Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe Page 7

  On the next page was a collage of black-and-white photos of the student body doing various activities. Performing in the school plays—everything from Annie to A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Peter Pan to Rent—playing sports, winning championships, hanging out casually in the quad in between classes. She came across the pages of photos from the debate team and stopped. There was Luke in a suit and crooked tie, standing at a podium, deep in thought, buried in concentration. And, across the room, at the other podium, was Darcy herself, mouth open in a moment of determined arguing.

  A flood of nostalgia rushed through her. The memories of hating Luke, of constantly wanting to prove him wrong, of going to any lengths to make sure he understood that he was inferior to her, all of it suddenly seemed so clear: she felt this way and did these things because secretly, deep down, she knew that Luke had it right all along. He took it easy, he appreciated things for the way they were, he knew what it was to be grateful, to feel satisfied, and, as a result, he was going to get to know happiness. She fought him tooth and nail because she was worried he had something she’d never have, and she wanted to prove him wrong for the sake of her own peace of mind. When she had been drunk she could see this clearly, that though he might seem simple, he actually carried with him the secret to easy living, to pure living, and that’s why she had kissed him. Deep down, she had been secretly attracted to him all along.

  This is the worst, she thought, slamming the book shut. What the hell am I supposed to do with this information?

  She shoved the book back under the bed, pushing it deeper so that it didn’t have any chance of getting out this time. She grabbed Little Lion off the shelf and got back into bed, aggressively curling him into the crook of her elbow for comfort and support. She pressed Play and fell asleep to the sounds of Rory Gilmore precociously discussing Madame Bovary.

  * * *

  She woke in the morning to an excited knock on her door.

  “Who is it?” She yawned, disoriented and puffy-eyed.

  “It’s Lorna, dear! Your presence is requested in the dining room.”

  “Really? So early?”

  “It’s … ten, dear.”

  Darcy snapped her face toward the clock underneath the TV and saw that it was, in fact, ten in the morning. How had she slept so long? On the TV screen was a sign that read “ARE YOU STILL WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS? YES/NO.”

  “I’ll be right there!” she told Lorna.

  “As soon as you can, dear. Your parents have good news they’re eager to tell you.”

  News? That’s odd, thought Darcy. After all, neither of them had exactly gone out of their way to speak to her since she’d arrived in Pemberley. She hurried out of bed and sat in front of the vanity to put her best face on.

  * * *

  Darcy entered the dining room, bracing herself for the worst. Sure, Lorna had said that the news was good news, but that felt so unusual to her, it was hard to believe it wasn’t just a hoax to get her downstairs with the whole family before springing something awful on her. The dining room was sparkling clean and decorated shamelessly in white lilies. Her whole family was there: Mom, Dad, and three brothers, all chatting joyously. She let her stiff shoulders relax a little bit, shimmying off the tension. Still, she wasn’t used to seeing them all together like this—it had to have been at least a decade since all three of her brothers were in one place—so she approached with caution.

  “Darcy!” her mother called cheerily from her wheelchair at the head of the table. “Come join us.” The color was back in her cheeks, Darcy was glad to see.

  “Where were you at the Christmas party?” her middle brother, James, who was staying at his fiancée’s family home for the winter, asked with a nagging tone Darcy did not appreciate. “I didn’t see you all night.”

  “I know where she was,” teased William, the youngest. “She was under the mistletoe making out with Luke Bennet.”

  Gasps rippled around the table. Darcy thought she might faint with embarrassment. She couldn’t stand the thought that anyone had seen her acting out such base instincts, even though they were her family, who she’d become accustomed to disappointing.

  “Is that true, Darcy?” her father asked, horrified.

  “With all due respect…” She swallowed hard. “I don’t think it’s really anyone’s business, is it?”

  “Actually, it is somewhat my business,” said Mr. Fitzwilliam, “because I just recently spoke with Andrew Donovan, who said things were quite serious again with you and Carl.”

  “Dear God.” Darcy let out an exasperated sigh. “The way news travels in this town, I swear. Listen, Dad, things are not serious with Carl and me. In fact, we haven’t even been dating in like over a year, so I’m sorry to burst that bubble again, but the status of Carl and Darcy is same as ever: not happening.

  “Yes, it’s true, maybe you heard, that he gave me an ultimatum and I have until Christmas to decide if I’m going to be with him, otherwise he’s cutting me off for good.” She rolled her eyes as she said this. “But I really don’t see it going his way. Carl just doesn’t … do it for me, okay? I don’t know what else to say about it. So, as a grown woman, I think I have the right to make out underneath the mistletoe with anyone I please, thank you very much.”

  By the time she finished she was out of breath. Wow, she thought, that train of thought really got away from me. She had intended to shut the whole conversation down quickly and concisely; she had not intended for it to become a one-woman rant. Her family members blinked dumbly as a stiff silence permeated the room. Hadn’t they all been laughing carelessly just a moment ago, before she had entered the room? Was there something about her that tended to end the fun so abruptly? Was she broken in some way? What was it about her that caused her to be the black cloud drifting over everybody else’s good time?

  “Why do we even care who Darcy marries?” Kenneth, her oldest brother, asked. “James is marrying an heiress to the largest chocolate company in America, I’m married to an actual Nobel Prize winner in medicine, and William is dating that Kellogg girl! I think we’ve got it covered. Darcy can be a spinster if she wants, and it does seem like that’s what she wants.”

  “Thanks, Kenneth,” Darcy snipped sarcastically.

  “You’re welcome,” he replied, pretending to not hear the sarcasm. Mr. Fitzwilliam took this all in; it seemed to make him feel slightly better.

  “Okay, okay,” interrupted Mrs. Fitzwilliam. “All of this is getting unpleasant. And I called everyone here today to discuss good news. Good news only, people. So, let’s start with William. He has an announcement. William?” She gestured to him excitedly. William Fitzwilliam sat slouched in his chair, not used to the attention on him.

  “I, uh…” He chuckled awkwardly. “I got into Harvard.”

  Everyone except Darcy erupted into applause and congratulations.

  “Are you serious?” Mr. Fitzwilliam looked as though his smile was about to burst off his face. He turned to his wife. “Elsie, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise! I wanted to see your face,” she explained. “And it was totally worth it.”

  “Congratulations, son!” Mr. Fitzwilliam stood and extended his hand to William, who took it in a formal, practiced manner. “I can’t tell you how proud I am.”

  “Way to go, baby bro!” said James, patting him on the back. “Way to do justice to the Fitzwilliam name.”

  “Justice to the name, indeed,” agreed Mr. Fitzwilliam.

  “Congratulations,” said Kenneth coolly, who himself had gone to Yale and most likely did not like the idea of relinquishing the title of “Only Fitzwilliam son to have graduated from an Ivy League university.” “I’m sure you’ll do great there.”

  Darcy sat quietly, staring off into space. She didn’t understand what the fuss was about. Kenneth had graduated from Yale and she had graduated from Columbia and James was currently enrolled at Duke University. Both the Fitzwilliam parents had also gone to Harvard and
were the second-richest family in all of Ohio, and had been for many decades. What did they think, that William was going to end up at a state school? It seemed to Darcy that this had been in the cards for some time, and she couldn’t make herself get excited about it. But she noticed her family was looking to her, as she was the only one present who hadn’t said anything yet.

  “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Congratulations, Will. Uh … great job.”

  “Thanks, Darcy.” He nodded to her in a way that made her think maybe he saw it the way she did, and understood. This made her like him better than she had before. That simple nod made him officially her new favorite brother. Actually, she had never had a favorite brother before; she had only disliked them all equally for different reasons. So now William was her first favorite brother.

  “Okay, Elsie, now tell them the other news.”

  “There’s other news?” William seemed happy to have the attention finally taken off him.

  Mrs. Fitzwilliam had an almost mischievous look on her face, like she was enjoying keeping this good news to herself, making everyone squirm.

  “Dr. Law came over this morning and says I’m officially out of the woods!” She threw her hands up. “I can go back to living life!”

  “Mom, that’s incredible!” This time it was Darcy who was first to jump to her feet. She hugged her mom tightly, feeling a weight lift off her shoulders. She hadn’t quite realized, until her mom had said these words, how much the fear of losing her had been looming. Unlike the rest of her family, she’d been close with her mother growing up and owed so much of her headstrong determination to that relationship. Had her mom died, Darcy would have felt somewhat like a boat without a rudder.

  “Oh, thank God.” Mr. Fitzwilliam put his hand over his heart as if it were now he who was having a heart attack. “I don’t know what I would have done if I had lost you.” He kissed her on the head. “But honestly, Elsie, you couldn’t have told me this when you first found out?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Don.” She laughed at him lovingly. “I only found out an hour ago, and you would have just given away the surprise.”

  “The surprise that you’re not dying?” Kenneth asked, cynically. “Seems to me like that’s something you could have told us all immediately.”

  “Seriously, Mom,” said James, “it’s not like it’s fun to wait in suspense to find out if your mom is on her last legs or not.”

  “Oh, you know I like to have my fun.” She swatted at them like flies. “Don’t be such wet blankets!”

  “You have a strange idea of fun, my love,” said Mr. Fitzwilliam. “Maybe next time you want to have a little fun, we take a trip to Tuscany, instead.”

  “That’s right!” she said excitedly. “That’s the whole point, that now that I’m well we actually can go to Tuscany. And we should! Should I tell Marianne to book the flights?”

  “Whoa, okay, let’s not get carried away,” James interjected. “Dr. Law just cleared you. I think it’s best to take it easy for a little while longer.”

  “Fine.” She rolled her eyes and called into the hallway, “Lorna! Will you bring out a bottle of Dom? We have so much to celebrate.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” Lorna called back. “Coming right up.”

  “So much for taking it easy,” Mr. Fitzwilliam grumbled, defeated.

  Lorna came in carrying a bottle of freshly popped Dom Perignon on an elegant silver tray. The cold vapor floated up and around the bottle’s neck as she walked. She poured the bubbly liquid into six glasses and the family clinked them together in a fizzy collision.

  Darcy’s phone buzzed in her pocket. It was a text from Bingley that read, Hey, you free?

  She typed back: With family but dying to get out of here. What’s up?

  The three dots appeared to the right of her screen, and then: Jim ended it. Miserable.

  “I’m gonna head out,” Darcy told her family, standing from her chair. “Bingley needs me. Congratulations, William! And Mom, I am so relieved, I can’t even tell you how relieved I am. See you all tomorrow!”

  11

  The Charles family lived on the other side of town in a modest-sized ranch-style home with an oversize roof that drooped down over the outer walls, creating a square ring of shade around the perimeter. Bingley was an only child, and his parents were on a ski trip in Stowe, Vermont, and wouldn’t be back until late that night.

  “Hello?” Darcy called, stepping in through the unlocked front door. “Is anyone home?”

  “Yes,” Bingley grumbled. “I’m in here.”

  She followed his voice into the dim living room, lit only by an outside porch lantern. Bingley was sitting on the houndstooth couch with his neck craned back, staring up into the cottage cheese–textured ceiling. On the coffee table in front of him were two miniature bottles of Kahlúa.

  “My baby!” she cried, throwing herself down onto the couch next to him. “What happened to you? Tell me everything.”

  “He said I was right, that things were happening too fast. That he hadn’t been thinking clearly and that we should cut it off now, before things get serious. I wanted to get wasted, but all we had here were these two bottles of Kahlúa. They’re disgusting.” Ah, she thought, so those are empty bottles of Kahlúa, then.

  “Well … I hate to say it, but don’t you think he has a point? I mean, I know I’m the one who introduced you, but I never thought you two would get so crazy and all but move in together within a two-day period, you know? In a way, it’s a good idea to break it off now, before you have to go back to L.A. Nobody likes the heartache of a long-distance relationship.”

  “But I was going to move back to Pemberley, remember? I hadn’t even gotten a chance to tell him that yet.”

  “And that’s what you would really want?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Darcy.” He sighed heavily. “I just didn’t want to have to make a decision so soon.”

  “I get that.” She let her head fall back so that it was in line with his. “I wish there was a way we could live on our own timelines without everyone flipping out on us, ya know?”

  “Yeah!” He sat up, indignant. “What if I wanted to date long-distantly and see how it went from there? Why does the world gotta be so strict, Darcy?”

  “Ha! You had two airplane-size Kahlúas and you’re slurring your words like a sailor on leave.”

  “I’m a pretty little lightweight.”

  “Well, first things first. We have to get you out of this depressing scene. This whole mess is my fault. I’m the one who told you to cool things down with Jim, and that got him thinking about it in a serious way, and that’s on me. But I can fix it. At least I hope I can. Get dressed into something … presentable.”

  “Where we gonna go?”

  “Not sure yet. All I know is we won’t make any progress lounging around here like two sad potatoes.”

  * * *

  “Okay, so I was thinking,” Darcy said, pulling Bingley along by his coat sleeve as they trudged down the street in the freezing cold. “The only way for me to fix this is to fix it.”

  “Uh … duh?”

  “Don’t be a brat. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Yeah, after you ruined my life!” he said with intentional teenage girl affect.

  “What a drama queen!”

  “Okay, so tell me, you’re going to fix it by fixing it how, exactly?”

  “You’re heartbroken because Jim ended things with you because he was worried your relationship didn’t have a future. But the only reason he came up with that is because you told him that you thought things were moving too fast.”

  “Because you told me to!”

  “I know, I know, but listen. So I was sitting there in your depressing little living room while you got dressed, trying to think of what we could do to cheer you up. Go out dancing, see a movie, binge eat a box of macaroons, start a Tinder account for you—”

  “But I don’t want to do any of those things,” he whin
ed.

  “Exactly. You don’t want to do any of those things. All you want to do is get back together with Jim. So that’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to get you back together with Jim.”

  “What?” He stopped in his tracks.

  “Keep walking or we’ll freeze to death.”

  “Why are we walking anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I didn’t think that part through. I was just so excited to get us to the Bennet house that I forgot to think of calling an Uber.”

  “Darcy,” he laughed. “We are not going to the Bennet house.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “What if Jim doesn’t want to see me? What if he’s not even there? Or worse, what if he’s there but with another man?”

  “Oh, please. Jim hadn’t dated anyone in years until you.”

  “He just broke up with me; he doesn’t want to see me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Generally when someone breaks up with someone else, it means he or she no longer wants to be seeing him or her.”

  “Bingley! Wake up! He didn’t want to break up with you. You forced his hand. And we can unforce it.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked, noticing that she had taken out her phone and pulled off one glove with her teeth so that she could type.

  “I’m calling an Uber. At this rate, we’ll never get there.” She tapped around and then looked up. “JoJo will be here in two minutes. In a black Prius. Perfect.”

  “Yeah.” Bingley rolled his eyes. “Perfect.”

  * * *

  By the time they pulled up at the Bennet house it was almost one o’clock. The house lights were on and, judging by the noise coming from inside, it seemed that most, if not all, of the Bennets were home.

  “I don’t understand why I can’t just call him like a normal millennial would. Or even better, send a text.”

  “Because this is the romantic way to do it. And this is the only way that it will work. You have to make a gesture big enough to detract from the memory of you saying you want to take space.”