Page 15 of Thaw My Heart
CHAPTER 6
CODY
“Aren’t you concerned that your sweet, precious baby sister has been alone with Mr. Bohemian Man Slut in there for about two hours now?” Darcy asks me as she takes a nonchalant sip from her margarita.
She glances at me out of the corner of her eye, and I swear I see a glimmer of mischief. She has a valid point. I should be concerned about my sister’s new admirer. However, I am more concerned with what Maya will do to me if I interfere. It’s every man for himself when it comes to my sister. She is a sweetheart and a lover. She falls in love hard and fast. But…she also falls out of love just as quickly. If Louis is dumb enough to put himself in the line of fire and become the new shiny object of Maya’s affections, there’s nothing I can do to help, though God knows I want to. I mean, come on—Louis?
Of all people. Louis.
My sister sure knows how to pick them. Leave it to her to find the biggest womanizer in the resort and try to domesticate him.
I expertly change the subject. “Aren’tyouconcerned thatwe’vebeen left alone for two hours now, and you haven’t clawed my eyes out with your bare hands yet?”
Darcy takes another sip. She looks at me with a smirk that makes it hard to distinguish whether she’s joking or not when she says, “I don’t typically commit felonies until I’ve had at least three drinks, but who knows? Maybe I’ll snap early.”
By my count we’re at least four drinks in now and my inhibitions are lowering by the minute.
I’m man enough to admit that Darcy is a lot cooler than I initially thought she could ever be. She’s got awesome music taste, she makes crude jokes (and laughs at my crude jokes), and she’s fun to debate with about almost anything. But most of all, she’s just easy to be around. I forgot what that felt like. It’s not like with everyone else. I don’t have to act like Mr. Polite Ski Instructor, who doesn’t have an unprofessional bone in his body.Though, I’m not exactly good at that role all of the time.
If I was getting drinks with anyone else in this resort, the silences between us would be uncomfortable. I would likely try to start a new conversation or fill the empty voids. But with Darcy, the silence isn’t nearly as loud and suffocating. It’s… well, easy. It takes me back to being fourteen, sitting with her in my parents’ basement. Maya would be off designing a dress or writing a play, and it would just be the two of us. We’d just sit there in the sweetest silence for hours. She would read a book, and I would sketch her, paying attention to every little detail of her face when she was too comfortable to notice. I still have those drawings somewhere. I never told her about them. I think it might be too late now.
I hope she doesn’t notice my nervous gulp. It’s not that I’m scared of Darcy per se, but, well… I’ve seen what this woman can do to a man. In high school, a little while after we stopped speaking and starting hating each other, her date to the homecoming dance left in tears after she tore him to pieces on the dance floor for ogling the cheerleaders, and she was only a freshman at the time. That’s when I realized she wasn’t as dorkyas I thought. That’s when I saw her in a new light. In the way all the other boys at school saw her. I had felt so confused before, after we kissed in junior high and I started seeing her differently. I didn’t like it. She had always been nerdy, bookworm Darcy to me. The little kid I’d grown up with.
I’d hate to imagine what became of the boys who dared to fight for her attention when she got older. Although, I suppose that side of her isn’t quite as prominent anymore; it hasn’t been since junior year, when she met Milo. I remember Milo—well. In fact, we were friends for the first couple of years of high school until I quit athletics as a junior. We were on the wrestling team together. He was a real macho, tough guy. He was big for his age, handsome and confident and arrogant as could be. But the girls loved him. They literally tripped over their feet to even be near him. All except for one. Darcy. Darcy did not trip over her feet for anyone. I think that’s part of what made her so appealing to everyone.
Humans inherently want what they can’t have, and no one could have Darcy. She was notorious for agreeing to a single date and then dumping the poor bastard as soon as he paid for her dinner. Or at least, those were the rumors. It’s hard to say just how true they were. Our school loved to talk, especially about the redheaded girl with a temper as fiery as her hair. Milo was the only one to ever really break through her walls, andboy, did he have to work for it. Maya would come home every day and swoon over the new elaborate way Milo asked Darcy out, just for Darcy to say no and for Milo to promise to try again the next day. If I remember correctly—and I almost always do—he finally won her over with a truly terrible interpretation of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.” He never was all that bright, but somehow, he accomplished something that no one else ever could—winning Darcy’s heart. And then the fool so easily gave it away.
I don’t understand it. I don’t think I ever will. I’m sitting here, and I’m looking at her, and she’s beautiful. But even more than that, Darcy is the kind of person who makes you feel truly seen when she looks at you. She listens and she reacts and she cares. She’s quick to judge and stubborn as hell butshecares. Most people don’t care anymore. Milo is the biggest idiot in the world for giving this up. For givingherup.
I had a woman as strong and fearless as Darcy once, and if I could go back and keep her with me, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I would never let her go. But here Darcy is, completely alone because the person she devoted everything to sold her out. He gave it all up so freely. So now, what’s left? Her light is gone. She’s like an angel with clipped wings, trapped with her immortal pain while the couples, so full of love and life, pass her by like only her time is standing still and theirs is moving on, full speed ahead.
“Can I ask you something?” Darcy enquires, yanking me from my quickly derailing thoughts.
A stray lock of her fiery hair falls across her cheek, and I have to fight the urge to brush it away. My fingers twitch with the desire to touch her.
I notice how her lips move as she talks, pink and inviting. The way she gestures animatedly, her slender fingers cutting through the air. I catch a whiff of her perfume – something floral and intoxicating.
Suddenly, I realize how close we've gotten. I can see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose, count each of her eyelashes. My heart races, and I quickly take a swig of my drink to hide my reaction.
Darcy's words falter, and I wonder if she feels it too – this crackling tension between us. Her eyes meet mine, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe. I clear my throat, trying tofocus on what she's saying and not on how badly I want to close the distance between us.
"Sorry," I mumble, leaning back slightly. "What were you saying?"
Darcy blinks, seeming to come back to herself. "Oh, um, right. I was just seeing if I could ask you something?”
I gather myself, blinking the image of Darcy from my mind, and nod. “Yeah, ‘course.”
“Why are you here? And I don’t mean here in this bar. I meanhere, in this resort, in Colorado, over a thousand miles away from home. You could’ve gone anywhere. You could’ve stayed in Ohio. Why are you here?”
The question catches me off guard. I don’t think I know the answer to it. Not really. I know why I left home initially—I wanted to explore. Become my own person and see the world a bit before settling down. But that was years ago. I’ve explored. I’ve grown. I’ve fallen in love, and I’ve had my heart broken. I’ve picked apart every piece of myself until I knew myself inside and out. And yet, I’m still here, in a dim bar on a snowy mountain.
“This place…” I start, then I stop because the words I was about to utter don’t feel right. I don’t thinkanywords will be enough to properly express what this place means to me. “A lot has changed since I last saw you,” I finally say. “I’ve changed. This place has changed with me. It fits in a way that home just doesn’t anymore. Being back there feels like being a rat in a cage. I’m free here—for the most part, anyway. I don’t know if I’ll always be happy here. I doubt it. But for now, I am. And in my fickle twenty-five years of life experience, true happiness can be hard to find. Once you get it, you don’t ever let it go.” Darcy’s looking at me in a way that no one has looked at me in a very long time. I hate it. The last person who looked at me like that…
No.
This is too hard. It was easy when Darcy just wanted to fight. It was natural and comfortable and... notthis.Thisis utter misery.Thisfeels like someone is clawing at my chest and squeezing my heart until it bursts. Why is she looking at me like that?
Before I can even really think of what I’m doing, I stand up. The movement is so abrupt that the stool I was sitting on teeters and threatens to tip over.
