Something Borrowed (37 page)

visions of her languishing in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV,

dark circles under her eyes, her hair stringy, her skin gray. In

these scenes, I am there by her side, bringing her magazines and

black licorice, telling her that everything is going to be okay, that

everything happens for a reason.

But even if these scenes play out, I will never regret telling Dex the

truth about what I want. I will never be sorry for going for it. For

once, I did not put Darcy above myself.

As the days tick by, I go to work, come home, go back to work,

waiting for the bomb to drop. I am sure that Dex will call at any

moment with news. Good news. In the meantime, I steel myself,

refusing to give in to my temptation to call him first.

But after a

full week passes, I start to worry and feel the shift back to my

former self. I tell Hillary that I want to call him, knowing that she

will talk me out of it. I remind myself of a woman on the wagon,

dragging herself to an AA meeting in a last-ditch effort to resist

her urges.

"No way," she says. "Don't do it. Don't contact him."

"What if he was drunk and doesn't remember our conversation?" I

ask her, grasping at straws.

"His tough luck."

"Do you think he remembers?"

"He remembers."

"Well. I wish I hadn't said anything."

"Why? So you could have a few more nights with him?"

"No," I say defensively.

Even though that is exactly the reason.

After another few days of torture, of being unable to eat or work or

sleep, I decide that I must get away. I have to be somewhere else,

away from Dex. Leaving town is the only way that I will keep

myself from calling him, retracting everything for one more night,

one more minute with him. I consider going to Indiana, but that is

not far enough. Besides, home will only remind me of Darcy and

the wedding.

I call Ethan and ask if I can visit. He is thrilled, says come

anytime. So I call United and book a flight to London.

It is only

five days away, so I must pay full fare eight hundred and ninety

dollars but it's worth every penny.

After I type my vacation memo, I go to drop it off at Les's office.

Mercifully, he is away from his desk.

"He's at an out-of-the-office meeting. Thank gawd," his secretary,

Cheryl, says to me. She is my ally, often warning me when Les is

in a particularly foul mood.

"Just have a few things for him," I tell her, heading into his den of

horrors.

I put a draft of our reply papers on his chair, the vacation memo

under them. Then I change my mind and move the memo to the

top of the pile. He will be so pissed. This makes me smile.

"What's that smirk for?" Cheryl asks as I leave his office.

"Vacation memo," I say. "Let me know how much he curses me."

She lifts her eyebrows and says, "Uh-oh," without losing her place

on the document she is typing. "Someone's gonna be in trou-ble."

Les calls me that evening when he returns to the office.

"What's

the big idea?"

"Excuse me?" I ask, knowing that my calm will nettle him further.

"You didn't tell me you were going on vacation!"

"Oh. I thought I did," I lie.

"When was that?"

"I don't know exactly Weeks ago. I'm going to a wedding." Two

lies.

"Christ." He breathes into the phone, waiting for me to offer to

cancel my trip. In the old days, back when I was a firstyear, the

passive-aggressive trick might have worked. But now I say

nothing. I outwait him.

"Is it a family wedding?" he finally asks. This is where he draws

the line. Family funerals and family weddings. Likely only

immediate family. So I tell him that it's my sister's wedding. Three

lies.

"Sorry," I say flippantly. "Maid of honor, you know."

I let him rant for a few seconds and make an idle threat about

getting another associate to take over the case. As if everyone is

chomping at the bit to work with him. As if I would care if he

replaced me. Then he announces with pleasure that this means no

life outside the office for me until Friday. I think to myself that

that won't be a problem.

Darcy calls minutes later. She is just as understanding.

"How can

you book a trip so close to my wedding?"

"I promised Ethan I'd visit him this summer. And the summer is

almost over."

"What's wrong with the fall? I'm sure London is even more

beautiful in the fall."

"I need a vacation. Now."

"Why now?"

"I just need to get out of here."

"Why? Does it have anything to do with Marcus?"

"No."

"Have you seen him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Okay. Maybe it does have something to do with Marcus" I say,

just wanting her to shut up. "I don't think it's going to work out

with him. And maybe I'm a little bummed. Okay?"

"Oh," she says. "I'm really sorry it didn't work out."

The last thing I want is Darcy's sympathy. I tell her that it really

has more to do with work. "I need a break from Les."

"But I need you here," she whimpers. Apparently her ten seconds

of sympathy have expired.

"Claire will be here."

"It's not the same. You're my maid of honor!"

"Darcy. I need a vacation. Okay?"

"I guess it'll have to be." I see her pouting face.

"Right?" She adds

this with a note of hope.

"Right."

She sighs loudly and tries another tactic. "Can't you go the week

I'm in Hawaii on my honeymoon?"

"I could," I say, picturing Darcy in her new lingerie. "If my world

revolved around you but I'm sorry. It doesn't."

I never say things like this to Darcy. But times have changed.

"Okay. Fine. But meet me at the Bridal Party tomorrow at noon to

pick up your bridesmaid dress Unless you have plans to go to

Venice or something."

"Very funny," I say, and hang up.

So now Dex will know that I am going to London. I wonder how

he will feel when he hears this news. Maybe it will make him

decide more quickly. Tell me something good before I fly far away.

I keep waiting, feeling increasingly tortured with every passing

hour. No word from him. No call. No e-mail. I constantly check

my messages, looking for the blinking red light.

Nothing. I start to

dial his phone number countless times, compose long e-mails that

I never send. Somehow I stay strong.

Then, on the night before my flight, Jose buzzes me.

"Dex is here

to see you."

A flood of emotion rushes over me. The wedding is off!

For once,

my glass is not only half full, but it runneth over. My joy is

temporarily clouded as my thoughts turn to Darcy what will

happen to our friendship? Does she know of my involvement? I

push thoughts of her away, focus on my feelings for Dex. He is

more important now.

But when I open the door, his face is all wrong.

"Can we talk?" he asks.

"Yes." My voice comes out in a whisper.

I sit stiffly as if I'm about to be told that someone very close to me

has died. He might as well be a police officer, coming to my door

with hat in hand.

He sits beside me and the words come. This has been a really hard

decision I really do love you I just can't I've given it a lot of

thought feel guilty didn't mean to lead you on our friendship incredibly difficult I care too much about Darcy

can't do it to her owe it to her family seven years summer has

been intense meant what I said I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm truly sorry always, always will love you

Dex covers his face with his hands, and I have a flashback to my

birthday, how much I admired his hands while we were riding in

the cab up First Avenue. Right before he kissed me.

And now, here

we are. At the very end. And I will never kiss him again.

"Say something," Dex says. His eyes are glassy, his lashes wet and

jet black. "Please say something."

I hear myself say that I understand, that I will be fine. I do not cry.

Instead I concentrate on breathing. In and out. In and out. More

silence. There is nothing more to say.

"You should go now," I tell him.

As Dex stands up and walks to the door, I consider screaming,

begging. Don't go! Please! I love you! Change your mind! She

cheated on you! But instead I watch him leave, not hesitating or

turning back for one final look at me.

I stare at the door for a long time, listening to the loud silence. I

want to cry, so that something will fill the scary blank space, but I

can't. The silence grows louder as I consider what to do next.

Pack? Go to sleep? Call Ethan or Hillary? For one irrational

second, I have those thoughts that most people don't admit to

having swallowing a dozen Tylenol PM, chasing them with vodka.

I could really punish Dex, ruin their wedding, end my own misery.

Don't be crazy. It's just a little heartbreak. You will get over this. I

think of all the hearts breaking at this moment, in Manhattan, all

over the world. All of the overwhelming grief. It makes me feel

less alone to think that other people are getting their insides torn

to tiny bits. Husbands leaving wives after twenty years of

marriage. Children crying out, "Don't leave me, Daddy! Please

stay!" Surely what I feel doesn't compare to that kind of pain. It

was only a summer romance, I think. Never meant to last beyond

August.

I stand up, walk over to my bookcase, and find the Altoids tin. I

have one final hope. If I get double sixes, maybe he will change his

mind, come back to me. As if to cast a magic spell, I blow on the

dice just as Dex did. Then I shake them once in my right hand and

carefully, carefully roll them. Just as it happened with our first

roll, one die lands before its mate. On a six! I hold my breath. For

a brief second, I see a mess of dots, and think I have boxcars

again. I kneel, staring at the second die.

It is only a five.

I have rolled an eleven. It is as if someone is mocking me, saying,

Close, but no dice.

I am somewhere over the Atlantic

Ocean when I decide that I will not tell Ethan all of the gory,

pathetic details. I will not dwell and wallow once the plane lands

on British soil. It will be the first step in getting over Dex, moving

on. But I will give myself the duration of the flight to think about

him and my situation. How I put myself on the line and lost. How

it's not worth it to take risks. How it's better to be a glass-halfempty

person. How I would have been so much better off if I had

never gone down this road, setting myself up for rejection and

disappointment and giving Darcy the chance to beat me again.

I rest my forehead against the window as a little girl behind me

kicks my seat once, twice, three times. I hear her mother say in a

sugary voice, "Now Ashley, don't kick the nice lady's seat." Ashley

keeps kicking. "Ashley! That is against the rules. No kicking on the

plane," the mother repeats with exaggerated calm as if to

demonstrate to everyone around her what a competent parent she

is. I close my eyes as we fly into the night, don't open them until

the flight attendant comes by to offer us headphones.

"No, thanks," I say.

No movie for me. I will be too busy cramming all of the misery I

can into the next few hours.

I told Ethan not to come to Heathrow that I would take a taxi to

his flat. But I am hoping that he comes anyway. Even though I live

in Manhattan, I am intimidated by other big cities, particularly

foreign ones. Except for the time I went to Rome with my parents

for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I have never left the

country. Other than Niagara Falls on the Canadian side, which

hardly counts. So I am relieved to see Ethan waiting for me just

outside of customs, grinning and boyish and happy as ever. He is

wearing new horn-rimmed glasses, like Buddy Holly's, only

brown. He rushes toward me and hugs me hard around the neck.

We both laugh.

"It's so good to see you! Here. Give me your bag," he says.

"You too." I grin back at him. "I like your glasses."

"Do they make me look smarter?" He pushes the frames on his

nose and strikes a scholarly pose, stroking a nonexistent beard.

"Much." I giggle.

"I'm so glad you're here!"

"I'm so glad to be here."

A summer full of bad decisions, but at last I made a good one. Just

seeing Ethan soothes me.

"It's about time you visited," he says, maneuvering my roller bag

through the crowd. We make our way outside, into the cab line.

"I can't believe I'm in England. This is so exciting." I take my first

breath of British air. The weather is exactly what I imagined gray,

drizzling, and slightly chilly. "You weren't kidding about the

weather here. This feels like November, not August."

"I told you We actually had a few hot days this month.

But it's

back to normal now. It's relentless. But you get used to it. You just

have to dress for it."

Within minutes we are in the back of a black cab, my bags at our