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Darcy would feel like a stalker, waiting in an unmarked car outside the house where the woman he loves is staying. Part of him wants to see Lizzie—to see her open the door and step outside, even to see her briefly at a window, closing the curtains. The rest of him, though, knows that even though he’s here because of her, he’s not here for her.
He wants Lizzie; he needs Lydia.
He waits instead.
The clock on the dashboard says that it’s not quite ten in the morning when the front door opens. He leans forward, looking, and lets out a breath of relief when Lydia steps out the front door. She’s wearing blue and black, and she looks like a washed-out version of the energetic girl he once knew. She stops in the doorway, just as she’s pulling the handle closed.
Someone else is there with her.
Darcy’s heart stops. Is it…?
No. It’s Jane, not Lizzie. She puts her hand on Lydia’s shoulder, says something—probably offering to come with her. But Lydia just shakes her head and gestures to the sidewalk. Jane shrinks back sadly, and, a moment later, Lydia is walking down the little path that leads to the street. All by herself.
He’d hoped that he would be able to get her alone. In another couple of hours, he would have had to take the direct approach—that is, go and knock on her front door, with all the unfortunate baggage that would entail. Instead…
He opens the door of his car. She doesn’t look over at him.
It takes him a few seconds to set an alert on his phone—there is a time limit to all of this—before he sets off down the street after her.
When he was a child, he’d run down the sidewalk, trying not to step on any of the lines or cracks in the concrete. Not because of any childish games or rhymes; it’s just that there was something about it that bothered him. Each footfall needed to be placed precisely or it would leave his skull ringing with a faint sense of wrongness. He’s always been like that—needing to have everything just so.
His therapist says that he doesn’t have to be normal. That so long as he’s functional, and he isn’t hurting himself, those little games he plays—where he allows himself to step, the way he counts when he’s engaging in repetitive activities—that these things are okay.
It’s substantially easier to avoid those gaps in the concrete now that he’s older. It’s like his stride was built to hit the center of every square of the sidewalk. And since Lydia is ambling along at a desultory pace—walking, he notices with a slight wince, without any regard for the cracks and lines in the pavement—he catches up with her all too soon.
“Lydia,” he says, when he’s just two steps behind her. “Lydia Bennet.”
She whirls around. For a moment, an awful hope lights her face—as if she’s expecting someone else entirely.
Darcy knows that look. He’s seen it before.
That was the look in the girls’ eyes, when they knocked on the dorm room that George and Darcy shared that first year at Harvard, when Darcy was forced to make excuse after excuse on his roommate’s behalf. That was the look in Gigi’s eyes, those first few weeks after that horrible debacle with George. When her phone would ring, or someone would come to the door. She’d look like exactly like that—as if she wanted to believe her prince had come.
That was the look that Lizzie gave Darcy at Bing’s birthday party. The look says that he’s a poor substitute for the real thing.
He’s mostly gotten over his hatred of that look. His therapist has helped.
Lydia lays eyes on Darcy. Her expression falters and that terrible light seeps out of her eyes. It is replaced by a hollow confusion.
“Darcy?” She shakes her head.
“Lydia,” he says, “I have to speak with you.”
She turns away from him, points her toe and grinds it into the ground. “What,” she says softly. “To blame me for taking Lizzie away from you? To let me know how energetic I am, how much of a—”
“Stop,” he says, because he’s never been good at comforting anyone. Not even his own sister. “I don’t want to blame you for anything.”
“Well, that’s a first.”
Darcy makes himself look at Lydia now, look at her without his preconceived judgments and fears in place. She gives her hair a little toss, and even though she’s paler than she once was, she looks up at him with defiance.
He recognizes the turn of her head, the lift of her chin. These are Lizzie-expressions, ones that he knows by heart.
“I am serious, Lydia.” And now that he’s caught up with her, he’s not sure how to proceed. “Your sister gave me quite the scolding for the way I talked about you. She was right. I was…I was unfair.”
Lydia looks up at him.
“I should never have said those things about you,” he tells her. “I should never have thought them. I didn’t realize how much joy there was to be found in your energetic personality until you were robbed of it.”
She’s standing in front of him, unmoving.
“I want to help you,” he says. “What can I do for you?”
She lets out a flat, unforgiving laugh. “Nothing.” He can taste the bitterness on her speech. “Nothing. I’ve already done everything to myself; what would I need you for? It’s already ruined—everything. And tomorrow…”
“Start with tomorrow,” he urges her. “If you could change one thing about tomorrow, what would it be?”
“What are you,” Lydia sneers, “a one-man Make-a-Wish foundation? Do you go around making dreams come true for girls who are about to have the entire Internet leering at their naked bodies? Well, try this on for size, Darce-face. I want the sex tape to not be released. I want that site down. I want every computer that has a copy of that video to be smashed into bits.” She’s gaining steam as she talks. “I want every copy of it ever to burst into flame. And I want George Wickham—” Her face crumples, but her hands curl into fists. “I want George Wickham to tell me why he did it. After everything he did to me, I deserve that much.”
She’s panting when she gets to the end of the tirade, panting and looking at him in rage, as if she’s asked for the impossible and she’s waiting for him to smack her back into the cold, depressing reality.
Darcy simply nods and takes out his phone. He scrolls through his contacts, starts a call, presses the speaker button.
The phone rings once. Lydia looks up at him in confusion, but he simply holds up a finger.
“Sir,” says the familiar voice on the other end of the line. “Sir, have you found her?”
Lydia takes a step back.
“Lydia,” Darcy says, “this is Marcy Jenner. She’s my computer specialist at Pemberley, and I brought her down four days ago.”
Lydia swallows.
“Miss Jenner,” Darcy says, “Miss Bennet has a few requests for you.”
“I—” Lydia shakes her head.
“Go on, Miss Bennet.” He keeps his voice cool, professional. Business like. “Miss Bennet, what would you like us to do about the automated release of the tape? Jenner here will do anything you want.”
“Can you…can you stop it?” There’s a breathlessness to Lydia’s voice.
“Well,” Jenner replies, a note of amusement in her voice, “I’m sitting in front of the servers for Novelty Exposure right now. They weren’t a real LLC, by the way. That was a front. This is really just a home-grown operation out in Van Nuys.”
“Stop it,” Lydia says. “Stop it.”
“There we are,” Jenkins says. “There’s a chron job… Okay. I’ve stopped it. Shall I update the website, too? Tell people the tape won’t be coming?”
“Yes. Yes. God, yes.” Lydia seems on the verge of tears. “You can do that?”
“I’m opening up the index file right now…. Cut, paste… Done. What else would you like, Miss Bennet?”
“Is it…no, there’s no way. There’s no way that we could delete every copy of the video that there is. There’s too many copies.”
“Before I went to work at Pemberley,” Jenner responds smoothly, “I was a forensic computer specialist working for the FBI. Once we recovered Wickham’s laptop, we were able to find everything—his Dropbox account, the places where he uploaded back-up copies. We have the SD card from the camera where the original video was taken. I can’t make any guarantees, but I’m going to spend the next few weeks making sure we didn’t miss anything. I think we got them all.”
Lydia staggers in front of him. Darcy reaches out a hand to steady her; she takes a hold of it, almost in a daze.
“What would you like to do with those copies?” Jenner asks.
“Delete them all.” Her voice is shaking; her hand is, too. “If I could, I would smash them all to bits.”
“Well, Mr. Darcy will have to help you with that,” Jenner replies. “I don’t think Dropbox would look too kindly on us destroying their servers.”
“If there’s anything else you need from Jenner, Lydia?” Darcy asks.
She shakes her head in a daze.
He ends the call. She still hasn’t really looked into his eyes, this girl who has Lizzie’s expressions, Lizzie’s nose, Lizzie’s mouth. She’s shaking, but he thinks it’s from relief.
“There’s one other thing you asked for,” he says, ever so quietly. He’s almost afraid to bring it up. But then… He’s also been prepared for this.
“What…?” Her head tilts, and then she remembers her final request, the one she thought was most impossible.
“I can take you to him,” Darcy says, “and I can do my best to make him tell the truth. But I can’t promise that he’ll give it.” In fact, if there’s one thing his childhood friend is good at, it’s prevarication. “Is that what you want?”
Lydia nods slowly. “It’s what I want.”
He walks back with her to his car. She walks at a snail’s pace. She doesn’t care about the lines on the sidewalk, and so he doesn’t either. He steps on them, wincing inwardly but letting it happen. It’s more important now that he stay by her side.
#
This is not too much of an exaggeration. Darcy gave the man a choice last night—to have a chance to walk free today, or to be delivered to the police trussed up with zip ties. Tomorrow, Darcy’s going to the police. Tomorrow, he’ll make sure that there’s an outstanding warrant for Wickham’s arrest. Today, though…
The door to the motel squeaks as it opens. Lydia follows Darcy inside, and gasps at the sight of Wickham sitting on the cheap bed, lazily flipping through channels.
“Hey, Lydia,” Wickham says, giving her a little wave. “Good to see you.”
“That was the deal.” Darcy folds his arms and glowers at his former friend. “You tell her the truth, or everything is off.”
The pleasant expression falters on his face. “Okay,” George grumbles. “It’s not good to see you. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to ever see you again.”
Lydia’s lips twitch and her eyes glisten. “Why did you do it, George?” she asks. “Why did you tell me you loved me? Why did you make the tape? Why did you sell it?”
“I did l—” Darcy holds up a finger, and Wickham frowns, looks away. “Fine,” he mutters. “You want to know why I did it? I did it because I could. Because I knew it would hurt you, and that would hurt him.” He gestures at Darcy.
He can guess at the pain that is flickering across her face. He’s heard it all from Gigi before—how much it hurts to be a means to an end, what it’s like to discover that the love that you thought was real and precious and shared came from one heart only. He wants to reach out and hug her, but she doesn’t even like him. That would be awkward.
“And now what?” Lydia asks.
Wickham glares at Darcy. “Now,” he says, with an exaggerated roll of his eyes, “now that douchebag Darcy is forcing me to leave the country. He’s putting me on a plane to Brazil, giving me enough money to last a couple of days. And he says that if I ever come back to the States, if I ever come near the people he cares about…”
Darcy gives his former friend a nod. “If he ever comes back,” he says, “I’ll see him thrown in jail myself.”
Lydia doesn’t cry at this news. It’s as if she’s shed all her tears. She raises her chin and looks away. “I’m done here,” she says to Darcy, and she marches to the door.
He’s proud of her, even though there’s no reason why he should take credit for what she’s accomplished.
“There’s one more thing,” Darcy says, as they pull out on the freeway. “Something I have in the back of the car. I have Wickham’s laptop. And the camera he used in filming.”
Lydia blinks. She stares straight in front of her for a few moments, and finally shrugs. “I don’t suppose you have a sledgehammer, do you?”
“No, but if you would be so good as to input ‘Home Depot’ into the GPS system, I can obtain one for you.”
She laughs, like he made a joke.
“In fact,” he says, turning on his signal, “I see a sign for a Lowe’s right there.”
“Are you serious?”
“Are you?” he asks back, smoothly.
She accompanies him inside, hefts the various choices, finding one that she can lift overhead without straining too much. She calls him a nerd when he insists on buying safety goggles, too. (“I wouldn’t want you blinded by a flying piece of motherboard,” he tells her, and finally she acquiesces. “But only because this one is hot pink,” she says, gesturing at the pair she’s found.)
They drive with their purchases into a deserted parking lot, and there, in a sea of old asphalt, with dead weeds coming up between the cracks, Darcy lays out the remainder of George Wickham’s days as a film director.
Lydia doesn’t need any instruction in the use of the sledgehammer. Her first hit cracks the plastic case of the laptop clear in two; her next few send electronic shrapnel flying. She batters the laptop to bits, her face set in a grimace as she does it. He wonders what she’s thinking of when she lands the next strike.
He has a pretty good guess. There is the hint of water in the corner of her eyes, a blind fury in the way she beats the computer to shards and then turns on the camera. She doesn’t stop until bits of shattered plastic are all that remains of the man who did harm to her. When she’s done—when she lets the heavy sledgehammer fall from her grip and leans back against his car—Darcy steps forward and removes the battered remains of the hard drive.
He glances at Lydia. “Best to dispose of this in a way where there’s no chance of data retrieval. Do you trust me to do it?”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Finally she nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I do.”
#
Darcy glances down at the steering wheel and smiles. “No. Actually. I’m not.”
“Okay, you aren’t. Even better, though. Lizzie is still a nerd, and if you were cool, you wouldn’t have much of a chance with her.” Lydia glances over at him. “I watched her videos. I saw you flirting. The best you could come up with was, ‘I’m a fan of Dr. Gardiner’s work.’”
Darcy’s cheeks heat and he clears his throat.
Lydia lets out a little laugh. “Good thing you used that line on the one person it would work on.”
His heart jumps in his chest. Only a little. “Do you…do you think it worked?”
“Totally,” Lydia says, leaning towards him. “Do you know what Lizzie used to say about you, before you, um, told the entire Internet you were in love with her?”
It’s not like he could blush any more. “No,” he says. “I do not know.” He waits, but after two seconds, the suspense is too much. “What did she say?”
“She used to say, ‘Why are all the hot guys such douchebags?’”
“I…Ah…”
“Seriously, Darce.” Lydia rolls her eyes. “She thinks you’re hot. All you have to do is convince her that you’re not a douchebag. And I assume that you did all this so that I tell her—”
“No,” Darcy says, a little too forcefully. “I don’t… I don’t want her to find out. Please don’t tell her. I don’t want her to feel obligated to date a man that she thinks poorly of simply because he…”
Lydia looks over at him, a puzzled expression on her face. “That makes no sense,” she says. “I don’t know what you had to do to help me, but… I can only begin to guess. You really put yourself out there. Why wouldn’t you try and benefit from it?”
He can’t explain. He spreads his hands helplessly against the steering wheel. “I will benefit,” he finally says. “When I see Lizzie on camera, smiling. That’s the whole reason I’m doing this. Anything else…”
Lydia doesn’t say anything for minutes after that. She puts her hands in her lap and twiddles her fingers. She’s so intent on watching her thumbs that she can’t look up at him. So he drives in silence, negotiating the freeways that will bring her back to the family that loves her. To Lizzie, and Lizzie’s smiles.
He parks the car three houses down from hers. “Well,” he says, as he turns off the engine. “This is farewell, Lydia. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
She turns to him, a faint smile on her face. “Do you have a penthouse in San Francisco?”
He’s not sure where this is going. “Yes?”
“With windows overlooking the whole city and hardwood floors and everything?”
“Yes,” he replies, even more confused. “Except for the entrance. That’s marble.”
Lydia holds out her hand, palm up. “Promise me that if I ever go up there, you’ll let me do sock slides at your place.”
He smiles, takes her hand. “It’s a deal.” He shakes it.
He gets out of the car, opens her door for her, gives her a hand out.
“Thank you,” Lydia says. “Thank you for everything.”
He hands her a card. “The name of my therapist,” he says, not quite bashfully. “In case…in case you need a referral. Nothing wrong with finding someone to talk to. And what George did to you…that was abuse. It wasn’t right.”
She blinks. She takes the card. And then, before he knows what’s happening, she gives him a hug. A full-blown little-sister hug, the kind that Gigi would give him before she got too old and sophisticated, when there was nothing to her but love and enthusiasm. She hugs him tight, and he finds that his eyes are stinging.
He is definitely not crying.
She looks up at him.
There’s a look in her eyes again. This one isn’t the cold light of false hope that Wickham inspired. It’s not the boredom that Darcy used to see. It’s affection.
And that’s when Darcy realizes how much Lizzie has brought into his life. Before he knew her, he would never have known how much it would mean, this untoward friendship with a too-energetic girl, a girl who walks on the cracks in sidewalks without flinching, a girl he wants to see bloom and emerge wise and victorious.
“I’m going to see you again, aren’t I?” Lydia asks.
Darcy looks up at the window that…well, at the window that is now Mrs. Bennet’s latest meditation room.
He’s always been able to imagine a future with Lizzie. Now, though, it’s not just the thought of her in bed, of the two of them traipsing around Europe. Now, a future with Lizzie is something that’s even better than two people in love. It’s that night when Lizzie has to work late, and so he takes Lydia and Gigi out for karaoke. It’s the day when Bing and Jane come with them to Tahoe (in summer, for Bing’s sake). It’s an afternoon talking about bonsais with Mr. Bennet. He wants that—wants that love, that connection—almost as much as he wants Lizzie.
“I hope so,” he responds. “I fervently hope so.”
“Oh my God.” She punches his arm. “What kind of nerd uses ‘fervently’ in every day conversation? Just give me your number so I can text you what Lizzie says about you.”
He turns and raises an eyebrow at her. “Beware, Lydia,” he says. “It’s catching. You might want to reconsider my offer of sock slides.” But as he speaks, he takes one of his cards from his wallet and hands it to her.
“Seriously, your card?” She laughs. But she hugs him again—quick, casual—and then turns to go into the house.
#
He sends flowers.
Not to Lizzie. As much as he wants to send Lizzie a bouquet or twenty, the two of them are simply not there yet. They might never be there. He still has to ask her out on a date, and anything more from him would feel intrusive. Right now, Lizzie needs to spend time with her sister, and he doesn’t want to get between them.
Instead, he sends Lydia two dozen yellow roses, flowers the color of friendship.
He doesn’t include a card, but he does attach a pair of socks—Smartwool socks, vibrantly colored in a crazy pattern of purples and yellows and greens.