Darcy barely noticed the sigh of relief that slipped through her lips as the streets of Meriton flew past her. She watched through half-opened lids as the small rural Massachusetts town faded in the rearview of her family's SUV.

There was a hush over all five of them in the car that morning as most were barely awake. The only reason Henry could successfully merge onto the highway and direct the car east towards the city was due to the large cup of coffee sitting half-full in the center consul between himself and Lois.

The party the night before had ended promptly at eleven o'clock, per the agreement Charlie and Carson had made with Lois. However, despite Darcy's best efforts to clean up while she avoided mingling with the guests or getting sucked into another conversation with Eli that would once again expose a deeply insecure part of her personality, the clean-up process kept the whole household up until midnight.

It was Charlie's fault that Darcy was up until one. Darcy's fault too, in a way, since she couldn't stand the sight of her dear friend stressing over what to pack.

Charlie had been so overwhelmed with the party and her current standing with Jamie, with championships added on top of all of that, that packing had fallen to the bottom of the priority list until the night before they were due to leave for the city.

Darcy had a sneaking suspicion that Charlie had alerted Jamie to the fact that she would not only be absent from Meriton for the entire week of spring break but that she would also be going radio silent as she needed to focus on her competition and spending time with her family, all of that via text message at one in the morning.

The sleepy cloud slowly but surely dispersed with each mile that brought them closer to the city. By the time Henry reached the tunnels diving them underneath the city, all of them were up, alert, and peering out through the windows for the first sight of those towering buildings, reflecting the warmth from the early spring sunlight.

It was all hands on deck unloading the car outside Darcy's father's apartment building. Their car stood idle with its hazard lights on pull off to the side of a narrow one-way straight as every Bingley, Darcy and the doorman unloaded five people's worth of stuff needed to spend the week in the city.

Henry, Lois, and Charlie had five minutes total to dump their stuff off in the living room and head out for a breakfast banquet for all the teams competing at the scholastic decathlon, leaving Darcy and Carson to get things settled in.

The first thing Darcy did was open every window possible to let in the fresh air, even if it was the harsh wind of spring the raced past the twentieth story.

It was easy to tell that no one lived there, that no one had, in a very long time. The fridge was empty and turned off. The cabinets had spice jars that had expired the year before. And there was not a single token of family memorabilia to distinguish this apartment from any other staged for real estate showings.

Which made sense, as Darcy's father had put this apartment for sale just as he was preparing to leave the country indefinitely. It was Lois who had stepped in and told him to hold off, to remind him that his children might like to see where they were supposed to grow up one day. Now the apartment stood empty except for the rare occasions one of the Bingley family needed a place to stay in the city.

If Darcy's father was in town, he stayed with the Bingleys. He was never in town very long and so spent every second he was able to with Darcy and George. It was the very least he could do.

Darcy's phone pinged just as she was finished unloading the last of the groceries they had carted in with them. She nearly dove onto the couch to check her phone, her face breaking out into a wide smile at the alert that met her eyes.

She raced out the door, just barely remembering to grab the keys on her way, leaving a bemused Carson behind her. He needed no explanation for her excitement.

Darcy raced through the lobby, her footsteps echoing off the marble floors and floating up into the high ceilings above.

"Good morning, Miss Williams," The doorman said, pulling the door open just seconds before Darcy could do it herself.

"Hi, Frank!" Darcy replied over her shoulder as she raced down the sidewalk to the intersection at the end of the one-way street.

Commuters walking to work and messengers riding in between jobs didn't bother giving her a second glance as she stood at the corner, look every which way, standing on tip-toe to get a better view, anything but standing still as she waited.

Finally, a car looked like it was slowing down and Darcy recognized the mop of brown curly hair in the front seat, primed and ready to hop out as the car paused right before Darcy and then took off again once its load was discharged.

Bags were dropped to the ground and forgotten as Darcy raced towards her brother and wrapped her arms around him. He stood just an inch taller but still managed to wrap his arms around her waist and lift her in the air.

All thoughts of Meriton and the last two months flew from her mind, a distant memory as she soaked in her brother's clean soapy scent. They were both laughing as they disengaged but neither of them moved.

Darcy stood taking him all in, ignoring the looks of the passersby. He seemed taller. He certainly stood taller. His hair was longer but Darcy knew George never got a haircut unless forced. His smile was wide and gone was that broken look that had haunted his gaze ever since last summer.

She hadn't seen him since Christmas and even then, it felt like too long. She missed the days when they could walk side-by-side at Netherfield, everyone aware of who the Williams twins were.

"Hey, Cece."

George's use of her childhood nickname warmed her heart. She could feel her shoulders ease, her face relax.

"You got skinny. Don't they feed you at that school?"

George threw back his head and laughed. The sound filled Darcy's heart. Her little brother (of twenty minutes) was here, with her. And he was okay.

"It's good to see you, too," George replied.

Darcy bent over and helped him grabbed his stuff. They took their time walking back to the apartment, George's arm hung heavy over Darcy's shoulders.

The reunion between Carson and George was less enthusiastic between Darcy and George but just as satisfying. It started with George asking Carson "Did you bring it?" and peaked with a cry of excitement when Carson smirked and pulled out a bag filled with video game equipment.

Darcy's family was together at last.

The Bingley's celebrated their reunion with George, and Charlie's exciting win at her competition, with a dinner out at their favorite Italian restaurant. With their only responsibility now taken care of, (Darcy, Carson, and George needing to attend Charlie's competition, Charlie needing to win her competition), the four of them now had the week to do as they pleased.

The city was theirs that week. There wasn't a day that the four of them didn't slip-on sneakers and pull on down jackets to face the bracing winds of early spring in Boston. They explored every corner of the city, trying out every coffee shop when the clouds overhead opened up and rained down, checking out every bakery, lunching at all the best sandwich shops.

They ate pizza at their favorite hole-in-the-wall pizza place in the North End every day to the point where they were friendly with the owner, who started slipping them extra containers of his famous garlic sauce for free.

When the sun was out, they traipsed through the park, investigated corner book shops, and out of the way thrift stores. It was warm enough by the end of the week that they even took the ferry up the coast and then back down just because they could.

It took a few days for the feeling of bittersweet to finally find its home in Darcy's gut. It poked its head in on their first day out but then decided to check elsewhere for the time being. By Wednesday it had decided Darcy's stomach was the place to be and she couldn't do anything to evict it.

She found herself standing on the outside of their foursome more often than not. If they walked down the street, she walked just a little bit behind. Eli's voice popped up in her head a few too many times for her liking, his words from the party echoing in her brain.

"Stiff..... awkward...."

It didn't help Darcy's state of being when she realized that these precious moments with her family were soon to become few and far between. Carson and George would be graduating with her that year. Their spring breaks wouldn't look the same anymore. What about their summer breaks? Would they all still make it down to the Cape to stay at the Bingley's beach house?

Darcy could feel her world shifting, tilting, changing, too fast for her liking.

George was the only one who noticed her sudden bout of emotional vertigo. Every time she stood a foot away from the rest of them, watching them from the outside, an observer, an exile, he closed the gap and nudged her out of it, bringing her back to center, back to the present.

But his concerned smile was only a temporary fix to what Darcy was starting to notice was a looming problem. Her concerns grew to a critical point Friday night.

While they had spent all other nights have family dinners, watching movies, and playing games, Friday night was determined date night for Henry and Lois and so the four of them had nothing to do at the apartment.

George mentioned a friend of his playing a show on the Boston University campus and since it wasn't sitting around watching George and Carson play video games, everyone readily agreed.

Eli's voice came and went, sometimes screaming at her, sometimes a whisper buzzing about her ear like a bee. But always it was there.

'Stiff.... Awkward.... Uncomfortable.... Unlovable."

It no longer stuck to the strict confines of what Eli had actually said and it was long past the spirit of what his words met. His voice had found a partner in Darcy's deepest insecurities and the two of them were wreaking havoc on her emotional state.

The venue was small and crowded. The four of them got in with black x's on their hands and made for the far wall opposite the bar. The stage was a mere nine inches off the ground and there was no opening act as the headliner came on just as Darcy and the rest got settled in.

"Hi everyone! Thanks for coming!"

The young girl's voice traveled through the microphone and came out the speakers on the edge of the stage. She was met with enthusiastic cheers and held the attention of the majority of the audience.

"I'm Carrie Weaver and these are a few songs I wrote."

With her ukulele strap slipped over her shoulders, Carrie started strumming and the crowd started to sway.

With consideration of Darcy's discomfort with tight crowds, the four of them had kept away from the open floor, sticking to the sides of the room. The three of them were swaying along with the crowd as Carrie's sultry tones rang out in heartbreaking clarity, emphasizing the emotion coursing through her lyrics.

"She's big on the university scene. Plays every open mic night in town. Made a splash at Hank's in the South End recently," George yelled into Darcy's ear.

"How do you know her?" Darcy yelled back.

"A friend from school introduced me. She used to go to Berklee but dropped out to pursue music full time."

"She's good!"

George nodded as his wide eyes turned back to his friend. She had the whole room enraptured.

George, Carson, and Charlie couldn't help but move with the crowd as they crowded towards the stage.

George was focused on the music, on the performer. But Darcy couldn't help being aware of the crowd. Too many guys with curly hair and light eyes, taller than her, reminding her of Eli, of what he had said about her, of her sneaking suspicion that he was right. Darcy didn't move in with the crowd as her siblings did. She stuck to the wall, her arms tight across her chest.

Her fists were clenched as they usually were in these types of tight settings. Darcy took a deep breath, tried to let the music wash over her, and put her hands down by her side, flexing her fingers. She wanted to join her friends but couldn't. And she couldn't change that.

Looking around, Darcy determined that she was fine. She had ample space on all sides. The walls weren't moving in on her. She didn't have to be afraid. She wasn't afraid. So why couldn't she enjoy the music, enjoy the show, enjoy watching the three people she loved the most sing along with the Fleetwood Mac song Carrie was covering?

Darcy studied the faces of each of them, Carson, then Charlie, then George, each of them in turn. Their faces were relaxed, their bodies at ease, their shoulders nowhere near their ears. How did they not look over their shoulder, check every direction, just in case?

"In case of what?" Darcy's brain asked.

The show ended. Carson, Charlie, and George returned to where they had drifted from Darcy, each with a sincere apology for leaving her. Darcy tried smiling and waving them away but she couldn't even comprehend what they were talking about.

She rode with them in a daze on the train back to the apartment and when she finally came to, she was seated on the second single bed in the guest room at the apartment. Outside her door, the rest of the household was asleep, Charlie in the bed next to Darcy's, her aunt and uncle in the master room down the hall, Carson and George passed out in the family room.

And yet Darcy couldn't close her eyes. Darcy left Charlie to her soft snores and sought refuge elsewhere.

Carson and George successfully taken over the entire family room, Carson snuggled up in a sleeping bag on the floor, George spread out on the couch next to him.

Darcy hadn't slept great that last week while staying in her dad's apartment. Not like Charlie had. There were no memories there to haunt her, but too many what if's. What if's for the future, what if's for her alternative present.

What if her mom hadn't died?

What if her dad hadn't put his emotions and career before his kids? What if he had figured out how to raise Darcy and George on his own?

What would her life look like now?

Would she still be friends with Charlie and Carson?

Would she be as close with Lois and Henry?

How would her life have been different if she had grown up in this apartment like her mother had intended her to?

And then there were the what if's for the future, the scarier alternative of the two. The what if's Darcy only let herself dwell on in her daydreams.

What if she didn't go to college?

What if she didn't get a degree in Art History like Lois and her Aunt Katherine wanted her to?

What if she worked full-time at the gallery instead?

What if she lived in this apartment full time, all by herself, and walked to work?

It was a thirty-minute walk to South Boston from the apartment and a ten-minute train ride. What if that was her daily commute?

What if she traveled with her dad to discover new artists for the gallery?

But no, out of all her what if's, that scared her the most.

But the what if's didn't quiet her whirling thoughts from the concert. Instead, they turned her insecurities into the scariest what if's of them all.

What if Eli is right?

Movement behind Darcy startled her. She turned in the dining room chair she had camped out on to stare out the window at the sleeping apartment building across the road. Something shifted on the couch then slowly eased off of it and moved with heavy footsteps towards her.

"Cece? What are you doing up?"

The only light was from the full moon reflected in the dark windows across the street. It cast a hazy silver light over the dining room.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

George waved her off as he slumped into the chair next to hers. His arms extended out over the table in front of them and his hand propped up his head to keep it from falling.

"Can't sleep?" he asked in a hushed tone out into the night.

"No. You?"

"I heard you come out. Tried to get back to sleep but couldn't. I figured now would be as good a time as any to have some serious brother-sister bonding time."

A snore escaped Carson's half-open mouth. He shifted, turned over, and then fell still, the only sound in the apartment for a long minute his half-snores and George and Darcy holding their breath, afraid to wake him.

"You doing alright?" George asked, after a silent few minutes of Carson's snores.

Darcy shrugged in the dark, aware that he might not have seen her gesture but he would understand her answer.

"What's up? You've seemed kind of... off this week."

Darcy found a scrap of paper on the table and rolled it between her fingers, something, anything to avoid answering George's question. But she knew neither of them would be able to sleep unless she spoke. Besides, if she couldn't talk to George, then who could she talk to?

"George..."

She hesitated, took a deep breath, and tried again. Her brother sat patiently beside her.

"Am I... Am I unlovable?"

She expected a laugh of shock or disbelief. But in the dark, she could see George's eyebrows pull together. Even in the dark silver light, his skin radiated warmth. He was his father's son, she was her mother's daughter, polar opposites the two of them but connected for life.

"No, Darcy. Of course, you're not."

"I'm not like you. I'm not like Charlie or even Carson. I've seen how you guys act, how you interact with people. All of you can just get along with people. You're friendly and kind and welcoming. And I'm just....not."

George let out a long sigh, his shoulder sinking further into the dining room chair.

"No, Darcy. You're not."

Darcy focused on her scrap of paper.

"But that doesn't make you less than any of us, make you any less worth loving. Are you easy to love? Yes, because you deeply love and care about the people close to you. Are you easy to get to know? No, not really."

"I don't want to be. I want to be friendly. Make friends. Have people like me. Like you and Charlie do."

"Have you made friends? At Meriton."

Darcy couldn't figure out how to answer that.

"I mean, maybe. There's this one guy but I can't decide whether he hates me or not."

George let out a huff of laughter into the still night.

"That sounds like you. What about your other classmates? Have you met any girls you think you'd get along with?"

"There were a few girls, in my PE class. But..."

"But what?" George prompted.

"But I kind of kicked their butts during volleyball week and they don't really like me."

"Yeah," George sighed. "That sounds like you, too."

Neither of them spoke for a while. Darcy It was comfortable, sitting with her brother, being honest about how she felt.

"It's not easy opening up to people, Darcy. It's a skill you have to learn, develop. But it's worth it. Finding people to trust-"

"But what if I mess up again?"

And so Gina had entered the conversation. It was as if she had sauntered in through the front door and come to rest against the wall right behind George. The sadness that had taken over George's expression last summer returned. Darcy didn't need sunlight to see it.

"You know Gina wasn't your fault."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement. A statement George needed Darcy to believe. One she couldn't yet accept as fact.

"Gina is no one's fault but her own. She did what she did because she wanted to."

"She got away with it because I wasn't paying attention. Because I was too distracted."

"By what? The desire to connect and interact with your father? That doesn't make sense, Darcy! Gina saw an opportunity and she took it. She played you as much as she played me. She played all of us. And none of us saw it coming. You can't keep blaming yourself for something you didn't do. That's how she wins, Darcy. That's how she wins."

Darcy felt the tears only once they hit her cheeks. They must have glinted in the moonlight or George could just sense Darcy's pain as he reached out and grabbed her hand, stilling its attempts to tear the piece of paper into even further tiny pieces.

"You don't make it easy to love you, Darcy. But you do make it worthwhile. It's okay to open up, to let others get to know you. That doesn't mean you stop trusting your instincts and become absolutely vulnerable with every person you ever meet. But it does mean you give people the chance. There's always a risk. We know that now, especially after... everything. But sometimes those risks pay out big."

Darcy met her brother's eyes as she wiped away her tears. She nodded as she didn't trust herself to speak.

It was the perfect night to have an emotional breakthrough. George was heading back to school the next day and the Bingleys were headed back to Meriton. Darcy had a big dinner to attend at her great aunt's the next night and so their vacation in the city was coming to a close.

In the spirit of vulnerability and to repay him for his wise counsel and understanding kindness, Darcy spoke the words she had been afraid to utter ever since last summer. Her words voiced an idea she had come up with and had only dared daydream about.

"I want to work at the gallery next year instead of going to school," Darcy whispered out into the night.

George's grip on her hand tightened in a squeeze and the concern in his eyes faded as they lit up in excitement.

"That sounds like an excellent idea."

A/N:

I'm not crying. You're the one who's crying!!!

Sibling GOALS!!!

All four of them really but ESPECIALLY George and Darcy. Love them.