Designer Dreams, Designer Shades

I awoke to a faint tapping on my window. My stomach flipped. Darcy only came through my window when… “Darcy?” I whispered, opening my window. Of course she would choose tonight of all nights to come through my window. It was raining cats and motherfucking dogs out there. “Shit! Darcy, come on!” I hurriedly pulled her inside, slamming my window shut.

I held her close, not caring that she was soaked and getting my clothes wet, too. We stood in silence for a few minutes. I just wanted to make sure my parents wouldn’t wake up. “Drew?” Darcy croaked.

I let go of her to grab my towel off the bathroom towel rack and wrap her up in it. Darcy was shivering hard, wearing only jean shorts and a plain gray v-neck. It seemed like she walked barefoot all the way here from her house, and that wasn’t a very short distance at all. I turned on my bedside lamp. Darcy instantly hung her head, shielding her face from my view with the towel. “Darcy…?”

“He came home really drunk,” she choked out, shaking not just from the cold now. “He just…a b-beer bottle, and…”

I gently tilted her face up by her chin, grimacing at the swelling bruise on her left cheekbone. “Wait here, I’m gonna get you some ice. Go to my closet and help yourself to some dry clothes, alright, dollface?” I murmured, comfortingly rubbing her back.

Darcy nodded, scuttling over to my closet. I went downstairs, quietly getting some ice from the freezer and placing it in a plastic bag. I wish Darcy would just come and live with us already. Why she put up with her dad’s shit was a mystery to me, but the hitting started when her mom left them to move to Switzerland with her boyfriend. Her mom had been cheating on her dad for almost a whole year. It was no use telling Darcy to leave him. She wouldn’t. It’s not like she was a masochist…I think the fact that he was the only family she had left was what kept her with him.

I went back up to my room to find Darcy on the floor of my closet, wearing one of my shirts and a pair of my basketball shorts. She had hung my towel back on the rack and was hugging her legs to her chest, rocking back and forth on her heels. “Here, Darce,” I said as I sat down on the floor with her, handing her the bag of ice. Darcy pressed it to her face and we sat there in silence for a while.

“I’m tired,” Darcy muttered after a while, leaning onto me. I helped her onto my bed, preparing to sleep on the floor, but she wouldn’t have any of that. Whenever Darcy came to me, running from her father, we always slept in my bed together. At least that way she didn’t feel alone.

And I hoped she felt that at least one person in this small town loved her.


“Great to have you home, Chris!” Harley greeted me, hugging me tightly.

I smiled, hugging my sister and snapping out of my flashback. I only thought of that night with Darcy because the weather today was the same – rainy and stormy as fuck. “It’s great to be home, Harley.” I was lucky this year. I’d get to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years with my family. I haven’t done that in three years now. And not just with my family…with my girlfriend, Macy Cavendish.

Girlfriend? Oh, who am I kidding?

Everyone knows I settled for Macy when Darcy left.

“Oh, Chris!” My mother exclaimed, getting up from the dining room table. “How was your flight, dear? Goodness, how many tattoos do you have now? What are those contraptions in your ears?” We spent the rest of dinner catching up. At least, Mom and Harley did. They actually made an effort to talk to me. Dad just sat there, eating and nodding every now and then to pretend he was listening. But that was expected.

He was proud that I’d done something with myself, I knew that much. I mean, come on, who’s been paying Harley’s way through college? Not him. He just wasn’t a fan of my drug use.

After dinner, Macy called because she heard I was back home. We’d been dating for a few months now. She was a little older than me, but that didn’t bother me, though I knew it bothered her a great deal. We planned on a date tomorrow, but I think she was more excited to see me than I was to see her.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Macy. I just wanted a few days to myself to chill, though. I decided to head out to see the town a bit. I always did this when I first came home, like I wanted to make sure nothing had changed. But a few things always did.

First stop. I went into The Grind and out of the rain. This place hadn’t changed too much. It had some nicer furniture, though, and less people right now. I guess the college kids were busy studying their asses off.

One time, Harley wanted me to help her with a college research paper. It had to be, like, thirty pages long… and the whole thing was mostly quotes from journals and articles that she found in the library or online. Thirty pages of ridiculousness.

I really don’t understand the point of research papers. They’re just testing how well you can find things. Seriously, why do you need to be so good at finding things that other people said? I think it’s more important to come up with your own ideas, to put your own thoughts down on paper. Sure, they may be influenced by other people, and someone may already have had the same idea as you, but that’s so much better than just looking up something and regurgitating it like a damn machine...

The barista was paying special attention to a pretty girl sitting at the counter. I sat down at the counter, too, patiently waiting for him to be done. He was sweet talking her while he made her the drink she ordered, and she was flirting back, but I learned much from Macy. This girl’s tone made it obvious she wasn’t interested and was flirting with him out of pity.

She looked like she was too good for him, anyways. Every guy in here, myself included, was staring at her. She certainly didn’t look like a mid west girl, with her strappy heels, backless white dress, long, ebony locks of hair, tanned skin, and purple Gucci purse. And she was alone? Damn, that’s just asking for trouble right there.

I sighed loudly, which caught the barista’s attention. “Oh, I’ll be right with you, sir,” he said quickly, putting her mug down in front of her. “Here’s your chai latte to go, miss…?”

“Vivienne,” the girl said as she grabbed her drink, getting off the bar stool and onto her feet.

She hated that name, but that’s what she always ordered when she came here, a chai latte. That face was too familiar. Granted, it was thinner and more tired than I remembered, but…I couldn’t help it, I had to try. “Darcy?” I said aloud, getting to my feet.

That stopped her right in her tracks, and she stared at me with wide eyes. “Drew?”

I couldn’t say anything…but that was probably because I had nothing nice to say to her, and you know what they say – if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. “You’re…different,” I managed to say civilly enough. I’m not going to deny it. I hated Darcy when she left, and I hate her still. Darcy bit her lip and walked past me, completely ignoring me. “Leaving with no goodbyes again?” I sneered.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think you know me,” Darcy said coldly, pulling a small umbrella out of her purse and exiting the building. And she was right. I didn’t know her.

But I loved who she used to be.