The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet (34 page)

Of course, I didn’t say that out loud, but Darcy noticed, anyway.

“Don’t worry,” Darcy told me. “It’s mostly downhill from here.”

“Oh, thank God,” Gigi said between breaths as she came up behind us. “My coach is going to be so pissed when she finds out how winded I am. Still . . . it’s awfully
pretty.”

The street was really lovely, with switchbacks to make it so the incline was less harrowing for cars, the road paved in red brick and greenery filling in the spaces in between. Plus the view
from the top down to Coit Tower was amazing.

“Yes, it is,” Darcy agreed.

“I take it you guys don’t come here that often.”

“Not really, no,” Darcy said. “I suppose living so close to well-known places make them less special. No one thinks to be a tourist in their hometown.”

“True,” I said. “I live a half hour away from the beach and haven’t been in . . . months.”

He considered that. “I haven’t been to the Marina in years.”

“Well,” I said, “let’s not keep you two apart any longer.”

“Hold on,” Gigi called out, and we began our steep descent. “I wanted to take a picture of you on top of a hill!” Then, exhausted . . . “Oh, screw it. I’ll
take it at the bottom, when we’ve conquered it.”

After that, we made our way to the Marina. We stopped at the fresh seafood market at Fisherman’s Wharf, then went and looked out at the water. On a clear day like this, the Golden Gate was
stunning. As were the tall ships in the harbor, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz (although unpleasant memories of a bad walrus joke marred its view). Gigi insisted on stopping and taking pictures, while
Darcy insisted on indulging each of our whims. Gigi wanted to get hot chocolate at the Ghirardelli factory. Darcy stood in line, while we sat and rested our feet. I wanted to go down on the pier to
see the sea lions. Done.

“Okay, you didn’t warn me about the smell,” I said once we approached Pier 39, which was no longer able to house boats, as the sea lions had invoked squatters’ rights and
taken over the whole thing. I whipped out my camera and took a few pictures. Luckily, pictures don’t smell.

“Would it have stopped you?” Darcy replied over the sea lions’ barking.

“No, but . . . forewarned is forearmed.” I smiled at him. “So, do you still miss the Marina?”

“Actually, I do. I don’t make as much use of the city as I should. Perhaps I’ll make an effort to spend more time here.” Just then, another tourist shouldered us to get a
better view of the odiferous adorableness sunbathing before us.

“But perhaps when it’s less crowded,” I added.

Just then, another tourist bumped into us, and I dropped my phone. Not in the water, luckily, but hard on the dock, and in the center of a busy tourist thoroughfare.

“I’ll get it,” Darcy said, and ducked into the fray to retrieve my phone. He grabbed it and held it out to me.

“Here you go. No worse for wear, I think.”

When I reached out and took the phone from him, my finger brushed his. And I
felt
it. A warm shock spreading from the point of contact up my hand. Not electric, but more of a tingly
comfort. Easy. And right.

My eyes flew up and met his—and I could tell he felt something, too.

I quickly took my phone and shoved it in my pocket.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

“My pleasure,” he replied in a similar mumble.

“William! Lizzie!” Gigi called out once we’d left the dock (she had stayed behind, avoiding the smells). “Come check out this fountain!”

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly. The shadows were growing long and so we headed back on foot toward my place. Along the way, Darcy would point out something interesting here and there,
and more than once I caught Gigi taking a surreptitious photo of us. She’d make a terrible paparazzo or private detective.

It was dusk when we finally got back to my apartment building. At the door Gigi gave me a big hug, and Darcy solemnly handed over my bag of Chinatown goodies he’d been lugging all day, and
then . . . shook my hand.

But that warm, comforting shock from before wasn’t a fluke. It was still there.

And then we all stood there for a moment, not wanting the afternoon to be at an end.

“Thank you,” I said. “The tour was indeed epic.”

Darcy suppressed a smile. “You had a good time?”

“The best.”

Once I got upstairs, I couldn’t stop grinning. And it took me a little while to figure out why.

It was Darcy.

He was so different. He was attentive, and with his sister around, he’s much lighter. I’ve known ever since the letter that my first impression of him was inaccurate, but I
hadn’t really been thinking of him as . . . as a
guy
. Until today.

And he
is
a guy. A smart, handsome, kind of shy one, who just took me around to all the tourist traps in the city on what has to be one of his rare days off.

Even after everything I’ve said about him, he still wanted to spend the day with me. He went very far out of the way to make me feel special. And that in and of itself makes me feel
special.

But as I was contemplating Darcy, and reheating noodles for dinner, I got a phone call.

“Lizzie!” Gigi’s voice was almost drowned out by the crowd noise and singing I heard in the background. “I know we just spent the day together, but I’m inviting you
to impromptu karaoke! We’re less than two blocks from you.”

“We?” I asked.

“Fitz and Brandon and me . . .” The connection became a little garbled, but I managed to make out, “William had to catch up on paperwork.”

“Oh.” I was strangely (or not strangely?) disappointed.

“Come on! Sing one show tune with me!” she pleaded. “Fitz wants to ask you all about the day and is willing to ply you with mixed drinks for it. He doesn’t believe me
when I say you had a good time.”

I looked at the clock. “Okay,” I decided. “One song and drink.”

Gigi squealed and gave me the address.

I have to admit, I’m happy for the distraction. As great as today was, it was also altering. The fact that Darcy wouldn’t be there meant that I could relax.

I’m relieved by it.

And yet, I’m not.

I find myself wanting to see him again. Only hours after he dropped me at my door.

Wow. Do I . . . do I
like
William Darcy?

No. No, Lizzie, don’t go that far. Pull up on the reins of your imagination.

But I know I
could
like William Darcy. Which is strange enough.

Ode to a Broken Phone

I remember when we first met. You so shiny, so new, so rectangular.

Y
ou promised the world to me.

A world of Internet and email, cat memes and Angry Birds.

Alas, I would always root for the pigs.

It was beautiful, the years we grew together,

the phone cases I clothed you in,

the pictures and videos we shot, then deleted.

You could incriminate me, yet you never did.

The notices, the texts, the dings and pings.

All of life’s moments, big and small, we shared.

But our time has come to a sad end.

Gravity has parted us.

One fall on the dock left you seemingly fine, and yet.

And yet.

It began with a garbled connection. The decline.

Miss calls, dropped texts. The downfall.

Something in your insides scrambled, something no longer wired right.

“Don’t worry!

Y
ou will be going to a good home.

A farm upstate, with an open field that

will never allow for hard landings.”

But I lie to both of us.

I would say you are irreplaceable, but let’s face it.

W
e are in the hi-tech capital of the world,

and I can get a new phone as easily as a cup of coffee.

Good-bye, broken phone.

T
he time we shared has been so sweet.

And I consider your last act a kindness,

sacrificing yourself so two pairs of fingers could meet.

I will miss you—

the small scratch at your bottom left corner,

the volume button that won’t go down.

Good night, sweet phone. Good night.

I’m sitting on a plane bound for home. They’ve made us turn off all electronic devices and I can no longer keep calling Lydia. Although she’s not answering.
Twenty-four hours ago, home was the last thing on my mind. Hell, four hours ago, for a brief moment I thought I might be spending tonight at the theater in the company of someone who could be
special. But that was before I got the call.

My phone had been on the fritz ever since I dropped it at the pier. The outside seemed fine, but calls quickly became fuzzy, then the type pad wouldn’t work properly, and finally it just
wouldn’t turn on. I got a new one, and while I was offline waiting for it to activate and download my settings, the world decided to implode.

“Charlotte?” I said, immediately picking up the phone. “What’s wrong?”

Something had to be wrong. The minute my phone turned on I could see that she’d called me seven times in the last hour.

“Oh, thank God, Lizzie.” She exhaled in relief. “Where have you been?”

“My phone died and I got a new one,” I tried, but she just cut me off.

“It doesn’t matter—Lizzie, get on the Internet. There’s a website.”

“A website of what?”

“They say they have a tape of Lydia. A sex tape.”

“A . . . a sex tape?” I couldn’t believe it. There was no way Lydia would make a sex tape—but, would she?

“The website is asking for subscriptions, and they have a countdown clock, and . . . Lizzie, it’s with George. They’ve been dating,” Charlotte said.

“George. George
Wickham
?”

And that was when I knew it was real. A sex tape was not beyond the reaches of George’s twisted imagination. And since he could talk an Eskimo into buying ice, I have no doubt he could
talk Lydia into this.

“I’m forwarding the link. I think they’re trading on her fame. They call her ‘YouTube Star Lydia Bennet,’ ” Charlotte was saying. “I tried calling Lydia
when I couldn’t get through to you, but she didn’t pick up. Lizzie, do you have any idea what’s going on? Do your parents know?”

“No,” I said. But I needed to find out. “No, I’m coming home. I’m coming home right now.”

I hung up and just stared at my phone. Like a bomb about to go off—but it had already exploded.

“Lizzie, what is it?” Darcy asked, beside me.

Yes, because Darcy had been witness to the entire exchange. He’d come into my office to ask me if I wanted to go to the theater that night.

With him. On a date.

After I hung up the phone with Charlotte, the rest is kind of a blur. Except for Darcy. He made me tell him what was going on. He asked me to let him help. But as I opened up that website on my
phone, its garish, sparkly text and its picture of Lydia and George
smiling
at each other in bed, I knew there was nothing he could do. And the only thing I could do now was try to talk
some sense into Lydia.

Darcy insisted on putting me on a plane immediately, getting me the first flight out. Which is how I got to here. Sitting on the runway at SFO, unable to keep calling Lydia or Jane (I tried her
once but she doesn’t seem to be picking up, either—we Bennet sisters chose a
really
bad day to simultaneously go offline). Darcy put me into his car and instructed his driver
to take me back to the apartment, where I packed up my things in ten minutes before running back out to the car again to make my flight.

I just can’t believe Lydia would do this. That she would make a sex tape, and let George release it online. For what? For money? There’s no amount of money in the world worth letting
something that personal exist in the open, and forever.

And I’m at fault for this. I wasn’t holding the camera, but I sure as hell didn’t warn her about George. If I hadn’t been so stupid and stubborn for the past month and
actually
talked
to my sister, I might have seen this coming and been able to stop her.

But how, and why, would George go after Lydia?

She doesn’t have anything, other than a marginal bit of recognition due to the videos—hers and mine.

And that’s my fault, too.

I knew Lydia had been making videos while I was away. Viewers had been tweeting me, imploring me to watch them, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I thought it would just be Lydia being
Lydia, blithely irresponsible and floating from one crisis to the next.

I never thought she would ever do anything like this.

I tried to watch one of her videos with George while I was in the airport lounge, waiting to board. But once his smarmy face popped up I couldn’t continue. I just wanted to break through
the screen and strangle him. Everything he said was a line. A self-deprecating ploy. My insides were screaming at Lydia, asking why couldn’t she see it?

But then again, I hadn’t seen it at first, either.

I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home. I don’t know what I’m going to say when I see Lydia.

I just know I need to see her.

I don’t even know where to start.

As bad as it was thinking that Lydia and George made a sex tape and released it, the reality is actually ten times worse.

My presumption that Lydia had known about the website—had signed off on it—was terribly, terribly wrong. If she had known, as disturbing as that would be, at least she would have had
some control. Perhaps we would have been able to talk her out of releasing the video when the countdown expires. Which is in about twelve days. God, we only have twelve days to solve this.