Page 112 of Hang the Moon
ANNIE (9:57 A.M.):Hey. I wanted to let you know I just landed.
BRENDON (10:00 A.M.):I’m glad you made it safely.
ANNIE (10:02 A.M.):Thanks, Brendon.
BRENDON (10:03 A.M.):
Friday, June 18
Brendon stabbed at his salmon salad, huffing when he sent a stupid cherry tomato rolling across the table. He didn’t trust a fruit that disguised itself as a vegetable, and cherry tomatoes were, by and large, the worst. It wasn’t so much the taste but the texture of tomato guts spraying against the roof of his mouth. Disgusting. He’d asked for them to be left off, but here they were.
“Brendon... did you hear what I said?”
Without lifting his head, he scooped the tomatoes off hissalad one by one and deposited them on Darcy’s plate beside her so-rare-it-was-mooing prime rib. The tomatoes rolled into a puddle of pink-tinged au jus. “Sorry, what?”
She waited to speak until he looked at her, and when she did, her voice was a touch too soft, setting his teeth on edge. “I asked how you were doing.”
He nodded briskly. “Good, good. Katie, Jenny, and I had a great brainstorming session about our new marketing campaign. We looped the engineering department in for the profile tweaks we’ve got planned, and our expansion is going ahead—I mentioned that to you already, yeah?” He continued to ferry tomatoes from his plate to Darcy’s. “We’re starting with the Canadian expansion later this year, beginning in—well, Q one, technically. And then we’ll move on to Mexico before expanding to Europe. Our investors are jazzed, I’m jazzed, we’re all—”
“Jazzed?” Darcy quirked a brow. “Brendon.”
He reached for Darcy’s coffee and stole a sip. One taste was more than enough to remind him why he didn’t order coffee at this restaurant. “Hm?”
“How are you,really?”
He chewed on his lip. “Fine?”
“Fine.”
He pasted on a smile. “Are you going to repeat everything I say?”
With a hard swallow that made the column of her throat jerk, Darcy set her fork and knife on her plate, the silverware quietly clanking against the porcelain. She lifted her napkin to her lips, dabbing carefully at the corners of her mouth, careful not to mess up her lipstick. Only once she’d replaced thenapkin in her lap, smoothing the linen over her legs, did she look at him.
He wished she hadn’t. The sheer amount of pity in her gaze about bowled him over.
“It’s okay if you’re not, you know. Fine.”
He shoved his salad to the side and ran a hand over the back of his head. “What do you want me to say, Darce? You want me to tell you I’mnotfine?”
Her tongue poked against the inside of her cheek and he could practically hear her counting to five before she spoke. “You don’t have to put on an act around me. It’s pointless. I can see through it. I wish you didn’t feel like it was necessary to lie to me—”
“I’m not lying. I don’t really see the point in hashing it out.”
Talking wouldn’t bring Annie back to Seattle any sooner.Talkingwouldn’t bring her back at all.
Darcy’s teeth sank into her bottom lip before she must’ve remembered her lipstick. She released it, pursing her mouth instead. “Bottling up your emotions and pasting on a happy-go-lucky façade isn’t the way to handle this. I am speaking from experience when I tell you that you will wind up the emotional equivalent of Pop Rocks in a bottle of soda. You’ll bubble over and you’ll burst, and it would be better if you let it out rather than let it fester and explode.”
He scratched his eyebrow. “Are you auditioning for the role of my therapist now?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t be a prick, Brendon. I’m your sister, and Igotthat advice from my therapist.”
Her expression dared him to laugh, something he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing.
“Sorry,” he muttered, feeling every inch the prick she’d called him. “I didn’t know. That’s—that’s great, Darce. I’m... happy you’re talking to someone?”
She rolled her eyes. “You give great advice, don’t get me wrong, but I figured I needed an impartial third party to talk to about... things.”
“Things,” he echoed, not wanting to pry, but curious nonetheless.
