Written in the Stars(95)

“It is—”

“No.” Brendon shook his head. “It’s not. You’re not Mom, and it was never supposed to be your job to take care of me. You did more than you needed to, more than I probably know about, but you don’t have to do it by yourself anymore. It’s our job to take care of each other, okay?”

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she whispered.

“Needing help, wanting help, it doesn’t make you weak, Darce. Let me in. Let me help you.”

This was Brendon. And apparently, he knew more, was far more perceptive, than she’d given him credit for. He’d already seen her at rock bottom; how much worse could it be opening up? “You want me to tell you about Elle?”

He nudged her again. “Humor me.”

Fine. Darcy licked her lips. “She tastes like strawberries.”

Brendon wrinkled his nose, face scrunching up in disgust. “Oh, come on.”

Darcy kicked him in the foot and laughed, swiping beneath her eyes. “I meant her lip gloss. She tastes like the strawberry jam Grandma used to make. Remember?”

Brendon leaned his head back against the bathroom wall and smiled. “Yeah?”

She twisted the ring on her hand and nodded.

“What else?”

The easier question wasn’t what she liked about Elle, but what she didn’t. Because Elle wasn’t perfect, there were things about her that drove Darcy up the wall, like how she never wore a jacket and would sometimes drop off in the middle of a sentence when a new thought flitted through her mind, but listing the things she loved about Elle was like asking her to count the stars in the sky. They’d be there all night and even then, it wouldn’t be enough time.

“Her eyes are my new favorite color and if you make fun of me for saying that I’ll—”

“Issue an empty threat?” Brendon nodded. “Not laughing, but got it. Go on.”

Darcy sighed and leaned back against the bathroom cabinet. “I can talk to her, trust her with things I don’t tell everyone. Like how I watch soap operas and used to write Days fanfic—don’t say anything—and she didn’t laugh. She told me I should do whatever makes me happy.” Darcy rested her hand over her throat. “She makes me happy. Made me happy.”

Brendon reached out, resting a hand on the top of her foot. “Sounds like you love her.”

Darcy shut her eyes and bit her tongue.

He hadn’t said it the way Mom had, intrusive and anxious. Brendon made it sound simple. The sky is gray. It’s raining out. You love Elle. As if it were easy. But there was nothing simple about how she felt.

“Brendon.” She choked. “I can’t. I can’t love her. I can’t do it.”

He squeezed the top of her shin and made a soft sound in the back of his throat, half hum and half cough. “I don’t think it’s a matter of can or can’t. You either do or you don’t, and I think we both know you do. There’s— If I make a Yoda joke, will you kill me?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. “You feel how you feel and that’s not going to change just because you didn’t tell her, because you didn’t say the words. I mean, you didn’t stop loving her after the party the other night, did you? How you feel . . . that’s not really the question, is it? It’s whether you’re going to let Elle in. Whether you’re going to let her love you the way you deserve to be loved, Darce.”

Would Elle even want to hear how she felt, or was it too late? What if Elle turned her away? Or worse, what if everything went perfect, only to go wrong again in a month, six months, two years?

There was no accounting for anything when it came to love and that was terrifying.

“Come on,” Brendon said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Darcy swallowed. “I’m scared.”

Brendon’s brow furrowed like he wasn’t expecting her to admit it, to finally say it. But it was about time she finally owned up to the fact that she was constantly terrified. That her fears had come true and the hope of fixing this only to fail all over again was almost enough to make her throw in the towel and never put herself out there again.

“That’s normal, Darce. Everyone’s scared. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t.”

But not everyone was afraid of this. “I don’t want to be like Mom. She built her entire life around Dad and . . . look how that turned out.”

Maybe Darcy hadn’t built her life around Natasha, but she’d built a life with her and when that life had come crashing down, there was no clean break, no easy way to separate out the parts of that life that belonged to her alone. There was too much overlap, too much muddying of the waters. She’d lost her apartment and her friends, save for Annie. Darcy still had her job, so no, it wasn’t exactly the same as Mom, but the fear of everything else crumbling around her again, the thought of having to rebuild her life all over again, after having already done it once, was suffocating enough to make the differences in their situations feel nominal. It was the whole reason why she’d sworn off dating and buried herself in her work and exam prep in the first place.

“I’m not trying to take anything away from you or downplay what happened with Natasha—you went through a breakup, a really bad breakup granted, but it’s not the same. That’s not the type of person you are.” Brendon took a deep breath. “Running at the first sign of something serious because you’re afraid someone’s going to hurt you isn’t any better. You’re just going to hurt yourself like you’re hurting right now. And you’re going to keep hurting until you do something to fix it. Try. Be honest with her. Trust her.”