Friday night found Teagan in the back seat of his mother’s car, head bumping against the driver’s seat every time his sister approached a stoplight. She kept flooding the engine when she tried to shift gears. He wasn’t even sure she had a driver’s license, and he was too afraid to ask at this point.
He’d entertained the passing thought that while driving Sloane and Darcy to the Westchester Zoo’s annual Art Walk gala would be a very bad time to have a panic attack, and of course, no sooner had he pulled onto Broadway than he felt that now-familiar surge of adrenaline course through his veins like snake venom.
He pulled over at a gas station, palpably aware of the stares that he drew leaning against the car in his tuxedo as two women in evening gowns argued around him.
“We should just go home,” Darcy said. “I looked up the Westchester Zoo. It’s a private zoo, owned by some eccentric finance jerk. Private zoos are terrible. They select for the most charismatic species rather than paying even lip service to captive breeding programs and species reintroduction. Everyone has a Bengal tiger when they ought to have a Przewalski’s horse. And this dress is itchy.”
“Teagan should go home,” Sloane retorted. “I look hot. You look hot. I got my hair blown out for this. We can probably hit up, like, a lot of donors if we work together.”
“I have to go to this,” Teagan said, struggling for air. “Just give me a minute.”
Darcy and his sister regarded him with disappointment, and Sloane none-too-gently shoved him into the back seat.
“I’ll drive,” his sister announced.
The past two weeks had been hell. Nora was coming by the office almost every day to case the art on the walls like a Wet Bandit in Lanvin pumps, Sloane was making noises about changing her major a third time or possibly dropping out of school entirely, and, most ominously, Darcy had purchased a new pair of snow boots for the coming winter. The boots were stashed away in the coat closet of his mother’s house, but Teagan felt their dire presence like a gothic heart beating under the floorboards.
His symptoms were all in his head. He was not having a heart attack. His terror was just a misfire in his brain. The woman crowding into the back seat next to him was real, and she cared about him, and if he just put his head down and worked hard enough at it, he could fix all the problems that were sending her out of his life.
These precisely dictated thoughts were launched at the invading mass of anxiety until it gradually began to retreat.
Darcy rubbed a soothing palm between Teagan’s shoulder blades until he sighed and moved his head to her shoulder, feeling some of the storm in his skull subside. “Private zoos aren’t even good at wildlife education,” she gently chided him. “The animals don’t perform their natural behaviors in the kinds of enclosures these zoos have room for, and they don’t have enough individuals to maintain their typical social groupings.”
“We can leave as soon as I’ve given my speech,” Teagan promised.
“What speech?” Darcy asked.
“Mom was on the board of this zoo, and this was Mom’s favorite event,” Sloane called from the front seat. “She’d bring one of us as her date every year. There are pictures of teenage Teagan in a tuxedo, holding a lemur.”
Teagan felt the weight of Darcy’s judgmental stare, even though he didn’t think it was fair to condemn him for not intuiting animal welfare concerns as a fourteen-year-old.
“Since she died on the way back from a board meeting, they decided to name the new tiger exhibit after her two years ago. I think they were afraid someone would sue them. As if Mom needed an excuse to get drunk. So, anyway, Teagan gives the annual update about the tiger exhibit now,” Sloane finished.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Darcy muttered, hand still pressed against Teagan’s back, the anchor he was clinging to. “This zoo basically killed your mom, and you have to give a speech every year?”
“Too many vodka sodas killed my mother,” Teagan mumbled. He forced himself to sit up and take deep breaths. “I’m not worried about the speech.”
He was worried about the speech. He’d spent ten minutes before the speech dry heaving last year. Public speaking didn’t bother him any more than it did most people, but saying nice things about his mother and this nonprofit that he didn’t really believe in did bother him. But his worries about the speech were not even visible over the pile of worries he was carrying for his other plans tonight.
If Darcy was serious about what she’d said—that she wanted to be with him, if all the other extraneous bullshit in his life didn’t get in the way—he thought he’d put together something to offer her. He just had to keep it together for the next few hours.
They made it to the zoo’s valet stand before Sloane could wear out the transmission. Darcy squinted suspiciously at the big flags depicting happy penguins dancing around bits of avant-garde sculpture while Teagan summoned every scrap of optimism he possessed. This could go well. He could end tonight happy. Maybe it would all work out for him this time.
His sister bumped him with her shoulder.
“Do you want a Xanax?” she asked quietly.
Teagan startled. He was holding off on all his prescribed psychotropic medication until after he’d convinced Darcy not to fly back to Montana for the winter.
“Do you have Xanax? Did someone prescribe you Xanax?” he demanded.
“No, but, I mean, I could get you some,” she said, her expression stating that she thought she was being helpful.
“No, thank you,” he said firmly, making a note to interrogate her later on who was selling drugs at these events.
They followed couples in evening wear through the roped-off entrance. There was an open bar and passed hors d’oeuvres in a pavilion near the entrance, but the dance floor was empty so early in the evening, and the band had not yet taken the stage. Teagan saw people he recognized: friends of his mother, donors to the foundation, other charity executives. Twenty million people in this town, but the number of people who liked to dress up and talk about how much money they might give away was small enough to feel like a terrible kind of high school class, one which held reunions multiple times a month. He saw the one person he’d been hoping to dodge until later tonight catch sight of him and stride purposefully away from the meerkat exhibit to intercept his path to the bar. Nora looped an arm under his and towed him off to a side path.
“Look at you two!” Nora said, gaze taking in only Teagan and Sloane. “Let me get a picture. Adrian, can you take their picture? We need to put a photo of you two on the website. Oh Sloane, my God do you look like your mother. You’re gorgeous.” Nora’s fiancé gave Teagan a silent look of apology as he pulled his phone from his pocket and halfheartedly pretended to line up a shot.
“Ooh, hello, Adrian,” Sloane said, wiggling her eyebrows at the artist, who winced.
Teagan put his arm around Darcy’s waist as she tried to stomp away from the conversation.
“Nora, I think you’ve met Darcy?” he asked pointedly.
“Of course I met her,” Nora said, checking the edge of her lipstick with a red-taloned finger. “Is that going well? Sobriety? You must be getting one of those little chip things soon. How many days has it been since you had a drink?”
“I’m not sure,” Teagan said.
“Oh, really? I thought alcoholics always knew exactly how many days it had been,” Nora replied.
“Seventy-seven”—Darcy looked at him oddly—“days since you were in the hospital, at least.”
“Then it’s seventy-seven,” Teagan said, beginning to feel a little dizzy again. He hadn’t had two panic attacks in a single day recently, but he was pretty sure he could manage it, if necessary.
Faking a history of heavy drinking was as good a reason as any to have one. Pretending to be sober for the rest of his life wasn’t going to be hard—he just wouldn’t drink—but pretending that Darcy was in his life for that reason needed to stop.
Tonight, he vowed. He’d tell her she could quit being his sober companion, and he’d handle his own sobriety from here on out. He’d start going to AA meetings, if necessary. He’d heard the coffee wasn’t bad.
“I’m still so surprised you turned out to have a drinking problem,” Nora said. “I can remember you driving out to pick your mom up when she’d had a little too much to drink. Oh well! She’d be so proud of you for continuing to support the Westchester Zoo, you know. She loved this party.”
“She did,” Teagan agreed, hearing ringing in his ears.
“You look very nice tonight,” Adrian said to Darcy with the air of a man putting himself into the line of the fire.
“Thanks,” she replied under her breath, fidgeting with a shoulder strap. Teagan would rather throw himself on a grenade than tell a woman what to wear, but Sloane had impressed on Darcy that she couldn’t wear her typical button-down shirt and slacks to a black-tie event. The only dress Darcy owned was of the tube variety, so Sloane had furnished this long blue dress tied with gold cord under the bust and around the waist. Teagan vaguely recalled the dress on Sloane, some years past. It fit Darcy very differently, clinging to some of his favorite places on her. She looked like a Roman goddess with her wavy hair pinned loosely and hanging down her back.
Teagan hadn’t said anything only because he didn’t want her to think he cared if she ever put on an evening gown ever again, but Darcy’s uncertain face said she hadn’t been sure how she looked before Adrian spoke.
“Did Teagan buy that for you?” Nora asked Darcy, gaze assessing.
“No. I think Sloane wore it to prom,” Darcy replied, wrinkling her nose.
Nora laughed politely. “Oh no. I thought so. I suppose there aren’t many reasons to wear black tie in Idaho.”
“Montana,” Darcy said evenly. “And no, usually not.”
“You must be headed back soon. Since Teagan’s almost three months sober.”
Darcy looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Before Thanksgiving, probably,” she told Nora.
Teagan gritted his teeth as Nora nodded in satisfaction.
“I’m going to get myself a club soda,” Teagan said, taking a step to the side in an effort to extricate himself from the conversation.
Nora took a corresponding step to stay in his path.
“So, tonight would be a good night to announce that you’re selling the John Currin paintings,” Nora said. “While everyone’s thinking about your mother. She has a lot of friends here. We might get a little premium for sentimentality.”
“I haven’t had a chance to look at the consignment agreement yet,” Teagan said.
“Rose already reviewed and approved it,” Nora said.
That was news to Teagan.
“I’d also like to review it,” he said, trying to remain calm. “I’m not sure that’s the direction I’d like to go.”
“I can send it to you right now,” Nora said, pulling her phone out. “What else are you addressing in your speech?”
Teagan resisted the urge to rub his face. “I was going to thank some of my mother’s friends for their support of the zoo and the foundation.”
“Do you have it written down? Let me see,” Nora commanded.
Teagan sighed and pulled his index cards out of his jacket pocket. Nora plucked them from his hand and put them into her purse.
“There’s a VIP lounge in the cabana behind the lemur house,” she said, pointing out the building. “Why don’t you meet me there in a few minutes, and we’ll go over the speech and the other donors who are here tonight.”
Teagan wanted to say no. He wanted to come up with some reason that he didn’t have to do any of it. He didn’t want to go sit in the VIP lounge with Nora, he didn’t want to give a speech where he’d pretend that he had a single fond memory of pulling his mother out of this party or any other, he didn’t want to talk to the people who’d handed her drinks and cheered her on as she spiraled further and further out of control.
“Yes, all right,” he said.
“You’re my favorite!” Nora chirped, finally stepping aside.
Teagan stood still until she was out of sight, mentally shouldering the other things he would do tonight, locking his knees and trying to refocus his mind on his existing plans.
This could go well.
Sometimes, things went well.
Nothing had gone well that he could bring to mind in that exact instant, and the gambler’s fallacy dictated that the chances of things going well were no better because of previous failures, but surely he was due for something to break in his favor for once in a metaphysical way, if no other.
“I’m getting a drink and going to the VIP lounge,” Sloane announced, giving Teagan a bright smile and walking fast after Nora.
That finally left Teagan alone with Darcy, under the judgmental eyes of many lemurs but thankfully few humans. Darcy glared off at the VIP lounge as though about to throw something at it, but she eventually wrapped two hands around his arm and shook him until he unlocked his knees.
“Hey, Bear Bait. Sometimes you need to make like Nancy Reagan and just say no,” she said.
Teagan laughed politely. “If Nora offers to do lines in the VIP lounge, you have my word.”
“No, I mean it,” she said. “What are we doing here? You’re not doing well tonight. You don’t want to give that speech. I look ridiculous. The parrots by the bar were already freaking out about the music and the band hasn’t even started playing yet—”
“You look beautiful,” Teagan replied, choosing the statement he could refute. He needed to keep it together, look like he had a plan, focus on Darcy and how this was going to work, if he could get through tonight. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the room, whatever you’re wearing, but you look beautiful in that dress.”
Darcy shook her head in faint amusement, her expression stating that she hadn’t forgotten everything else in her list. “It doesn’t fit. Sloane’s three inches taller than me and like twenty pounds lighter. It’s so tight around my hips that I couldn’t even wear underwear.”
“What—is that true?” He resisted the urge to look. Then he looked. He couldn’t tell. It did look tight, but Darcy’s hips could cause a traffic accident regardless of what she was wearing.
“Maybe you’ll find out later,” Darcy said, curling her mouth in a brief smirk. “We could go home now, and you could verify it.”
That sounded like a fantastic plan, a hope he was going to cling to until this evening was over. That it would end with both of them at his home, Teagan taking that dress off her.
“Not yet. We’ll be here a couple hours, at least. But this is the last gala you ever have to come to. You never have to come with me again,” he said.
“Well no, that’s not right. If you go, I have to go. Otherwise someone’ll hand you a cocktail and all my hard work is wasted.”
Teagan cleared his throat. “At some point you have to trust me to make good choices, right?”
Darcy fidgeted again with the strap of her dress. “I guess. I don’t think you’re there yet. Do you?”
“I think I am. I’m sober for good. I promise, I’m not even thinking about drinking,” he said.
“Then what are you so worried about?” Darcy said softly, beautiful dark eyes wide with concern. She went up on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth, then framed his face between her hands to kiss him more lingeringly. She pulled back to study his expression, leaving her hands loosely clasped around his neck, fingertips gentle on his jaw.
She was so good to him. She had to want this too.
Teagan exhaled, trying to think of a good way to start. He’d been working on how he’d ask her this all week.
“I’m actually—so—I wanted you to come with me tonight because there’s . . . an opportunity.”
Darcy stared blankly at him. He was falling back on business speak, and he probably sounded like he was asking for a transfer into the special situations group or a new corporate revolver. But now that he was in it, there was nothing to do but to keep talking.
“I want you to meet one of our donors, Yuna Park,” he said. “Her latest husband is a small animal veterinarian, and he’s retiring from practice to run a wildlife rehab outside of Beacon.”
Teagan swallowed hard, even though Darcy’s face said she still wasn’t following this to its conclusion. “They want to hire someone to run a volunteer program at the rehab center. For local teenagers. I said you might be interested, and they want to talk to you about the position.”
Darcy pulled back, her reaction leaning a lot further toward surprise and consternation than Teagan had hoped. She gestured at her cleavage.
“Jesus. You want me to go to a job interview in this dress?”
“It’s not a job interview, it’s just to meet them—”
“But you set this up? They know I’m coming? They knew about this?”
“I—yes, I talked to Mrs. Park a couple of times about it. But all you need to know about her is—”
“Give me a minute!” she shouted. “God. What even is this coordinator supposed to do? You know I don’t have any experience actually working with animals. Or kids.”
“I know, but—”
“What did you tell them? Did you tell them I did? Did you tell them I don’t actually have a degree yet?” Color was rising in her face.
“I told them you were enrolled in a degree program for wildlife science, but nothing else,” Teagan said, feeling buffeted by the vehemence of her reaction.
“How long have you known about this, again?” she demanded.
“Since last Tuesday?”
“Teagan! And you didn’t tell me about it? I’m going to probably fall all over my ass when I talk to them.”
Teagan bit down hard on the insides of his lips, trying to choose his words carefully. “I wanted you to hear about the job from them, rather than me.”
“Why?” Darcy began to pace. “Not cool, Teagan. Not cool, springing this on me.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d want to do it if you heard about it from me first.”
“I’m not sure I do! If you work with migratory birds or endangered species, you have to get permitted by the state and the feds, there’s probably even more paperwork if you work with kids, and—I’m sorry, Teagan. I’m sorry. This is probably not going to work.”
“Wait, wait,” he said, beginning to tense up at Darcy’s agitation. “Please just hear it from them first. You don’t think it might be better than driving the damn snow truck?”
“I know I can drive the snowcat! I keep telling you, I need to have a job I can actually do. I don’t want to get arrested by the game warden because I didn’t fill out the paperwork right.”
“Please. Darcy. I just want you to consider it. Doesn’t it matter at all that you could stay here if you worked at the wildlife rehab?”
“Of course it does. But I wouldn’t be here very long if I got fired because I was terrible at managing volunteers. I’ve never managed anyone. Or anything. I’m pretty sure I’d be terrible at it.”
“I wouldn’t let you be terrible at it. If you have . . . paperwork, you could bring it home, and I’d help you fill it out. I wouldn’t let you fail at it. Darcy, I’d help you,” he said, trying to put his whole heart in his voice.
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I can’t take some job I can only do if you’re coaching me through it.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because, I assume, in this scenario you’ve dreamed up, I’m also living with you. I’ve never heard of Beacon, but I bet I can’t afford to live there on whatever a wildlife rehab volunteer coordinator makes.”
“Okay, yes, that’s true, but that would just make it easier for me to help you until you get settled into the job.”
“And if I don’t settle into the job? If I get fired?”
“Then I’ll help you find a new one.”
“But what I’m saying, Teagan,” she insisted, eyes round and scared, “is what if you and I don’t work out?”
She said that like it was something that might be out of their control. It wasn’t! He couldn’t control when his brain would melt down like a graphite-moderated reactor, but he could commit to her, in whatever terms she wanted. He could do that even if she wouldn’t offer up the same.
Teagan clenched his jaw hard. “You don’t have to worry about it. You know me. You know it would never be me who left.”
“I can’t ever know that,” Darcy said, looking down at her feet.
There was tight heat in a band around his throat and behind his eyes. Every word was harder and harder to force out.
“Then tell me what it would take for you to feel safe enough to take this job. It doesn’t have to be this job. Tell me what would make you feel safe enough to stay here with me. If it’s something that can be bought, I’ll buy it for you. If there’s something I can do, I’ll do it for you. If there’s anything you need to hear me say, any promise I can make, I’ll say it to you. Here and now or in front of as many people as you like.”
Darcy’s shoulders heaved, but she didn’t look up. He felt as though he was shouting up at her from a great distance below, somehow sinking deeper.
“I called the tow lot this morning. Your car’s going to auction for tow liens next week. I could buy it for you. So that you could always move out, if you wanted to.” He swallowed again. “Am I getting warmer?”
“I don’t know,” Darcy said, curling and uncurling her hands. “I need to think about it.” She took a step away and turned toward the reptile house, and Teagan was abruptly certain that she’d talk herself out of it entirely if she had a chance to run off. He couldn’t just let her go.
“Do you want to get married?” he blurted out.
“Jesus! Are you asking me?” she cried, spinning back to face him.
“No, I’m saying—is that what it would take? For you to be sure you could do this. That we could do this.”
Her expression was appalled, and her reaction to the idea couldn’t have been a sharper knife in the chest if she’d laughed at him instead.
“And if I said yeah, I’m not sticking around unless you put a ring on my finger?” She had her lips pressed so tightly together they’d turned pale.
There were right and wrong answers to this, he was sure. He wished he knew what she wanted to hear.
“Then—I’d get you one,” he said softly. He thought it probably wasn’t the right answer, but it was true, at least. Darcy gasped like he’d confessed some terrible misdeed.
“Why?” she said, throwing her hands in the air. “Why would you do that? Teagan, you’re miserable, and you’re only getting worse since we got back from Montana. I don’t think I’m helping you at all with your alcohol dependency. I can’t do anything to help you with your job, and your job’s pretty all consuming. Don’t you want to be with someone who makes you happy?”
“It’s not your job to make me happy,” Teagan said, jerking back in surprise. “I’m happy with you. I love you. You’re that first cup of coffee that gets me out of bed in the morning. You’re the song on my playlist for the drive home. You’re every good thing that I promise myself to get through the day.” He gripped his hair so hard it hurt, just to be able to keep talking. “You’re the best thing in my life—and I mean it. I’ll do anything. Ask me for anything.”
At last something he said had landed. She was taking deep, gulping breaths, eyes wide and shocked, but at least she was considering it.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
“Okay . . . what?” he was so dizzied by the conversation that he wasn’t sure whether he was engaged or whether she was leaving him.
“Okay, I’ll think about it. About what you said. About the job. And—and everything. Can you go drink some Sprite or something for a while? I just—I need to think about it.”
She took another step backward, rigid and tense. He opened his mouth to beg her to stay, to promise he’d not bring it up again, but a big giddy knot of women came down the path, hands full of shrimp cocktail and cheap wine, and when Teagan moved out of the way to let them by, Darcy bolted.