“Have you seen my white leather high tops?” Darren asks.

“Is there anything you haven’t misplaced?” Finn retorts from down the hall in his room.

Spring-cleaning is now in full swing in for Darren and her brother. In their home when it comes to spring-cleaning, they like to nearly completely empty a room in sections to make it easier to see what is necessary to keep and what isn’t so necessary. Most of the unnecessary items include the items received in fan mail. Although Jack and Finn always enjoy getting mail from their fans, a lot of the items they receive become useless and take up precious space.

Luckily, Darren doesn’t have to worry about that. She usually lets her brothers take care of it themselves, but this year Finn is on his own. All Darren really needs to worry about is her room. She’s got most of it done, but now it’s just a matter of what clothes she will keep and continue to wear and which ones she will donate. However, as she’s gone through her closet and drawers, she can’t help but notice some of her favorite articles of clothing, shoes, and accessories are missing.

“Well, I still have my dignity.” She twists her face, not seemingly enjoying her choice in sarcastic replies for that one but continues to go through various boxes of shoes. So far she’s managed to organize most of them back into boxes – she keeps them for that exact purpose, organizing that is. There are a few boxes that are missing pairs of shoes, including her high tops, but she can’t seem to find them amongst the mess of her room.

She finally gives up on looking for her moccasins, throwing that box into the corner next to the other couple boxes that she can’t find shoes for, when her phone rings. Darren picks up the device, checking caller ID first, and puts it between her shoulder and her ear as she starts folding some of her t-shirts.

“Hey, Bee.”

“Hey! I’m bored. Can I come over?” Darren laughs at how Blithe doesn’t beat around the bush.

“Uh, yeah. I guess, but we’re-”

“Great! I’m outside. Let me in, yeah? It’s freezing.” She hangs up.

“-doing our… spring cleaning.” Darren huffs and gets up off the floor. Before she leaves the seconds floor she calls out a warning to Finn that Blithe is here.

She skips steps down the stairs. When she opens the front door, Blithe just walks right in. As if she owns the place, she shrugs off one of the outer layers that is wet from the rain, that has continued to pour for the past three days since Sunday, and kicks off her shoes. But Darren doesn’t complain because this is normal.

“So as I was saying before you so rudely hung up,” Darren jokingly glares at Blithe, “we’re doing our spring cleaning this week. So you get to help me with my room.” Darren smiles innocently at Blithe as she scowls at her. Even still, Blithe agrees to help Darren complete the clean sweep of her room – in exchange for Darren’s boot slippers that Blithe loves. She just doesn’t do this kind of thing without a reward. Darren, who was going to be donating those anyway, agreed to give Blithe her shoes.

With Blithe’s help, a once estimated two hour job only takes them one hour. Much to Blithe’s dismay, Darren’s boot slippers were added to the pile of empty shoeboxes, as they were not found during the clean. So with two girls absolutely pooped from folding and hanging and organizing shoeboxes, they try to come up with a solution to the missing items club.

Most of the rest of the house is eliminated, as Darren’s room is one of the last to be cleaned. Previously, she had thrown anything of hers that she happened to find lying around back into her room. The only part of the house that is left to clean is the garage, but her and Finn are going to work on that tomorrow. Today is all about their personal rooms and that’s it.

“So I ran into Jared the other day,” Darren says as she straightens out the covers on her bed, only to jump on top of them, lying down, after. “You know, Jared Livingston?”

Blithe perks up when she hears the news. “Really?”

“Really. He says hi…”

“And? That’s it?”

“Well, he invited me, and you of course, to this party on Friday down by the river. Says it won’t be a party without us, that everyone will be thrilled to see us.” Darren rolls her eyes as she says this.

“Oh…” Blithe doesn’t press any further. A party wouldn’t be good for either of them, and by the annoyance in Darren’s tone, she can tell Darren declined. “So you and Harry, huh?” Darren smiles, and Blithe knows that is enough to be a silent thank you for changing the subject. “Now, I better be the first to know that Harren is official – if it is official that is. I want to be the first to tweet about it.”

Darren laughs. “Well, ‘Harren’ isn’t official yet, so save your tweet.”

“You said yet! Where does that put you as of now?” Blithe hits Darren excitedly, impatient for the details.

“I don’t know. He asked me to go on a date with him on Saturday.”

Blithe squeals obnoxiously and starts going on about how cute that is and asking for more details that Darren refuses to give for the time being. They go one for a good half hour before they – or at least Blithe that is – runs out of things to say. So they lay in silence for a few moments before Blithe shoots up in a sitting position with a different talking subject. “Hey, do you think that maybe you left your boots at – never mind. That’d be dumb…”

Darren’s eyebrows crease together as she looks up at her friend. “No, go on. What were you going to say?”

Blithe looks down at Darren unsure of whether she should say it or not. Knowing Darren, though, she may as well tell her anyway. “Well, you were with… James for a while and you spent a lot of time at his place. I was thinking that maybe you have a stash of clothes or shoes and stuff at his place?”

Darren sits up, eyes wide. “Crap.”

~

She had somehow convinced Blithe to not go with her on Friday so she can do this on her own, to go to her ex-boyfriend’s apartment and claim back her belongings. Darren wasn’t at all scared of doing this. Almost two full months have passed since the break up, and with the help of Harry, her friends, and her brothers – but mostly Harry – she has been too distracted to even care for James anymore.

So with her black rain boots pulled on, even though it wasn’t actually raining but just wet everywhere, and head held high, she walks up the steps so she is under the awning and out of the rain. She moves up slightly to knocks firmly three times before stepping back a bit. A hollow bang against a distant wall on the inside causes Darren to jump followed by more aggressive noises. Darren folds her eyebrows in and decides to ring the doorbell.

This time the curious thuds have stopped and the sound of light footsteps padding across a tiled floor. The door opens to reveal Parker, whom Darren hadn’t really talked to other than the time he let her in to call James when he was evidently in America. Parker stands there, a light sweat dripping down his bare torso down to the waistband of his low hanging sweatpants that look as though they were just sloppily pulled on.

“Uh, hi. Darren, remember?” Darren says, pointing awkwardly to her face as she asks him if he recalls who she is. Parker just stands there, mouth hanging open, eyes almost panicked. “I, uh…”

“Who’s at the door, babe?” another voice calls from down the hall. It’s a voice that Darren knows all too well, and she can’t decide if she’s just hearing things or if he really just called Parker ‘babe’. And if she’s not hearing things, then her eyes surely aren’t playing tricks on her as the owner of the voice starts to walk out of an all too familiar room from that hall clad in nothing but black boxer briefs.

James almost runs back into the room, but he’s smart enough to know he’s already been seen. Rather than run, he walks slowly and awkwardly toward the door where Parker and Darren stand.

As he approaches, Darren can’t help but spot the similarities between them – no shirt, light sweat, and down to just their pants, both of which are sloppily put on. And those thuds that she heard… Surely her mind is playing tricks on her. She almost can’t remember what her purpose was here.

“Darren…” James says ominously.

Parker decides to cut in. “I’ll just,” he points back toward the hall, “be in the other room,” and then he scurries off, leaving Darren and James alone in the doorway.

“What are you doing here?” James asks Darren when Parker is out of sight.

“I came to collect my things unless, of course, you’ve gotten rid of them already.”

“Not at all. They’re just in the other room. I’ll, uh, go get them,” James explains to her nervously. As he starts to shuffle his feet into the other direction, he invites Darren to come in and shut the door behind her to block out some of the cold weather. Darren does as he says and waits awkwardly for a few minutes before James comes back with a medium sized box. “Everything should all be in there. I’ve been picking things up and putting them in since we… yeah.”

“Thanks,” Darren tells him. She turns the other way, planning on leaving him and the conversation at that. Darren makes it just to the door with her hand floating over the handle when her heart pulls her back in his direction. She just has to know. “Are you and Parker- are you, like, a thing?”

James looks down at his feet, but he isn’t ashamed of his answer. “Yeah. We’ve been together for five years now.” He didn’t have to tell her that part, but knowing she would’ve asked, he included it in there. Like he had initially guessed, Darren’s eyes go wide.

“Five years?” she chokes out. James nods. Darren gulps. Jarren a thing for something like two and half and had only broken up about two months ago, but James and Parker had been something before Jarren even existed. In any other circumstance, she might have though she was just the other woman in the situation. She repeats her question with a firm tone. “Five years? So what? I was just a game on the side then?”

James huffs and looks Darren in the eyes. “Look, I’m sorry for leading you on, but I just – anal wasn’t meeting my needs, okay? When I met you at that party and we slept together, yes, I was with him. And you thought we had some sort of connection, so I strung you along for so long so I could meet my needs. And it was the stupidest thing I could’ve done, and I’m so fucking sorry because you’re really an amazing person, Dare.” He may not have been ashamed of his answer, but James was truly sorry for what he had done to Darren. It was truly a fucked up story.

Darren took in every word he said, trying to process everything clearly. She had been used and lied to for years. Suddenly, everything made sense. In the beginning he was okay. He helped her get through her darker times, but what Darren didn’t realize until now is that she never really escaped those dark times. James had always been a generally terrible boyfriend. They never really did anything “couple-y” together. James would go for days, sometimes even a couple weeks, without contacting Darren, and then they would get together again. Darren would yell, James would yell back, but they always ended up in a bed. And Darren thought that was great. That was fine because she loved him and he loved her, right?

Darren could feel her heart sinking deeper and deeper down her throat to the point where she felt like she was choking on her own heartbeat. So before she could hear anymore, she turned to open the door and ran out onto the wet streets, clutching her box of things tightly against her.

“Darren, wait!” she hears Parker yell. He comes running out after her, now wearing a t-shirt. “Just stop and listen, will you?” Darren gets to the car and puts her box on the passenger seat. When she closes that door, Parker is standing behind her. “Please, just hear-”

“You knew,” Darren spits. “You were so nice to me, but you knew all along. Why would you let him do that while you sit back and watch as if you really cared about how our relationship turned out even though it was fake the whole time? How can you be with someone who does something like that?”

“You’re right, I knew, but I-”

Darren puts her hand up and pushes him back so she can move around to the other side of the car. “Just save it. I don’t need to hear anymore. Please, just… leave me alone.” She gets into the driver’s seat and shuts the car door, locking herself in. Parker shakes his head in shame and walks back into his house. When he disappears from view, Darren screams to let all of her backed up emotions out. Then, she catches her breath and tries to think of where to go from here, because she doesn't know if she can do this anymore.

She doesn’t know if she can carry on with her life after today. Most of her life has been lived as a lie in one way, or form, or another. She’s been used so many times though she claims to be in charge of her life. She has smiled on the days that have been the hardest and only let a few select people see her cry. All this time that she thought she was holding up strong, she had had cracks, but today she shatters more than she’s ever shattered before.

The metaphorical pieces are right in front of her, and she can’t go on anymore. So even though she knows what she’s about to do is stupid and careless of her Darren starts the car and drives.

Notes

I was going to warn you that stuff happens in this chapter previously, but then I decided not to because it's ending in the next chapter and everyone likes surprises, right? Also, not sure when exactly that next chapter is going to go up, but because it is the last chapter and I do have a story goal, can we please, please, please make 100 votes happen before it is posted? I don't want to say I won't update unless that happens, but it would make me seriously happy!

So vote if you haven't, subscribe so you can be updated asap when the last chapter is put up, and comment all of your hate and questions below :D

~A