“I’m only taking four hours right now,” she said. “I tried to take eight this summer, but I failed one of my classes, and if I fail another one, I can’t graduate in my major.”
A wrinkle formed between Teagan’s eyebrows.
“You should take more than four hours. You could take a full course load right now. What can I do? I could take dictation. Or record your course materials for you.”
Darcy laughed and looked down at the ground. He sounded so sincere. He probably meant it, even. He would probably make her all sorts of promises if she let him. She couldn’t let him, she reminded herself.
When this inevitably ended, one of the things she wanted to remember about this was that Teagan hadn’t ever broken any promises to her. Or it could get even worse, if he kept them, and he didn’t want to. It was going to hurt like a shipwreck when she had to leave anyway, she could see that already, but she never wanted to be one more thing Teagan felt trapped into taking care of. He had too many of those things in his life already, and she didn’t want to be here when he stopped looking at her like she had all the answers and started seeing her for the trash fire she usually was.
“Thanks. But exams are in December, and I probably won’t be here,” she said.
Teagan did that little jerk backward that he didwhenever Darcy mentioned her departure date, like she’d called him a name. Whatever progress they’d made in the month she’d been in New York, it hadn’t convinced him that he’d be just fine without Darcy here to help him.
His mouth flexed as he worked on a response.
“But you might be,” he said slowly. “If you had a job here.”
Darcy scrunched up her nose in reluctant assent. “I haven’t applied to any jobs here. I haven’t even heard from anywhere in Yellowstone yet.”
“I’m working on that,” he immediately said.
That was too close to a promise for her liking, and Darcy instinctively tightened her shoulders.
“You can’t pimp me out to your drinking buddies as a sober companion,” she warned him.
“My... okay, sure. No drinking buddies.”
“And I’m not working at an art camp. I can’t draw.”
“Okay,” he agreed again. “Only things in your field, I promise.”
Even though she’d done all but bite his head off this morning, Teagan gave her a slow smile, sweet and encouraging.
Darcy felt her face suffusing with blood, and she put her feet back on his desk so that he couldn’t see her expression.
It was like a whole spoonful of sugar sliding into her cup, his confidence that she’d finish her degree and land the kind of job she’d wanted since she was eighteen, repeated failures to do that notwithstanding. It hit her right in her feelings, when she should have dodged.
Darcy bent over her phone to hide more, tempted to wrap her arms around the emotion and catch it for later study.
She knew better than this. Disappointment always hurt worse than brutal honesty would have.
Darcy heard him start typing.
“If you get an interview with the New York parks department, I’ll help you practice questions about what you’d actually be doing day-to-day,” he said.
“You’re seriously putting in an application with the bear place?” she asked.
“Yes?”
He looked at her with mild challenge over the rim of the computer. Darcy had that teetering-on-the-edge sensation again. Experience counseled that this was a trap, and she’d end up mopping staterooms on the way to Diego Garcia.
It was a nice daydream though. Being in charge of some little state park. Coming out of her own office to meet school buses full of cabin-feverish kids who’d listen to ten minutes of bear facts before sprinting for the rocks.
Was Teagan imagining it too? Was he able to imagine a life where he was sober and unafraid, with Darcy still in it? If so, could he please tell her how that worked? Could he read the manual to her?
“Suit yourself,” she said, trying to play it off like it wasn’t something she wanted, because wanting things very rarely had anything to do with having them.
“I will,” Teagan said, undeterred.
