“No! No, I do not want to apply to babysit some snotty-nosed college brat.”
“Okay, well, what if it was someone else? Someone older? I can ask around, put the word out—”
“Jesus! Are you trying to get rid of me already?” Darcy burst out.
“No,” Teagan said immediately, but Darcy ignored him. “You’re going to need another job soon. You said you liked this one. I thought I could help—”
“Sorry that I’m cramping your style. You’re just going to have to accept sobriety until December,” she said, walking faster.
They passed through the lobby and into the cool air of the Midtown night, redolent of exhaust and hot trash.
“No,” he said again. “No, no, no, wait. I’m not trying to—I’m glad you’re helping me. I just thought, maybe you’d like to line up another job, and I could be flexible on the timing.”
I just thought you might like a reason to stay nearby.
“I have a job until December,” Darcy repeated stubbornly. “And I have plenty of applications in to do real work after that.”
He wished he had a good argument for why she was wrong.
“This is a one-time deal. This is not a skill set I’m interested in developing. These people suck, and so do their parties. I can tell everyone thought my job was bullshit,” she continued, stalking down the street.
“It doesn’t matter what they think,” Teagan said, trying to keep up with her. “Half of them could probably use a hard think about their own drinking.”
“Well, I’m not the girl to make them,” Darcy said sourly. “You know what? Just don’t even tell them what I do. I don’t want to talk to anyone about it. Just say I’m your girlfriend.”
Teagan stopped dead in his tracks.
“Is that what you are?” he asked, surprised and suddenly light-headed. He hadn’t thought that. He hadn’t dated anyone seriously in a couple of years, but he hadn’t ever been under the impression that a relationship firmed up just because you’d seen someone naked a few times. But he was often wrong about what Darcy thought, and he was willing to be told he was wrong about this too.
Darcy turned around and put her hands on her hips.
“Oh I—I just meant that was something you could tell people,” she said, face clouding with confusion.
“Right,” Teagan said, feeling very foolish. “Never mind.”
He clenched his jaw and began walking again. Darcy had never said a thing about wanting to know him past the time she decided that he was sober for good. And since he already was, he was on borrowed time anyway.
“Teagan,” Darcy said from feet behind him.
“What,” he said, not slowing.
Darcy caught up to him.
“You didn’t think—”
“No.”
“Teagan,” she said again, and her voice was guarded but so gentle that this time he did stop. “Look, I don’t even know where I’m going to be living next—and you know long distance doesn’t ever work.”
“I don’t know that,” Teagan said, even though he hadn’t until this moment considered that possibility with Darcy, as focused on the idea of finding her a job near New York as he’d been. “How do you know that?”
“I was in the Navy for seven years. I saw everything from a guy who came back from a six-month deployment to find his wife three months pregnant to a girl who checked her credit card bill from Bahrain and found out her boyfriend was tipping strippers with her combat pay.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Teagan immediately said. “You can’t think I would do anything like that.”
“You’re so sure I wouldn’t either?” Darcy said, crossing her arms.
Teagan paused and thought about everything he knewabout Darcy. He couldn’t imagine it. She was impulsive and she made mistakes, but he’d yet to see her do anything she ever thought waswrong.
