Something Borrowed (14 page)

have already surrendered. We have crossed a new line together.

Because even though we have already slept together, that didn't

really count. We were drunk, reckless. Nothing really happened

until this kiss today. Nothing that couldn't have been stuffed into

a closet, confused with a dream, maybe even forgotten altogether.

That is all changed now. For better or worse.

I have always done my best thinking in the shower. The night is

for worrying, dwelling, analyzing. But in the morning, under the

hot water, I see things clearly. So as I lather my hair, inhaling my

grapefruit-scented shampoo, I pare everything down to the

essential truth: what Dex and I are doing is wrong.

We kissed for a long time last night, and then he held me for even

longer, few words passing between us. My heart thumped against

his as I told myself that by not escalating the physical part we had

scored a victory of sorts. But this morning, I know it was still

wrong. Just plain wrong. I must stop. I will stop.

Starting now.

When I was little, I used to count to three in my head when I

wanted to give myself a fresh start. I'd catch myself biting my

nails, jerk my fingers out of my mouth, and count. One.

Two.

Three. Go. Then I had a clean slate. From that point forward I was

no longer a nail-biter. I used this tactic with many bad habits. So

on a count of three, I will shake the Dex habit. I will be a good

friend again. I will erase everything, fix it all.

I count to three slowly and then use the visualization technique

that Brandon told me he used during baseball season.

He said he

would picture his bat striking the ball, hear it crack, see the dust

fly as he slid safely into home base. He focused only on his good

plays and not the times he screwed up.

So I do this. I focus on my friendship with Darcy, rather than my

feelings for Dex. I make a video in my head, filling it with scenes

of Darcy and me. I see us hunkered down in her bed during an

elementary-school sleepover. We are discussing our plans for the

future, how many kids we will have, what we will name them. I see

Darcy, ten years old, propped up on her elbows, pinkies in her

mouth, explaining that if you have three kids, the middle one

should be a different sex from the others so everyone has

something special. As if you can control such things.

I picture us in the halls at Naperville High, passing notes between

classes. Her notes, folded in intricate shapes, like origami, were so

much more entertaining than Annalise's notes, which simply

reported how bored she was in class. Darcy's were chock-full of

interesting observations about classmates and snide remarks

about teachers. And little games for me to play. She'd put quotes

down the left-hand side of the page and people's names on the

right for me to match. I'd crack up as I drew a line from, say, "Nice

brights, buddy" to Annalise's father, who made that comment

every time drivers forgot to turn off their high beams.

She was

funny. Sometimes cutting, even downright mean. But that only

made her funnier.

I rinse my hair and remember something else, a memory that has

not surfaced before. It is like finding a photograph of yourself that

you never knew was taken. Darcy and I were freshmen, standing

beside our locker after school. Becky Zurich, one of the most

popular girls in the senior class (but not the nice kind of popular,

more the mean, feared variety) walked by us with her boyfriend,

Paul Kinser. With her virtually nonexistent chin and way-too-thin

lips, she really wasn't pretty at all, although at the time she

somehow convinced a lot of people, including me, that she was. So

when Paul and Becky passed us, I looked at them, because they

were popular seniors, and I was impressed, or at the very least,

curious. I'm sure I wanted to hear what they were talking about so

that I could glean some insight into being eighteen (so old!) and

cool. I think it was only a casual glance in their direction, but

maybe it was a stare.

In any case, Becky gave me an exaggerated stare back, making her

eyes pop out like a cartoon. She followed this with a hyenalike, lipcurling

sneer and said, "What're you lookin' at?"

Then Paul chimed in with "Catching flies?" (I'm sure dating Becky

made Paul meaner, or maybe he just figured out that being mean

earned him action later.)

Sure enough, my mouth was wide open. I snapped it shut,

mortified. Becky laughed, proud to have shamed a freshman. She

then reapplied her pink frosted lipstick, inserted a fresh piece of

Big Red into her mean little mouth, and made one final face at me

for good measure.

Darcy had been shuffling through books in our locker but clearly

caught the gist of the exchange. She spun and eyed the pair with

revulsion, a look she had practiced and mastered. She then

imitated Becky's shrill laughter, craning her neck unnaturally

backward and rolling in her lips to make them invisible. She was

hideous and looked exactly like Becky in midchortle.

I stifled a smile while Becky looked momentarily stunned. She

then gathered herself, took a step toward Darcy, and spat out the

word "bitch." Darcy was unflinching as she stared right back at the

senior duo and said, "It's better than being an ugly bitch.

Wouldn't you agree, Paul?"

It was Becky's turn to stare, mouth agape, at her newly discovered

adversary. And before she could formulate a comeback, Darcy

threw in another insult for good measure. "And by the way, Becky,

that lipstick you're wearing? It's so last year."

Everything about that moment is suddenly in sharp focus. I can

see our locker decorated with pictures of Patrick Swayze in Dirty

Dancing. I can smell that distinct, starchy, meat-based odor of the

nearby cafeteria. And I can hear Darcy's voice, forceful and

confident. Of course, Paul had no response to Darcy's question, as

it was clear to all four of us that Darcy was right she was the

prettier of the two. And in high school that sometimes gives you

the last word, even if you are a freshman. Becky and Paul scurried off and Darcy just kept talking to me about whatever

it was we had been talking about, as if Becky and Paul were totally

insignificant. Which they were. It just took a lot to realize that at

fourteen.

I turn off the water, wrap a towel around my body and another

over my head. I will call Dexter as soon as I get to work. I will tell

him that it has to stop. This time I really mean it. He is marrying

Darcy, and I am the maid of honor. We both love her.

Yes, she has

flaws. She can be spoiled, self-centered, and bossy, but she can

also be loyal and kind and wildly fun. And she is the closest thing

to a sister that I will ever have.

During my commute, I practice what I will say to Dex, even

talking out loud at one point on the subway. When I finally arrive

at work, I have my speech so memorized that it no longer sounds

scripted. I've inserted the proper pauses into my Declaration of

Mind-set and Future Intent. I am ready.

Just as I am about to make the phone call, I notice that I have an

e-mail from Dex. I open it, expecting him to have reached the

same conclusion. The subject line reads "You."

You are an amazing person, and I don't know where the feelings

that you give me came from. What I do know is that I am

completely and utterly into you and I want time to freeze so I can

be with you all the time and not have to think of anything else at

all. I like literally everything about you, including the way your

face shows everything you're thinking and especially the way it

looks when we are together and your hair is back and your eyes

are closed and your lips are open just a little bit. Okay.

That's all I

wanted to say. Delete this.

I am breathless, dizzy. Nobody has ever written words like this to

me. I read it again, absorbing every word. / like literally

everything about you too, I think.

And just like that, my resolve is gone again. How can I end

something that I have never experienced before?

Something I

have been waiting for my whole life? Nobody before Dex could

make me feel this way, and what if I never find it again? What if

this is it?

My phone rings. I answer it thinking it could be Dex, hoping it's

not Darcy. I can't talk to her right now. I can't think about her

right now. I am buzzing from my electronic love letter.

"Cheers, baby."

It is Ethan, calling from England, where he has lived for the past

two years. I am so happy to hear his voice. He has a smiling voice,

always sounding like he's on the verge of laughter.

Most things

about Ethan are just as they were in the fifth grade. He is still

compassionate, still has cherub cheeks that turn pink in the cold.

But the voice is newer. It came in high school with puberty long

after friendship had replaced my schoolgirl crush.

"Hi, Ethan!"

"What's the statute of limitations on wishing someone a happy

birthday?" he asks. Ever since I went to law school, he loves

throwing out legal terms, often with a twist.

"Strawberry tort" is

his favorite.

I laugh. "Don't worry about it. It was only my thirtieth."

"Do you hate me? You should have called and reminded me. I feel

like an absolute ass, after eighteen years of never forgetting. Shit.

My mind is going and I'm still in my twenties not to rub it in."

"You forgot my twenty-seventh too," I interrupt him.

"I did?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think I did."

"Yeah you were with Bran "

"Stop. Don't say that name. You're right. I forgot your twentyseventh.

That makes this infraction somehow less egregious, right? I didn't break a streak So how is it?" He whistles.

"Can't

believe you're thirty. You should still be fourteen. Do you feel

older? Wiser? More worldly? What did you do on the big night?"

He fires off his questions in his frenetic, attention-deficit-disorder

way.

"It's the same. I'm the same," I lie. "Nothing's changed."

"Really?" he says. It is like him to ask the follow-up.

It's as if he

knows that I am holding back.

I pause, my mind racing. Do I tell? Not tell? What will he think of

me?

What will he say? Ethan and I have remained close since high

school, although our contact is sporadic. But whenever we do talk,

we pick up where we left off. He would make a good confidant in

this emerging saga. Ethan knows all the major players.

And more

important, he knows what it's like to screw up.

Things started out right for him. He did well on the SATs,

graduated as our salutatorian, and was voted most likely to

succeed, picked over Amy Choi, our valedictorian, who was too

quiet and mousy to win votes for anything. He went to Stanford,

and after graduation took a job at an investment bank even

though he majored in art history and had no interest in finance.

He instantly despised everything about the banking culture. He

said pulling all-nighters was unnatural, and realized that he

preferred sleep to money. So he traded his suits in for fleece and

spent the next several years drifting up and down the West Coast

snapping pictures of lakes and trees, gathering friends along the

way. He took writing classes, art classes, photography classes,

funded by the odd bartending job and summers in Alaska's

fisheries.

That's where he met Brandi "Brandi with an /'" as I called her

before I realized that he genuinely liked her, and that she wasn't

just a fling. A few months into their romance, Brandi got pregnant

(insisting she was part of that woefully unlucky .05

percent on

birth-control pills, although I had my doubts). She said that

abortion was out of the question, so Ethan did what he thought to

be the right thing and married her at City Hall in downtown

Seattle. They sent out homemade marriage

announcements

featuring a black-and-white photo of the two hiking.

Darcy made

fun of Brandi's way-too-short-and-tight jean shorts.

"Who the hell

hikes in Daisy Dukes?" she said. But Ethan seemed happy enough.

And that summer, Brandi gave birth to a baby boy an adorable,

bouncing Eskimo baby boy with eyes that turned coal black

almost immediately. Brandi, with blue eyes that matched Ethan's,

begged for forgiveness. Ethan promptly had the marriage

annulled, and Brandi moved back to Alaska, probably to track

down her native lover.

I think Brandi soured Ethan on the whole fresh-air, live-off-theland

kind of life. Or maybe he just wanted something new.

Because he moved to London, where he writes for a magazine and

is working on a book about London architecture, an interest he

didn't acquire until he landed on British soil. But that's how Ethan

is. He figures things out along the way, always ready to back up