Darcy stared at Lizzie's closed front door. He could still hear Bing on the other end of the phone trying to get the attention of the bartender before the phone went dead.

He stuffed it back in his pocket and rubbed his face in frustration.

So this is how the day was going to end. Not with a bang, but with the least graceful of good-byes – no goodbye.

Fitz slowly pulled away from the curb. Neither he nor Gigi said anything to Darcy. Gigi watched his disappointed face in her side mirror.

Darcy knew that nothing was going to happen tonight. This was still him and Lizzie, not to mention the fact that his sister and friend would have been glued to the car windows. He doubted she would have asked him in to her apartment even with the excuse of putting the food in the fridge. And what parting words would he have left her with on the front porch? If anything it would have been a final chance for him to say something stupid.

But he couldn't shake a sudden strong desire to wish her goodnight.

Between Bing and Fitz he was beginning to question his choice in best friends. Not really. But a little. Just a bit.

Inside the apartment Lizzie was also disappointed. Not that she had any idea how she wanted the evening to end, but it all felt unexpectedly…off. She thought she had heard Bing's voice through the phone which left a bitter taste in her mouth and a feeling that she had betrayed Jane.

Here she was having an amazing time in the city while Jane was living in Los Angeles with a broken heart. Even if that hadn't been Bing, that voice had been enough to remind her of the reality of her situation. Reality was what she had managed to avoid all day. For one day she had been existing in a bubble, isolated from all her other troubles.

It was like she had been living in a controlled lab experiment. For once she had convinced herself that all that mattered was what she thought of Darcy independent of everything that had happened. As if he had just been a guy she had met at a coffee shop and flirted with over who would get the last croissant.

But that wasn't the truth. That wasn't what was really going on.

They were responsible for their past actions to each other, their past actions to others. There was still so much baggage that they were both carrying around. Lizzie sat down on Prof. Gardner's leather couch, too tired to put the food away in the fridge.

She took out her phone and scrolled through the missed emails and texts she had received throughout the day. It looked like Charlotte had sent a text for every one of Gigi's tweets. Jane had sent photos of a few sample pieces she was saving for Lizzie.

The apartment felt so empty all of a sudden.

Lizzie continued to ignore Gigi's text with the Bushman video. She didn't feel like watching herself acting like an idiot right now.

Charlotte's texts took a little longer to decipher. They were mostly emojis and question marks and more emojis.

She slowly made her way through the texts until she reached the first one Charlotte had sent that morning. Lizzie sat up straight. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart pounded I her chest. She had no idea what the text was in reference to.

"! LIZZIE BENNET ARE YOU EYE SEXING DARCY?"

She started to text back, but waiting for an explanation would take too long. Instead she opened her Twitter app and went to Gigi's feed, scrolling to the start of their trip earlier that morning.

How had she missed that photo.

She was totally eye sexing Darcy. Or at least eye foreplay-ing. Lizzie knew the exact moment that photo had been taken. It was before she had her morning coffee and Darcy had sat down next to her in those damn glasses. It wasn't her fault she had been taken by surprise.

Lizzie scrolled up through the feed. There was nothing else too incriminating, but her body was still tense with adrenaline. As long as she had already been publicly photographed, she figured it was time to finally face the video.

It wasn't anywhere on Gigi's feed…but there wasn't anywhere else it could be. Lizzie prayed that for once Gigi had shown some discretion, but why?

Lizzie opened the video in Gigi's text hoping to find the answer there.

What she saw was video Lizzie and video Darcy strolling along the wharf looking strangely couple like. Then she saw video Lizzie practically leap into the arms of video Darcy. He was holding her up, her arm entwined in his leather jacket.

He held her a little longer than was necessary. Not that she looked all that bothered in the video.

There was definitely a reason this wasn't on the internet.

Lizzie replayed it. Her cheeks colored as she realized Darcy had the same video waiting on his phone.

She played it again.

She studied his face.

The adoration on his part, the openness of her own. It was a strangely perfect moment of uninhibitedness.

It was a reminder that she didn't hate Darcy even a little bit anymore. It was everything else in her life that was making the situation so complicated.

Lizzie decided to have a little more faith in what she felt. She needed to rely less on analyzing and understanding every little thing that happened. The day may not have ended the way she had hoped, but she wasn't a victim of the cosmos.

She logged back into Twitter and composed a short message.

" wmdarcy Thank you and Gigi for an awesome day."

Somewhere across town an all too rare text alert went off. Darcy lifted his head out of his hands and read the words twice, three times. He replied.

" TheLizzieBennet Our pleasure."

It was all his heart could manage after such a day. He hoped that for once his words wouldn't betray him – that he had said exactly what he meant.