He would have thought he’d feel worse. Teagan would have thought he’d have a panic attack or otherwise fall apart. Darcy had probably thought he would too. But he hadn’t cried, wasn’t even shaken. A soft, tired kind of calm had fallen on him.
He’d been staring at the television for hours in the darkened den of his mother’s house. His sister had put on a streaming series when they got home, a romance involving beautiful Korean people who accidentally embraced at least once an episode. It was almost comically inappropriate to the household mood, but the background blur of the dialogue was better than silence.
Teagan’s eyes couldn’t pick out the television subtitles from the far side of the couch. He ought to go to the optometrist and get contacts or glasses or something. Use that gold-plated vision plan before his insurance cut off. He told himself he’d do it tomorrow.
Here was the silver lining about the worst thing happening: it had already happened. Everything Teagan had worried about had already happened. The love of his life had left him, he’d lost his job, he’d publicly embarrassed himselfin multiple situations and locations, and his baby sister was periodically retching up shellfish and cocktails into a trashcan at the other end of the couch. So what was there to fear? It had all happened, and he was still alive. He could almost laugh about that. He’d survived a fucking bear attack! Of course this wouldn’t kill him. So there was nothing left to worry about, and he hadn’t even needed to open a prescription bottle to achieve this state of total numbness. It felt like clarity.
Sloane ineffectively spat into her trashcan, groaned, and took a swig from the bottle of blue Gatorade he’d positioned next to her. She sat up and put her show on mute with the remote.
“Have you heard anything from Darcy?” she demanded.
Teagan glanced down at his phone where it rested, screen up, on his thigh. Nora had called a couple of times and left messages, but nobody else had.I’ll listen to her messages tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow he’d wrap up all lingering responsibilities from the first part of his life.
“She’s probably halfway to Ohio by now,” Teagan said.
He didn’t really believe that though. All her clothes and things were still here in the guest bedroom. Darcy might leave him, but she was too practical to leave her snow boots and winter gear. He’d need to get Sloane out of the house to make sure there were no confrontations between the two of them tomorrow, let Darcy move out in peace.
“You really think that’s it?” Sloane asked. “She’s not even going to stay till December?”
Sloane was acting almost sober now, so Teagan guessed it was marginally possible that the shrimp were more responsible for her present condition than the drinks he’d watched her toss back earlier. Maybe the only lesson Sloane wouldtake away from tonight was to not eat seafood served for a crowd.
“I think this is it,” Teagan said.
He must have looked bad when he said that, because Sloane’s face briefly crumpled up in anguish before she smoothed it again.
“If learning what was really going on with you made her leave, she was never going to stay,” Sloane said with bitter confidence. “She didn’t find out anything she shouldn’t have already known about you. She knew you were a mess! It’s not like you were hiding what you were like.”
Possibly that was true in one sense: there was never anything Teagan could have said or done to make Darcy stay. Not after the way he’d gotten her here.
“She learned that I lied to her,” he said softly. “That’s probably enough, even without anything else.”
Though all of that would have been enough too.
“Yeah, well, she should have already realized you’re a big fat liar,” Sloane said, even if the tilt of her chin was sympathetic.
“I am not,” he protested. He’d lied to Darcy aboutonething. He’d meant everything else he’d promised her. He could have come through with it, the same way he was going to have to get up tomorrow and take out the trash and call the optometrist and book his sister another stint in rehab as though his world hadn’t ended tonight.
“You’re a liar! You lie all the time! If you were a politician, your campaign slogan would beI’m fine. And you never are.” Sloane’s face slipped again, her eyes welling up. Teagan belatedly identified her expression as guilt.
“Sloane, Sloanie, it’s not your fault,” Teagan leaned forward and groped for her ankle, somewhere beneath the mohairthrow he’d tossed over her. “You’re right. She was always going to find out. And she was always going to be right to go when she did. It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d already... I don’t know.”
He supposed that was a minor blessing. That she was leaving before he really thought she would stay. It still felt like it was his life she was leaving, not theirs. He hadn’t gotten the chance to see whattheirlife would have looked like, because she was always going to leave.
“She didn’thaveto go. There’s a lot of worse things you could have been, like, you could have turned out to be a crypto bro or already married to one of those anime character pillows.”
Teagan forced himself to smile at his sister. “Then I really wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Sloane shot him another worried look. “But you are, right?”
Teagan patted her ankle through the blanket, trying to look reassuring, because Sloane was only twenty-two and she was scared, and he knew she’d been trying as hard as he’d taught her how to do. Tomorrow he’d get up and do all the things he had to do again, and that’s all life was and forever would be.
“If nobody else can stand me, I guess I have to,” he said.
•••••
The battery on her phone was at twenty percent, and the front gate of the wildlife rehab in auspiciously named Great Swamp, New Jersey, was closed and locked, just like the first two places Darcy had tried. Darcy would have kicked the wall of the place for daring to be closed after she had navigated the Lincoln Tunnel to get here, but she waswearing a pair of too-large gladiator sandals borrowed from Sloane, and that would only break some toes.
She stomped back to the car and turned the ignition, not sure what her next step was. There was less than a quarter of a tank left, and Darcy wasn’t inclined to fill the ancient Mercedes sedan up with diesel even if she could spare the money. The next nearest wildlife rehab was twenty-five miles away.
