Page 92 of Written in the Stars
What she’d said to her mom... Darcy’s heart stuttered inside her chest. “What part?”
Elle scoffed gently and hugged herself tighter, elbows squeezing in, making the curl of her shoulders and the jut of her collarbone sharper, more pronounced. “All of it?”
All of it... okay. That was why Elle wasnotfine. Why she’d taken off, run out into the cold. Something about what she’d heard, she hadn’t liked.
Nothing about that conversation had sat well with Darcy. Not Mom’s prying, not her demeaning Elle, not her assumptions, and definitely not the part where she tried to force Darcy to reckon with her feelings. As if that were her place. As if Darcy needed that. Mom had no idea what Darcy needed.
Darcy shoved the heel of her hand into her breastbone and stared down the sidewalk. Empty. No one was crazy enough to be standing outside when it was this cold. No one except for her and Elle.
“Okay.” She turned, facing Elle once more.
Elle shook her head, lashes fluttering as she blinked, lights catching on the glitter. “Okay? That’s—” She blew out her breath, shivering softly.
“Let’s... let’s go back inside.” Darcy gestured over her shoulder. It was warm in the hotel and Darcy desperately wanted to head back inside just like she desperately wanted tonothave this conversation. She wanted to step this whole night back, return to the dance floor, back to when everything had been far less confusing, the thoughts inside her head less of a jumble. The fear of what she felt would’ve still been there, but it wouldn’t have been so suffocating, bearing down on her with an intensity that made it difficult to do something as basic as stand there and act like she was okay. It had lingered in her periphery, but if she kept her eyes on Elle, kept looking ahead—nottoofar ahead— it was okay.
Elle’s chin wobbled gently before she clenched her jaw and lifted her head, staring up at Darcy, the blue of her eyes as dark and glassy as the lake at night. “That’s it? I said I overheard and you don’t have anything... anything to say?”
Darcy bit the inside of her lip. “What do you want me to say?”
Elle stared for a heartbeat, then two, three, and Darcy’s heart quickened. The air around them crackled, cold and electric and quiet. Elle’s chin jerked in a barely there shake. “Something. I want you to saysomething.” Her tongue swept out, wetting her bottom lip. “Is this— What is this to you?” she whispered.
Darcy’s heart clenched, the back of her throat narrowing.
She’d told Mom that she was having fun with Elle, and that was true, but it was more than that. It was fun and frightening and more than anything Darcy had felt in a long, long time.
“It’s... it’s complicated,” she admitted, feeling like thatwasthe right word, the only one that could do her quagmire of feelings any justice.
Elle’s jaw dropped, a little gasp tearing from between her lipsbefore she laughed, low and dry, humorless. “That’s— Could youuncomplicateit for me?”
If only it were that easy. “It’s not that simple, Elle.”
Elle stared, eyes narrowing before she pressed her lips together and gave a tiny shrug. “Isn’t it? Or shouldn’t it be? It is for me.”
The back of Darcy’s throat burned. “You wouldn’t understand—”
“Why not?” Elle glared. “I might beflighty, but I’m not stupid, Darcy.”
Darcy hugged herself tighter until her ribs ached. “I never said you were. I never called you flighty.”
“Your mom did.” Elle’s jaw clenched tighter as she stared down and to the side where a crack in the pavement spread like branching veins all the way to the curb.
Darcy’s chest went cold. “I am not my mother.”
Elle was quiet and as much as Darcy didn’t want to have this conversation there was something unsettling in this silence, alarming in the stillness of Elle’s body, her posture. She was a force, always in movement. Twitching, shifting, vibrant. This wasn’t like her, wasn’t normal. It wasn’t like how some of their silences were comfortable. Those contained breath in every space between their words. This was deprivation, asphyxiation in the grim absence of Elle’s voice, her laugh, the sound she made when she sighed softly and she was simplythere. Touchable.
The distance between them now felt vast and Darcy didn’t have the slightest clue how to traverse it. If she could.
With another barely perceptible jerk of her chin, Elle frowned. “I’m not asking for... for a proposal, Darcy.”
Bile crept up her esophagus, her heart tripping, flailing, faltering.
“I’m not asking you to promise me forever.” Elle sniffed hard. “It’s only been a few weeks, but you’re all I can think about and I just want to know what this is. We were fake and now we’re not, but what are we? What am I? Am I your girlfriend? Is this— How do youfeel?”
Like she was going to throw up.
Outside of the immediate moment, Darcy had never felt likethis, not this soon, not this fast, not this deep, not this much, none of it. Not for anyone, not even Natasha. And like Mom had said, Darcy had been ready to spend the rest of her life with Natasha, had loved her, and as a result, finding her in bed with a mutual friend hadbrokenDarcy. Had shattered her heart into a million pieces and it had taken nearly two years and a cross-country move to glue herself back together and even then, until recently, she sometimes wondered if she’d put herself back together wrong.
If she was more like Mom than she wanted to believe.
