Page 144 of Mr. Aster
“You’re right,” I said. “Listen, I have a very dear friend that I’m taking you to meet. Her name is Darcy. She is very kind and very sweet. She’s the one that helped me be happy again.”
“Because she made you eat grasshoppers?”
“Pretty much. I wasn’t so happy about it in the beginning, though. I acted like you’re acting right now by not getting your way.”
“Oh.” I could see her wheels turning.
“Now you understand why you must eat grasshoppers when you go to Mexico,” I teased.
Charlotte’s face grew somber, “I don’t want to meet Darcy…I don’t want to eat bugs!”
Oh, fuck.
“No, no, no, honey. Darcy only feedsmegrasshoppers,” I said, trying to fix the godawful impression I was giving Charlotte about Darcy.
“She’s mean,” she said. “She’s not a very good friend, Daddy.”
Fuck my life.
“Listen,” I said, scrambling to make Charlotte excited to meet Darcy, “do you remember the monkeys at the zoo you loved so much?”
“Yes,” she smiled.
Please forgive me, Darcy…
“Well, my friend Darcy was named after a very special monkey because she isthatspecial of a person.”
“Really?” Charlotte said, lighting up like a Christmas tree.
“Yes. In fact, her real name is Darcel. She was named after a baby monkey who lived all alone in a rainforest.”
“I like her name,” she said with a smile.
I royally fucked myself on this one. I was so very beyond fucked at this point that I was glad I didn’t expect Darcy to take me back. If my abhorrent treatment of Darcy hadn’t been bad enough, I’d made her out to be some monkey-girl sadist who force-fed people bugs.
Now, because karma was a dish best served cold and with grasshoppers on top, Char had latched onto the name Darcy hated most in the world, compounding the mountain of shit that I was going to have to climb to make Darcy give me a second chance.
My only hope was that Darcy had made peace with her jungle name as part of her growth and personal evolution, and she wouldn’t hate me even more when we met again.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Darcy
Iwalked into the reception office at the travel agency where I worked, excited to get the notes for the client who’d booked me for a half-day private dive excursion. These were my favorite types of dives; without having a large group of people, I could focus solely on one or two clients, and sometimes the dives went so well that I managed to slip in a few bonus sites for them to check out and take pictures if they wanted.
I’d been living and working in Mexico for four months, and it had only taken two months for the company to entrust me with their VIP tours. That was an exciting validation of my hard work paying off and a constant reminder of how much I loved this job.
“Hey, Maria,” I said, greeting the office manager. “Is my guy here yet?”
“Right here,” I heard a voice that shook me to my core, taking me far too long to process what was happening.
Maria’s smile broadened with a flirty grin as I closed my eyes, being crushed under a wave of dread that I’d have to turn around eventually and face him.
There is no way this is happening,I thought, in equal parts fear and sudden frustration,not after all the work I’ve done to get over this man.
“Darcy?” I heard him say, confirming with his concerned voice that it wasreally Sebastian,the ghost of my haunted past.
Instead of succumbing to the emotions I felt bubbling to the surface, I steadied my mind and turned to embrace what may come once I saw his face again for the first time in eight months.
