Page 61 of Written in the Stars
Feigning interest in the building’s architecture, Darcy turned, pressing her fingers to one of the stones in front of her, hiding her smile in the shadows. “How’d you find this place?”
As covertly as possible, she peeked over her shoulder, watching as Elle dropped her arms, her smile dimming. Subtle, but Darcy noticed. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but shenoticed everything about Elle. How she tugged on her ear when she was anxious. Her bad habit of biting her bottom lip, a bad habit Darcy liked very much.Toomuch. She’d never been jealous of someone else’steethbefore, but Elle could bite that lip whenever, and there was something patently unfair that Darcy wasn’t allowed the privilege of doing the same.
Losing it. Darcy was absolutely losing it, losing her head, losing her grip, losing it all over Elle. She had sneaked up on Darcy and now here she was, jealous of Elle’s fucking teeth. God help her.
“Come on.” Elle tilted her head toward one of the arched French windows.
Darcy breathed deep, lungs swelling, burning before she exhaled and followed where Elle led.
Like the door, the window wasn’t locked, opening with ease when Elle pressed against the latch. She threw her right leg over the sill, straddling the ledge, then shimmied out the window, dropping onto the balcony that wrapped around half of the turret-shaped building. Elle held out a hand. Resting her fingers in Elle’s warm palm, Darcy stepped over the edge and into the cool, night air, her hair whipping in the breeze.
Above them, bright, winking stars twinkled against an inky blue canvas, the view expansive and impressive and it made Darcy’s breath catch in her throat. “Oh.”
Elle tugged, dragging Darcy eagerly over to the stone railing. “Life would be a lot better if we all spent a little more time staring at the stars.” Loose strands of blond hair caught the moonlight, creating a haloed glow around her when she turned her face up to the sky. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Darcy wasn’t looking at the sky.
“You see that cluster of stars right there?” Elle pointed, drawing Darcy’s attention to a grouping to the right. “Right”—she grabbed Darcy’s hand and lifted it toward the sky, tracing a pattern in the stars—“there. That’s the Big Dipper. If you follow those stars—the vertical ones on the end—straight up, you reach Polaris, also known as the North Star. It’s a constant, never moves. If you’re ever lost, you can always find true north, as long as you can spot that star.”
Elle let go of Darcy’s hand and placed her palms flat against the railing. Hyperaware of where her limbs existed in space now that Elle was near but no longer touching her, Darcy’s hand hovered awkwardly at her side, her fingers tingling as she flexed them.
“I know about this place because I was an astronomy major.” Elle’s lips quirked. “The last person I told that to assumed I was some ditz who confused astronomy with astrology and was in for a rude awakening.” She huffed out a laugh. “Shockingly, not true.”
Darcy hadn’t thought it was. “People are assholes.”
“They can be.” Elle’s earrings, dangling azure baubles shaped like planets, skimmed her jaw. She cleared her throat and tilted her head to the side, meeting Darcy’s eyes, her lips crooking. “I got into grad school and got my master’s in astronomy with an emphasis in cosmology.”
Her teeth scraped against the swell of her bottom lip making the muscles in Darcy’s stomach quiver and clench. It was Elle’s lip Darcy was jealous of now, the desire for Elle to sink her teeth intoDarcy’slip fierce, consuming.
“I was working toward my PhD. It was a six-year program, the first two geared toward coursework for your master’s, and the rest was teaching, research, writing your dissertation, and preparing for what comes next, whatever that was. I was stuck teaching this intro course that was full of freshmen looking for an easy A and staying up until all hours working on my thesis, and it all just hit me that it wasn’t what I wanted but I kept plugging along because what else was I supposed to do? Then Oh My Stars—it was Margot’s and my side hustle at the time—took off when we got a job writing horoscopes forThe Stranger. Grad school had zapped the magic out of learning, but Oh My Stars was something I was excited about, the thing that got me out of bed each morning. I woke up the next day and decided I wasn’t going to let anyone take the stars from me so I quit the program.”
“I’m guessing your family didn’t take it well?” Darcy arched a brow.
Elle ducked her head, chuckling in that self-deprecating way people tend to when what they’re saying means more to them than they’re letting on, than they want you to know. “My family was... I want to say concerned, but I think they werehorrified. They sat me down for an intervention. Everyone thought I was burned out or having a quarter-life crisis. Mom thought I’d lost my mind.”
Elle leaned her elbows on the railing and rested her chin in her hands. “I don’t... I don’t expect them to agree, or even completely understand, but I wish they’d respect it. My choices.Me. I wish I didn’t have to be so... soseriousin order for them to take me seriously. Does that make sense?”
Mom liked to joke that Darcy had been born serious, butthat wasn’t true. She knew how to have fun; her interests just leaned toward quiet, individual pursuits. Reading. Crossword puzzles. Yoga instead of team sports. Even her more whimsical hobbies—watching soap operas and TV Land—put her firmly in the camp ofmillennial grandma.
That didn’t mean she didn’t understand how Elle felt. “Fewer than a third of actuaries are women and even that’s five times higher than it was a decade or so ago. It’s not the same. I’m not trying to say—” She sighed. “My job is conventional. It’s garden variety. No one thinks you’re peculiar when you say you’re an actuary.Boring, maybe.”
Elle chuckled softly.
“But I’ve had people assume I’m an administrative assistant. If they know I’m an actuary, they assume I’m a career associate—which there’s nothing wrong with, don’t get me wrong—but they balk at the idea of me reaching FSA designation. Why would I take all those tests? Aren’t I happy being an associate? The pay’s good, but—”
“You want more than that,” Elle said.
She nodded. “I want more than that.”
“I know why I want more, but how about you? Is it proving that you can? That you can be the best? Or I assume the payisbetter...”
It was, but that wasn’t why. Or it wasn’t only why.
How much did she want to tell Elle? Shedidn’twant to talk about it. Simply churning up the memories in turn churned up her stomach until she was queasy. But Elle had been so open, so honest, let herself be vulnerable. Darcy owed the same, and a tiny part of her wanted Elle to know. Know her.
“I told you about my parents.” Darcy rubbed the hollow of her throat. “About how my mother quit working when I was born. My father made enough that he was able to support the family on one income, so even when we got older, she didn’t go back to work because she didn’t need to. She had hobbies and volunteering to fill up her time, and over the summer, she went with my father when he traveled for business. She didn’t like that he was gone so often, or... she didn’t like that she didn’t know what he was doing, she didn’t trust him, and seeing as the reason for their divorce was that he left her for his twenty-four-year-old personal assistant, I suppose her worries weren’t unfounded.”
“Shit,” Elle muttered.
