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“You’re over-thinking it,” he whispered, amused. Reaching for the bottle, he refilled my glass. “I was engaged to Violet two years ago. We were dating, she got pregnant. I thought we’d become a family. Then one day she told me she got an abortion because she was asked to dance in Paris.”
“Wow—”
“It gets worse. She told me via a handwritten note. She never gave back the ring either, even after she’d gotten married to someone else a few months later. They were only together a year. I remember being thankful I hadn’t given her my mother’s ring because it was too plain.” He didn’t looked bothered at all, like he was telling someone else’s story, not his own.
“But she came back.”
“There were rumors she had an affair with the ballet director in Paris, so she joined Darcy Entertainment.”
“And you just let her?”
He looked at me, confused. “We needed a dancer. Though you did embarrass her when you upstaged her at the recital.”
“I didn’t mean to, and you’re a better person than I am. I can hold a grudge for years. In fact….”
Don’t, Felicity. I didn’t talk about my past, not with anyone, yet I felt like I could tell him. I heard Cleo telling me not to do it in the back of mind.
“In fact?” He waited.
Exhaling deeply, I faced the screen again. “I haven’t spoken to my father in almost a decade. It was my mother who taught me to dance and play piano. We used to sit side-by-side and play all the time. So many people wanted me to play or dance for them at recitals, at games. I got so many invitations. But I didn’t care about that. I only wanted to show my mother that I could be just like her. When I was eight, she died. Three days later my father brought home this other woman and her two daughters. They looked just like my dad, and they were only a few years younger than me. He didn’t explain anything. To her credit, the woman was never mean to me, but I hated her and I hated him. After I got into trouble, I never looked back. My life…. I’m a mess, Theo. There are days when I feel like there is nothing inside me. Like I’m a black hole. And the people I care about, the people who get too close, they get sucked in and die. No one wants the broken girl. People cheer you on when you’re a kid, but when you’re a teenager or an adult, they say, ‘Why aren’t you better yet? What’s wrong with you?’ I wish I knew the answer.”
He didn’t say anything, and I was grateful for that. We watched the rest of the movie in silence.
Theo
I understood why she was so distant now, why she no longer played, and in a way I took comfort in the fact that my initial thought was right: she was just like me. We had both been let down by our fathers and deeply missed our mothers.
I wondered if that was the reason I was so draw to her. Maybe something in me saw something in her. Maybe I was looking for things that weren’t there. Either way, I wanted her just like this.
“Did you always want to do this?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Be Theodore Darcy, CEO of Darcy Entertainment?”
No one had ever asked me that question, so I had never even thought about it.
“I don’t know if I ever wanted to be CEO per se. I know I wanted to tell a story. I didn’t and still don’t care what medium it’s in, whether it’s music, dance, or film. Darcy Entertainment used to be a small indie filmmaker under my grandfather. Then my father, Arthur, expanded on that. Walt only cared about dancing. Arty was always more interested in computer technology. So it fell to me, and I do enjoy what I do.”
“I can tell, Ernest.” She giggled, shaking her head. “I was horrible, but you were great. I almost forgot you were you.”
She thought she was horrible? “How do you completely underestimate yourself and leave me dumbfounded at the same time?”
“You were dumbfounded? When?”
I couldn’t even begin to list the occasions and luckily, I didn’t have to. It started to pour, the rain beating down on everything and everyone in sight. While the others grabbed their things and ran back to their cars, Felicity stood up and opened her arms wide, allowing herself to get soaked.
“You guys aren’t true fans!” she yelled, unable to contain her laughter.
“Why aren’t they true fans?” I asked, stepping up beside her, getting as soaked as she was.
She pointed to the screen. “When else in life are
you going to get the chance to make out in front of what is arguably the most romantic movies of this generation? Who lets this just slip by?”
“I don’t see you kissing—” Before I finished, she’d jumped up and latched on to my arm, wrapped her legs around my waist, and kissed me.
They weren’t like our normal kisses, the ones that were prequels to us taking off our clothes. They weren’t lust filled. Instead we kissed each other like we would have been content with only this for the rest of our lives.
