I'll Love You For A Lifetime [Heartstopper, Tara x Darcy]

Year 9: Cecelia

Darcy's pov

Since that day, I had not really been able to connect with Tara on the level we had been before. She had broken my heart, without meaning to.

A week had gone by. I stared into space, lying on my bed, thinking about how things used to be and if they were ever going to be the same again.

I looked at the clock, it was showing 9. I should be down for dinner before everything is finished.

That is what my family was like. You had to learn to live yourself, help yourself because that is what real life is like. You didn't get called for meals and if there is no food at home, you decide where you are going to eat yourself. No one simply cared. Or maybe they cared way too much. Our parents were not home most of the time, but when they were, they made sure those hours felt like hell.

I strutted into the kitchen and saw everybody at the dining table so I joined them. I do not remember what the food tasted like, or what we even had conversations about, but by the end, mom and dad were at each other's throats and George was close to sobbing.

I remember standing up and declaring I had had enough of this, and I remember running out of the house. But after that everything turned into a blur. I cried. A lot. I was out on the streets, all alone.

Maybe half an hour passed before I realised that I needed help. So I called the first person who came to mind.

"Hey," I said and a drowsy voice replied back, "Darcy?"

"Are you- can i-" I swallowed and then stopped talking altogether.

"Darcy?" there was some shuffling, "are you crying?" More shuffling and then pounding on the floor, "where are you?"

"Nowhere," I looked around me, "I don't know."

"Come on Darcy," she said, "any clue? Can you find your way to my place?"

"I guess," I stared around me in a half-trance, "yeah."

And in an hour, somehow I was at Tara's place. She wrapped her arms around me and partially lifted me inside, made me sit on the dining table and her father gave me something to eat which I refused. I cried again, I guess. And then we went to her room where she shushed me to sleep. I remember us sitting in the same room a few days earlier, back when her ankle was sprained, her head in my lap. She had been reading a book to me:

"I hope you know by now that all of your secrets are safe with me," Celia said as she started unbuttoning it[her shirt] to put it on. I think for her it was a throwaway line. But it meant a lot to me.

Not because she said it, I suppose. But because when she said it, I realized I believed her. "I do," I said. "I do know that."

People think that intimacy is about sex.

But intimacy is about truth.

When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is "You're safe with me"-that's intimacy.

And by those standards, that moment with Celia was the most intimate one I'd ever had with anyone.

It made me so appreciative, so grateful, that I wanted to wrap my arms around her and never let go.

"I love you," Tara whispered to me. "I know I had sounded unsure earlier, but I do. I do love you."

"I know," I said, my voice small and tired, "I love you too."

"Wanna talk about what happened?" she asked, cupping my chin in her palms.

"No," I replied, "tired."

"Ok, baby," she said, leaning down and kissing me upside down on the forehead, which made me giggle for some reason.

"Take some rest," she said, smiling too, her fingers massaging my scalp gently. A few moments after that, I drifted off to a deep, and very safe sleep.

***
A/n

The exerpt in this chapter is from a book I am currently reading called Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. This scene is so beautiful i thought you guys should read it as well.

Also sorry if the next updates will be slower. School has started and my mental health is going down the drain again.

TAKE CARE OF UR MENTAL HEALTH YA'LL

AND STAY HYDRATED

Ly (~￣³￣)~