The duffel bag in the front passenger seat didn’t move when she started the car, so Darcy quietly unzipped the top to check in on the otters. They were asleep in a huddle, totally unaware that they’d been stolen and then taken on a driving tour of the tri-state area. She zipped the bag again. She didn’t know whether to try one more place or go buy them some food.
She slumped her forehead against the top of the steering wheel. In the Navy, every fuckup was swiftly followed by a critique. Darcy could nearly hear her chief petty officer’s voice in her ear:What were you thinking when you took the otters, Albano? Did you even read the manual first?
Darcy felt tears leaking out the corners of her eyes again, even though she’d thought she was done with that before she left Westchester County.
She thought she’d be done with the otters by now. She thought she wouldn’t be angry by now. She thought she’d be home by now, ready to hash this out with Teagan.
She could call him, she knew. She probably should have called him when the first place was closed, because she was sure he was a wreck now that it had been hours and she hadn’t even told him she was coming back, but handling justthis one goddamn thingon her own had taken on a talismanic importance in her mind.
She’d been so worried that Teagan was going to figure out that she was just a giant stack of unmet needs and unachieved aspirations, and that’s when things would end. But of course he’d noticed—he’d probably clocked that at the point he got on the lawn mower and started clearing the weeds and her work schedule for her. Teagan was great at noticing when other people needed things. And since then, he’d doggedly gone about solving every single problem in her life, because he thought she’d leave him if he didn’t.
That was the thing that hurt the most, more than the lying or the uselessness of all her efforts in maintaining a sober man’s sobriety. He thought Darcy was the kind of person who dipped when she found out her partner had a serious illness, or even just that he had fucked up and then tried to cover it up.
Why wouldn’t he think that though? What had she ever finished that she started? She didn’t have any kind of track record, with him or anything else, even though she painfully wanted to be the kind of person who came through for people, the person who knew what to do in a crisis.
That was why Darcy was scrolling through Google Maps on her phone instead of going home to bawl him out and then tuck him into bed, because some irrational part of her brain thought she would show him when she got these otters squared away. Darcy was someone he could rely on. Look, she’d spotted and remediated an animal welfare violation, all on her own.I love you too, Teagan, and everything is going to be okay. I’ve got you, don’t worry. Nothing’s more important than you.And then he’d actually tell her what was going on and what he needed.
Possibly that’s what he’d been trying to do, if not insimple enough terms that Darcy could pick up on it. He’d asked her to stay with him. Tonight, for sure, but he’d been trying to ask for weeks probably, every time he floated a vegan restaurant or a new apartment or a better job. And it was easy for her to say he should have asked for way more than that. He should have told her he was drowning in his life, that he didn’t know how to handle his illness, and that he was worried about his sister, and asked for her help. Of course she would have helped him.
But he thought that asking her to stay with him was such a big request that he couldn’t ask her for anything else, or he thought that it was such a weighty demand that he had to balance it out with everything else she wanted. That’s why he’d done it in such a terrible, roundabout way.
Darcy sniffled tears back loudly, and one of the otters woke up, startling its siblings, who squeaked in protest.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay babies, go back to sleep,” she whispered, cranking up the heater, because she had a vague recollection that these otters were a subtropical species.
He was so wrong. He was enough by himself, without any of the other things he’d offered her. How was he ever going to believe that, though, if Darcy didn’t show him she could handle a few things on her own? How was he ever going to believe shechosehim?
That was the thought that had her beating the palm of her hand against the steering wheel hard enough to sting, because she didn’t know what to do. What she wanted to do was just go home and figure the otters out tomorrow. She wanted to curl up around Teagan’s long warm body in the guest room bed and go to sleep until she woke up. She wanted it to be okay that she didn’t have all the answers today, becausethey had all the time in the world, actually. This job wasn’t going to run out. This gig wasn’t seasonal. This relationship wasn’t temporary.
How did she convince him of that?
Darcy looked in the backseat. Her hiking sandals were tossed back there with a spare water bottle, an unopened pack of tissues, and Sloane’s dress coat, which Teagan had made her bring in case she got cold from all the cutouts in her dress.
There wasn’t an easy way to convince him. There wasn’t a quick way either, even if she found someone to take the otters. She just needed to go home and get started. Teagan had been the one to tell it to her: the only way to teach him she wouldn’t leave was by staying. If he was holding on, she had to hold on harder.
She put the car in reverse and checked that the otters weren’t sliding off the passenger seat.
“Just a little longer, kiddos,” she whispered to them. “Let’s hope we have enough gas to get home to Irvington.”
twenty-nine
When Sloane went ten minutes without paying tribute to the Hefty bag, Teagan urged her to try to get some sleep. It was way after midnight, and at least one of them was going to need to be functional the next day. He didn’t think he could sleep. He worried he’d miss a message, a call—something.
The TV silently streamed more of the incomprehensible story. Several people got shot in the chest, but it seemed that they were all going to be okay. That was reassuring news, especially in relation to how he felt.
Sloane snored. After a particularly loud inhale woke her up, she flopped to her side, squinted at Teagan for a few moments to reassure herself that he was still there, and went back to sleep, just like she had as a baby. He felt a familiar pained tenderness at the sight. After they talked about rehab tomorrow, he’d call a charity to come collect all the bedroom furniture in the house, and then he was calling a Realtor. They were going to start everything fresh.
Teagan heard a noise from the backyard. He hit the power on the remote and listened again. Something from the pool house. He looked down the hall at the row of quiet bedrooms; he’d pointed Adrian to his own bedroom, but therewasn’t an outside door, so it couldn’t be the poor man trying to sneak out.
It was almost dawn, but probably not too late for the local teenagers to break into the only pool in the neighborhood. It was getting chilly this week, but Teagan had spent many summers chasing them and their White Claws out of his backyard.
He sighed and stood up, wondering if he ought to grab a lacrosse stick or something from the garage. He ultimately decided that getting his ass kicked if the teenagers objected to eviction would just be par for the course this evening.
It was pitch-black before Teagan flipped on the pool lights and the string lights around the cabana, and he blinked for a few seconds at the sudden illumination. Instead of teenagers, there was only Darcy, still clad in Sloane’s prom dress, barefoot and wielding the netted pole for cleaning leaves out of the swimming pool.
Teagan could remember falling off his bike as a kid, slapping a hand to cover his skinned knee. That moment he’d lift his hand and see it bloody was always the moment it would start to hurt. This felt like that. He didn’t know how much he had hurt until this moment.
“Oh,” Darcy said, dropping her forearm from where she’d shaded her eyes. “I thought you’d be asleep by now.”
