by Nancy Thayer
Was it possible, Darcy wondered, that she’d inherited some of her mother’s tendency to rush into romance? It was a special thrill, falling in love—it was exciting, turning all one’s senses to high. That first spark, that first sidelong glance, the first phone call, the first kiss…the first time making love. All engraved in the memory and illuminated by the neon lights of infatuation.
But staying in love with one person for a lifetime? Maybe Darcy simply wasn’t capable of that. After all, she had kissed Clive. And if it had been out of sympathy and kindness, it had also been from desire. From the moment she set eyes on Clive, she’d wanted him to want her. And if that was purely a selfish egotistical urge, it came from her own body, without any thought or decision. She looked at him; she was…interested in him. She admired him, and she desired him. Was there ever any wisdom in desire?
How did people manage to stay faithful to one person all their lives? Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the seat and contemplated the lives of her summer neighbors. Mimi was widowed. Clive was divorced, and happily divorced, it seemed. Boyz was divorced and married to Autumn who had been divorced. Willow was not Boyz’s daughter. Autumn clearly enjoyed flirting with and having sex with other men, yet even after Boyz found out, even after he knew there was a chance Autumn was pregnant with another man’s child, Boyz loved Autumn. He stayed with her. Well, Boyz had also propositioned Darcy. Only those two knew the rules of their relationship. Otto was clearly unfaithful to Susan; and if Susan knew, she seemed too overwhelmed to care. Was that the cure for giving a damn about your mate’s infidelities—simple exhaustion?
Well, Darcy was simply exhausted now, exhausted and despairing. She put the key in the ignition and drove back to her home. Her home, where she lived alone, with a cat.
23
When her alarm clock chirped on Tuesday morning, Darcy automatically shut it off and forced herself from her bed. She was exhausted, listless, even after having a day off. But she wasn’t going to call in sick and lie around all day in a puddle of self-pity. She would put on a bright summer dress and go to her second home and be around books and people who loved books.
She almost changed her mind when she saw her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a one-hundred-year-old woman. Make that a one-hundred-year-old troll. She hadn’t really slept for the past two nights. She’d spent yesterday watching romantic movies while she ate Cheetos and ice cream. She hadn’t combed her hair or brushed her teeth yesterday and Sunday night’s mascara and eyeliner had migrated to different sections of her face, most of it ending up in bizarre patterns just below her eyes. Her hair was limp.
“Gawd,” she said to herself in the mirror. “Aren’t you a treat for the eyes.”
She trudged around the house, feeling slightly hungover, but she hadn’t drunk alcohol, so this was an emotional hangover, not easily cured with aspirin and ginger ale. Darcy made herself a cup of strong coffee and carried it back to the bathroom. She took a long shower. After that, she was almost her normal self, except for the sadness that had lodged itself in her center like a heavy stone.
Nash.
So quickly he had moved on. As if it had been only lust and fun between him and Darcy. As if she were so replaceable.
“Stop it!” she ordered herself.
Muffler meowed stridently in return.
“You’re right,” she told the cat. “It’s you and me, babe.”
She stepped into her prettiest, pinkest, girly-girlest dress and brushed her hair thoroughly and tied it back with a pink grosgrain ribbon. At work, she forced herself to hum show tunes as she tapped away at the computer, and when one of the librarians impulsively invited her to go to Fog Island for lunch, she agreed. The sunny, windless day was perfect for the beach, which meant Darcy and Monica got a table without waiting in line. Monica was a second-generation native, meaning her parents had been born on the island, so she knew all sorts of hometown gossip, and, more than that, she knew who was voting for what on the special town warrant coming out in October. Darcy listened, laughing, for Monica had a salty way of expressing herself. As they walked back to the library, Darcy emotionally recharged and reconnected to the island. Her island.
After work, she pulled on her Speedo and walked down to the Jetties for a long, lazy swim. Floating idly, she heard the ferries’ horns as they entered and exited the harbor. She heard children laughing and smelled hot dogs and hamburgers from the concession stand. Wading back in the shallows of the beach, she saw three brightly colored beach umbrellas, like a painting of a summer paradise. Painted in watercolor, of course, she joked to herself.
By the time she walked home, she was nicely tired out, ready for a drink and a shower and later a book and maybe a long talk with Jordan. Jordan might have wonderful news, like news that Kate was a traveling nurse just transferred to Seattle. Darcy smiled at herself, but all day long she had been covering her sadness with a gloss of pretend happiness, and she was drained by the effort.
She entered her house, kicked off her shoes, and walked barefoot into the kitchen. On the counter, the answering machine for her landline blinked. She couldn’t hold it back—her heart leaped with hope.
She hit the play button. “You have one message. Message one.”
“Darcy. Could I stop by after work? Around eight?”
Darcy froze. Nash’s voice. She replayed the message, staring down at her small electronic messenger with her hands clasped at her breast like a silly Victorian maiden gazing at a valentine.
She took out her cellphone and tapped his number. He answered. Not a machine, the real man. For a moment she choked with excitement.
“Nash? It’s Darcy. Yes, please come by, whenever.”
“Around eight.” Nash spoke without emotion and clicked off immediately.
“Wow!” Darcy cried. She couldn’t help speaking aloud. “Nash is coming over. Is that good? Or is it bad?”
She glanced at her watch even though she was too excited to take in the time. She flew around the house, dusting, washing, tidying, and singing all the nonsense children’s songs she knew because she wouldn’t allow herself to sing anything happy or hopeful because that might jinx what Nash was going to say.
Because what if he were coming over to formally break things off with her? Because that could be why he was coming over. She shouldn’t assume that because he called, he wanted to be with her. It could be the exact opposite.
She felt as if her life were balancing on the edge of a spinning coin. One side, heads, the other tails, and she had no control over how it would land.
She decided to change out of her sundress. It was too pretty, too hopeful.
She took the world’s longest shower, sudsing herself up with perfumed soap. She slathered moisturizing lotion all over her body and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts, nothing fancy, nothing seductive. She decided not to wear any makeup. He’d seen her waking up with morning breath and without makeup, he’d seen her curled up on the sofa with a blanket and a carton of Ben & Jerry’s while enduring menstrual cramps. If Nash wanted her, he could take her as she was, warts and all.
If he didn’t want her, she wouldn’t get mascara all over her face when she cried.
24
“Nash. Hi. Come in.” She stepped back for Nash to enter.
“Thanks.” Nash went into the living room and sat on one of the overstuffed chairs.
He went into the living room, not the kitchen where he often went. Did that mean anything? And why did he choose to sit in a chair, not the sofa where Darcy could sit next to him?
“Would you like a drink?”
“In a minute. Let’s talk first.” Nash had obviously showered. He wore a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and khakis. Definitely not casual. Not here to watch the Red Sox and drink beer.
“Okay.” Darcy settled at the end of the sofa, facing Nash. She was grateful for the fat arm of the sofa next to her left arm. It gave her a sense of security.
“Darcy.” N
ash cleared his throat. “We should get some things straight.”
Damn. That sounded ominous. Darcy bit her lip to hold back a whimper.
“Okay.”
“Darcy, I’m in love with you—”
“Oh, Nash!” His words almost launched her off the sofa.
He remained stern. “Wait. Listen. I’m in love with you, but you’re making it hard for me. And, no, not like that, stop grinning. This is serious. You say you love me, but you say you never want to leave your grandmother’s house, this house. Then you kiss another man.”
“Nash.” Darcy leaned toward him, as earnest, as truthful, as she could be. “It didn’t mean anything. Truly.”
“And it didn’t mean anything when I flirted with Kate Ferguson. Darcy, I don’t know what to think. I had thought you and I were—headed toward a serious relationship. Maybe more. I was happy with you.”
“I was happy with you, Nash. I wanted—I want—to be in a serious relationship with you, but I don’t know, we never spoke about being exclusive, anything like that—”
“Have you been sleeping with anyone else?”
“No, Nash! God!”
“I haven’t, either. So I thought we were a couple, even if we hadn’t made it official somehow. Even if we hadn’t said so in words.”
“I guess I need to hear the words,” Darcy told him.
“Are you ready to say the words?”
“What? Oh, Nash, I love you! You know that.” Darcy strained toward him, wanting to kiss him, to touch him. “I didn’t know you loved me, so…”
“Darcy, I told you something I haven’t told anyone else. About my brother. About his death, all that.”
“I haven’t spoken of that to anyone. I would never—”
“I thought you’d understand how I feel about you when I told you about Edsel. But, Darcy, come on, settle down, we need to talk this out. You say you love me. I love you. What does that mean? In my world, it means we’re pretty much on our way to being together permanently.”
Darcy’s eyes went wide. She half choked, half whispered, “Marriage?”
“Well, that’s what normal people do when they fall in love, when they’re as compatible as I thought you and I were. But I can’t get a clear reading from you, Darcy. I wanted to talk to you about the future, but only a few weeks ago you said you hoped you never had to leave this house.”
Darcy frowned. “You don’t like this house?”
“That’s not the point. If you’re never going to leave it, that means you never want to get married or live with anyone, or it means you expect whoever you marry to move in here.”
Darcy gazed around the room, this familiar, beloved room that had held her grandmother’s life and her own childhood.
“I guess you’re right. I mean, about what I said. I never really thought about it that way, Nash. I guess when I daydreamed about living with a man, having children, having grandchildren, it was always in this house.” She straightened her back; she met Nash’s gaze. “Could we just pause for a moment to be like fireworks happy that you and I love each other?”
Nash smiled, but his eyes were sad. “I’m glad if all this makes you happy. It makes me miserable.”
“Nash, no. If we love each other, we can work things out, right?”
“Can we? Can we really ‘work things out’? If I give you a couple of days or a couple of months, do you think you’ll be able to decide to sell this house? All this furniture”—his arm swept the room—“your grandmother’s garden?”
“But, Nash, why should I have to? Isn’t it a great house? Isn’t it wonderful to be in town, walking distance to the library, the post office, the shops?”
“What if I want to get a dog, a big dog that needs lots of room to run? What if I get an Irish setter or even a Lab? What if I want to live in a modern house with a large yard out of town, bordering the moors, where I could let the dog run?”
Darcy took a deep breath. “I think this is when I get myself a drink. Would you like one?”
“Please.”
“Wine?”
“A beer, if you’ve got it.”
Darcy rose and walked toward the kitchen.
Her head was spinning, and her heart had gone into some kind of gymnastic performance that sent tremors through her hands. She poured herself a glass of wine. She took a Heineken from the fridge, popped off the cap, and carried the drinks out to the living room.
She handed Nash the beer. “Would you come sit next to me on the sofa?”
“Thanks for the beer. No, I’m not moving. We can’t solve this problem physically. We’d only delay it.”
Darcy returned to the sofa. “But being physical is part of the solution, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” Nash asked. “If we make love, will you be a fraction more likely to sell this house and choose a house with me?”
“You’re making me feel so pressured,” Darcy said. She took a sip of wine. “Nash, when you think of the future, where do your dreams take you? I mean, do you think you could live on Nantucket for the rest of your life?”
“I’ve given this a lot of thought, Darcy. Yes, I could live here all my life. I’ve traveled a lot. I’m tired of traveling. I like my work here, I like the guys I hang with. I like eating fish I’ve caught right out of the ocean. I like seeing the stars without light pollution, and I like that I can admit that and it doesn’t make other people think I’m odd or weak. I’ve been part of the world of lawyers and judges and writs and summonses and that’s not for me. It’s not who I am. I’ve been discovering who I am and what I want since I’ve been here. And I want to live here, on the island, with you.”
Darcy nodded. “But not in this house.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. But I don’t want this house to be what you choose over me.”
“So we’re kind of talking about deal breakers,” Darcy said.
“If you want to put it that way, yes.”
“It seems clinical. Cold.”
Nash shrugged. “You’ve often said you thought you got married to Boyz too quickly. You rushed it, you didn’t get to know each other, you were all about what you dreamed would happen and you never took time to understand the reality.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Darcy nodded, her mind working fast now. “So here’s another, I guess you could call it, deal breaker. I’ve come to care for Boyz’s stepdaughter, Willow. She loves books, like I do, like you do. She’s smart and funny and working hard to make sense of life, as if anyone can make sense of life. What I’m trying to get at is, Willow might be part of my life. Maybe not, I don’t know, but I’d like her to be part of my life. I’d like to have her visit here, by herself, without her family, but it means I’ll have to be in touch with Boyz and Autumn. Would that bother you?”
“I don’t think so. We both know we have complicated pasts. It would bother me if having Willow in your life changed whether you’d want to have children. Your own children. Do you want that?” Nash asked.
“Gosh, yes, Nash. I really want children. I want your children.”
For the first time that evening, Nash broke out in a spontaneous smile. “So do I.”
“Oh, wow, that’s great!” Darcy set her glass on the coffee table. “Please, could I come kiss you now? This is driving me crazy, all this questioning, it’s like taking some kind of bizarre quiz.”
“Not yet, Darcy. I’m not comfortable about us yet. I want to answer your question about Willow. No, I wouldn’t have a problem if Willow became part of our lives. I’m not thrilled about contact with Boyz, but it doesn’t worry me. Willow’s swept up by the whirlwind of adolescence and she should have as many people caring for her, guiding her, as she can.”
“Oh, good, Nash. I don’t know what will happen with Willow, but I want to be there for her if she needs me. Boyz told me that Autumn is pregnant, so a new baby in the house might make Willow ecstatic, or she might feel pushed away, replaced. So that’s good then! So now can I kiss you?”
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br /> “We need to settle the matter of the house. This house.”
“Oh, Nash, that’s so complicated!”
“I think it’s simple, actually. I’d like to know whether or not you love me enough to live somewhere else. If you could sell this house and live in a house that you and I would choose together.”
“Nash, please. This house has been my home, my security, ever since I was ten years old. Even when I was married to Boyz, I knew the house was here, waiting for me. It would be painful to have to give it up. And I can imagine us living here. Even with children, even with a big dog. You know, the garden can be changed. If I remove all the flowers and low bushes, and seeded it with grass, it would have much more room for a dog, for croquet, even for badminton.” She bit her thumbnail, envisioning the changes. “Maybe not for badminton.”
“You still haven’t answered my question. Could you sell this house and live in a house that you and I would choose together? Yes or no.”
Darcy met Nash’s eyes and held his gaze. “The honest truth, Nash, is that I don’t know the answer to that question. I’m going to have to think about it, but can’t we be together while I’m thinking? I don’t mean only tonight, I mean for a few days? Or maybe even a few weeks? I don’t think I can come to a decision if I have to worry about you leaving me.”
Nash nodded. “That you’ll even think of leaving this house is more than I thought you could do, Darcy. Why don’t we agree to giving you a year. One full year.”
“Okay. That’s good. And during the year, we’ll be—together, right?”
“Yes. Together. Exclusively. No more coming on to any other men.”
“Or women,” Darcy added. She needed so badly to touch Nash, to trace his cheekbones and feel the bristles along his jaw, to be touched by him, anywhere, everywhere, and it wasn’t sex that she needed, or not only sex. Her soul yearned to connect to him, to be whole with him. She wanted to cook with him; to walk the moors with him; to slob out with him in front of the television, eating ice cream from the same carton; to arrive at parties with him at her side; to sit in silence in the living room with a fire burning in the grate while a blizzard rattled the windows, the soft glow of the reading lamps illuminating them as they each lost themselves in books. To go to sleep with his body warm and sturdy next to hers. And, yes, to have sex with him.
