Written in the Stars

by Alexandria Bellefleur

  Her family certainly thought so. Darcy, too.

  “You’re just right, Elle.” Margot pushed back Elle’s bangs and rubbed her thumb over Elle’s temple, wiping away tears. “No one is worth feeling like you’re not good enough, that you’re not amazing exactly as you are. If Darcy can’t see that, that means she isn’t right for you, okay? It means she’s not your perfect person.”

  Elle bit down on the side of her tongue until she could speak without fear of sobbing out her words. “I don’t think I have one of those. A perfect person.”

  This was the antithesis of who she was—full of fear, doubt, hopeless. But she didn’t feel like herself, not at all. Maybe a sanitized version, scrubbed down to all bones, no heart. Elle minus.

  Margot grabbed the sides of Elle’s face, forcing Elle to meet her stare. Margot’s throat jerked and she blinked fast. “You do. You absolutely do, you hear me? And honestly, you probably have lots of perfect people. Look at us. You’re one of my perfect people. You’re my best friend, Elle. You’re my family.”

  Shit.

  “Margot.” Elle’s nose stuffed, her throat burning like she swallowed sandpaper.

  “And you don’t need to change a single thing about yourself for anyone, okay?” Margot cocked her head, black hair curling against her neck. “Okay, you need to shower and, like, open a window to air the apartment out because it smells rank in here, but other than that, you don’t need to change a damn thing.”

  Elle coughed out a weak laugh.

  “You deserve someone great, Elle. Someone who loves you for exactly who you are, as you are.” Margot stretched, snagging a fistful of tissues from the table. She pressed the whole bunch into Elle’s face, making her laugh a little stronger.

  Wiping the tears from her face, Elle scooted to sitting. “I get it.” She touched the side of her head with the pads of her fingers before tapping her chest. “But when am I gonna believe it?”

  She wanted to feel that certainty she was so used to. Positivity, that unerring ability to believe everything was going to be all right. Optimism. She missed that. She wanted it back.

  Margot frowned and shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, babe. But I’ll keep telling you until you do, okay?”

  “It could take years, Mar.”

  Margot arched a dark brow, expression shrewd. “Are you going anywhere? Because I’m sure as shit not.”

  Elle sucked in a shuddering breath and nodded. “Thanks.”

  “That’s what friends are for, right?” Margot stood and reached for the ice cream that was beginning to go soupy. “You know what else friends are for?”

  Elle shook her head. She could come up with plenty of things friends were for, but it was easier to ask when Margot made it sound like she had something specific in mind.

  Margot headed into the kitchen and put the ice cream back in the freezer. Then she grabbed a paper bag from beneath the counter hefting it into the air. Stamped across the paper was the logo from the liquor store on the corner.

  She grinned. “Tequila.”

  * * *

  Elle rolled over, trying to get comfortable, but the couch was so hard. Something dug into her side and something under her gave off a terrible, shrill squeak. She shifted away, smacking her funny bone on something even harder. A frisson of pain shot down to her wrist all the way up to her shoulder, her fingers tingling. Ow.

  Cracking open an eye—ah, bad idea. Elle burrowed her head into— Styrofoam?

  She tried again, cracking open her eyes slowly. Beneath her face was one of the many takeout containers. And she was using it as a pillow because . . . she was on the floor. “What the hell?”

  Ew. Her tongue was gummy and her teeth needed to be scrubbed. Twice. For good measure.

  Sitting up slowly, Elle squinted around her. The coffee table was still littered with all the same junk, plus a bottle of tequila . . . missing most of the tequila. Oh. She pressed a hand to her forehead. No wonder she felt like hell and had slept on the floor. Fucking tequila.

  “Oh, hey. You’re up.” Margot bounced into the living room looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and not at all hungover. Not one bit. She was wearing real people clothing, black jeans and a lace bodysuit. And makeup.

  “Mar,” she croaked. “What the fuck? Please tell me there’s not a tiger in the bathroom.”

  “There’s not a tiger in the bathroom and I promise you still have all your teeth.” Margot winced, eyes darting over to the tequila. “Yeah. You had a lot of that.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?” Margot set the glass of water she was holding on the table in front of Elle. “I drank a little, but I wanted to keep an eye on you.”

  Elle tilted the glass and let the cool water run down her parched throat, soothing the burn. She was so thirsty she felt the water run down through her chest and into her churning stomach. Now all she needed was some ibuprofen and—

  “What the heck is that?” Elle pointed at the floor beside the couch where a strange doll-shaped bundle sat.

  Margot followed her gaze, eyes widening and lips rolling together. “I meant to get rid of that before you woke up. You . . . how much do you remember?”

  There’d been ice cream. And crying. Then tequila. She and Margot had made a list of all Darcy’s most annoying attributes and . . . her memory went fuzzy. “We made a list?”

  “Good, yeah.” Margot chewed on her thumbnail. “We made a list and you kind of lost the plot and started saying things you liked about Darcy so I tried to get you back on track. Which worked. You got pretty amped up and you decided to . . .”

  “To what?” Between the alcohol and Margot’s reluctance to give Elle a straight answer, Elle’s stomach churned and her mind flitted from one worst-case scenario to the next, her panic escalating. She had decided to call Darcy? FaceTime her? Elle brought her glass to her lips and took a slow sip to soothe her tummy.

  Margot winced. “You made a Darcy voodoo doll.”

  Elle choked, sputtering water down her chin. “What?”

  “You know, a Darcy effigy—”

  “I know what a voodoo doll is, Margot.” Elle set her glass down roughly, water sloshing on the table. She scrambled across the carpet on her hands and knees and grabbed the human-shaped doll off the floor. In reality, it was a T-shirt stuffed with what looked like pillow fluff made humanoid by tying off limbs with hair ties at the joints. Thankfully, it looked like she hadn’t gotten to the point of doing something crazy—crazier—and poking pins in the damn thing. “What the hell was I thinking?”

  Margot bared her teeth in a grimace. “Tequila. You weren’t doing much thinking.”

  “Did I . . . did I realize how stupid this was?” Elle shook the doll in the air. She’d even attached those twisty-ties they kept in the junk drawer, the red ones from bread loaves, to the doll’s head like hair. It looked terrifying, like some rustic doll of olden time possessed with the spirit of a vengeful child. Elle was creeped out that she had made it. “Please tell me I came to my senses.”

  Margot’s head seesawed side to side. “Uh. Honestly? You started crying that you couldn’t get the freckles right and then you passed out beside the coffee table.”

  She stared at the doll with wide eyes. Sure enough, there were scribbled splotches, smudged dots that had bled into the cotton fabric. Freckles. Elle slammed her eyes shut and clutched the doll to her chest. Fuck.

  She hadn’t had enough time to commit the constellations those freckles and moles connected into memory. Not nearly enough. She was never going to see those freckles again.

  A hand landed on Elle’s shoulder making her jolt. Margot tugged the Darcy doll from Elle’s hands, setting it aside. In its place, she pressed Elle’s phone. “You might want to check that.”

  Elle’s heart crawled into her throat. “I didn’t call anybody, right?”

  Margot set her hands on her hips, an affronted frown on her face. “I’d never let you do that. You have another missed call from your
mom.” Her mouth pinched. “And you have a text.”

  “Did you . . . did you look?”

  Margot bit her lip and nodded.

  “Is it—” She stared at Margot, eyes wide and heart pounding inside her chest, pulse leaping painfully in her neck.

  One little jerk of Margot’s head was all it took to send her spirits plummeting. “It’s Brendon.”

  * * *

  Inside her pocket, her phone buzzed. Brendon, maybe? She wasn’t running late.

  No. Mom.

  If she didn’t answer, Mom would just keep calling. The calls had escalated in frequency over the past two weeks, word no doubt getting back to Mom that Elle was no longer avoiding Jane and Daniel, just her. Better to bite the bullet than prolong the inevitable. “Hello.”

  “Elle, you answered. Good.” She sounded relieved.

  Elle shut her eyes and leaned against the stop-walk sign. “Look, Mom, now’s not a good time.”

  “I’ve called half a dozen times. I left you messages.”

  Something about the way she said it, as if Elle owed her an explanation made Elle grit her teeth.

  “I didn’t have anything to say.” No, that wasn’t right. “Or I did, but it didn’t feel like you were ready to listen.”

  Silence filled the line, until the clearing of Mom’s throat broke it. “Elle, I’m . . . I’m sorry. It was never my intention to belittle what you do.”

  “But you did. You called it a pseudoscientific fad. Do you not realize how badly that hurt?”

  It still hurt, the sting of her words fresher than ever after Elle’s falling-out with Darcy.

  “I didn’t. I just . . .” Mom sighed. “I’m just worried. It’s my job to worry about you, Elle-belle. I want what’s best for you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  What about what she wanted? They’d been having some variation of this conversation for years, tiptoeing around it and Elle was tired. “I’m happy. Why can’t that be good enough?”

  “I’ve gone about it all wrong. I know that now.”

  “Let me guess. Jane said something? Daniel?”

  “It was Lydia, actually.” At Elle’s stunned silence, Mom laughed. “She confessed that she agrees with a lot of what you said. That I put too much pressure on you, all of you, Lydia included. I had . . . I had no idea, Elle. But Lydia, she told me that she and Marcus are thinking about eloping, can you believe that? She doesn’t want to plan a wedding with me. Apparently, I have impossible standards and not just when it comes to color schemes and venues. Which makes me feel great, let me tell you.” Mom’s laughter took on a frantic edge. “I just want what’s best for all of you. The best, Elle. I read all these stories about no one being able to retire, that no one can buy a house, and there might be another recession, and it makes me nervous.”

  “Look on the bright side, I might not be able to retire but at least I love what I do. I’ll be super happy working until the day I die.”

  Elle cringed until Mom chuckled. “I don’t know if that’s supposed to be funny.”

  “I don’t know either.” The light turned green and Elle hustled across the street.

  “Maybe”—Mom coughed—“at our next brunch, you can tell me more about this consulting you’re doing for OTP. I promise to actually listen this time.”

  Elle chewed on the side of her thumbnail, frowning at the brick building but not yet going inside. Brendon was waiting for her, waiting to talk. About what, Elle wasn’t sure, but she’d been having flashes of that stress dream, the one where Brendon ripped up their negotiations.

  Contracts had been signed; there’d have to be some massive breach to void them, or else OTP would have to pay her and Margot out. Regardless of the legalities, Brendon wouldn’t be spiteful like that. Then again, what did Elle know? Nothing. Her gut was all wrong, miscalibrated.

  Hopefully when this was all said and done there would still be a deal to tell Mom about. “Sure. But right now, I need to go. I’m meeting a friend for coffee.”

  “Darcy?”

  The sound of her name put a lump in Elle’s throat. “Brendon, actually. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  “You’ll be home for Christmas, won’t you?”

  “Of course. I’ll drive over on the twenty-fourth, okay?”

  One phone call didn’t automatically undo years of damage, and she’d bet Mom still wouldn’t approve, but maybe she wouldn’t be so antagonistic. It was a start, a tiny weight lifted off Elle’s shoulders. She’d take it.

  Shoving her phone back into her pocket, Elle stepped through the door, the warm, nutty aroma of coffee hitting her like a wave. In the back corner of the coffee shop, Brendon sat, frowning at his cup.

  Elle’s chest throbbed at the sight of him. The resemblance was obvious, painfully so.

  Rather than dawdle in the doorway, Elle skirted the ordering counter and headed straight for Brendon’s table. Her stomach was too unsettled for caffeine and the acid in the coffee would only amplify the burn in her chest. The sooner she got this over with, the sooner she could head home and— Well, then she’d figure out what came next. This—whatever urgent matter Brendon had requested they meet to discuss—was eating up all her focus, all her energy, her attention.

  Brendon looked up from staring morosely into his cup, his brown eyes widening as he caught sight of Elle. Unfolding his long legs from beneath the table, Brendon stood and took a half step toward her before awkwardly freezing like he didn’t know how to greet her. “Elle. Hey. You made it.”

  Elle rested her hands on the back of the chair across from him. “I said I would.”

  “Right.” He nodded, too quick. Frenetic. Jerky. “You did.” He cleared his throat and gestured to the chair with a silly little sweep of his hand. “Sorry. Sit. Please.”

  Elle lowered herself into the chair on wobbling knees. She set her hands on the edge of the table, fingers curling around the wood. Ugh, that made her look nervous. Which she was. But Brendon didn’t need to know that. She dropped her hands into her lap and clasped them tightly before finally shoving them between her knees. “So.”

  Brendon collapsed into the chair with a heavy sigh, raking his fingers through his hair and messing up the strands. “So.”

  So. This was awkward, more so because Brendon was acting awkward, exacerbating an inherently thorny situation. It set her teeth on edge, wondering what exactly it was that had Brendon all in knots. “Is . . . is everything all right with the partnership. OTP and Oh My Stars?”

  She held her breath, shoulders tensing.

  Brendon’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  “Is—”

  “No, I heard you.” Brendon ran a hand over his face, eyes shutting for a second before opening and looking tired. He looked . . . exhausted. Not as rough as she felt, but not well rested, that was for sure. He met her eyes, lips curling in a weak smile. “Everything’s fine with the partnership, Elle. Of course, it is. It’s . . . it’s perfect.”

  Her shoulders relaxed infinitesimally. “Good. That’s good.”

  “I didn’t ask you to meet me here because of work,” Brendon said, shifting forward in his seat. He pushed his tea aside and rested his arms on the table. “This doesn’t have anything to do with OTP.”

  Elle bit the corner of her lip, too nervous to ask what he had asked her here to discuss.

  Brendon dropped his chin, staring at his hands. “Darcy.”

  Even knowing, realistically, what was coming, hearing Brendon say his sister’s name made Elle’s heart stutter pathetically. “Hmm.”

  “Elle.” Brendon stared at her, with wide eyes the exact same color as Darcy’s. “I need you to be honest with me.”

  She blinked, trying hard not to take offense. “Excuse me?”

  Brendon licked his lips. “I said—”

  “I heard you.” Elle shook her head, knees pressing hard in on her hands. “When exactly have I ever been anything other than totally honest?”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t, I—”


  “Implied it,” she said, shoving down her rapidly rising hackles. Now wasn’t the time to lose her chill. “I’ve always been honest. With you and with your sister, too, for that matter. And I’m sorry, but I don’t exactly appreciate you implying otherwise.”

  Brendon lifted his hands in supplication. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m . . .” He raked one of his hands through his hair again. “Out of my depth, yeah? I’m trying.”

  Trying to what, exactly? She shook her head. “Why’d you ask me here, Brendon?”

  “I’m saying this all wrong.” Brendon dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “Darcy is a wreck, Elle.”

  Darcy was a wreck? Why? She wasn’t the one who’d gotten her heart broken. Her life hadn’t been upended, her whole world turned upside down.

  “Darcy told me. She told me how this started and she also told me how it changed,” Brendon said. “She told me . . . she told me everything.”

  A chilling sense of understanding settled in Elle’s upset stomach, cooling her anger into frosty irritation. “Well, sorry I ruined her ruse. Wasn’t my intention.”

  Just like falling in love with Darcy hadn’t been Elle’s plan. It had just . . . happened. Hindsight being what it was, Elle should’ve known better than to think she wouldn’t fall ass over head for someone like Darcy.

  Brendon groaned softly. “That’s still not— Fuck, Elle.”

  Elle stared. Had she ever heard Brendon swear?

  “What you said on the street. You were wrong, Elle. Darcy’s not heartless, okay?”

  Elle pried her hands out from between her knees and crossed her arms, shielding herself from the intensity of Brendon’s stare. “Did you ask me here to tell me off, or something? Because to be honest, I’m a little hungover and a lot miserable, and I’m not in the mood to be scolded—”

  “No.” Brendon shook his head quickly. “Look, Darcy keeps her cards close to the chest.”

  He kept saying that, but this wasn’t a game of poker and she and Darcy weren’t supposed to be playing against each other.

  “I don’t think that’s an excuse at this—”