The heavy gray skies had threatened rain all day, mirroring Darcy's mood the day after her confrontation with Gina. She had one eye on Charlie and the other always searching for Gina.

When she did appear, which was rare and only when least expected, she was always with Eli. The look he gave Darcy darkened with each accidental encounter. She had given up entirely on making him even look her way during English. They sat side by side as if the other person did not exist.

The rain let loose by the time the final bell of the day rang and made up for its lost time by dumping everything it had in store in a torrential downpour. Darcy forgot about Charlie's study date with Jamie until he followed Charlie into the back seat of Darcy's car, both of them laughing from running through the parking lot, his jacket their only shelter from the storm.

Playing chauffeur for the day, Darcy left them to themselves in the backseat and headed for home.

Her thoughts turned dark as the sky, her conscious mind wondering if her dark mood was a subconscious response to the rain and the dark, the early spring showers, the time of year sneaking up on the anniversary of her mother's death.

Had she died in rain just like this? Or had the day of her car accident been clear, bright? Darcy didn't linger on that thought for too long. She had given up trying to find out exactly how her mother had died and what the circumstances had been when her dad's mood turned dark every time she brought it up. She only saw him twice a year. The information wasn't worth watching him slip away for the rest of his visit.

She could have easily asked her Aunt Lois but by the time she had figured that out, Darcy didn't care anymore. She had been two. She didn't remember her mother. Her Aunt Loos had been enough of a mother figure for her. Her father, on the other,... well, he was doing his best. At least, that's what Darcy told herself.

The rain had eased by the time Darcy pulled into their driveway and brought the car to a stop. She spotted Jamie's look of confusion as he watched her climb out of the car as well and head for the front steps.

"Are you studying with us, Darcy?" He asked.

Darcy found a familiar expression of bewilderment on his face. Charlie hadn't gotten far enough into her relationship with him to break down their living situation. Darcy had asked her to keep it quiet until need be. Apparently, this was need be.

"Darcy lives with us. She's my sister," Charlie replied.

In response to Jamie's deepening look of confused as he looked from Charlie's warm, soft expression, to Darcy's cold hard exterior, Darcy clarified, "God-sister."

Jamie nodded. Mystery solved.

Lois was already home when they walked in. Jamie was introduced, inquiries were made about school days, Charlie grabbed Jamie's hand and led him off to the library to study.

Lois returned to her work and her computer where she had left them, placing her glasses back on the tip of her nose from where she had let them hang from their chain around her neck. Darcy joined her and they dove into gallery work, Darcy catching Lois up on the applicants she had weeded out the day before, Lois running through the list of things accomplished so far for their "Burgeoning Artists" exhibit, set to open the beginning of June.

The two of them talked business over the sounds of dinner being made as Lois took command of the kitchen. At some point, Carson returned from wherever he had gone after school and Uncle Henry came home from work.

The rain had taken up a steady beat pounding against the windows of the kitchen. The sky was dark for early March at six in the evening, the moon nowhere to be found in the mists of the rain clouds.

"Kids! Dinner!" Lois yelled, just as the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it!" Darcy cried over her shoulder. She had already jumped from her barstool before considering who might have been ringing their doorbell at dinner time in weather like this.

It was her own fault for not considering the possibility and so had only herself to blame when she stood frozen in the doorway, Eli standing underneath the overhang, out of the rain, on the other side of the door.

"Darcy."

It was the first time he had said her name in two weeks, let alone looked her in the eye. The usual glare was replaced by a look of complete confusion like Jamie had worn earlier but times ten.

"Eli. What are you doing here?"

It was a stupid question. It was raining buckets, the nearest bus stop was a half-mile walk away and Eli's family's van was parked out in the driveway. Darcy could just make out the 'Bennett Fresh' logo on the side of the van in the dark.

"I'm here to pick up Jamie."

"Darcy, who is it? Hi! Who's this?"

Darcy turned to where her aunt had paused in the foyer, a casserole dish hot in her hands, protected by oven mitts.

"Jamie's brother is here to pick him up," Darcy answered

"Oh! We thought Jamie was staying for dinner. I made enough. Actually, I made enough for you too if you'd like to join us."

Both Darcy and Eli started protesting at the same time but Lois shut them up with the same piercing look.

"Please. Eli. Join us."

"My, um, my little brother's in the car. I should-"

"He can come too! Call him in. And hurry. We don't want the front hall getting soaked."

Darcy tried giving Eli an apologetic look but he had remembered himself and was avoiding her eyes again. He put his fingers to his lips and whistled a high-pitched cry. A head popped into view in the passenger seat of his family van. Eli waved the head in. In ten seconds, a smaller, scrawnier version of Eli was pushing past Darcy to get inside out of the rain.

"Kit. Manners!" Eli called after his younger brother. Darcy followed them both to the dining room, leaving the rain to carry on.

Carson and Uncle Henry were carrying two additional chairs to the table and Charlie and Jamie were setting two extra spots when Darcy reached the dining room. The food smelled delicious and the warm glow of candlelight helped Darcy put aside the thought that she was about to sit down and eat a meal with Eli. Something she would have never dreamed was possible.

He sat directly across from her, never looking in her direction. He sat straight, stiff, awkward. But Uncle Henry was quick with the jokes and Lois joined in with funny stories from the gallery that soon enough, a relaxed energy had settled among everyone seated at the table.

Darcy even found Eli smiling, laughing, his eyes glowing in the candlelight.

She refused to breathe, to move, to fidget. If she did, he might remember that she was there and the small smile would fade, the low, quiet laugh disappear.

And the look Gina herself had sewn onto his face would return.

She didn't go unnoticed for too long. Henry pulled her out of her frozen state by calling her name.

"I got a call from the arena this morning, Darcy."

Darcy didn't realize she was staring at Eli until she had to pull her eyes away to meet her uncle's.

"Yeah?"

"The Wild Wallflowers are performing in a few weeks. They asked if we wanted our usual box."

Now Darcy had a new reason to freeze, a different reason for her heart to speed up. Her uncle laughed at the frozen wide-eyed look stuck on her face.

"I thought you'd be excited."

"The Wild Wallflowers? Eli, that's that girl band you like, right?"

Kit was snickering at his own private joke, almost falling out of his seat with the nudge Eli gave him.

"Kit, -"

Before his admonishment could meet his younger brother's ears, Lois spoke.

"Are you a fan, Eli? If so, you and your brothers are more than welcome to join us. We have plenty of run in the box."

Lois's smile was sweet and disarming but Darcy's stomach was in knots, the food she had just ingested considering relocation. Her wide-eyed look of excitement was quickly turning to panic.

"That would be awesome, Mom. Jamie, you guys have to come. The Wild Wallflowers are amazing live. Right, Darcy?" Charlie glanced her way but her attention was stolen by Jamie.

"That would be awesome, to be able to see them. Eli's been a fan for a while. We couldn't get tickets last time they came through with Reeve Keller. Tickets were too expensive. And sold out."

"Well, then. It's settled. You're all coming with us."

Henry was beaming as if he had just solved world hunger. Darcy's brain was still trying to catch up to the thought of having to spend another evening in the presence of both Eli and her family.

"You can count me out. I can't stand The Wild Wallflowers. All that screaming and angst? Like, yeah, I get it, you're angry. Get over yourself."

Eli rolled his eyes up to the ceiling in silence as Kit blabbered on. Darcy met Carson's eyes across the table and found him amused at the idiocy of this additional guest of theirs.

To change the subject, and to save Darcy from going into cardiac arrest, Carson leaned forward and asked, "So, Darcy. How's our boy George doing?"

Darcy could breathe again as she gave her family an update on her twin brother. Now it was her who was avoiding Eli's eyes.

When dinner ended, Darcy was the first one up, claiming clean-up duty. To her surprise, Eli offered to help. He was already stacking dishes and clearing them away from the table by the time Darcy realized what was going on.

He took position in front of the sink, filling it with warm soapy water, leaving Darcy to dry and put away. It made sense. She lived here. She would know where things went.

Everyone else cleared the table and soon enough it was just the two of them in the kitchen. Darcy could hear through the high-arched entryway into the kitchen the low voices of Charlie and Jamie, and surprisingly, Kit and Carson. Well, mainly Kit but she had to assume he was talking to someone and not just to himself. She laughed to herself at the thought of Carson's look in response to the words spewing from Kit's mouth.

"What?" Eli asked.

"What?" Darcy responded, shocked out of her amusement.

"You laughed."

Darcy focused extra hard on the plate she was drying to cover up for the heat in her cheeks. She hadn't realized that she had laughed audibly.

"I hope it's cool, you know, about the concert," Eli tried again.

"Of course it's cool. Why wouldn't it be? My aunt invited you. You're more than welcome to come."

Darcy said all of this in her best cool, even tone as she stared at the dishes in her hand, wiping them two times more than they needed.

The conversation lulled. Tension settled between them and Darcy felt herself growing angry. Angry at Eli for liking the same band she did, for wanting to take her aunt up on her offer, at Gina for surely spinning some sort of sob story that kept that glare of contempt just within reach of Eli's reach.

"So," Darcy said, her words coming out crisp and clipped. "Wickham seems to be making friends."

Eli's paused in the water, a second-long hesitation before he pulled the plug and let the water drain.

"Yeah. She is."

Darcy bit her tongue from replying how she would have loved to.

"She makes friends easily enough. It's keeping them, that's where she has trouble."

Darcy let out a huff of frustration instead. Eli shook off the excess water from his hands harder than necessary, Darcy thought, and leaned against the counter, drying them, glaring at Darcy.

"What's your problem with Gina, anyway?" He finally asked. The glare was back and Darcy had to applaud it for its depth of disdain. He could teach her a thing or two.

"You'll have to be more specific."

This she could do. Contempt, disdain, she could do. Not small smiles and laughter with her family.

"There's only one Gina who goes to our school," Eli retorted.

"No, I meant you'll have to be specific about which problem I have with Gina. There are several."

They stared at each other in stony silence. Darcy only realized that the voices of Jamie and Charlie had gotten closer. She could look just past Eli's shoulder and see them entering the front hallway, talking to each other, Charlie's heart torn from her chest and sewed to her sleeve with the way she looked at Jamie, Jamie's stare focusing on his shoes in return.

Gina's promise came to mind and Darcy's anger was quenched.

"But none of them are your business."

Darcy returned to putting away the dishes.

Eli must have spotted Charlie and Jamie as well because he dropped his volume several notches and closed the space between them to talk.

"What are you even doing here? Did you come over here to spy on them while they study? He likes her, okay? What's the big deal? Is he not good enough for your standards? You should just go home and leave them be."

"I don't need to go anywhere. I live here."

The look of confusion was back and Eli's look of contempt had gotten smacked right off his face. A small victory, in Darcy's book.

"I have since I was two. So no, I won't be leaving any time soon. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think it's time you and your brothers went home."

Darcy glided out of the kitchen, the only evidence of her frustration the pain in her palm, from where her fingernails were digging into her skin.

Charlie and Jamie had been slowly making their way to the front door, and Carson had moved there too, in hopes that Kit would follow and take the hint that it was time to leave and therefore stop talking.

"Thanks for dinner," Eli said, taking his time following Darcy out of the kitchen.

He stopped at the door, his hand on the knob, ready to leave.

"I was telling Carson you guys should totally throw a party here. This place is huge!"

Kit's eyes bulged as his eyes followed the grand staircase to the two-story ceilings overhead.

"I believe his exact words were, 'A rager would be all the rage, dude.'"

Carson winked at Darcy and she found herself laughing at the sound of 'rager' and 'dude' coming out of Carson's mouth.

Eli's look darkened as he grabbed his little brother by the arm and got him moving for the exit.

"They're not throwing a party here, Kit."

"I mean, we could." Charlie looked from Eli to Jamie to Carson, hope in her eyes. "That could be fun." No one was jumping to agree with her except Jamie. And Kit, of course.

"Sounds fun," Jamie said.

"Totally! I can help with the guest list!" Kit offered. "I know all the cool people at school. Oh, and Gina could come! She's the coolest."

"Kit, we're leaving."

Without another word, Eli had his younger brother by the arm and was dragging him out into the rain. Jamie lingered by the door to say a quiet good night to Charlie. He didn't do anything else as Carson and Darcy were two steps away glaring at him. He blushed and looked away, following his brothers into the rain.

"Drive safe!" Carson called after them, a smirk on his lips.

He leaned in so only Darcy could hear and whispered, "That Kit kid is a certified idiot."

Darcy tried laughing but she had caught Eli's expression as he climbed in. He didn't look back, didn't even glance. He put the van in drive and drove off as fast as was possibly safe, away from her.

A/N:

The tension. It thickens.

Also! Shout out to anyone who recognized the band Wild Wallflowers!!!

If you didn't, they made a small cameo in my book, Five Years Of Fame. And I started a book about them a few years ago and then never finished it.

And never will. Forgive me. To make up for that fact, here's your meme.