She backed up, looking around for a place to hide, but there was none. She felt the blood drain from her face as she watched the knob turn. Thinking as quickly and rationally as she could, Darcy pulled off one of her Steve Madden kitten heels and prepared to throw it. The door opened, and in that exact moment she threw her shoe so that it hit the intruder’s head.
“Agh-h-h!” Darcy’s mom shrieked, stumbling backward.
“Mom?” Darcy panted.
“Darcy? What in God’s name is going on? Did you just throw your shoe at me?”
“Oh my God!” Darcy ran to her mom. “I am so sorry. I thought you were an intruder.”
“An intruder with a key?” Now that her mother had said it, Darcy realized how absurd her line of thinking had been. If it had been an intruder, somebody who had seen her and followed her home, he (or she) wouldn’t have a key.
“That’s a good point.” Darcy’s cheeks reddened.
“Who would even be intruding? We haven’t ever had an intruder.”
“I don’t know … I didn’t think about it. I was blinded by fear! Plenty of people must be after our money, aren’t they?”
“Well, if they are they certainly aren’t going hunting for it in the gazebo.”
“Another good point,” Darcy had to admit.
“And our security system is state of the art, you know that. Nobody can get back here without the pass code to the gate. And if someone tried to jump the fence, an alarm would go off instantly. Not to mention the security cameras. Didn’t you think of that?”
“I wasn’t thinking at all,” Darcy admitted, which was ironic, since the reason she had embarked on this walk in the first place was to think. “Mom, I can’t believe I hit you. I am so, so sorry. What were you even doing back here?”
“I was taking my nighttime stroll and I saw that the gazebo light was on. I thought I must have left it on earlier by accident. I wasn’t expecting to get hit by a shoe.”
“I’m so embarrassed.” Darcy hid her face in her hands.
“That’s okay.” Mrs. Fitzwilliam looked quizzically at her daughter. “I know it wasn’t on purpose. But Darcy … are you all right? You’re shaking.”
Darcy looked down at her hands and saw that they were, in fact, trembling.
“I don’t know,” she said, being honest for the first time that day. “I don’t know if I’m okay.”
“Sit down, darling.” Mrs. Fitzwilliam held Darcy’s hand and they sat down together on the bench. “Tell me what’s going on. Is it Luke?”
“Yes.” Darcy sighed.
“What did he do? I knew he was too rough around the edges for my daughter.”
“I don’t know, Mom. I don’t think it’s all his fault. It’s kind of a long story.”
“Well, I don’t have anywhere to be, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“Then let’s talk it out.”
Darcy couldn’t remember the last time she had a true heart-to-heart with her mom. She barely knew where to begin. She told of how she’d first come to realize that she was in love with Luke, how she went to his house and professed her love in a completely inappropriate display of romance. She told of how he not only had shot her down but also had attacked her character, and how she had taken his word for gospel, taken it to heart and believed that she was a selfish person who needed to change her ways. She told her mom about Kit and Lyle and how she saved them from being shipped away to juvenile hall, and how she was dehydrated and she’d forgotten to eat for too long and ended up in the hospital. She told of how she’d rushed to Luke’s engagement party, only to find that it was canceled, and how he’d changed his mind about her after learning what she’d done for his brothers. She told of how happy they’d been to finally be together, and of how it lasted barely a day before things had unraveled right before her eyes.
“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said. “We didn’t mean to put any unnecessary stress on you. You know we only want you to be happy. We get carried away, but all you have to do is say, ‘Mom, Dad, back off,’ and we’ll back right on off. Sometimes we just need to be reminded.”
“Well, thanks. But then I went to Oasis Spa with Bingley and he reminded me of what Luke had said, and then I just couldn’t get it out of my mind. So I planned to get dinner with Luke and tell him how uncomfortable I was and how I couldn’t get the memory of him calling me selfish out of my head, but when I got to dinner, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be honest. I wanted to be honest, I really did, but instead I got bratty and moody and completely shut down. Then I ran home and cried, and I thought if I came out to the garden I could think more clearly, and … well, you know the rest.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam chuckled. “The part where you threw a shoe at my head and nearly gave me a concussion.”
“How can you joke about that? And in a time like this, when your only daughter is clearly having a nervous breakdown?”
“Honey…” She chuckled again. “You’re not having a nervous breakdown.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re not. In fact, it makes perfect sense that you’re reacting this way.”
“It does?”
“Isn’t it obvious? The last time you were open and honest with him about how you felt, he rejected your feelings and he attacked your character! Of course you’re afraid to open up to him again; you don’t want to get hurt again.”
Darcy stared at her mother, blinking. She was right. This was obvious. Only Darcy had been too frantic to see it. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him how she felt this time because last time she got so hurt. Her body was literally shutting down as a way to protect herself from getting hurt again.
“Shutting down has always been easier than being vulnerable.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but she was glad she had, so she could hear it in her own voice.
“That’s exactly right, darling.”
“So what do I do?”
“That’s entirely up to you.”
“But I don’t even know my options!”
Mrs. Fitzwilliam laughed again at her daughter, prompting Darcy to laugh along with her; she was gradually feeling less and less panicked.
“You can tell Luke your concerns and risk getting hurt, or stay emotionally shut down and most definitely stay in pain, because you will have destroyed a potentially good thing.”
“So I’ll get hurt either way?”
“The first way you might get everything—relief from this anxiety and the love of your life back.”
“Do you really think he could be the love of my life?”
“I don’t know, darling,” she said. “But there’s really only one way to find out.”
22
Mrs. Fitzwilliam brought a pot of chamomile tea to Darcy’s room, which she sipped gratefully, sitting in her reading nook, looking up at the twinkling stars. When she felt ready, Darcy picked up her phone and opened up the text app.
No, she told herself, don’t send a text. Call him. This isn’t high school.
She clicked on his name and hit the Call button, then listened anxiously while it rang. She put the call on speakerphone and held it away from her ear so that it didn’t feel so intense. Would he be mad? Defensive? Would he even answer? When he answered, her heart skipped a beat.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hi, Luke, it’s Darcy.”
“I know.” He sounded tired, like maybe he had been asleep.
“Oh, right, okay,” she stammered. “Look, I don’t know how mad at me you are for the way I acted tonight, but if you’d give me a chance, I’d like to explain everything that’s been going on with me.”
For a moment, only silence came from the receiver. Darcy closed her eyes and swallowed. Maybe this relationship wouldn’t work out, but it would crush her to know that she was the one who ruined it.
“Where do you want to meet?” he said, clearing his throat.
She hadn’t thought about it; she’d figured they’d talk
on the phone.
“Oh, uh…”
“How about we get mojitos at the Tiki Room?” he joked dryly.
She laughed. Okay, she breathed, maybe we can recover from this.
“I actually kind of like that idea,” she said. “See you there in thirty?”
“Okay, Darcy,” he said. “Whatever you want.”
* * *
She got there early and ordered herself a drink. The Tiki Room was, as it sounded, a tropical-themed bar adorned with tiki faces etched into the wood, plastic palm trees, a green, jungle-esque glow, and electric tiki torches perched in every corner. She was only partly surprised when the bartender poured her drink into a hollowed-out pineapple and stuck it with a tiny paper umbrella. She asked for a Stella Artois for Luke, then paid the bartender and took the drinks to a booth in the way back, where the wall was covered in plastic bamboo entangled with red and green Christmas lights that hadn’t yet been taken down.
Luke arrived right on time, sliding into the vinyl seat across from her. Between them was a map of Hawaii, stuck beneath a layer of Plexiglas. “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys started to play.
“This place is really weird,” he said.
“You picked it.”
“I was joking.”
“Thank you for meeting me,” she said. “I didn’t want to make you come out again so late.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. “It sounded important. No mojitos?”
“Well, I guess that’s a good place to start. I have to be honest with you: I hate mojitos and I always have. So when you said you didn’t think I was a mojito kind of girl, you were actually spot on.”
“So you gaslit me.”
“I what?”
“You made me think I was wrong and crazy for thinking something, even though it was completely accurate.”
“Yes, exactly, and I’m really sorry for that—”
“I don’t understand. Why did you pretend you like mojitos?”
“I’m getting to that part.”
“Okay…”
“I pretended to like mojitos and was an overall asshole to you at dinner because I wanted to tell you something but was afraid of how you’d react.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “God, glad I’m not crazy. But why couldn’t you just tell me?”
“Because last time I told you how I felt you shot me down. You called me a snob and—”
“But you know I didn’t mean it!”
“That’s the thing; I don’t know that. The morning when you said those things, you were just so sure, so convinced that I was a spoiled and entitled brat. And as far as I can tell, the only thing that changed your mind was that I bought your brothers a Get Out of Jail Free card, and for no other reason than to prove to you that I am in fact a good person who thinks of other people. If anything, it was one of the more self-centered things I’ve done, especially since I didn’t consider if it was even what was best for your brothers.”
“You did the right thing,” he said. “Juvie is a hellhole, and—”
“Okay, maybe. But you thought of me as a snob before that, and if that’s really the only thing that made you change your mind, then, I mean, what’s stopping you from going right back to seeing me that way again? Maybe I’ll send back my meal at dinner or I’ll want our kids to go to private school and you’ll interpret that as snobby and you will judge me. And what I realized, what really started to bug me, was that the truth is I’m not all that snobby and I’m not really selfish. You perceived me that way, you interpreted my actions as snobby for all these years, even though I’m actually a pretty good person and you never saw that until I bailed your brothers out. And I don’t know what to do with that information, but it was sitting really badly with me, and I wanted to express all this to you, and I know I should have sooner, but I didn’t want … I didn’t want to get hurt again.”
“Are you finished?” he asked.
“Yes.” She took a moment to catch her breath.
“I am sincerely so sorry for what I said that night. The real, honest-to-God truth is that I don’t, and never did, think poorly of you. Now, if you’ll let me, I’d really love to explain what happened.”
“Oh.” Darcy was surprised. “Yes. Of course.”
“I’d been dating Charlotte for a little over three years. Things were great, we had a lot of good times and we got along really well, no fighting or anything like that. My parents were crazy about her and said from the beginning that I should marry her, but something about that plan didn’t feel quite right to me. It was always a good relationship, but some things were always a little off. Like how we never really had the same sense of humor. Or, rather, she never really had any sense of humor at all. And I don’t say that to be unkind, obviously. I’m just trying to help you understand how things got to be … well, how they were.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But how does this have anything to do with you thinking or not thinking that I’m a snob?”
“It’s the backstory. Key backstory. Don’t worry, I’m getting to it.”
“Okay.” She nodded gently. “Keep going.”
“So about two months ago she came to me and she said she’d been reading this book, a self-help book, that said if your boyfriend hasn’t proposed after two years of dating, then you need to break up with him, because it means his heart just isn’t in it.”
“Oh, yikes. And you’d already been dating three years.”
“Exactly. So she asked me if we’re moving forward or if she’s wasting her time with me, and I honestly didn’t know, so I said that, and she said she was leaving me! I was a little sad, but mostly I was relieved, so I didn’t try to fight her on it. She was ready for marriage and I just wasn’t. Or, I think, more importantly, I wasn’t ready to marry her.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, so then you showed up before Christmas and, my God, I feel bad saying this, but I practically forgot all about Charlotte. In high school I had a huge crush on you, but I always thought you were too good for me—way too smart and way too beautiful—so I never let on that I had any feelings whatsoever.”
“You were a competitive jackass,” she reminded him. “You unhooked my bra once during Mr. Walser’s bio class.”
“Right, yeah.” He scratched his head and blushed. “And I’m sorry about that, but my suppressed feelings were just expressing themselves through alternative routes. Little did I know that giving a girl a hard time in high school is basically the same thing as baking her a cake that says ‘I LIKE YOU’ in big red letters.”
“I guess figuring that out is a rite of passage.”
“And I totally get why my behavior made you think of me as just another high school idiot. Anyway, I always liked you, and I loved giving you a hard time, because it was the only thing that ever made you pay attention to me. I challenged you during debate because you were the smartest girl and the funnest to argue with.”
“Most fun.”
“What?”
“I was the most fun to argue with. You said funnest. But it’s most fun.”
“Seriously, Darcy?”
“Yes, that is seriously the correct way of saying it.”
“But are you seriously pointing it out in the middle of me pouring my heart out to you?”
“Yes. It makes it … funner, don’t you think?”
He tried not to smile but couldn’t help it.
“Very funny,” he said. “So, like I was saying, I hadn’t seen you in, like, a decade, and when I saw you all those feelings came flooding back—how beautiful you are, how frighteningly smart, how different you are from everyone else I’ve ever known—and I felt like I had to have you. You made me feel so many things Charlotte had never made me feel, and I just thought ‘Okay, it makes sense now. How could I have wanted to marry Charlotte when I didn’t feel any of this for her?’”
“And then we kissed, that night…” Darcy recalled.
“Yes, and I thought it was too good to b
e true. I thought you must have been too drunk to know what you were doing.”
“Well, I was.”
“But then it happened again.”
“I think I was drunk then too, wasn’t I?”
“Okay, great. So you never actually wanted to kiss me and we’re just sitting here for no reason right now, is that what you’re saying?”
“No. God, don’t be such a baby. Of course I wanted to kiss you. Both times. I realized I had fallen in love with you and I tried to shake it off but I couldn’t. Drunk or sober, you were suddenly always on my mind.”
“And you were always on my mind,” he said.
“Then what happened?”
“I was thinking about how I could take things further with you, maybe take you on an actual date so that you knew I wanted more than something drunk and casual. Charlotte came to me that night and tried to get back together. I told her I couldn’t, because I had fallen for you and was going to try and pursue you. She didn’t like hearing that, obviously. She got really serious and reminded me of what I suspected all along: Darcy Fitzwilliam is way too good for me.”
“She told you that?”
“She said to get real, that a girl like you would never truly want to be with a guy like me. She told me you had to be using me as a quick distraction before going back to New York.”
“But—”
“And I believed her. I believed her because I had already believed it deep down! Then she told me she had seen you talking with Carl at the Glidden House, and that you were probably getting back together.”
“What the hell? Charlotte was at the—”
“I was so sure you’d be rejecting me any minute, then, and Charlotte convinced me to get out while I still could. I knew I could feel safe with Charlotte, that she would never hurt me the way you potentially could, so I chose to stay. Remember, this was when I didn’t believe you could ever want to be with a guy like me.”
“Wow,” said Darcy. “That’s … sad. I’m sorry you felt that way.”
“Well, what I did next was probably more sad. She told me I had to cut off my relationship with you, and I agreed. I thought if I was going to have a marriage and a family with her, I was going to have to do everything I possibly could to make it work.”