Chapter
Forty-six
The
end of this part of the story…
Paige was both
illuminated and annoyed when she finished reading the letter.
“In another world, we could have been
friends…” Paige sighed regretfully. She really did look sweet that afternoon
with her hair done just so. She’d taken all the right advice from her older
sister Shiloh by then, I’m sure. I hope I look as cool as her when I’m a
junior.
“Oh, Darcy’s so arrogant and conceited!”
Paige added, “never date those kinds of men,” she warned me.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” I assured her.
We
were waiting for a ride that afternoon and Paige was giving me a lift, so we
took the alternate exit – the one we hardly ever use.
Little did Darcy know. He’d delayed his
flight by a few hours and was waiting at the other entrance.
Humbled,
he waited for Paige. Paige had turned her cell off – she was so over
socializing.
Leaning on his car that afternoon, he
waited some more.
For the longest time.
But Paige never appeared. Mackenzie and
Ryan convinced him to go with them to LAX. He took Paige’s absence as a sign.
If Paige had raced back just a second
earlier to get her purse, she might have seen him standing in the entrance to
the car park, leaning on his car like the coolest boy in school.
But she didn’t.
Darcy and Paige took these absences as a
sign that they would never meet again.
Perhaps I should have been more humble,
Darcy thought as he pulled on his seat belt.
Perhaps
I should have shown more grace under fire, Paige Elizabeth Bennet wondered,
after we’d walked across the field with me to meet Shiloh. Normally she took
the car park but today, she’d changed her path to take a short cut normally
reserved for seniors. Well, she was nearly there. Paige hated to admit it but
senior year would never be the same without the hotness.
“Darcy and I are never going to see each
other again,” she said, aloud, as if no one was listening, except me.
Because how wrong was Paige? I
wrote that afternoon. Honey and I were settled on the living room sofa, writing
the notes that completed the first part of Darcy and Paige’s high school story…
“I suppose it was just never meant to
be,” she sighed, “Oh,
you’re too young to understand , Wednesday,” Paige added, as she shared the details
of the letter with Shiloh , and Honey read what was discarded.
“After all,” Honey said, “Princesses have no secrets.”
