue eyes and a guy I’d risk it all for.
It makes me itch, trying to attach that to Harry, when who I really want is here with me, lying on the floor, legs propped on the couch, bass almost bigger than her body as her fingers move along the slender neck of the instrument.
No matter what I do—however much I try to tune Darcy out, pluck her from my mind—she reappears with a lightning strike every time I try to tap into the lyrical part of my brain.
I sigh, setting my guitar to the side and then sliding to the carpet. “I’m calling it for the day. Muses aren’t musing.” More like I can’t keep thinking about my muse or I’ll get sad(der) and horny(er) and probably start to cry.
“I know what will inspire us,” Darcy says, setting aside her bass and crawling across the carpet to rest her head next to mine, feet pointed in the opposite direction.
I swivel to look at her, and she’s already staring at me, a devious smile on her lips.
She drops her forehead to mine and whispers, “Wanna watch Bridgerton?”
“I’m ready for Anthony Bridgerton to stop being a gentleman,” Darcy says as the character cites for the thousandth time that that’s the reason he has decided to create seven episodes of sexual tension instead of just kissing Kate Sharma.
“I’m ready for him to take his pants off,” I add through a mouthful of pizza. Darcy cut it up into tiny bites for me so I wouldn’t hurt my extraction sites.
“That too,” she agrees. “Kate as well. Honestly, the entire cast, crew, and ensemble while we’re at it.”
“God bless the female gaze.” We high-five, then giggle, our bodies vibrating together from our snuggled spot on the couch.
The sofa is huge, more nest than normal seating arrangement, but we’ve sequestered ourselves to a corner of it, tucked up tight with blankets and pillows.
It all feels so normal, so wonderful—this irresistible closeness like muscle memory, even after months of trying to break it.
I’m terrified of this charge of happiness looping through my body after going so long without it.
Touch used to be second nature for us. A hug.
Holding hands while we ran down the hallways at school.
Legs tangled in front of us as we played music back and forth.
Cuddled close as we ate junk food and watched movies on so many nights like this.
I wish I could pinpoint the moment when touching her became so …
raw. So brutally vivid. Like I’m plugging myself into a circuit board, something warm and terrifying running through me.
If I knew the moment, maybe I could go back to it, disarm the memory like a bomb, rework the wires of it so all of these touches didn’t turn me inside out with nostalgia for a life I’ll never have.
As if this isn’t our fifth rewatch, we both shriek in horror at the dramatic ending to episode seven, rabidly hitting buttons on the remote to start the season finale. It takes about ninety seconds for us both to start crying at the drama on the screen.
“I needed this,” Darcy says softly, snuggling closer. Her arms are wrapped around my middle, cheek pressed above my heart, while I toy with the ends of her hair. “No one else I’d rather binge-watch with.”
“Me too,” I say, so many unspoken words chafing my throat.
God, I want to tell her. Want to turn her face to look up at me and pour out every overwhelming feeling I have for her, exorcise all these soft, scary thoughts.
Make her hear the awful, remarkable truth of it so I don’t have to be the only one to carry it.
I want to tell her that I can’t stop thinking about her and that night and the stupid things we did and that stupid kiss from years before.
I want to ask her if she ever thinks about it too.
If she thinks about me in the almost painful way I think about her.
And, if she doesn’t, I want to ask how I can stop turning back to these thoughts as often as I do.
She picks up my hand, absentmindedly turning the rings around my fingers as she watches the TV, my eyes fixed on only her.
I love the little divot at her wrist, the way her veins and tendons track the music living in her hands down to the callouses on her fingertips.
I love the way they feel against me. I hate how I can never tell her this.
I love my best friend so much, I worry who I’d be without her, without this love that eats me whole, tethers me to Earth. I’d rather be on the sidelines of her life, growing numb around this aching heart of mine, than risk losing her entirely over a silly, devastating crush.
“I’m sorry I didn’t stick up for you in Philadelphia,” she says softly, eyes still fixed on the screen.
She doesn’t look at me, her jaw clenched and eyes creased. I see the hurt there, the way it pulls her muscles taut with regret. I shrug, clearing my throat.
“It’s okay,” I whisper back. “You already apologized yesterday.”
She surprises me by sitting up, grabbing the remote, and turning off the TV.
“No I didn’t.” She stares at me, brow furrowed and lips pinched like it’s the first time she’s seen me in months. “And it’s not okay.” The crack in her voice is as sharp as a knife. “It’s all right for you to admit I hurt you. That I messed up. That doesn’t make you weak.”
“It makes the hurt worse,” I admit, barely above a whisper.
“How?”
I swallow a few times, words getting tangled in my throat. “If I admit I’m hurt to someone else, I have to admit it to myself—acknowledge the pain—then it will fester and grow and stink. Why would I do that?”
“Did you ever think that admitting someone hurt you would let the wound heal?”
I shake my head, not because the thought never occurred to me, but because I know it won’t work.
I don’t want it to. I want to hang on to these wounds from Darcy.
They’re horrible reminders of how deeply I feel for her.
If I let them go, let them scab and scar over, numb to any sensation, I’ll lose this last bit I have of her, poignantly sharp and damning.
It’s sick, but I refuse to give that up.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, one hand gingerly reaching out to cup my cheek.
Every nerve ending reroutes to where she touches me, the brush of her fingers cool against the heat of my skin.
“I don’t want you to forgive me easily. I want you to acknowledge I hurt you …
keep hurting you.” She goes quiet for a long time, her thumb brushing away the tears streaming down my face.
“But I also want you to know I’m going to work to make things right. ”
I bite my lip, trying to look away, but she doesn’t let me, giving my earlobe a gentle tug until my eyes are back on her, until she can see every cracked-open, raw emotion playing across my face.
“I’m not going to hurt you anymore, Cubby love,” she says, a few tears of her own rolling down her cheeks. “I promise.”