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“Tell me, Cowboy,” Darcy smirked as she tossed back a shot of whiskey. “How’d you end up in New Mexico?”
“‘S classified,” was all Clint would say before he knocked back his own shot. “What about you, how’d you get here?”
Darcy waved towards the bartender for another round of whiskey as she sipped at the cool beer in front of her. “Do you want the long version or the short version?”
“Gimme the short version and we’ll go from there.”
“I needed 6 science credits and I was Jane’s only applicant.”
Clint sighed, “I know that already.”
“Well then you should have asked for the long version,” she smiled at the bartender who was refilling their shot glasses. “Hey, you’d better just leave that bottle with us okay?”
“Oh, it’s going to be one of those nights?” the bartender laughed, setting the bottle down between Clint and Darcy before turning away.
Darcy took another shot, and then another before she spoke again. “Eighth-grade year my boobs grew in,” she started. Clint’s eyes went wide at her beginning but he just sipped at his own beer and let her continue. “I, um, maybe was curious what that could do for me. I might have let Taylor Brown take my bikini top off behind the pool house. It was unfortunate that Momma just happened to need the air compressor that was kept back there right as we both discovered what playing with my nipples could do.”
Darcy drained the rest of the beer in her glass and refilled her shot glass, readying it for her next story break. “Daddy was so mad I thought he’d pop a vein. They had our pastor come over that night and before he even heard the whole story he was shoving a pamphlet in my parent's hands. Two weeks later I was off to Missouri’s Most Baptist Bible School ever.”
“Really?” Clint asked skeptically, “Just like that?” He took another shot as he waited for her answer.
“Just like that. God forbid a girl is curious about her own body. Momma spent that entire school year arguing with me about what was and was not an appropriate shirt for a 13-year-old girl to wear. The boys in Sunday school could never stop looking my way; Pastor James gave us so many lectures about the sins of the flesh that we’d started mouthing along with him when he started.”
“Brats,” Clint laughed.
“The brattiest,” Darcy agreed. “Anyway, off I went to this tiny little religious school because they wanted me to learn the Word. It worked for maybe the first semester. I kept thinking maybe if I just stayed quiet and did what they wanted when I went home for Christmas I wouldn’t have to go back.” She knocked back another shot; Clint was surprised she wasn’t slurring her words. “I should have known better. The second I stepped off the bus I saw my old friends crossing the street to avoid having to talk to me.”
“That’s shitty,” Clint said as he poured himself another shot and subtly set the bottle out of Darcy’s reach.
“So shitty. I was the best little Christian girl I could be that Christmas, but nothing I did mattered. I wore turtlenecks and skirts that dragged the floor but the boys still couldn’t stop staring and on New Years’ Day they packed me back onto a Greyhound and sent me off.” She reached towards the bottle with grabby hands but Clint frowned at her and shook his head. Rolling her eyes she continued on.
“After that, I stopped trying to be what they wanted me to be. I still memorized their bible and did as I was asked, but once I decided I didn’t care what they thought of me it really opened my eyes to the world. I mean, what kind of god would keep a girl from getting what she needs?”
Clint shrugged, “Not one I believe in.”
“Me either,” Darcy smiled. “When I came back the next Christmas and I wasn’t their perfect little Christian covering up from head to toe they took me to a doctor.”
“They what?!” Clint asked, a little incredulous. His surprise distracted him from Darcy’s grab for the bottle and she’d gotten another shot in before he could wrestle it away.
“Yeah. He literally told them the devil was controlling my senses, preventing me from making the ‘right’ decisions. I dunno about you, Barton,” Clint could detect the hint of a slur in her words now, “But to live the way you please doesn’t sound like possession to me.”
“Me either,” Clint agreed as he got the bartenders attention and signaled her for waters. She set two glasses of water in front of them and Clint dutifully made sure Darcy drank hers before he prompted her for more. “What happened then?”
“Oh, they just sent me back. Four long years studying the bible. Momma, Daddy, and the Pastor all hoped it would help me repent and change my troubled ways. They didn’t count on me fitting the scripture to match my world views.”
Clint raised an eyebrow, curious what she meant.
“Everybody in my hometown acts like love is all pious. Apple pies and virginity. It’s like they completely forget all the risque shit in Psalms. They didn’t even have high school dances, Clint.”
“Okay?” he wasn’t sure how this connected to her world views.
“Well, sure I learned the golden rule - be good to everybody, be a strength to the weak. Be a joy to the joyful and the laughter in the grief. But I kind of expounded on that.”
“You did?” Clint asked as he finished his beer.
“Yeah, I mean, you should give your love freely to whoever that you please, really. I’m not going to let those idiots tell me who I need to be. And if all the people in that tiny town want to damn me, well it’s just another damn in all the damns I’m not giving. After I graduated I left town for Culver and never looked back.”
Darcy spoke with conviction, her eyes clearer than they had been a few moments before and her words less jumbled. The water did her good, but Clint still pushed his glass into her hands as he asked, “So in all that learning about the bible, what’d you learn about miracles?”
He’d meant it to be light-hearted. They’d just watched an actual alien fall through a rainbow portal in the sky; if anything counted as a miracle he was sure that would. One corner of Darcy’s mouth ticked up in a grin as she shimmied off the stool and into the opening between his thighs.
She pressed a kiss to his lips, both her hands wrapped around his shoulders as she leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “You wanna see a miracle, watch me get down,” she winked.