by Mara Jacobs
Chapter Two
How did he get roped into bringing Munchkin along with him? Lewis started his car and made his way around the circular drive. In a way, it felt familiar having Darcy tag along. But it had always been Brooks and him telling her to go home or to leave them alone. And when they were older, and were able to drive, she’d always found a way to finagle a ride from them, even though she’d always been relegated to the back seat.
But here she was, in the front seat. And she wasn’t a little girl anymore, that was for sure. It had given him pause, placing her in the hallway. He knew it had to be Darcy. What other girl would be in the Bennett’s hallway? In fact, he’d quickly computed the statistics that a random woman had found her way into their home. But then, if you added in things like having the same coloring as Darcy and being approximately the same age (though that had fooled Lewis for a moment because for some reason, he always seemed to think of Darcy as fifteen), the odds just became too great.
But it wasn’t any Darcy he’d seen before.
“Did you come home for the party last year?” he asked, trying to conclude why he’d been stumped.
“Yes. Why?”
He turned out of the Bennetts’ neighborhood—his old neighborhood—and started through town. “I just couldn’t remember.”
“We danced together,” she said.
“Did we?”
“Twice.”
“Hmm.” Nope, it wasn’t coming to him. Nothing. He only remembered dancing with Grace. “So, how’s Beantown, Munchkin?”
“Darcy. It’s great. You should have stayed, it’s a great place to live.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. But it made sense to make the move. For the company.”
“Well, New York’s just a train ride away. I go down all the time.”
“Do you?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Well, not all the time. But I’ve gone down quite a bit.”
“Hmmm,” he said while his mind turned to a new app idea. Wouldn’t be cool if you could—
“You just missed the turn to the Club,” he heard from afar.
“Hmmm?”
“Lewis? You just missed the turn.”
He came out of coding in his head to realize that, yep, he’d gone a half-mile past the turnoff to the Club. So many times he’d be walking through Manhattan and realize he’d gone five blocks past his office. That’s the app he needed—a warning on his watch or something for when he walked past his building. Something like a Garmin, but tiny and wearable.
“Unless you’d like to go somewhere else…” Darcy said beside him, jolting him out of his app nap.
He looked over at her as he pulled the car to the side of the road to turn around. “What? Where else would I want to go?”
She was looking at him like he should know something. He got that look a lot from women. She shook her head (again, something he got a lot) and turned her head toward her window. “Nothing. Never mind.”
The parking lot at the Club was filling up fast, even though the party was just beginning. You didn’t arrive fashionably late for this event. You sucked every minute out of this night.
What if there was an app where you could rate the party you were at and your entire social network could see it, rate theirs, and you could all move to the best one? As he parked the car, he reached for his digital recorder to get the idea down, then paused.
You could kind of do that already on Facebook. Damn Zuckerberg. (This was a sentiment Lewis thought daily.)
“Are you ready?” Darcy asked.
He looked at the Club, lit up with not only from the inside, but also the tasteful holiday lighting along the outside of the building. Grace was in there. His future started now.
“I’m ready,” he answered and got out of the car.
