“Okay,” Darcy muttered.
One of the otters, braver than its siblings, approached the edge of the water, sniffing suspiciously. After a moment of hesitation, it jumped in, landing with a small splash and swimming determinedly toward the other side of the pool.
“I was always going to come back though,” Darcy said. “I just thought—if I could just handle one fucking thing on my own—but I guess not. I always think if I just get the next job, the right classes, a good start, then I’ll have my shit together. Well, I don’t. But I’m here anyway.”
She leaned back on her palms, shoulders tense and arms flexed. Teagan didn’t understand.
“You’re not going back to Montana,” he blurted, mostly as a guess.
“No, I’m staying here. I can’t promise anything else, but I’m staying here.”
“But you’re still—you’re going to take that job with Mrs. Park’s husband,” he hazarded, trying to understand her reasoning, what she thought was going to happen now. What washere?
“I mean, yeah. I will. I’ll try, at least. But Teagan, I’m here because I wantyou. I’m staying with you.”
There wasn’t enough air outside. He needed to take greatbig gulps of it, because he couldn’t breathe. His lungs didn’t work properly.
“You’re sure?” he asked, even though he didn’t want to ask if she was sure. He’d take her even if she wasn’t sure. If he warned her off, it was only for her sake, not his. “I’m so—Darcy, I’m a wreck. You’re right that things weren’t getting better. I was getting worse. I’m so sorry.”
Darcy exhaled. “Of course I’m sure. I love you. I’m not afraid of things getting worse.” She closed her eyes as though about to cry. “I keep thinking about what Sloane said. About how I was going to leave. And I guess I do always bail out when things get hard. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“Nobody would blame you. I wouldn’t,” Teagan said.
“I would. No place without you would ever feel like the right place to be. Even if it’s not easy. Even if I can’t hack it with the wildlife rehab or finish my degree or make it through a single boring party without an incident report—you’d never give up on me. I want to be that kind of person for you.”
The first otter had made it to the other end of the pool. It loudly chirped when it discovered that the edge was too steep to climb out. They both looked at it with concern until it managed to turn around and swim back the way it had come. Teagan grabbed for Darcy’s hand.
“It doesn’t have to be this hard for you,” Teagan tried to reassure her even as tears were beginning to overflow onto his cheeks. “I’ll start taking my medication again. I’ll—I’ll follow up with a real doctor. I already quit my job.”
Darcy shook her head, her own eyes scrunched closed. “No. No, I’m not making any deals with you. Not when you’re what we’re bargaining with. I don’t want you to do it for me at all. I don’t want you to ever think I’m with youbecause I think you’ll get better or you’ll be different or someday you won’t have this illness. Okay? I’m here even if it’s always like this.”
A wave of mingled relief and disappointment swept through him—relief because he didn’t know if he could have promised her anything else, and disappointment because her hope for him, founded on false premises as it had been, had been such a light in his life.
“You think it will always be like this?” Teagan gestured at himself, but the movement took in his teary cheeks, the stolen otters, the quiet house, the first gray streaks of dawn smudging the sky.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what changes you’re going to make in your life, and I don’t know if they’ll work. Maybe there are parts of it you’re always going to struggle with.” She pulled her legs out of the water and crossed them.
The other two otters had satisfied themselves as to the survivability of the water, and they jumped in to follow the first, all three beginning to swim in large, satisfied circles.
“But we’ve spent the past two months working on not drinking whenyou don’t drink.” She gave a small laugh. “I’m going to need an entirely new set of podcasts. It’s like I’ve been guiding you through a bamboo forest, but we’ve only been watching out for polar bears. I was worried about the wrong bears.”
Teagan swallowed through his tight, dry throat as he dimly imagined not feeling like this anymore.
“Was it—is it pandas? Are we worried about panda bears?”
“It’s a fucking metaphor, Teagan,” she said, glaring at him, and he lifted his palms in surrender even as he was gratifiedat the small upward tilt to her lips. “I know there must be other things you wanted in life besides me. Well, you’ve got me. What else?”
Teagan knew she was right, but the idea was so overwhelming at that moment that he couldn’t even begin a response. He shuffled enough to the side so that he could lie down and put his head in Darcy’s lap. He pulled his feet out of the pool and curled his legs up. When Darcy didn’t object, he wrapped both arms around her waist and pressed his face into her hip.
“I’ll think about it,” he vowed, mumbling into the thick, soft fabric of her dress. “Once I can think again. But you may need to make all the plans for a while, because you’re all I can think about right now.” He wiped his face against the loose fabric, because he imagined she wasn’t going to wear it again.
Darcy put a hand in his hair and stroked it gently.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “I’ll do that.” He heard her swallow. She took a deep breath, and when she spoke her voice was tremulous but determined. “Tomorrow all we’ll worry about is getting the otters squared away, all right? And if it’s a nice evening, we’ll make smoothies and sit in the hot tub. Then on Sunday we can check out that bear mountain you mentioned.”
That all sounded perfect to Teagan. She took another breath and told him what they’d do Monday.
Darcy’s hand in his hair and her voice making small, soft promises were the only push Teagan needed to topple over the edge into sleep. He didn’t care if it was cold out here. He didn’t want to lose an inch of this, not even for a moment. He didn’t care if the ground was wet, because his head was pillowed in Darcy’s lap. But as soon as the otters were out ofthe pool and had found the pile of old towels, Darcy shook him awake and pulled him to his feet, and they both went inside and slumped off to bed.
