Written in the Stars

by Alexandria Bellefleur

  ELLE (5:46 P.M.): pizza?

  ELLE (5:46 P.M.): pineapple and jalapeño right?

  DARCY (5:48 P.M.): And black olives.

  ELLE (5:49 P.M.): barf

  ELLE (5:50 P.M.): but fine

  DARCY (5:52 P.M.): And I’m bringing the wine.

  ELLE (5:54 P.M.): hard sell but deal

  ELLE (5:55 P.M.): pleasure doing business with you

  DARCY (5:59 P.M.): No, but it will be.

  ELLE (6:02 P.M.):

  * * *

  Physiologically improbable as it was, Darcy’s heart sputtered to a stop before kick-starting when Elle stepped into the Regal Ballroom of the Bellevue Hyatt Brendon had booked for his party.

  Forgoing the traditional red or green holiday attire, Elle wore a sparkling silver minidress that made her skin glow, luminescent beneath the twinkling lights of the chandeliers. She accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter and scanned the room. Their eyes met and a bright smile lit up Elle’s face. Darcy tore her eyes away and stared at the bubbles rising inside her champagne flute, trying to quell the similar giddy stirring in her stomach.

  “Hey.” Elle stopped in front of Darcy and reached out, tracing one of the thin straps holding up Darcy’s dress. Darcy fought against the resulting shiver and lost. “I like this. It’s very 1930s, let’s have clandestine sex in the library.”

  Darcy coughed out a laugh and wiped champagne off her lips with the back of her hand. “I don’t even know what to make of that, but thank you?”

  Elle shook her head. “Atonement? Come on, it was the movie that made me realize you can be sad and horny at the same time.”

  “I’m surprised you let such a prime opportunity for alliteration slip through your fingers. Angst and arousal. You’re off your game,” Darcy teased, lifting her flute and taking a sip.

  Elle reached out, fingers ghosting down Darcy’s arm before dropping. “Your dress is distracting. I’m proud I’m even making words right now. Complete sentences. Whoops. Sentence fragment.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Look what you do to me.”

  As if Elle didn’t drive Darcy to distraction, too. The majority of Darcy’s dreams, both waking and sleeping, as of late, were about Elle. That terrified and elated her in equal measure.

  Not knowing what to say, Darcy took another sip of champagne.

  Elle spun, the light overhead catching on the multicolored glitter sprinkled down her zigzagged part, the rest of her hair left down, imperfect waves tumbling atop her shoulders. “Fancy party. I should say hi to your brother, but I haven’t seen him yet.”

  Darcy set her glass down on the table of hors d’oeuvres behind her. “He’s near the front of the room making the rounds with my mother.”

  “Your mom?” Elle shifted uneasily on her heels. “Do I get to meet her?”

  Darcy’s brows rose. “You want to?”

  Elle reached out, resting a hand on Darcy’s upper arm. “Unless you’d rather I not.”

  Darcy stared across the room to where Brendon was currently introducing Mom to a group of coworkers who appeared to hang on her every word. Darcy twisted the ring around her middle finger. “Later? Do you want something else to drink? More champagne?”

  Elle stared at her with huge eyes rimmed with dark, smudgy liner. Glitter had fallen from her hair down onto her lids, her cheeks, her jaw. “Okay, that sounds—”

  Elle broke off, cocking her head to the side. More glitter scattered around her, falling from her hair.

  “This song.” Elle drained her glass and set it aside with one hand, reaching for Darcy’s hand with the other. “I love this song.”

  Dancing wasn’t something Darcy usually did unless forced. But the beat was slow, had a hazy dreamy quality to it that she could probably sway to. That and Elle seemed eager, so eager Darcy didn’t want to deny her. She let Elle drag her out onto the dance floor where she wrapped her arms around Darcy’s waist, fingers dragging against the skin left bare by her low-cut dress. Darcy shivered and stepped closer, resting her hands lightly atop Elle’s shoulders.

  “Your dress.” She swallowed. There was a lump in her throat that hadn’t been there before, not until she caught a whiff of Elle’s perfume, something sweet but not floral. Vanilla. Elle almost always smelled like cookies or some kind of baked delicacy, mouthwatering. The same scent had clung to Darcy’s pillows, her sheets. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I meant to tell you I like it. You look like—”

  “A disco ball?” Elle suggested, laughing. She continued to trace nonsensical patterns against Darcy’s skin.

  She gasped softly when Elle’s fingers slipped beneath the satin of her dress. “I was going to say you look like . . . you look like the moon.”

  The stars, too, for that matter. Elle looked like she’d been draped in the night sky, dipped in starlight.

  Rather than laugh or roll her eyes at Darcy’s fumbling ineloquence, Elle pressed closer, fingers squeezing Darcy’s waist. Her tongue swept against her bottom lip and Darcy couldn’t help but track the movement. “Fun fact—the moon doesn’t actually produce any light of its own. It reflects light from the sun, making it appear bright at night. So, if I look like the moon, I guess that means I’m reflecting the light that’s around me.”

  Her eyes lifted, staring up at Darcy from beneath the blackest of black lashes.

  “That’s—”

  Elle dropped her eyes, breaking their gaze. “Corny? Sorry.”

  No. Or, if it was, Darcy still liked it. She liked Elle and all her eccentricities, her quirks. Elle made her smile more in the past month and a half than Darcy could remember smiling over the course of the last two years. “No. I was going to say—” She hadn’t actually known. “Interesting. It’s interesting. I didn’t know that.”

  “I taught you something?” Elle trailed a finger down the length of Darcy’s spine and grinned. “Huh. Kudos to me.”

  “You’ve taught me plenty of things.” Glitter from Elle’s hair landed on Darcy’s wrist, pink, blue, and silver freckles mingling with the rest of the moles that dotted her skin. Rather than shake it off, Darcy let the glitter linger.

  Her cheeks burned when Elle stared, lips quirking curiously. Please don’t let her ask what Darcy had learned.

  “Teach me something,” Elle said instead. “Preferably something that doesn’t involve death statistics due to inclement weather.”

  Darcy cut her eyes. “It was relevant.”

  “It was morbid.”

  Darcy harrumphed.

  “Tick tock.” Elle arched a brow sprinkled with glitter.

  Darcy drew a blank. Not because all her facts were boring or morose, but because staring at Elle did that to her. Zeroed Darcy’s focus to figuring out what color to call the blue of her eyes. Romantic obsessions that scared her more than any death statistic.

  “Um.” Darcy shook her head. “I don’t know. I—” Her facts weren’t boring, but they felt inconsequential in the face of Elle’s cosmic knowledge, her ability to expand Darcy’s world by reducing the universe to something as finite as the fact that the moon had no light of its own, but also infinite in its ability to take her breath away. Being with Elle, around Elle, in the mere presence of Elle meant getting comfortable with constantly being out of her comfort zone. Paradoxical.

  Elle’s fingers dipped below the back of Darcy’s dress, flirting with hidden skin, almost indecently low. Her lips twitched and Darcy ached. “Come on. Anything.”

  “I could tell you a joke.”

  What the hell. A joke? Where had that even come from?

  Elle’s head bobbed in a frenzied nod, her footsteps faltering, losing the rhythm of the song. “Yes.”

  “It’s not funny, not really. Lower your expectations. It’s—” Darcy sighed. Based on Elle’s wide-eyed look of anticipation, Darcy had committed and now she needed to deliver. “On our first . . . our first date, you told me you weren’t sure what an actuary does.”

  Glitter clung to Elle’s lashes, making eve
ry blink sparkle. “I remember.”

  Here went nothing. “What I should’ve said was, an actuary is someone who expects everyone to be dead on time.”

  Elle blinked, then comprehension dawned on her. She ducked her head and snorted loudly, stumbling into Darcy. “Oh god.”

  “Lame, right?” Warmth flooded Darcy’s chest, the knots inside her stomach loosening. Elle could’ve rolled her eyes or shook her head in confusion, but she’d laughed. Snorted. It was such a genuine sound. Real.

  Elle rested her head on Darcy’s shoulder and sighed. Each exhale was hot against her neck and it sent a shiver skittering down Darcy’s spine. “That was worse than a dad joke. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. But wow.”

  “You asked for it.”

  “I guess I did, didn’t I?” Elle lifted her head, arms banding tighter around Darcy’s waist as they continued to sway in time with the slow melody. “Speaking of asking for it, what do you want for Christmas?”

  “You don’t have to buy me something. You already got me the tree and it was perfect.”

  She was going to cherish that ugly little stump of a tree with its mismatched ornaments forever, keep them safe, start a new tradition like Elle had said.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I have everything I want.”

  Time stopped when Elle looked at her, eyes soft and fond, shining beneath the light of the many chandeliers. She wasn’t entirely sure if she leaned in, or if it was Elle who closed the distance between them, perhaps both. Elle’s lips brushed against hers in a barely there kiss that made her sigh and sway closer, melting into Elle. When the tip of Elle’s tongue darted out, dragging against her bottom lip, Darcy’s toes curled inside her heels and her stomach did a riotous flip, her hands sinking into the waves at the back of Elle’s neck, pulling her closer, keeping her there.

  Elle drew back, champagne-sweet breath gusting softly against Darcy’s swollen lips. Glitter from Elle’s hair, her face, had transferred to Darcy’s lashes and when she blinked, her vision went fractal, exploding in a flickering light show. Like when they’d crawled beneath her Christmas tree and she’d squinted at the lights and everything twinkled.

  Elle’s face shimmered before her eyes, glowing, and Darcy’s chest seized, something, some tingling emotion rising up inside her too big to be constrained let alone concealed. Darcy glanced down at her chest, nearly expecting to see something there, visible just beneath the surface, pressing and clawing its way out.

  Darcy cupped the back of Elle’s neck and let her thumb drift, sweeping against the side of Elle’s throat. “I’m happy you’re here.”

  “Thanks for inviting me. For real,” Elle whispered, but that wasn’t what Darcy meant. She was happy Elle was in her life, that their paths had crossed, intertwined, even if at first it had seemed like the worst thing to happen to her. Elle had turned out to be the best, beyond Darcy’s wildest expectations.

  “Elle!”

  Distracted, Darcy hadn’t realized they’d swayed their way over to the edge of the dance floor.

  Elle glanced over Darcy’s shoulder, her face splitting into a grin. “Brendon, hey. Great party.”

  Darcy dropped her hands from around Elle’s neck and took a step back, immediately lamenting the loss of Elle’s arms around her. She turned to face Brendon and— Mom. She was standing beside Brendon, lips pressed into a polite smile.

  Right. “Mom, this is Elle. Elle, this is my mother, Gillian.”

  “Of course. You’re the . . . astrologer?” Mom cocked her head.

  “I am. It’s super nice to meet you.” Elle stuck out her hand, blushing lightly when her skin caught the light and sparkled. “Sorry, this stupid glitter won’t stay where it’s supposed to. I guess that’s what I get for using regular craft store stuff instead of splurging on the kind that’s made for your hair. I figured, glitter’s glitter, right? Wrong.”

  Elle rolled her lips together and chuckled, a little puff of air exhaled through her nose.

  Mom hummed and shook Elle’s hand. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Elle. I wish I could say Darcy’s told me so much about you, but unfortunately my daughter has remained rather tight-lipped. It’s my son who’s brought me up to speed.”

  There it was.

  Beside her, Elle shifted and Darcy could feel the weight of her stare. Darcy’s jaw ticked.

  Brendon coughed into his fist. “You mind if I cut in? I know this is a party and everything, but there’s something about the app I’ve been dying to pick your brain on, Elle.”

  “Sure.” Elle stepped toward Brendon and shot Darcy a ghost of a smile over her shoulder.

  Darcy tried to smile back and failed, dismally, the curve of her lips feeling all kinds of wrong, because Mom was watching her, eyes burning with curiosity.

  “I could use another drink. How about you, Darcy?”

  She sighed and followed Mom off the edge of the dance floor over to where one of the waiters—dressed like an elf, à la typical Brendon—held a tray of champagne flutes.

  Plucking two glasses from the tray, Mom passed one to Darcy before clinking them together. She drained half of hers in one sip. “You and Elle looked cozy out there.”

  Darcy crossed her arms. “I suppose.”

  “I’ve got to say, you look a lot more serious than you made it sound last week.”

  Darcy shut her eyes. “We were dancing, Mom. It’s a party, there’s music. What do you expect?”

  “I don’t expect anything.” When Darcy opened her eyes, Mom frowned. “I don’t know when you got the idea in your head that I’m not on your side. I’m not your enemy, baby, I’m confused. Brendon’s telling me one thing and you’re telling me something else and what I see is . . . well, it’s difficult for me to understand what it is I’m supposed to believe.”

  “Of course you’re confused,” Darcy whispered. “You’re drunk.”

  Mom looked offended. “I am not.”

  Drunk or not, it wasn’t for Mom to understand. “I already told you. It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated.” Mom’s lips furrowed at the corners. “There’s that word again. That word worries me for you.”

  “You’re worried about me? That’s a first.”

  “You’re the one who made it clear that I haven’t acted much like a mother to you over the years. Excuse me for doing what I can to make up for it now.”

  Talk about too little, too late. Her life was her business, not Mom’s to dissect and give unwelcome advice on.

  “Darcy.” Mom reached out and rested a hand on Darcy’s crossed forearm. “I’m not trying to be difficult. Elle’s . . . sweet. But you have to admit, she seems a bit more like your brother’s type, doesn’t she?”

  “What in god’s name is that supposed to mean?” She didn’t mean to take the bait, but that was ludicrous.

  Mom made an abstract gesture in front of her. “An astrologer?”

  “Like you don’t spend two weeks every summer at a spiritual retreat in Ojai getting high out of your mind.”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “I don’t mean anything by it. I’m just surprised. She doesn’t seem like your type at all.”

  Darcy shook her head. “I don’t see why it matters. Last week you were telling me I could use some fun in my life.”

  “That was when I thought that’s all it was.” Mom drained her glass. “She seems a little flighty, is all I’m saying.”

  Darcy scoffed. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

  Mom drew back, looking as if Darcy had slapped her. “I know I wasn’t always there, but I’m trying.”

  “You know nothing, Mom. And you definitely don’t know her.”

  “And you do? How long have you known her? You thought you knew Natasha, didn’t you?”

  Darcy crossed her arms tighter, fists pressing into her sides, digging into her ribs. “I know Elle.”

  “God, I—” Mom snatched another glass of champagne and stole a quick sip.

  “What, Mom
? Just say it.”

  Mom shook her head subtly and stared out across the dance floor for a moment before finally turning her head and pinning Darcy with a bewildered stare. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were in love.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  You seriously like the addition to the chat feature?”

  Brendon bobbed his head enthusiastically as he led Elle around the dance floor. “It’s brilliant. Seriously. It’s a bit more involved for the engineers, but the perks are undeniable. Encouraging users to continue chatting in the app for as long as possible . . . Elle. The projections are showing gains that are”—Brendon grinned boyishly, charming—“astronomical. The cost-benefit analysis speaks for itself.”

  “That’s great, Brendon. I’m guessing you already told your new best friend the news? I’m feeling awfully left out.”

  “Hush. You’re all adorably coupled up with my sister. Don’t act like we left you high and dry.” He raised their hands, encouraging her to twirl. She laughed and went for it. “But yeah, I did. Margot told me it was your idea.”

  “It was a joint effort.” Elle craned her neck, peeking over his shoulder. “Have you seen her lately? Margot? We came together and she went MIA on me.”

  Elle was dying to get Margot’s opinion on her strange introduction to Darcy’s mom.

  Brendon wrinkled his nose and something soft and gentle ached inside her chest, not unpleasant, full. Darcy wrinkled her nose the exact same way.

  His eyes swept the room. “I think I saw her chatting with a few of the folks in product design before I came over here.”

  “I’ll hunt her down later.” Stumbling, Elle smiled in appreciation when he kept her from toppling over.

  For a moment, they moved to the music, the silence between them comfortable, companionable.

  Brendon cleared his throat. “About that with my mom.”

  Elle bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah. What was that?”

  Brendon shut his eyes, briefly since he was the one leading. “It’s . . . nothing to worry about. Don’t take it personally.”

  Sure, because that was easy. Elle never did that.