Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

DARCY

A s I folded socks into my suitcase, I realized I was packing for a very different trip than the one I'd planned—less honeymoon, more “Oh God, what am I doing with my life?”

I never thought I'd be the girl sobbing on the floor of her own bedroom, staring at a half-packed suitcase meant for post-newlywed bliss that would never happen. Yet here I am, mascara streaking down my cheeks, surrounded by the remnants of a relationship that died long before I was willing to admit it.

Our room—my room now, I suppose—feels both achingly familiar and jarringly foreign. Milo's absence screams from every corner: the half-empty closet with hangers swaying gently, dust outlines where his superhero figurines once stood sentinel on the bookshelf, the fading scent of his cologne on his favorite blanket I can't bring myself to wash. It's the holes he's left behind that are suffocating—not just in the room, but in my life.

"Darcy?" Maya's voice filters through the door, accompanied by a soft knock. "Are you okay in there?"

I take a deep breath, willing my voice not to crack. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just... finishing packing."

The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. I'm about as far from 'fine' as a person can get.

"Well, hurry up," Maya says. "Our flight's in three hours, and I refuse to miss our fabulous, man-free vacation because you're having a meltdown."

I snort despite myself. Trust Maya to be brutally honest even when she's trying to be supportive. It's one of the reasons she's been my best friend since we were kids, sharing juice boxes and secrets on the playground.

With a sigh, I push myself off the floor and stumble to the bathroom. The woman staring back at me in the mirror looks tired, hurt, and more than a little lost. But underneath all that, I catch a glimmer of something else. Determination, maybe. Or the beginnings of it, at least.

I splash some cold water on my face and attempt to salvage what's left of my makeup. As I reach for a towel, my gaze falls on the framed photo of Milo and me at his sister's wedding last year. We look so happy, so in love. Was it all a lie?

The sight of it sends a fresh wave of pain through me. I grab the frame and hurl it across the room, feeling a grim satisfaction as the glass shatters against the wall.

"Darcy?" Maya calls again, her voice closer this time. "I'm coming in, okay?"

Before I can protest, the door swings open, and Maya's standing there, her blue eyes widening as she takes in the scene.

"Oh, honey," she says, pulling me into a hug. "He's not worth all this, you know."

I nod against her shoulder, inhaling the familiar scent of her perfume. "I know," I murmur.

I manage a wobbly smile. "I don’t know if I want to go."

"If you really don’t want to, we don’t have to," Maya says, glancing around the room. "But…I could really do with a vacation, and I think you could too. Now, let's finish packing and get out of here. I hear the mountains are gorgeous this time of year, and there's a hot tub with our names on it.” Maya winks. She’s kneeling on the floor, sorting socks that have been jumbled in a laundry basket in the corner of my room for two months. Her thick, waist-length blonde beach curls fall in a curtain as she leans down, blocking her face from my sight, but I don’t have to see her to know that she’s smiling like an idiot.

I’m glad she’s excited because I’m sure not.

“This is going to be a disaster,” I counter, pushing myself even further into the sweet comfort of my mattress. I wish it would swallow me. Maybe then I could escape this horrible day. I could live in the mattress and become a mattress woman. Nobody would be able to disturb me there.

“It’s a vacation, D.” Maya turns toward me and brushes her hair over her shoulder, raising a pale, arched eyebrow. “You’re acting like we’re being shipped off to war.”

“I might as well be!” I am well aware that I sound like a maladjusted toddler. “It doesn’t feel like a vacation. This was supposed to be my honeymoon. Right this very second, Milo and I would have been saying I do.”

“You know we don’t dare utter that name anymore,” Maya warns. I can’t quite tell how serious she’s being. Then her voice drops to an ominous whisper as she says, “You might summon him.” Her eyes dart around the room.

I can’t help but smile. Leave it to Maya to brighten even the darkest of times. She’s like a walking ray of sunshine, from her golden hair to her sparkling smile. I think I might just be completely lost without her. And really, I do want to go. I was the one who planned the whole thing anyway, and I could really do with getting out of this apartment.

“He’s not the devil, M. He’s just a man.”

“No, no. He is a boy. There’s a distinct difference. Exhibit A: men don’t cheat on their fiancée four months before the wedding. That’s ‘boy behavior,’ and who needs a stupid boy? Especially when you have me.” She flashes a winning smile. “I’ll give you a better honeymoon than that piece of shit ever could.” She climbs onto the bed and throws herself into my side, burying her face in my neck. I’m nearly suffocated by her coconut-scented shampoo, but I still find myself laughing.

“Seven whole days of nonstop spooning?” I ask.

Maya’s voice comes out garbled when she responds, and I don’t even bother guessing what she’s just said. A bunch of nonsense, no doubt.

I start to tease her, but I’m interrupted by my phone ringing before I can even get a word out.

Maya sits up and groans. “Not again!”

“Yes, again .” I sigh and decline the call, which has to be the hundredth since noon—and it’s only two. My ex seems to be in the bargaining stage of grief. He thinks calling me over and over again, begging for forgiveness, will fix the damage he’s caused. I’ve tried blocking him—twice, in fact—but he always finds a new phone to call from. I used to be na?ve enough to assume the random numbers were just spam, but not anymore. I have become as pessimistic as can be. Every wrong number is him. He is everywhere. I can’t escape him.

“You have got to change your number,” Maya tells me.

I shrug. “ That’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

“That much, we agree on.”

It’s painful to admit how cliché the whole thing is. Milo cheated on me with his “work bestie”. Emily . A woman in the office who he would casually mention. “Emily loves watching this show too,” or “Emily always has Cesar salad, she eats it most days for lunch, y’know.” I’m not the jealous type and although my skin prickled a little each time he mentioned her, I never asked any questions about her or had any suspicions. I don’t think it would have made a difference anyway. He insists it’s over now and it was a “short-term affair,” but I’ve got too much self-preservation to let him back in again.

I smile at my friend and let my gaze flicker down to the half-packed suitcase on the floor. Maya seems pretty excited about this trip. Maybe I should be too—or at least try to be. Nothing good ever comes from pessimism. Sure, my life fell apart along with my almost-marriage, but that doesn’t mean that the world stopped spinning. It’s time to start living again, for better or worse.

“Sorry I’m being moody. I promise I am really glad we’re going on this trip together,” I tell Maya, reaching out and squeezing her hand. “Since the payment was nonrefundable, I couldn’t stomach the idea of losing all that money, and well, I wasn’t going to let him take… her . Thank you for coming with me. I don’t know where I’d be without you. I love you.”

“Aw, Darcy, you sap.” Maya nudges my arm and lays her head on my shoulder. I can feel her crane her neck up to look at me, but I can’t see anything other than a sea of blonde curls. “While you’re really feeling that love for me, there’s something I should probably tell you.”

Oh, boy. Maya is good at a lot of things, but getting us into trouble might just be her best talent.

I wait.

“So, you remember how Cody was working at the resort, and he helped me get you such a good deal for this trip?”

I really don’t like where this is going.

“Yeah…” I affirm. “And then he got fired and moved to Maui.”

A beat of silence.

“So about that…” Maya says, “he never actually moved, per se. Because he sort of got rehired. And he’s still there.”

I sit up so fast, Maya nearly falls off of the bed. Frazzled, she pushes herself up onto her elbows and looks at me, her big blue eyes filled with guilt. Normally, that would be enough to dissolve any anger I have toward her, but not this time. This time, only an act of God will save her.

“He’s what ?!” I screech, my blood boiling. “Maya, no!”

“It’s really not that big of a deal, D,” Maya tries. “Please don’t overreact.” Maya holds out her hands like she means to placate me, but I bat them away.

“Oh, I will overreact, thank you very much. Your deluded brother, who I cannot stand is crashing our vacation? Ugh. Just when I thought this cursed honeymoon couldn’t possibly get any worse…”

“Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?” Maya asks in exasperation. “I know he can be annoying sometimes, but?—”

“He locked me in your basement. For two hours.” I still have nightmares about that horrifically ghost-shaped broom that lingered in the corner. “And that’s just one of the thousand effed up things he did to me!”

“It was an accident, and?—”

“Or so he claims,” I interrupt.

“ And , even if he did do it on purpose,” Maya continues as she narrows her eyes in warning, “he was eight. Eight-year-old boys tend to do stupid, borderline sociopathic things. We can’t hold it against him.”

“Oh, yes we can, and yes I will.”

“Okay, you know what, Darcy? I know you don’t like Cody. I know you don’t want to go on this trip. And I know that you have dug yourself so far into a pit of self-pity that you’ll need a ladder to climb out of it, but can you please think about me just this one time? He’s my brother—my brother that got you a major discount on this vacation, by the way—and I haven’t seen him in two years. You know how hard it’s been since he moved away. We can’t afford to come see him and he can’t afford to come home. So can you please just bite your tongue and pretend to be amicable for a week?”

Maya is, by nature, kind. She’s the type of person who would help an old lady across the street or give her last dollar to the needy. She doesn’t say things just to say them, and she doesn’t typically ask me to just smile and nod like this. So I can tell this means a lot to her. And if it means a lot to her, it means a lot to me. So what if her older brother and I have a complicated, messed up past? I haven’t talked to him in years. I’m sure we can be cordial with one another and act like agreeable acquaintances. Maybe.

“You won’t leave me alone with him?” I ask. She knows I’ve given in. I can tell from the smile that splits across her face.

“I won’t, I promise!” She throws herself into my arms, and I can feel the warmth of her sun-kissed skin pressed against me. I can smell her fruity perfume. I’m reminded that I really do love her, no matter how crazy she drives me sometimes.

As if she’s read my mind, Maya murmurs gently, “Thank you, D. I love you.”

I hum in response, a wordless way of saying “I love you too.”

“I really think this will be good,” Maya assures me as she pulls back and looks at me. “For all of us. You’ve been locked up in here for so long, and I know Cody has been so lonely. The three of us will get along great. It’ll be just like old times.”

“Oh, good,” I retort sarcastically. “Your stoner older brother will drive us around and blare his embarrassing hippie music.” I think maybe that’s the “old times” she’s referring to. But who knows? There are many more than just that; at one point, we really were good friends. Maya’s been my best friend since we were kids. Cody was the annoying older brother I never asked for.

Maya waves me off. “He left his hippie phase months ago. He doesn’t even smoke anymore. I promise, Darcy, he’s really matured since he’s been gone.”

I seriously doubt it. Cody Banks is a lot of things, but ‘mature’ isn’t one of them. He’s a burnout at best and downright careless at worst. And I’m not just saying that. I actually really used to like Cody once upon a time. Since he’s so close in age with Maya—a year and six months—we got to a point in our upbringing, sometime in middle school, when we became friends. For a long time, we were a trio. The three of us were inseparable.

But then high school came around.

Cody got handsome and popular, got into things he definitely shouldn’t have, and had no interest in hanging out with his dorky little sister and her even dorkier friend. He didn’t even say “hi” in the hallways. It was like an entire lifetime together never happened. He became a ghost to me.

I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him for abandoning us, even if Maya has. I remember how embarrassed I felt telling the other girls I had a friend who was a sophomore, only for him to ignore my existence completely.

A memory floods my mind without warning.

I smoothed down my skirt for the hundredth time, taking a deep breath as I approached Cody's locker. My heart raced, palms sweaty, but I was determined. It had only been a few days since our kiss during Spin the Bottle, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face, felt his lips on mine.

"Hey, Cody," I said, trying to sound casual as he shut his locker door.

He glanced at me, his ocean-blue eyes unreadable. "Oh. Hey, Darcy."

An awkward silence fell between us. This was new - we used to be able to talk about anything. I swallowed, hard.

"So, um," I started, fidgeting with the strap of my backpack. "I was wondering if maybe you wanted to hang out this weekend? Just us?"

Cody's eyes widened slightly, and for a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of something - fear? Excitement? But then his face hardened, and he looked away.

"Sorry, can't," he said flatly. "I've got plans."

"Oh," I said, trying to hide my disappointment. "Maybe another time?"

He shrugged, still not meeting my eyes. "Yeah, maybe."

I watched as he walked away, joining a group of older kids at the end of the hallway. They laughed at something he said, and I felt a pang in my chest. When had Cody started hanging out with them?

Days turned into weeks, and Cody's excuses piled up. Every time I tried to talk to him, he'd brush me off or pretend he didn't hear me.

It wasn't until I overheard him talking to one of his new friends that I understood.

"Nah, man," Cody was saying, leaning against the wall outside the gym. "Darcy? She's just my kid sister's dorky friend. I don't hang out with her anymore."

The words hit me like a punch to the gut. Dorky? Is that all I was to him?

Anger bubbled up inside me, replacing the hurt. Fine. If that's how he wanted it, two could play at that game. I stormed past him, making sure to bump his shoulder hard.

"Watch it, loser," I spat, not even looking back to see his reaction.

From that day on, Cody Banks was my enemy. No longer my friend, no longer the boy I'd had a crush on.

Even now, years later, the memory of that rejection still stings. Our rivalry is childish and immature, I know. Over time I'd tried to extend an olive branch, but every time he rejected it. Maybe that's why I still feel so guarded around Cody, even after all these years.

Maya interrupts my thoughts of the past. "He asks about you, y'know..." she adds quietly, with a strange expression on her face. She looks at me. "He was sorry to hear about the wedding getting called off."

I can picture his eyes, the most perfect shade of teal, and the little crease he gets between them when he worries. For a moment, I want to imagine that he could ever look at me with that kind of emotion again, but I know better. He doesn't know me enough to care, and I don't know him enough to wonder why anymore.

“The wedding that he wasn’t going to come to in the first place?” I sneer. “Or did his invitation just get lost in the mail?”

Maya’s face momentarily drops, but she’s quick to recover. She holds my gaze for the briefest moment before redirecting her stare to her hands. “You aren’t the only one who had a hard year, Darcy. Cut him some slack, alright? And please don’t pick a fight with him every two seconds. I don’t want to spend the whole week playing referee.”

“Slack .” Yeah, right.

“I won’t,” I tell her dejectedly. “I promise, I’ll be on my best behavior. But it’s fair game if he starts it.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Maya assures me. “I’ll be having this talk with him too.” Her eyes drill into mine—as big and genuine as ever—and I know she sees right through me. She always does. The corners of her lips quirk up and she scoots a bit closer, nudging my shoulder. “Hey. You know I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought you would hate it. Contrary to what you may think sometimes, I’m not trying to sabotage you.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. Maya has been my best friend, my closest confidant. She knows everything. She’s been there for everything. Every crush, every heartbreak, all of it. Every tear I ever cried, she was always there to wipe it away and make everything better. Maya is the better half of me, for better or worse, and I guess this is the “worse” part of that deal.

“As long as I’m with you, this trip will be fun,” I tell her.

And I really do believe that. Or, at least, I will. After a lot of meditation and maybe a glass of wine.