I glance at the message preview with my breaking heart in my throat.
Finn:Hi. Can I see you tonight? There's something I need to talk to you about.
There it is. The oldest sentence in the world. Nobody has ever followed those words with good news. He wants to do it in person, because he's kind, and kind men like to hold your hand while they leave you.
An hour ago I was going to tell him I loved him tonight.
Now, he's the last person I can bear to see.
I look at the message until the screen dims. Then I turn the phone face down on my desk.
CHAPTER 33
FINN
My phone sits on the marble countertop of my mother's kitchen, face up, where I can see it. I sent the text to Darcy over an hour ago. No reply. I also called twenty minutes back. She sent me straight to voicemail.
There are a dozen reasonable explanations and I've run through all of them twice. She's busy with class work. She's at her mother's. Her phone is at the bottom of her big tote bag with the ever-present student papers and the water bottle, on silent, forgotten, the way phones get forgotten by people who have actual lives.
Any of those explanations would cover the silence that seems like an open pit in my chest.
None of the scenarios I've concocted sits right. Darcy answers her phone. Even when she's buried, she answers. Even if it's just a few words and a promise to call back. Silence isn't her language. I know her languages by now.
I know enough to realize that this silence is something different.
Tonight was supposed to betheconversation. I've spent half this afternoon assembling it the way I'd assemble any expedition, everything laid out in order. The deal, the flight,what the meeting is and isn't—and then the only part that matters, the part I should have led with weeks ago. The truth about what she means to me. That I'm in love with her.
I want her to hear all of it, face to face, before I have to board that plane. I texted her at school because showing up unannounced during her workday seemed like a lot. I've been sitting here since, staring at the Colorado deal paperwork, rereading clause seventeen of something I've stopped caring about, waiting for her reply that I know isn't going to come.
I let out a groan at about the same time Evan comes thumping down the hall on his crutches. He hobbles into the kitchen, and aims himself at the refrigerator.
"I hope you didn't eat all of Mom's leftover chicken," he says, and starts excavating. Then, over his shoulder, too casual: "How're you holding up? Talk to Darcy yet?"
"No." I watch him. "I texted her after lunch. Called a while ago. Nothing back."
"Oh." Evan goes still, half inside the refrigerator.
It's a small thing. A one-second hitch in a man hunting for chicken. But I've been reading this kid's face since before he could talk, and I watch the back of his neck do the thing it did when he was nine and the garage window was broken and nobody knew anything about it.
"Evan." He straightens up slowly, a container of leftovers still in one hand. "What did you do?"
He sets the chicken down and faces me. I don't like the withered look on his face. "It wasn't intentional."
"Evan. For fuck's sake. What. Did. You. Do?"
"So Annie and me, you know we've been talking a bit lately, right? We were on the phone earlier, and she could tell something was off with me, and I was worried about you—genuinely worried—and I… might have mentioned the Colorado thing."
"The Colorado thing." It's not a question, and from his miserable expression I can tell I don't need to ask anything more.
"I told Annie about the deal. That it came through and they want you out there and you're flying out tomorrow." He winces. "I told her you were torn up about leaving town. About leaving Darcy."
The kitchen is very quiet. Outside, someone's dog is barking two properties over.
Evan told Annie I'm leaving tomorrow. Annie, Darcy's best friend. Annie, who has never once in her life sat on information that concerned somebody she loves. Which means Darcy has known about the Colorado deal since this afternoon. She's known for several hours.
Not from me, not even secondhand, but thirdhand. The way her mother heard about her father's affair after he was gone. The way most gossip fodder gets passed around this town. I know her history well enough to know exactly which nerve that lands on, and I provided the hammer myself. There is no version of that story where I'm not the biggest asshole in it.
I think back to the text I sent her this afternoon.Something I need to talk to you about.I might as well have sent her a countdown.
