When he went down the hall to the bathroom, there were two toothbrushes in the stand and a hairbrush next to the mirror. The air smelled like her conditioner. It looked like two people lived there. He liked how it looked.
When he felt tired enough to go back to sleep, Teagan would return to the guest bedroom. Darcy’s laundry was tossed in with his in the hamper and her clean clothes were strewn across the dresser. Darcy herself would be asleep in the center of the bed, spread out like a starfish, sleeping the guiltless slumber of the innocent. When he slowly shuffled back under the covers and shifted an arm or a leg to make a little room for himself, she’d roll toward him and curl her warm body into his side, making a little smacking noise with her lips as she dreamed on. If she stayed, he thought, this was what the rest of his life would look like, every night.
Teagan didn’t mind being awake now, because there wasn’t a thing he would change about what his world looked like at night. There were eight hours out of every twenty-four that looked just perfect to him, and wasn’t that more than there had ever been before?
twenty-two
“What about this one?” Teagan asked, spinning his laptop screen around toward Darcy.
Darcy flexed her stomach muscles to sit up and see it.
She was drinking her coffee at his desk while watching a movie on her phone, her boots resting on a stack of loose correspondence. He’d given her a mild look of reproof but said nothing, probably in consideration of the many improvements she’d made to his office that week.
Her first step had been to take out the big white dupioni silk curtains. They’d been ugly and collecting dust, and now the morning light streamed into Teagan’s office. Then she’d swapped the uncomfortable plastic seating for the pair of upholstered armchairs going unused in a corner by the women’s restroom. Finally, she’d put the bar cart out on the curb and requisitioned a mini-fridge to store sodas in.
It was harder than she’d imagined to keep busy. She’d been through the full backlist of Sober Sam episodes, and new ones only dropped once a week. She was caught up with her reading for class. She’d identified every alcohol-serving establishment north of 14th Street.
For the first time in her life, Darcy didn’t have anythingto do. Or rather, she didn’t know what to do, specifically. She was supposed to be supporting Teagan in his sobriety, but she was at a loss for what else she might do on that account. She was beginning to wish she’d read the manual on this first, because as the days went by, the tight set of Teagan’s mouth only seemed to worsen.
She’d promised she’d help him, but she wasn’t sure that’s what she was doing anymore.
Darcy took out her earbuds to focus on his computer screen.
It was a job listing for the New York State Parks Department. She squinted at the title:park manager, bear mountain state park.She thought, anyway. Below it was an impenetrable block of text. She gritted her teeth and tried to parse it, hanging up on the second sentence.
“They want a bachelor’s degree,” she said, looking away from the screen.
“Or equivalent experience,” Teagan corrected her.
Teagan spun the computer back around and began to read out loud.
“Primary duties include managing operations of park facilities, communicating with other park branches, managing park maintenance, educating park visitors, reviewing reports of operations—”
“Are you actually working this morning, or are you just looking at jobs I’m not qualified for?” Darcy interrupted him. She expected him to back off at the suggestion he was slacking on the clock, but he dug in.
“Isn’t that the kind of job you want?” he asked.
“I wanted to be a park ranger.”
“I think the person in this job does everything a park ranger does, and look, it pays more—”
Darcy scoffed. “Yeah, because they also want you to do a bunch of other stuff.”
“So why couldn’t you do this one?” he asked.
“I can’t do a single one of those things you just read,” she said.
“What do you mean? Operations? Education? Maintenance? You could do all of that. You were doing all of that in Montana,” Teagan insisted.
“Not for that kind of job,” Darcy said. “There’s probably tons of paperwork. Admin. Fifty different monthly reports. No.”
Teagan frowned down at the screen.
Darcy put her headphones back in, hoping that was the end of it.
“Darcy...” Teagan unexpectedly spoke again, his voice very hesitant. “Even if you can’t read the reports, I bet they could—”
Darcy sat bolt upright, sliding her feet off Teagan’s desk and sending papers fluttering to the floor. She pulled out her earbuds and tossed them back in her purse.
