Page 14 of It's You
She didn’t respond. They had entered a clearing and Beaver Pond, surrounded by pine trees, lay before them, sparkling in the sunlight. Off to the right, Darcy looked at the low peak of Magalloway Mountain, still white on top, and gestured to thesmall weather-beaten bench sitting in a clump of weeds a few feet from the pond. Jack dusted it off with his hand before she sat down, which made her lips twitch with a slight smile.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You didn’t answer me.”
“You didn’t ask me a question.”
“You’re an exasperating woman.”
“Says the man who appears in my life out of nowhere after twenty years, following me around my cousin’s wedding!”
“Darcy. Are. You. Angry. With. Me?”
She shifted her body to look at him. He stared straight ahead at the water, and she realized he was probably fighting the urge to catch her eyes and take a look inside her head. She admired him for it. It made her smile. Again.
“I’m incredibly confused,” she admitted. “And I’m a little nervous I’m going crazy.”
He breathed in deeply, and she saw him smile down at his clasped hands. “You’re not going crazy.”
“How doyou know?Thisisn’t normal.”
“Let’s play a game of quid pro quo,” he said, glancing at her.
“How?”
“You ask a question, and I’ll answer the best I can. Then it’s my turn.”
“Okay.”Anything to get some answers.
She leaned her head on the back of the bench and unbuttoned the top two buttons of her sweater, closing her eyes and basking in the warmth of the midday sun.
“Can you button back up?”
She opened her eyes slowly, squinting at him through the sunlight. He tore his eyes away from her breasts, but not before Darcy got a look at his face, which had flushed with full-blooded interest. Watching his profile, she saw him clench his jaw once as he stared at the pond.
“Sure.” She buttoned up and turned to him, smiling merrily. “My turn.”
“Wait a minute…”
“That was a question, and I answered it. I didn’t make the rules. I’m just following them. My turn.”
His nostrils flared in frustration, but he nodded.
“Did that kiss mean anything to you?”
He turned to her, his eyes soft and naked.Tenderness.
“Everything. You have no idea. It changed my entire life.”
Tears sprang unbidden into her eyes. Leftover tears from the depths of her soul where the tiniest sliver of hope had rested its battered self, hidden and silent for all of these years. He raised his hand gently toward her head, reaching to sweep an errant strand of blonde hair out of her face. “Darcy,pleaselet me touch you.”
She shook her head no, sniffling and swiping at her eyes as he lowered his hand without touching her. “Then why didn’t you?—”
He leaned his elbow on the back of the bench and interrupted her softly. “My turn. Why didn’t you ever get married?”
She used the sleeve of her sweater to swipe at the last of her tears and took a deep, shaky breath.
“It’s not that I haven’t dated. I mean, I have. Of course I have. I was very serious with one man while I was in grad school. Phillip…Proctor. We dated for several years, but in the end, we wanted different things from life.” She shivered lightly, thinking about Phillip’s heavy drinking and mysterious departure. He’d left Boston one day and never came back. She’d learned of his hasty relocation via a scrawled postcard hastily left in her mailbox, which had clued her in to the total of her worth to him.
