But then there had been the thing with Katie Smith during junior year. Katie was a sophomore with long blond hair who wore a lot of too-pink lip gloss. One weekend, while her parents were out of town, Katie decided to throw a huge party. One of those “everyone is invited” kind of deals. Darcy had a big chemistry exam to study for, and she had never been one for parties anyway, so she stayed home. Carl had not. When the party was over, Carl had showed up at Darcy’s window, drunk beyond recognition and begging to be let in. She had let him in, only because she worried that his wailing was sure to attract the police. Once safely inside her bedroom, he said “I love you” for the first time, then passed out on the floor.
On Monday at school there were whispers in the hallway as she walked by. Everybody she passed avoided eye contact, as if they all had some big collective secret. Katie Smith herself seemed to be watching Darcy all through fourth period English.
“Why is everybody staring at me, Carl?” She pulled him over between fourth and fifth periods, grabbing him by the long sleeve of his Polo shirt. He turned white as a ghost.
“Babe, we have to talk.”
“Really? You think? What the hell is going on?”
“As you know, I got really … really drunk on Saturday. I don’t even remember how it happened, but somehow I ended up in Katie’s bed and—”
“You slept with her,” she said, stone cold, very matter of fact.
“Yes. But Darcy, I swear to God—”
“That’s fine.”
“What? It’s not fine; it’s terrible. Darcy, I never meant to hurt you in any way. I hope you’ll find a way to forgive me.”
“I do forgive you.” She had laughed shallowly. “People make mistakes.”
“Wait, are you serious?”
“Yeah,” she had said, and meant it. “Nobody’s perfect.”
“Jesus, Darcy, you’re incredible.” He had stared bug-eyed in disbelief.
“Sure.” She had shrugged. “Hey, listen, the bell is gonna ring any second. We should get back to class.”
“Okay.” He had beamed incredulously. “I’ll see you after school.”
“Sure,” she had said dispassionately. He leaned in for a kiss but she turned her head so that he got her cheek instead, then she turned and hurried to class, holding her chin high above all the childishly curious eyes.
It wasn’t that she had been lying when she said she forgave him. She had meant what she said. People make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. It wasn’t that she was mad. The thing was, in that moment in the hallway, when he had confessed, the spark she had for him had just sort of gone out. She wasn’t mad and she didn’t hate him, she just didn’t quite feel anything for him anymore.
She’d broken up with him a week later, out of boredom and apathy, but had taken him back a month after that, out of boredom and apathy as well. He worshipped her, and treated her like royalty to get her back. He sent flowers to her house almost every day, and wrote an awkward, boyish love song that he played for her clumsily on his uncle’s antiquated acoustic guitar. It was cute, she thought. She was perfectly happy keeping him around as a constant ego booster, and they still got along pretty well. They laughed at all the same jokes and loved all the same books. They still shared political opinions and hated all the same classmates. And, of course, there was the fact that her parents adored him. As long as she was dating Carl Donovan of the Donovan family, they pretty much let her get away with anything she wanted. And so, because of all these things, she was perfectly content carrying on a romantic relationship with someone she wasn’t in love with.
But then her father had decided the two should get married, and the rest was history.
* * *
“Now just isn’t the time, Carl,” she told him then, sitting across from his eagerly waiting puppy dog eyes. “My mom is really weak and I need to focus on being there for her. I can’t commit to something I’m just not ready for.”
“I have to be frank with you, Darcy. This is the last time I’m going to ask for you back. I’m thirty and I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to get serious, start a family. And if you don’t want it to be with you, then I’m going to have to move on.”
“So … this is an ultimatum?”
“Yes. You have until Christmas to decide. If you want to be with me, really be with me, I need to know by then.”
7
Darcy hung back in the Glidden House lobby while Carl excused himself and retreated to his suite. She turned her phone on and saw that it was glowing with texts and missed calls and voice mails from Millie back at the New York office. Oh God, she thought. What fire do I need to put out now? But she quickly realized there’d be nothing like a high-stress work call to take her mind off the tediously unpleasant events of the past few days.
“Millie, talk to me,” she said, stepping out onto the freezing-cold terrace.
Millie updated her on the status of a few deals that were in the works, as well as the Overlook merger that was about to go south. Darcy made a mental note to call the director at Overlook to find out what was going on, and looking in on the lobby from the terrace, Darcy saw Bingley talking to the woman at the front desk.
“Hold on, Millie,” she cut in. “I’m going to have to call you back.” She hung up and hurried back into the lobby, eager to catch up with her friend on their respective nights. But he wasn’t alone.
“Hey, Darcy,” Jim said warmly, arm linked in Bingley’s. “What are you doing here?”
Bingley saw her then and blushed.
“I was just getting coffee with Carl Donovan,” she said in a singsong voice. “What are you two doing here, pray tell?”
“Do not judge me.” Bingley playfully pointed a finger at her.
“Yes, yes.” Jim rolled his eyes. “Bingley spent the night in my room, now could we please be adults about it and shut down the schoolgirl tittering? This is how rumors get started.”
“Okay, okay.” Darcy held up her hands in surrender. “You won’t hear another word from me. I am technically the matchmaker here, so of course I reserve rights to take credit for this.”
“Yes, fine,” Bingley agreed. “Darcy Fitzwilliam Superstar.”
“That’s me.”
“Carl wasn’t trying to put a ring on it again, was he?” Jim asked sympathetically.
“Not quite. But something like that.”
“What did you tell him?” Bingley asked.
“I don’t know,” Darcy sighed. “That I’d think about it. Meanwhile I have all this stuff I’m missing at work. I’m starting to think I should just go back. I don’t want the place to fall apart without me there. Or worse, be just fine without me there.”
“No!” Bingley protested. “You just got here!”
“I know, but—”
“Stay. Jim invited me to go caroling with him and his family tonight. You should come. She should, right, Jim?”
“Absolutely. It will be a blast. My mom has a secret hot chocolate recipe. You’ll love it.”
“I have a conference call, but I’ll try to get out of it,” she told them.
“Be there or be square, doll,” Bingley said, ruffling her hair lovingly.
* * *
In her bedroom, Darcy fidgeted with a lampshade in the corner. It was on crooked, and no matter how she adjusted it, it slid right back into crookedness as soon as she moved her hands away. Of course, it wasn’t really the lampshade that was on her mind. It wasn’t the stress of work that was on her mind either, or the pressure of Carl’s ultimatum. It wasn’t even her mother’s bad health. It was Luke.
What had that kiss been about? She had been drunk, yes, but not that drunk. She worried that it was something else, and that the alcohol was only partly to blame. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that perhaps the alcohol had only brought something to the surface that had been dormant within her for a long time. She only knew one thing for sure: nobody, no thing, had ever made her feel this way. Until now.
; She got dressed in a pair of woolen, slim-fit pants and a burnt-umber cashmere sweater, then wrapped it all together beneath her favorite black Prada peacoat.
* * *
The Bennet house was only two blocks away, so she walked there on her own. It was arguably one of the smallest houses in the neighborhood, only two stories tall, built in a classic Tudor style. She walked up the cracked pavement of the driveway, trying to remember the last time she had been there, but she couldn’t.
“Darcy! You made it!” Bingley cheered, pulling her in close.
“I told you she would.” Jim appeared behind him. “Darcy has never been able to say no to hot chocolate and caroling.” There was something in his tone of voice that suggested he was talking about something different altogether. That he was teasing her about something only the two of them would know. Or was she imagining it?
“Hey, Jim, where are the—” Luke bounded merrily into the room but stopped short when he saw Darcy standing there.
“Hey, Luke,” she said shyly, trying not to redden.
“Hey, Darcy.” He avoided eye contact, but tried to make his voice as friendly as possible. “Didn’t know you’d be here.” She saw him try to hold a determined smile back from taking over his mouth.
“Jim invited me.”
“Cool, cool. So, uh … where’s Carl?”
“No idea.”
“Got it. Did you tell him about—”
“Don’t!” she pleaded. “Let’s not relive it.”
“You say that as if it were a bad thing.”
“It was a mistake. A drunken mistake.”
“Interesting.” He smirked. “The Darcy I remember never makes mistakes.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
“I guess you’re not as perfect as you like to pretend you are.”
“And I guess you’re not as much of a gentleman as you like to pretend to be.”
“You’re a fun girl, you know that?”
“What are you talking about?” She balked. Just then, two high school–age boys trudged down the stairs, drawing attention to themselves with their awkward gracelessness.
“Kit! Lyle!” Jim called out, once he saw them coming down the stairs. “So good of you to join us!”
Kit and Lyle grumbled something unintelligible.
“Who are these people?” Darcy asked Luke.
“These people? They’re my brothers.”
“Aren’t your brothers like … five years old?”
“Um … they were five years old, once upon a time. See, people tend to … grow up over the years, you know, get older, et cetera. Are you really that self-absorbed?”
Darcy rolled her eyes and pretended not to hear him. Up close, she could see that Kit and Lyle were twins, each with ginger orange hair and a face full of freckles. One wore a black T-shirt with the word THRASHER written in jagged yellow letters, and the other wore a gray T-shirt with block letters that read SKATE, EAT, SLEEP, REPEAT.
Great fashion sense. Darcy mocked them in her own mind, then scolded herself for doing so. They’re kids, Darcy. They don’t know any better.
“Hey.” Jim laughed at them as they approached. “Caroling attire, remember?”
“There’s no such thing,” Black Shirt said.
“Of course there is,” Jim argued. “It’s a tradition that’s centuries old.”
“Sorry,” said Gray Shirt. “My bonnet is at the bonnet repair shop.”
“Good one.” Black Shirt approved of his brother’s joke. Both boys snickered, amused with themselves.
“Ah, to be young again,” Bingley fake-swooned.
“Which is Kit and which is Lyle?” Darcy asked, feeling annoyed that up until this point she was being made to guess.
“I’m Kit,” said the one in the black shirt with yellow letters.
“Lyle,” said the one in the gray shirt with white letters.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Darcy.”
The two boys blinked dumbly. When she realized neither boy was going to shake her hand, she returned it back to her pocket.
“Kit,” Jim scolded. “Lyle. Don’t be rude.”
“Oh, leave ’em be,” said Luke. “You remember what it was like to be fourteen. They’d literally rather be anywhere else than here.”
“Fact,” said Lyle.
“I’d rather be skating,” said Kit.
“Hey,” said Lyle, “don’t you have a shirt that says that?”
“Yeah.”
“You should have worn it.”
“I know, yeah.” Kit burped and they both laughed.
“Lovely.” Darcy repressed her gag reflex.
She glanced over at Luke and saw that the expression on his face was one she hadn’t seen on him before. It was a look of mildly pained discomfort, as if he were embarrassed by his baby brothers and the way they had presented themselves in front of Darcy. It was odd, because for as long as she could remember, Luke had been constantly above embarrassment or any other kind of societal influence. He had never been one to care what people thought, and he had prided himself on this characteristic. Though they’d butted heads throughout junior high and high school, Luke and Darcy had this in common. The thing was, he had always accused her of being a fake, of actually caring a great deal what people thought of her, despite what she said. Now she was beginning to wonder if this had been an instance of the pot calling the kettle black.
* * *
They took to the street as a group: Jim and Bingley and Luke and Kit and Lyle and Darcy. Had she known the caroling brigade would be so intimate she would have stayed home. With Bingley so obviously paired with Jim, and Kit and Lyle so obviously paired together, Darcy was left with Luke, walking tensely at his side. The night was getting increasingly cold, and she would have appreciated somebody to snuggle into, the way lucky Bingley had Jim. But things between her and Luke felt stranger than ever before, icier than ever before, and so she kept as much distance from him as possible, which, because of the wolf pack nature of their traveling bunch, was no more than a foot.
“Okay, let’s do this one,” Jim said, stopping outside a modest-sized house at the end of the block.
“But all their lights are off,” Darcy pointed out.
“Exactly,” said Jim. “That means no carolers have come by yet.”
“Or it means they don’t want any carolers.”
“Nobody doesn’t want carolers.” Jim laughed at the thought.
“Oh boy.” Darcy inhaled sharply. “Well go ahead. By all means, don’t let me stop you.” She gestured up the front walkway. Jim and Bingley trudged ahead.
“After you, madam,” Luke said mockingly. She turned her nose up at him and power walked up the stairs.
Jim rang the doorbell and soon the house flickered awake, one window at a time. The door opened and there stood an elderly man and his wife, both in pin-striped pajamas. Jim sang a note to get the rest of the group on key.
“Oh look!” said the wife. “They’re carolers, darling!” The man nodded happily to his wife as the gang began to sing, following Jim’s lead.
“On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: a partridge in a pear tree.”
This is the song we’re going with? Darcy inwardly groaned, but then made herself shake off the negativity, once she saw how delighted it was making the graying couple at the door.
“On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.”
And on they went, singing each verse, listing the three French hens and the four calling birds and the five golden rings and the six geese a-laying and the seven swans a-swimming and the eight maids a-milking and the nine ladies dancing and the ten lords a-leaping and the eleven pipers piping and the twelve drummers drumming. Darcy had so many questions about this song. First of all, who wrote it? Was the narrator male or female? And who was this wealthy-as-God true love? Who could possibly afford to send exo
tic animals and actual droves of human beings to somebody’s house?
And if I were to have these ludicrous displays of wealth and affection delivered to me, would I be impressed or just horrified? Maids a-milking? As in women who are milking cows? Why would I want to see one person doing that, let alone eight all at once?
Who were these lords and why were they a-leaping, and how on earth could you work out the physical logistics of sending them all to somebody’s home? And wasn’t this slave labor of some kind? Surely the leaping lords and the milking maids and the piping pipers and the drumming drummers weren’t getting paid for all this, were they? And what about the nine ladies dancing? What kind of dancing was this exactly, and was Darcy right to assume it was of a somewhat risqué nature? Did all of these performers and servants want to be there? Did they have families they’d rather be with? And what about the animals? Surely there were animal rights laws in violation. But then again, this song was from the year 1780, so it was safe to assume there were no animal rights laws to violate.
“That was so lovely.” The woman clapped her hands together and turned to her husband. “Don’t you think so, dear?”
“Absolutely,” he agreed. “Won’t you come in for some hot chocolate?”
“We’d love to,” Jim decided for the group, ushering them in.
“Seems kind of rude to just … barge on in like this,” Darcy mumbled under her breath.
“We’re not barging in,” Luke said. “He invited us in.”
“He was just saying it to be polite.”
“It’s tradition, Darcy, and you know that. Carolers go from door to door and then get invited in for hot chocolate and treats. It’s just how it works.”
“Sure, but they didn’t have their lights on. They didn’t want carolers.”