Written in the Stars(41)

Darcy threw her head back and laughed. Fuck. A tiny drop of beer trailed down her throat and Elle wanted to lick it off, taste Darcy’s skin. Her back teeth clacked together.

“What do I win?”

Elle snorted and polished off the remainder of her beer. “Bragging rights? I don’t know. Was there something you wanted?”

Either the beer was hitting her hard, or Elle was imagining the way Darcy’s eyes darkened.

Darcy shrugged and sniffed, tossing her hair over one deliciously freckled shoulder. “I’ll think about it.”

So would she.

“You’re full of surprises, you know that?”

Darcy cocked her head, frowning softly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What it sounds like.” Elle ripped the paper of her chopstick wrapper down the middle. “You’re a beer-chugging champ and you watch soap operas? Or at least know enough about them to answer a trivia question that stumped everybody else.”

Darcy’s expression shuttered, her eyes blanking before dropping to the table. “What about it?”

Elle didn’t mean anything by it, definitely no offense. “Nothing. It’s just . . . unexpected. I think it’s cool.”

Darcy scoffed. “Sure.”

“I do. Why would I bullshit you? Seriously, what do I have to get out of being anything other than perfectly honest?”

Darcy appeared to weigh her words, the furrow between her brows softening. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Elle teased.

“Most people make fun of them. The plots are contrived and . . . people die and come back to life for crying out loud, but my grandmother was obsessed.” Darcy’s smile went soft and nostalgic, her voice quieting, “During the summers, and then after we moved into her house, I’d watch with her. It was our thing. Every day at one o’clock we’d bring lemonade and little tea sandwiches into the living room and watch Whisper Cove and then Days of Our Lives. Every day.”

“Sounds nice,” Elle said, shredding the paper of her chopstick wrapper so she wouldn’t do something ridiculous like reach for Darcy’s hand.

“I know they’re silly,” Darcy said, sounding like she still thought she needed to justify her interests. Temper it by distancing herself from them emotionally.

“It’s not silly. Not if you enjoy it. And even then, silly’s not a bad thing.”

There were far worse things to be.

“Brendon said something similar.”

“I knew I liked him for a reason.” Elle grinned. “He sounds like a great brother.”

Darcy’s smile became achingly fond, her eyes creasing at the corners. “He is. Overbearing at times . . .”

“I’m sure he means well.”

“Yeah, well, he forgets that it’s not his job to take care of me. It’s the other way around.”

Elle brushed the mangled shreds of paper into a pile and pushed her empty beer glass to the right, clearing a space for her to rest her elbows. “Can I ask you a question?”

Darcy’s brows rose. “You can ask.”

The doesn’t mean I’ll answer was heavily implied.

“You and Brendon . . . sometimes you talk about him like you raised him.”

The corners of Darcy’s mouth pinched, her throat jerking as she swallowed. She dropped her gaze to the table and traced a gouge in the surface with her finger. “I— It’s nothing so extreme as that. I told you our parents divorced. It was the summer before my junior year of high school. Our mother was awarded custody; Dad didn’t ask for it since he traveled two weeks out of the month. But . . .” Her jaw shifted to the side, her finger pressing against the scraped table so hard her fingertip turned white. “My mother didn’t handle their split well at all. She was heartbroken by it and so, she sort of . . . checked out.”

What did that mean?

Darcy saved Elle the trouble of figuring out a polite way to ask. “She slept all day, stayed up till all hours of the night. Stopped leaving the house, hardly even left her room. Someone needed to step up, so I drove Brendon to school and picked him up and took him to his after-school activities. No one starved on my watch. But I wasn’t exactly thinking about paying the mortgage, and apparently neither was my mother, so a few months later the house was foreclosed on and we moved in with my grandmother.”

“Junior year of high school . . . you were—”

“Sixteen.” Darcy dipped her chin. “Brendon was twelve.”

Jesus. “Did your mom ever—”

Get better sounded stupid.

“Grandma helped her find a job. Forced her to, actually. If that’s what you mean. She was a photographer, did portraits, weddings, senior photos, that sort of thing, but when I was born, she quit working so she could take care of me and then, when I was a little older, so she could travel with my father. Later, after the divorce, she switched to travel photography, which lets her float wherever she wants whenever she wants, which she prefers.” Darcy shrugged, the strap of her camisole sliding off her shoulder. “We’ve never been close.”

“At least you’ve got Brendon.”

A waiter stopped beside their table holding a tray topped with two gargantuan burgers. “Two Mt. Fuji burgers?”