She dodged the server and jogged up the stairs into the restaurant, but the two bathrooms were free of anyone except hungover hipsters fixing their hair and makeup. She checked the kitchen and the basement. Beginning to feel some real panic, she walked out of the restaurant and scanned the street. She finally spotted Teagan halfway down the block, conspicuous mostly for being the only man in business casual.
He was leaning against a board fence between two brownstones, braced by his forearm.
“Oh no,” Darcy said, rushing over. “Are you...” She wasn’t sure how to refer to it, still. What had happened at his office. Freaking out sounded like a thing he could stop doing if he wanted to, but it was clear he really hadn’t wanted to be hyperventilating in the men’s room. “Upset?” she hedged.
Teagan barely turned his head to look at her, but he shook his head.
“No, I thought I might—but no. Not today. I’m keeping it together. I just—thought I’d stay out here until I could act happier for you than sorry for myself, and that’s taking a minute.”
At the idea it would be an act, and that he’d bother to do it for her, Darcy felt her heart stutter. Nobody else would ever have bothered to pretend. She didn’t know why Teagan would.
“Teagan...” Darcy trailed off, chest feeling tight. “It’s two whole months from now.” Nobody else had still wanted her over that time frame.
Teagan straightened and turned to her. “It doesn’t matter that it’s in two months. It wouldn’t matter if it was two years.”
Darcy blinked at him, guilt and worry tossing against her own fracturing certainty that Teagan would get better and grow past her someday soon.
“I think—I think maybe we should try to get you a real sponsor. And maybe a group? Like AA? I don’t know. I don’t think I’m doing this right. I don’t think it should be getting harder.” She exhaled through her teeth, a more familiar sense of incapability leadening her body. She felt like she was failing him, and she didn’t understand how.
“You know it’s not your job to fix me, right?” Teagan said, one corner of his mouth tugging to the side. “I never thought you would. That’s not why I’m dreading December.”
Darcy rocked back on her heels. She hadn’t realized that Teagan thought he was broken.
“Are you afraid you’re going to start drinking again?” she asked.
Teagan tightened his lips and shook his head again, looking away down the street. Darcy put a hand on his arm, wishing she had some wonderful plan to help him fit back into his life. Or even a marginally plausible plan, if he’d actually try it. All she had were bad plans, because she’d only ever made bad ones for herself.
“How about—okay, I’ve got it. We’ll move to Australia and work at one of those nonprofits that rebuilds coral reefs by planting baby corals on concrete pylons. Do you know how to scuba dive?”
“I don’t,” he said, smiling faintly. “And I get very seasick on anything larger than a sculling boat. Do you think that’s an impediment?”
“Probably. Okay. Never mind. I’ll keep working on it,” Darcy promised, her eyes feeling hot and scratchy. “I’m sure the right job is out there for you and me. After all, you’re very skilled at—well, I’ve been watching you for a month, and I’m still not really sure what it is you do. Answer emails. Look at spreadsheets. Brood.”
Teagan forced the corners of his mouth into the shape of a smile, but his eyes were still distant and sad.
“Do you hate it all?” he asked. “Sometimes I feel bad that I ever asked you to come out here in the first place.”
Darcy sucked on her lower lip, reluctant to be honest aboutit. Because she was leaving in two months, and he’d never asked her to stay. He’d been very careful not to, she thought, to spare either of them the embarrassment of making promises they couldn’t keep.
But maybe Sloane was right, and that’s what he wanted. And if so, he ought to know how she felt, even if she didn’t have any answers. She wished it wasn’t all up to him to solve, but if she’d been good at planning, she wouldn’t be perpetually two months away from having nowhere to live.
If she laid it out, she supposed, he’d at least know he hadn’t done anything wrong.
“So, I hate going to restaurants because I’m just fine living on peanut butter and junk food, and I feel like a brat if don’t order anything,” Darcy muttered, feeling her face turn red. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts and stared at her feet. “I hate going to parties because I don’t like getting dressed up. I hate going to your office because everyone else is working there, and I don’t have anything to do. I hate your condo because it doesn’t have any natural light, and I hate your mom’s house because you look so sad every time you walk in the door.”
Teagan sighed. “I guess that’s all of it, then,” he said glumly. He turned his shoulders back toward the restaurant, opened his mouth to say they should go back inside.
Darcy reached out and took his arm. “But Teagan—I don’t hate being with you. There’s nothing I hate about that. Do you understand?”
Her heart hammered in her throat. It was as close as she’d ever come to sayingI love youin her adult life, and she knew it probably wasn’t as close as Teagan wanted to hear, but it was as much as she could live with having said if this ended the way it always did.
“Yeah?” he asked quietly. His eyes searched her face. And Darcy wished she could tell him it would all work out, even if she went back to Montana in two months. But he’d been honest with her, and she was trying to do the same. She wasn’t sure he was going to be okay, and she wasn’t sure that she would be either.
She nodded and hooked an elbow around the back of his neck, burying her face against his collarbone.
“I like this part,” she mumbled.
It was very accommodating of him to be so tall, especially for situations where she felt vulnerable. Teagan closed his arms around her, and she got a little bit of that quiet feeling he’d once described, where the noise of the city fell away. She should have told him then that she felt the same way, but Teagan had chosen the wrong sober companion if he’d wanted someone really good with words.
