"I'm worried about you," William says. It's been two weeks since he returned from his mysterious sudden business trip to Van Nuys, and Gigi's barely spoken ten words to him in that time. Actually, he's barely spoken ten words to her. Blame where blame is due.

"You're worried about me?" Gigi asks, rolling over onto her stomach. She's laying on the sectional sofa in the less formal of their penthouse apartment's two living rooms, wearing her pyjamas, tangled up in her favorite comforter. It's bright teal and looks out of place in the den, with its warm and subtle creams and tans, but she's always found the color to be… well, comforting.

"Yes," he says. "You haven't been going out, you've barely been coming in to work, and I know you're supposed to be in class right now."

"I emailed my professor. She said I'm fine." She looks up at William, clearly only out of bed at eleven. Granted, she had only forced herself up an hour ago. And now she's half asleep on the sofa watching television. "I told her I had a family emergency."

"You shouldn't lie," he says.

"I wasn't lying." She kicks her comforter off and sits up, leaning over the back of the sofa. He stands idly in the doorway, staring at the TV. "Are you alright?"

"I'm not the one…" he begins, but breaks off with a sigh halfway through the sentence. "I'll be fine, Gigi."

"I really think you should talk to her," Gigi says, sitting down on the sofa. He sighs again, long-suffering, and moves to sit down on the arm of the sofa. She stares at him intently, but he doesn't respond. "William, I really think that she still likes you."

"Please," he responds, his voice strangled and tired. "I need you to stop."

Gigi's entire body deflates as she sinks into the sofa cushions. Her arms are crossed over her chest defensively. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to…" she begins. She can't find the words, and huffs impatiently, wiggling her toes and stretching her feet to chase off the feelings of anxiety that pool in the arches of her feet. "I just wanted you to be happy."

"I wish it could be that simple, Gigi," he says. "But sometimes things are just complicated."

"They don't always have to be," she protests. He just shakes his head.

"This time, though."

They sit in silence for a while. It's nice, but the sound of Gigi's cartoons on the television is painfully trivial compared to the conversation they just had and it makes her feel young and stupid.

"I'm worried about you," he reiterates. Gigi decides to humor him.

"Why?" she asks. He hems and haws for a second. Gigi thinks he is probably thinking of George, but he does not say anything about that. He never does.

"You seem… upset," he says, eking out the words. "Upset that… that Lizzie is gone." Gigi understands now why he is having so much difficulty speaking on the topic.

"Well yeah," Gigi says. "Yes, I am. I like her. I think she's cool. And," she looks away as she says this, even though she'd had her gaze fixed on him before, "I'm upset for you, too."

"That's what I thought," he says with a short sharp nod. "You have a great deal of emotional investment in…" He has a hard time choking out the next part of this sentence, so Gigi supplements for him.

"In your relationship with Lizzie?"

"Yes," he says, sounding not at all relieved. "And I just wanted you to know, I'm fine. You don't have to…" He gestures vaguely at her cartoon watching blanket nest.

"Well," Gigi says, dropping her hands down on the pile of blankets in her lap so that the air wooshes out of them. "I'm fine if you're fine."

"I'm fine," William assures her. She looks at him for a second before standing up, ambling over, and wrapping him in a hug. He hugs her back and again mutters an assurance that he is fine. When she pulls back, he stands up and ruffles her hair like he used to when she was little.

"Go to class," he says. Then he retreats into his room.

Gigi can tell he's not fine, but he has a point. She was so determined to convince Lizzie that her brother wasn't all that bad. That they were actually kind of perfect for each other, if she could only just reconsider long enough to see it. Gigi is still so thoroughly convinced William and Lizzie could be great, and she really wants that for both of them.

But apparently things are complicated.

The second Tuesday in March, an invitation arrives at the Darcys' apartment. When Gigi reads it, she literally screeches and tears off down the hallway. William is just emerging from his study, a look of dull panic on his face. She skitters to a halt in front of him, waving the invitation in front of his face, way too quickly and way too close for him to read it.

"Look, look, look," she sing-songs, handing him the invitation. He grabs it from her, reads it over three times, and then retreats into his study without saying anything.

Later, at dinner, Gigi mentions it to Fitz.

"We," she tells him dramatically. "Have been invited to Lizzie and Charlotte's twenty-fifth birthday bash."

"No kidding?" Fitz asks in a tone that suggests he is not really surprised at all.

"Yes," she says, looking at William.

"As it so happens, I was also invited to that particular event."

Gigi gasps in mock surprise with undertones of actual delight. "Maybe we'll see you there!"

"Are we going?" William asks, arching an eyebrow. The comment is entirely deadpan and out of nowhere. It's the first full sentence he's gotten out all night. Since she gave him the invitation, even. Gigi looks between her two companions for a second, as flabbergasted as Fitz looks.

"Yes," she and Fitz eventually conclude in unison.

"You are absolutely going," Fitz says. Gigi nods violently.

"I don't know if it would be politic," he says.

"It'd be politic as hell," Gigi counters, a little more loudly than she maybe should have in the very nice restaurant they're eating at. William gives her a look. She continues more quietly. "She invited us! It'd be rude not to go."

"She invited Caroline as well," William says. Gigi had been hoping he hadn't seen that tweet. "Just because she invited us doesn't mean she wants to see… us."

"Noooo," Fitz says. "It would've been rude to invite you and Bing and not invite Caroline. She wants see you so much that she was willing to invite Caroline to her birthday party." Gigi purses her lips and stares at her plate while Fitz talks about Caroline. But at least the message seems to be getting through to William, who looks contemplative.

"Still," he says, though she can hear the resolve weakening in his voice.

"Come on," Gigi says, nudging William with her shoulder. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Whatever the worst was, this certainly isn't it.

They're at the Bennet house, and even though Gigi has barely seen Lizzie all night she has a good feeling about things. There are a ton of people at this party, and she only knows five of them, which has been William's excuse for not talking to Lizzie. He needs to stay with her.

"I'm really fine," she says as they wander into the kitchen. "You should go talk to… Lizzie hi I didn't see you there."

The kitchen gets very quiet because it's only the three of them and besides some very brief hellos a few hours ago, they haven't seen each other since January. Gigi looks at William, who is looking at his feet.

"How are you?" Lizzie asks her. William looks up to see if Lizzie was talking to him and looks away immediately when he realizes that she wasn't.

"I'm great!" Gigi says. "How are you?"

"Good, good," Lizzie says. They all shuffle their feet for a moment. "Darcy?" she finally asks, peeking up at him from underneath her eyelashes.

"I'm well," he says.

"Happy birthday, Lizzie," Gigi says.

"Happy… birthday," William echoes. Lizzie laughs and thanks them.

"Did you finish your independent study?" Gigi asks.

"I have one more company left to shadow," Lizzie says. "In Los Angeles. I leave next week. It's going to be kind of a squeeze to get everything done before June, but I'm… tentatively optimistic."

"Good! That's good."

Lizzie then begins to mention that she should get back to her guests. Gigi does not let her finish, and instead interrupts.

"William brought you a present," she says. Lizzie schools her expression carefully, but she seems intrigued.

"Oh?" she asks.

"I, uh… yes."

Gigi takes this awkward response from her brother as her cue to leave. She seeks out Fitz and the two of them lurk in the living room, watching the kitchen doors closely. When William and Lizzie emerge, it is by Gigi's count a full eleven minutes later. Lizzie is carrying the book William got her for her birthday under one arm, and they don't look unhappy to be near each other, but they also don't look like they've been making out. Gigi would be lying if she said she isn't a little bit disappointed.

Gigi avoids William for the rest of the night in the hopes that this might force him to spend more time with Lizzie. Mostly, it just means that she gets to sit in a corner with Caroline, who looks uncharacteristically sullen.

"…so I'm thinking about going to New York for a while," Caroline says. "What do you think?" Gigi hasn't really been paying attention, and she immediately feels bad. Even though William has been irritated with Caroline since November, and even though Fitz has never been particularly fond of her, Gigi's always liked her. She simultaneously feels bad for her, because she's always known that she likes William way more than William likes her, but there's something in Caroline's ambition and reserve that Gigi admires.

"New York's nice," Gigi says. "The city?"

"Upstate," Caroline says. "I'm thinking about staying with my father for a while."

"I think he'd like that," Gigi says.

"I just need to get out of Los Angeles," Caroline says. "It's so… hot."

"And the air's so bad," Gigi agrees. "I think Upstate would be a really good thing for you."

"I think so too," Caroline says.

"I'll come visit you," Gigi says. Caroline leans back in her seat, appraising her with new eyes. Gigi can see the gears always turning in her head. Always calculating, always trying to figure people out. It stings, a little, that Caroline has to reevaluate their friendship, even after everything. But Gigi understands. "We can go see Breakfast at Tiffany's on Broadway," Gigi suggests.

"I'd like that," Caroline says, her voice taking on a quality that Gigi isn't sure she's ever heard in it before.

The party lasts well into the night, and after she has caught up with Bing and Caroline, and met Lizzie's parents, and introduced herself to Charlotte and wished her a happy birthday, Gigi begins to feel uncomfortable there. She knows William would leave the party in a heartbeat if she asked him to, but she doesn't want to do that.

Still, the house is so full of people she doesn't know, and everyone she does know is otherwise engaged. Feeling caged, Gigi slips out the back into the back yard, which is small but nicely kept. There's an orange tree at the far side, with a swing tied to one of the branches. Someone is swinging on it and drinking cheap champagne directly out of the bottle.

Gigi recognizes her almost immediately. It'd be hard not to, with that hair.

Apparently Lydia recognizes her, too, because when she sees her, she glowers.

Gigi can feel all the breath rush out of her, and she wonders if she should leave. But she ignores the flight response and decides… fight? Maybe it won't have to be fight.

She waves tentatively, and though Lydia looks obstinate and confused, she waves back. Gigi wanders over, her arms crossed over her chest. Her heels sink into the soft dirt as she crosses the back yard and she kicks them off and picks them up.

"Hi," she says when she's a few feet away from Lydia's swing.

"Hey," Lydia says, staring at her with an expression she cannot name. Gigi swallows nervously. She fidgets with her shoes. "What are you doing here?" Lydia asks.

"I was just," Gigi says. "Uh," she continues. "I needed some air."

"Oh, really?" She sounds mean when she says it. "I'm just trying to get away from all the drama," Lydia says, with a hand gesture. She says that with some real vitriol, but then purses her lips and looks down at her lap. Her voice is softer when she speaks again. "I mean, it's not… everyone's just talking about my sisters." Nobody's talking about Lydia.

No, of course they aren't, Gigi thinks.

Nobody ever talked about her, either.

"Well Lizzie and my brother seem to have figured things out at least," Gigi says, trying to transition to a less awkward topic. That her brother's relationship with Lizzie was her first thought when it came to "less awkward" says something. Lydia nods and takes a sip of her champagne.

"Jane and Bing too," she says, staring contemplatively at the back porch. "My mom is literally going to shit a brick."

"At least she'll be happy about it," Gigi says with an emphatic hand gesture. "Aunt Catherine is going to…" Well, for lack of a better term. "Shit a brick."

Lydia laughs, which catches Gigi by surprise. It's a nice surprise, though.

"Yeahhhh," Lydia says, making a face. "I hope, when Darcy and Lizzie have their big white wedding, they have it here." Gigi knows Lydia's joking so she doesn't say anything about how great she thinks that'd be. "Right here in this back yard. So all your super-rich relatives can come here and sit on our nicest lawn chairs and pretend they don't think it's all awful." Gigi is so taken aback by this self-deprecation, this rude outburst, that she can't say anything. She can't even say that she and William don't really have relatives, outside of Aunt Catherine. "That'll be hilarious."

"I like your house," Gigi says quietly.

"Really?" Lydia scoffs.

"Yeah," she says. "It's nice."

"It's not."

"It is," she says, slightly irked. "It's homey. It's what a home should be like. And you guys have lived here all your lives, right?"

"Yeah," Lydia says.

"That must've been nice." Gigi wanders over to the orange tree and rests one of her hands on the trunk. "We were always moving around when I was a kid. My parents flipped properties as a hobby. They could never decide which one they wanted to live in, for good. I think they just liked the variety, being able to move every couple years." Lydia makes a noise that suggests she doesn't think of this as a particular hardship. "I'm just saying," Gigi says.

"Mhmm." Lydia offers her the champagne bottle. Gigi hesitates, stiffening up, and Lydia retracts it back, nursing it to her chest.

"Anyway," Gigi says, feeling awful and ridiculous. "I should probably…"

"Yeah," Lydia agrees. Gigi wonders if she should put her shoes back on, but decides against it, and begins to pick her way back across the lawn. "Hey," Lydia shouts after her. She turns around, her heart thudding uncomfortably in her chest. "You're not as bad as all that," Lydia says.

Gigi takes the compliment without asking what all that is.

When she gets home that evening, Gigi discovers that Lydia has followed her on Twitter. She follows back.

A half hour later, she gets an email that Lydia has followed her on thisismyjam. Upon immediate inspection, Gigi discerns that her account is brand new. By this time, it's nearly one, but Gigi stays up another hour and a half to see if Lydia will do anything else. She doesn't, though. Gigi crawls into her bed at two in the morning, wrapping her arms tightly around her to fend off the feelings of foolishness that are nagging at the corners of her mind.

In the morning, Gigi has a tweet from Lydia about Bat for Lashes.

She's so eager to make a good impression that she can't decide on one song to recommend (because even though she like Winter Fields, she feels like Lydia might like Laura better), so she ends up linking her to a playlist of twenty songs. Afterwards, she tweets Lydia again to ask what her music recommendations are.

"Lana del Rey," Lydia tweets back. "Born to Die is my fav. Can't stop listening to it."

Gigi has never heard ninety percent of Lana del Rey's music. A year ago, she had listened to Off to the Races on recommendation from a classmate who had insisted she'd love it because of the literary references. That classmate had failed to take into consideration Gigi's reactive dislike of all things Nabakov, though, and the allusions combined with the cloying baby voice had turned Gigi off of Lana del Rey in general.

But Lydia has just confirmed through Twitter that she is in the middle of listening to the entire Bat for Lashes playlist, so Gigi opens iTunes and buys Born to Die.

As she listens to the song for the first time, she stares at her computer screen, entirely transfixed.

After it ends, she rips off her headphones and begins to root through her desk draw, looking for the wire that connects her laptop to the sound system in her bedroom.

William has, unsurprisingly, been spirited away to Los Angeles on "business", so she doesn't have to worry about him hearing her blasting the song on loop in her room. She plays it once, ten times, as she lays on her bed and stares contemplatively at the uneven spackling of her ceiling.

She can see where Lydia sees herself in the song. She can see bits of herself in it, too.

The lyrics are cynical and largely banal, but occasionally they strike home with her. The tune is eerie and revenant, which Gigi likes.

She runs her hands over the comforter she loves so much, rolls onto her stomach, and buries her face in her hands. She tries to clear her mind of everything but the deep crooning reiterations of sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough, I don't know why.

She tries to focus on Lydia's mindframe instead of her own.

William is wrong about things all the time, but he was definitely right when he'd said that it would be a Very Bad Thing if she slipped back to the place she'd been in after George had left her. It's not like she wants to go back there. She really doesn't.

But if she's been listening to this song the way Gigi has, Lydia's there right now.

Her brother hadn't let her help Lydia the first time around because he thought she wasn't strong enough. But if there is one thing she has never felt remotely uncertain about, it's that she has impeccable taste in music, so maybe she can do some good with that. Maybe she can even do it without getting hurt again in the process.

As the song restarts again, she rolls onto her back. She closes her eyes and tries to ignore every single thought that she has. She even tries to put the song out of her mind, focusing only on breathing in and out.

After a while, it feels like she is becoming the song, each breath trapping the lyrics inside her lungs, the bass line beating her heart for her.

She makes Born to Die her new jam. Lydia favorites the tweet.

After Lydia has grown tired of Bat for Lashes' entire discography, she asks Gigi what else she should listen to. Gigi has typed out an entire tweet about Florence and the Machine and is about to hit enter when she changes her mind.

In her closet, balanced on the top of the inside of the doorframe, there is a sixty-four gigabyte thumb drive. She'd hid it there last July, on the day she'd decided she had to move on with her life. William didn't know it existed; when she'd called him for their weekly catch-up, she'd only told him that she'd wiped all her art and graphic designs and the music and movies and photographs off of her laptop to help her get a fresh start. She had taken them off her laptop, but they were still there, hidden in her closet. Even though he probably wouldn't have taken it away from her if he'd known about it, Gigi knows that he'd disapprove.

She deletes the tweet about Florence and the Machine, stands up, and marches over to the closet like it is an enemy soldier. After she retrieves the thumb drive, she plugs it into her computer. Her hands do not shake, but she has an uneasy feeling in her stomach.

As she tabs through her old playlists, she is embarrassed that she didn't just delete them entirely. Before just now, she hadn't even thought of the thumb drive in months. She can't say she regrets making it right at this moment, because it makes it so much easier to find the song she is thinking of, but she can't help but ruminate on why she'd decided to save all this stuff in the first place.

It definitely hadn't been in case she needed to help someone else down the line.

She finds the song she was thinking of and compose a laconic tweet to Lydia, listing only the band and title. "Stars," it says. "Elevator Love Letter."

With this information she offers no further explanation. Lydia is smart enough to figure it out on her own.

William calls her from LA to say that his business there has been extended through the end of the month. And that he might have to house-sit for Bing at Netherfield indefinitely after that. Gigi teases him about this for several minutes but secretly she is thrilled.

"I saw that you've been speaking to Lydia," he says, employing all his usual subtlety with topic changes. "About music." Gigi feels very strongly for a second that she has been caught doing something wrong, but he continues. "That's good."

"Yeah. Yes." Gigi corrects herself while tracing over the pattern of her tights with her fingertips. It's not actually that surprising that William doesn't know enough about her taste in music to understand the meaning behind the songs she and Lydia exchanged. He's never listened to her music. One time he'd mixed up Gotye and Mumford and Sons. He's really not in the zeitgeist. "She's cool."

"I'm glad the two of you get along," he says.

"Me too," she agrees quietly.

"Lizzie says that she needs friends that are better for her."

Gigi doesn't say anything.

"That are… more reliable," he amends.

"I can be reliable," she responds. He seems satisfied by this answer and tells her that he has to go because he and Lizzie have reservations for dinner. When she tells him she doesn't want to keep him from that, she isn't lying even a little bit.

Gigi wonders if Lydia got a similar call from Lizzie, because the next she sends her a recommendation, she does it on direct message.

However, there is no doubt in her mind that Lydia got the message, because the song is entitled "Swimmers".

Gigi does not want to listen to the song. She stares at the title for twenty minutes, her lips pressed into a thin line, her palms resting flat on her desk. Her stomach roils. She feels a little bit dizzy. But, she thinks, she is stronger now. Besides, this song isn't anything more than another I understand. That's what the Stars song had been. It was just a message. It was not an attack.

This is not an attack. It's an I understand.

Lydia just understands.

She listens to the song.

It's pretty good, but it's just.

She ends up on her bed again, hugging one of her many pillows to her chest as the song plays. It's not a bad song. She kind of likes it. She kind of likes thinking about as a song that's just for her and Lydia, and not for anything else.

But.

She wonders, sometimes.

She wonders if maybe William was right. She wonders if she was better when she just never thought about any of this.

She remembers that this isn't about her. It's about Lydia.

In response to Lydia's direct message, she sends back a song by the same singer playing with a different band. The song is called Twilight Galaxy and Lydia messages her back not twenty minutes later to show her an acoustic cover of the song that she likes better. Gigi has to say she agrees.

Lydia loves Marina and the Diamonds. It's one of Gigi's new favorites.

By the time Lydia makes the song Guilty her new jam, Gigi is familiar enough with the band to recognize the song by its title. On thisismyjam she's left a mildly dramatic message about nobody believing or understanding her anyway in the comments section. For some reason, the idea that this song is one that Lydia identifies with makes Gigi angry. She wants to message her to say that nothing is her fault, that nothing that happened is her fault at all, but they don't talk about it.

They haven't ever talked about it, not directly. Gigi is too afraid to pull the rug out from under whatever she and Lydia have built together.

But she has to find a way to say something.

She idly skips through songs, discarding them each after thirty seconds or less. It seems impossible to her that she'll ever find one that says what she really wants to say. She stays up all night, trying to find just the song.

In the morning, she tweets the song Two Birds by Regina Spektor at Lydia. It'll have to do.

For the first time, when Lydia responds, all she says is thank you.

In late April, Lydia tweets her followers to say that she has finals coming up and needs new study music.

Gigi glances at the thumb drive, which is still sitting on her desk, and makes a decision.

She wipes everything from it. Months of her artwork, months of photographs and homework and everything else from that time in her life. Just gone. It's easier than she had thought it would be.

On the now-blank thumb drive, she puts her entire iTunes library. She overnights it to Lydia.

Lydia doesn't say anything about it on Twitter, but Gigi gets it back a week later. When she opens it on her computer, she sees that the files have been sorted into two folders: Gigi's Music and Lydia's Music.

Gigi adds Lydia's iTunes library to her own.

She listens to Miley Cyrus's entire discography for Lydia, who has apparently been a fan since the Hannah Montana days. She enjoys a couple of the more recent songs way more than she thought she would. She thinks back to that one Taylor Swift song she'd liked so much and decides that she needs to branch out in her musical tastes a little more. Branching out can be a really good thing.

On Twitter, she makes a post about broadening horizons to something of that same effect. Lydia and Lizzie both favorite the tweet, though Gigi suspects they do it for very different reasons.

By the time William has to come back from Netherfield to check in with the San Francisco offices, Gigi has grown accustomed to blasting her music over the apartment's sound system. When he comes back from work on the first night, his face is twisted into a displeased grimace.

"What are you listening to?" he asks. She looks up from her homework, trying to muster an innocent expression.

"Carly Rae Jepsen," she responds.

"Why?" William asks, sounding truly pained. Gigi just smiles to herself.

While Gigi works her way through Lydia's music library, Lydia does the same with hers. It's a bigger task for Lydia than it is for her; her library is almost five times the size of Lydia's. But Lydia seems grateful for it, and occasionally tweets to mention how much she likes a particular song of Gigi's.

It's been so long since she listened to some of the songs that when Lydia tweets them, it's like they've both discovered something new.

One of those songs is What If by Meg & Dia. Gigi loved Meg & Dia once, but hasn't listened to any of their music in almost a year. She plays the song through Lydia's thisismyjam page while she picks at her mid-afternoon snack and sorts through her study guide for her upcoming final in art history.

She likes the song. She always has, but she likes it more in this new context. It's a good song for Lydia, she thinks. It's resilient and triumphant.

It's definitely a departure from Born to Die.

Lydia's iTunes library is a total mess, and Gigi spends a considerable amount of time just sorting it out. She has a ton of orphaned songs, just one single song from an album or artist. Most of the tracks don't have their cover art. Some of them are not even labeled properly – there are at least a hundred songs that are just titled "Track 8" or "Unnamed Track 2".

Gigi's never been the orderly one in her family. William's got that role covered in spades. Literally everything in their apartment has been labeled. She's never felt the compulsion to do anything like that before, but she has gotten used to it over the years.

Plus, she doesn't like the idea of letting vast parts of Lydia's music library go undiscovered. So she goes through all of the songs, playing them, listening to the lyrics, Googling, updating the track information.

Normally it'd be really unforgiving work, but she finds herself having fun.

She starts in on the twentieth or thirtieth track. The tempo is upbeat and cheery, and she nods along in time to it, scribbling notes down on her study guide as she listens to the lyrics.

I'm rolling the dice, got the wind in my hair, I'm gonna kill my boyfriend, yeah.

She's lucky she wasn't drinking anything because she snorts so hard it hurts. She presses her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing outright as she listens to the rest of the song, but the cheery beat and bright tone in juxtaposition with the lyrics does her in and she laughs. She laughs in a manic way, because even though there's something inside her that's been fracturing for weeks, she has never heard a song she likes quite as much as this one.

She looks it up and makes it her new jam immediately and replies Lydia in the tweet thanking her for sending her the song.

For a few minutes, she regrets the decision, because she knows Lydia will see it. She worries that Lydia won't find it funny, that maybe something inside of Lydia is more than just fracturing. That she definitely hasn't had enough time to put herself back together yet.

But Lydia favorites the tweet and rejams the song.

For the first time since they've met, the digital interaction isn't quite enough for Gigi. She wants to know what Lydia is thinking, and if she's alright. If she thought the song was funny, or…

She just can't tell from her tweets.

When William asks her if she wants to spend the summer at Netherfield with him and Bing, Gigi does not hesitate to say yes.