Hi all, thanks for reading Darcy's Tale. This is a long one, and while it has its fair share of 18+ moments it isn't a pud-pounding ribald romp if that's what you're chasing.
As with all my stories, all characters are mine and purely fictional, with all similarities to real life being pure coincidence.
All characters engaged in sexual activity are 18 years old or older.
Please, please rate the story and share any comments. I am still finding my voice and really value feedback.
Have fun in Maple Ferry,
The Antipodean
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Darcy sat at the desk in the stockroom that doubled as her in-store office at the Shack.
It was here where she posted the monthly schedule, did all of the daily, weekly and month-ending accounting and associated paperwork, and where some of her team members did homework or ate while on a break.
The Sugarshack, just 'the Shack' to the locals, was Maple Ferry's favourite place for all things coffee. It had a trendy neo-diner vibe. There were enough tables, bar seats, nooks and booths for any kind of customer to find a place for themselves. The coffee wasn't bottomless, but it was delicious, the wifi was free and the tunes were always good.
Sitting right in the heart of the retail centre of Maple Ferry meant that the cafe got great walk-in traffic from both the River Walk and the corner frontage that it had on Main and Mill streets.
Being the tail-end of summer at the Shack made the cafe a little calmer than normal, with lots of families still on summer holidays or doubling down on their farms at the end of the growing season.
For Darcy, late August meant one thing. Pumpkin Spice was coming. With the return of kids to campuses the Great Pumpkin returned to cafes across the land in the form of Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Her baristas hated to make the sugar laden drinks but the clientele, and the cash registers, loved them.
Darcy put thoughts of PSLs aside and buckled down to hammer out her weekly food orders before wrapping up for the day.
If it hadn't been for the gigantic wall calendar with the staffing schedule staring her in the face, she probably wouldn't have noticed the date at all.
But there it was, in a jarring golden and bolded typeface, August 25th, 2024.
The five year anniversary of the finalizing of her divorce, it was also the same day she had signed the contract purchasing The Sugarshack.
She probably should have planned a party, at least for the anniversary of buying the Shack.
In traditional Darcy fashion, she hadn't even thought about it.
If you asked anyone in Maple Ferry to describe Darcy Monahan you were guaranteed to hear answers like, "No nonsense," and, "Straight shooter," or, "Pragmatic," but you were just as unlikely to hear comments like, "Outgoing, "Carefree," or, "Fun."
Not anymore, anyway.
--
Darcy had grown up in Maple Ferry, and she had been the typical kid. Blonde hair in a ponytail at all times, skinned knees, climbed trees, and a pink bike with handlebar streamers. The works.
She was the third of four daughters of the Monahan family, a family who had long roots in the Town and the Valley. Darcy's childhood was filled with play, with friends and any combination of the umpteen cousins who lived nearby.
Being a Maple Ferry kid growing up in the tail end of Gen Y meant what you'd probably imagine. Kids enrolled in activities like gymnastics, riding, little-league and soccer, and parents working jobs or farms to foot the bills for all the things; so long as the kids got home by dark, all was good.
Darcy had grown up in a big two-story home just up from the town square, a park built around a small bandstand with a war memorial in one corner and a playground in the other. It was the centre of all celebrations held by Maple Ferry and the Valley.
Memorial Day parade? Started and ended at the town square. Summer theatre in the park? Took place at the bandstand in the square. Maple Ferry wasn't big, but it was pretty, and predictable.
There had been Monahans in Maple Ferry and farming in the Valley carved out by the river which ran through town, for generations. Not a few of the names on the war memorial in the square belonged to members of Darcy's family.
This put the Monahans on the same page as the Cooks, Lassalles and Roussos when it came to being entrenched in Valley and Town lore. There had been members of each family at every important historical event that had happened to or in Maple Ferry since the Revolutionary War.
The first teacher of the first one-room schoolhouse, Valley School, had been a Monahan (Darcy's Great Great Great Great Great Aunt). The first victim of murder in Maple Ferry had been a Cook, strangled by the first murderer in Maple ferry Jean Lassalle, who had been hanged by the first Sheriff in Maple Ferry, also a Monahan, who happened to be Darcy's (5X) Great Grandpa.
So Darcy, and her sisters, were more than legacy kids in Maple Ferry, they were of founding stock. In lots of places the history between hers and the other founding families might have led to the kind of feuding and generational strife that defined a town. But not in Maple Ferry nor the Valley. Northerners tended to be, generally, no-nonsense people.
When faced with his murder, the Cooks of the time had agreed that Thaddeus Cook had warranted a good beating, and couldn't hold it against Jean Lassalle for wanting to throttle him. Thaddeus had been caught with his hands in the pants of Jean's married little-sister in a snug at the local tavern.
Further West at the same time, Thaddeus would have more than likely been called out and shot for the same offense. So, that Jean had taken it so far, while shocking and deeply sad, his actions were, at least, understood.
As clear as this all was to the Cooks, equally clear to the Lassalles was that Jean had to pay the price for murdering Thaddeus. Which meant that when the Circuit Court rode into town that cold March morning, with Jean Lassalle still locked up in the town jail, Maman Lassalle and Sheriff Monahan both knew that the town was going to see a hanging.
Over the course of the following one and a half centuries these families helped grow the Town and the Valley both in population and in lore.
There were so many Lassalles married to Monahans and Cooks married to Roussos, and vice versa, that when Darcy finally arrived at Maple Valley High she had more family at school than she did friends.
This made family reunions blessedly large, and the dating pool awkwardly small. Not that this phazed Darcy much, especially as she approached graduation.
When she turned 18 at the start of her senior year, Darcy had white-blonde hair, fair skin and bright blue eyes. At five feet tall, she was definitely not model material, but she was stacked, with the hips, tits and ass of a woman bursting out of the body of a lifelong gymnast, with a buoyant and lively face.
To top off this beautiful, if smaller, package, as ordained by her size, her strength, and her years of gymnastics and dance classes, it should come as no surprise that Senior Darcy had also been a cheerleader.
She was one of Maple Valley High's High Flyers, meaning that on the squad she spent as much time in the air as she did on the ground. She was constantly being thrown up, held aloft or being caught before a painful landing, by some buff cheerleading guy, or two hot cheerleading gals.
In the Team's routines Darcy was always the top of the pyramid, and the death-defying aerialist who gave the audience a heart attack as often as she did a glimpse of the hot-pants that hugged her ass cheeks under her cheerleading skirt.
Darcy was strong, good looking, of local royalty, and largely hands-off to the dating pool in her highschool. This didn't mean that Darcy didn't mess around with kids her own age.
She'd lost her virginity to a boy at an appropriate time, to an appropriate person, and then just to make sure she wasn't missing anything, she went the distance with one of her cheerleading girlfriends a week or so later.
She played the field and took care of her needs, but she didn't date.
Darcy and her sisters had always talked about the fact that their family tree in Maple Ferry and the Valley had too few branches, and the last thing that Darcy wanted was to fall in love and marry into that shrinking gene pool.
Given how public Darcy was about avoiding romantic entanglements amongst her near and distant kin, it came as no surprise to anyone that when he arrived on the scene during the second semester of senior year, Darcy took special note.
You could say, his arrival nearly knocked her out.
"He" was Damon Reilly, and his family was not from Maple Ferry, nor were they from the Valley. Damon and his people were from up near Boston, and he had the height, the square jaw, broad shoulders, and the black hair that said that his brand of Irish wasn't from around these parts.
At first, Darcy didn't notice him, literally.
She had second period AP English and was editing a poem she had written for Mr. Resch's second term extra-credit project when Damon walked into the room and had a quiet chat with the teacher before heading down the row of desks to the empty one behind Darcy.
Navigating the aisle, trying to be as invisible as any new-kid could be to his new classmates, both Damon and Darcy were shocked when his bag slid off his shoulder and struck Darcy solidly on the back of her head, bouncing her face into the table and the poetry she was so myopically reviewing.
"Oh my God! Are you okay?" Damon tossed the offending sling bag onto the empty desk behind Darcy's and dropped down to desk level to check on her.
The din in the classroom had dropped to crypt-like silence at the CRACK Darcy's head made when hitting her desk, but as Damon reached out a hand to check on the girl that silence was replaced by a rising, elevated, chatter.
Darcy lifted her head as her vision fought to bring both eyes into the same focus. Looking down at her desk she wondered why her poetry essay was on red paper, and then she was looking into the face of an Angel.
Pretty grey-blue eyes under a strong brow. They were like the cold ocean under cliffs. Why was she thinking in similes? Why was her nose running?
Darcy reached a hand to her face; it came back wet and red.
Damon, seeing the blood on the desk, and on the face of the girl who looked up at him vacantly, immediately shouted for someone to call for the school nurse as he pulled a pressed handkerchief from his jacket pocket.
Using his left hand to support her neck, Damon gently tipped her head backwards and nose up, while applying light pressure and mopping up the blood with his handkerchief.
