If his new addiction was phone calls to Charlotte, he could live with that. It was certainly less destructive than drinking or sleeping around, and if it helped him, helped them get back together, he was frankly all for it.
They spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing, until their eyes drooped and reluctantly they said good-bye, promising to talk again.
“Jane, I just wanted to tell you that you got another dozen roses,” Mrs. Bennet sounded delighted over the phone.
“Oh?”
“Yes, these are pale pink. I guess the florist ran out of white ones.” She laughed at her own joke. “They’re really pretty. Exactly the color your hair used to be.”
Jane felt a tightness in her chest. “Could you read the card to me?”
“Certainly, dear; it says, ‘Please call me,’ and there’s a phone number.” Her mother recited the digits. “Hmmm, funny, no name again. Do you recognize the number, Jane?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Are you okay, Janie?”
“Yes, I just have to go, Mom.”
“You take care, Janie dear. Bye now.”
“Bye, Mom,” Jane replied automatically and clicked off the phone. The number was one she would never forget: Charles’s cell phone. She bit her lip, fighting back tears. It was supposed to be getting easier, not harder. Yet every day she found herself missing him more and more. She seemed to be on the verge of tears all the time, and last night a nightmare, in which Charles rejected her, woke her up and left her in a panic. In truth, she hadn’t been able to relax all day while she waited to see if this day’s flowers would arrive.
Now she knew. The flowers had come, but with what? A request? A command? Jane knew the pink roses had been no accident. She knew Charles picked them deliberately to match her hair color from the night they first met. He was going back, trying to start over and make it right.
Without her knowing quite how it happened, the phone was at her ear again and it was ringing, although Jane could not remember dialing. “Jane?” a desperate voice answered.
“Charles?” she choked out.
“Jane! Oh God, Jane, oh my God! Did you get my flowers?” He was panting with relief.
“I got the message,” Jane said with a weak watery smile. She couldn’t believe how much she missed his voice, or how good it made her feel to hear it again. “You asked me to call?”
“Jane,” Charles breathed. “Jane, could I please, please come and talk to you? Please. I need to try to explain what happened.” He paused. “Jane, I need to see you.”
There was a sharp pain in Jane’s chest and tears were falling down her face unnoticed. “Okay,” she whispered.
“I’ll come right now!”
“No!” Jane exclaimed. “No, you can’t. I’m at my aunt and uncle’s, and now would not be a good time.”
“Tell me when.”
“Could you come tomorrow?” she asked softly.
“Yes, I’ll come anytime, angel.” She could hear the desperation in his voice. “Tell me where you are.”
The Gardiners lived in Kent Cliffs, a small community about forty minutes from the Bennets. Jane gave him directions and listened as he read them back. “I’ll be there, first thing tomorrow,” Charles said soulfully. “How have you been?”
Jane bit back her response. She wanted to tell Charles that she had been horrible and let him comfort her, but she couldn’t. Not yet.
Instead she ignored his question and just said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and hung up.
Elizabeth found her, crying helplessly on her bed. “Jane, what happened?”
Jane tearfully explained everything, from the flowers to the phone call. Elizabeth’s heart went out to her sister. Jane was trapped in a world of hurt, surrounded by thorns on all sides with no clear path to get free. Elizabeth understood exactly how she felt. Her own way was blocked with pain too, so she focused instead on Jane.
“Jane, you have to give him a chance. Listen to him. Let him explain what happened.” Elizabeth was adamant. She knew this was the result of a misunderstanding and it hurt her to see Jane in so much pain. “Please do it for me, sweetheart. You know he loves you. He screwed up, but he’s very sorry.”
Jane nodded, her faced closed off. “I’ll try, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth left Jane alone and went to the room she was using. She checked her email and was disappointed to find nothing from Darcy. She wasn’t sure if this was a bad sign, or merely a glitch in the system. She lay down in the darkness and wondered where he was and what he was doing.
Darcy sat with his mother’s guitar in his lap. He ignored the sheet music on the stand before him; it was memorized a long time ago. His fingers flew lightly over the nylon strings, his thoughts focused on his task.
His concentration was not broken by the arrival of his sister. He nodded to Georgiana as he continued playing, until the movement was finished and he turned the CD player off with the remote sitting on the floor beside him.
Then he looked to her, waiting. The young woman asked, “Got a moment?”
“I’m playing.”
“I know,” she replied gently, biting her lip. “But I’m only asking for a few minutes.”
Darcy frowned. He was caught and he knew it. He motioned to the nearby chair and waited. He had tried to hide his mood from Georgiana, but he had clearly been unsuccessful. So instead he had taken to dodging her for the past few days. Now that had failed as well.
“Will, what’s going on?” Georgiana asked softly.
“What do you mean?”
Georgiana took a deep breath, screwed up her courage, and spoke. “I mean that I left you in New York a week ago today, as happy as a clam, and on Wednesday you drove up here a different person. You’ve been moody and sulking all week.”
“I have not.”
“Will, you’re listening to U2!” she told him, gently contradicting him. “If I hear ‘With or Without You’ one more time, I’m going to snap the CD in half.”
Darcy was forced to smile slightly. It was bizarre what his sister gauged to be a sign of his depression, but he couldn’t deny it.
“Will, what happened on Tuesday? Did something happen at the awards? I watched them and you were great.”
Darcy sighed. “Did you see the pre-show?”
Georgiana nodded, unwilling to interrupt her brother once he started talking.
“Did you see LBS?”
“Yes, they’re the group on tour with you, right?”
Darcy nodded. “The guitarist, Elizabeth…”
Georgiana’s eyes got large and round as she stared at him with dawning comprehension. “You? And her? You’ve been dating?”
Darcy nodded, his jaw tight. Then he forced himself to speak. “Not exactly. It’s kind of hard to date on tour. But we have been together a lot.”
Georgiana smiled, excited at the idea of her dear brother having a girlfriend, then she thought about his behavior for the last week and frowned. “Okay, so you and Elizabeth have been together and getting to know each other. So what happened?”
“The Monday that we came back from Europe, she came to the loft.” Darcy’s voice stumbled a moment as he did some quick mental editing. “The next morning, I told her I loved her and that I never wanted her to leave, and she left.” He shrugged. “I guess she didn’t feel for me what I felt for her.”
Georgiana paled slightly as she realized what Darcy had left out. “Will, your problem is you are very black-and-white in your thinking, and you don’t realize that other people aren’t.”
Darcy looked at her coolly. “And how would you know this?”
“Years of therapy, Will. You pick up stuff after a while.”
Darcy sat back in his chair, his eyes reassessing the little girl who had become an adult before his eyes.
“Okay, let’s look at it this way,” Georgiana continued uncomfortably. “Let’s say I was at school, and I met a guy. Say we were in the same dorm and had some classes together.” She hesitated and licked her lips. “And let’s pretend that after a few months I decided that I like the guy and I go to bed with him.” She wasn’t quite able to make eye contact with him, but her point was so important, she pressed on.