Something Borrowed Part 15

"Was she cute?" I ask.

"The woman?"

"Yeah. Marcus's date."

"Actually, yes, she was quite attractive. As if you care."

She is right-I don't.

"Now quit stalling and address my point," she says.

"What point is that?"

"Rachel!"

"It certainly does look bad," I say, still reluctant to confess.

"Rachel. Who do you think I'm going to tell? I'm your friend. Not Darcy's. h.e.l.l, I don't even like her that much..."

I pick up my tape dispenser, pull out two inches of tape, and hold it between my index finger and thumb. For some reason, this is a harder confession than the one to Ethan. Maybe because it is face-to-face. Maybe because her past has not been as dicey as Ethan's.

"Okay." Hillary tries again. "Let me say the words for you, and you can just nod your head." Her voice is like that of a mother to a child.

I nervously play with the tape, wrapping it around my thumb. She is about to spell it all out, and I have two choices-admit or deny. An admission might be a huge relief. A denial will have to be accompanied by a suitably indignant expression and a barrage of "How could you think that? Are you crazy?" et cetera. I am in no mood for that charade.

"Dex is cheating on Darcy," she says. "With you."

Drum roll.

I raise my chin and return her gaze. Then I nod the smallest of nods, my head barely moving.

"I knew it!"

I consider telling her that I don't want to talk about it, but in truth, I do want to talk about it. I want her to tell me that I'm not a terrible person. I want her to expound upon her earlier statement that I would be better suited to him than Darcy. And most of all, I just want to talk about Dex.

"When did this all start?"

"The night of my parry."

She stares at the ceiling for a second and nods as if everything makes sense now. "Okay, start from the beginning. Leave nothing out." She settles into her chair and tears off a piece of her bagel.

"The first time I slept with him was an accident."

"The. first time? You've slept with him? Multiple times?"

I give her a look.

"Sorry, go on. I just can't believe this!"

"Okay. So yes, the night of my party, we were the last two out... we went for drinks, one thing led to another, and we slept together back at my apartment. It was an accident. I mean, we were both drunk. I was, anyway."

"Oh, I remember. You were a little bit out of it that night."

"Yeah. I was. But, interestingly, Dex says he wasn't that drunk." This detail not only s.h.i.+fts the responsibility his way, but simultaneously makes the genesis of the affair more meaningful.

"So he, what, took advantage of you?"

"No! I didn't mean to imply that... I knew what I was doing."

"Okay." She motions for me to go on.

I tell her about waking up the following morning, Darcy's frantic messages, our panic, and Dexter using Marcus as his alibi. "So that's it," I say.

"What do you mean, 'that's it'? Clearly not." She gives my roses a purposeful glance.

"I mean, that was it for a while. We both felt regretful and-'

"How regretful?"

"Regretful, Hillary! Obviously!" To myself, I recall that first day, and my complete lack of penitence. "So that was it. In my mind, it was over."

"But not in his, right?"

I choose my words carefully and tell her about his Monday call to me and the things he said. And then everything that happened in the Hamptons. And about our first sober kiss. The turning-point kiss. Sleeping with him for the real first time.

She takes another big bite of her bagel. "So is this-what? A purely physical thing? Or do you really like him?"

"I really like him," I say.

She digests this. "So is he going to break off the engagement?"

"We haven't talked about it."

"How can you not talk about it? Wait-was that what you were fighting about in the Talkhouse?"

I tell her that we weren't exactly fighting, but that I was upset about him having s.e.x with Darcy. Hence the roses.

"Okay. So if he's sorry for sleeping with his fiancee, that sounds like he's headed in the direction of breaking up with her, right?"

"I don't know. We really haven't discussed it yet."

She looks confused. "When are you going to?"

"We said we'd talk about it around July Fourth."

"Why then?"

"Arbitrary. I don't know."

She takes a swig of water. "Well, you do think he's going to dump her, right?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if I want that."

She gives me a nonplussed look.

"You are forgetting an important piece of this whole thing, Hillary. Darcy is my longtime, lifelong friend. And I am her maid of honor."

She rolls her eyes. "Details."

"You just don't like her."

"She's not my favorite person in the world, but Darcy is not the point."

"She's a major point, in my opinion. She's my friend. And besides, even if she weren't, even if she were a random woman, don't you think I would have to confront the bad karma aspects of this?"

I wonder why I am arguing against myself.

She straightens in her chair and speaks slowly. "The world is not that black-and-white, Rachel. There are no moral absolutes. If you were sleeping with Dex for the sheer thrill of it all, then maybe I'd worry about your karma. But you have feelings for him. It doesn't make you a bad person."

I try to memorize her speech. No moral absolutes. That is good stuff.

"If the tables were turned," she continues, "Darcy would do the same thing in a heartbeat."

"You think?" I ask, considering this.

"Don't you?"

"Maybe you're right," I say. Darcy does, after all, have quite a history of taking. I give, she takes. That's the way it has always been.

Until now.

Hillary smiles and nods. "I say go for it."

More or less what Ethan said. That's two votes for me, zero for Darcy.

"I'm going to keep seeing him as much as I can. We'll see what happens," I say, realizing that just "seeing what happens" is my version of "going for it."

Darcy and I are flying home to Indianapolis for Annalise's baby shower, and I am stuck in the dreaded middle seat. Darcy was a.s.signed the middle, but of course she w.a.n.gled her way into my window seat, saying that if she can't look out the window she gets airsick. I wanted to tell her that this principle of car travel does not apply in a plane, but I didn't bother, just surrendered to her demand. In the past I would have done so mindlessly, but now I feel resentful. I think of Ethan and Hillary and their recent statements about Darcy. She is selfish, plain and simple. And this is the truth, regardless of my feelings for Dex.

A forty-something man with a crew cut has the aisle seat to my left. He has glued the entire length and width of his right forearm to our shared armrest, elbow to fingertip. He drinks and turns the pages of his magazine with his left hand so as not to lose ground.

The pilot announces that the skies are clear and we will be landing ahead of schedule. Darcy announces that she is bored. She is the only person I know, over the age of twelve, who says with great regularity that she is bored.

I glance up from my book. "Did you already read your Martha Stewart wedding issue?"

"Cover to cover. There's nothing new in there. And by the way, you're the one who should be reading it. There's an article on favors-you promised you would help me think of an original idea for favors," she says, as she adjusts her seat the whole way back and then up again.

"How about matchbooks?"

"You said original!" Darcy crosses her arms. "Everybody does match-books! That's just a given. I need a proper favor, in addition to matches."

"What does Martha suggest?" I ask, marking my place in my novel with my thumb.

"I dunno, hard stuff to make. Labor-intensive stuff." She looks at me plaintively. "You have to help! You know I'm no good at crafts."

"Neither am I."

"You're better than I am!"

I turn back to my book, pretending to be engrossed.

She sighs and chews her Juicy Fruit more vigorously. And when that doesn't work, she hits the spine of my book. "Raa-chel!"

"Okay! Okay!"

She smiles, unabashed, like a child who doesn't care that she's made her mother miserable, only that she got what she wanted. "So you think we should do something with d?"

"D?" I ask, playing dumb.

"You know, a d... for Dex and Darcy. Or is that cheesy?"

"Cheesy," I say, which would have been my answer even before the D and R days.

"Okay-then what?" She checks the number of fat grams in her snack mix before casting it into the seat-back pocket in front of her.

"Well, you have your sugared almonds in netting tied with pastel ribbons... or mints in a tin with your wedding date," I say as I exert slight pressure with my left elbow, trying to wedge it in a tiny crevice on my armrest. In my peripheral vision, I see Crew Cut flex his bicep in resis-tance. "Then you have permanent keepsakes like Christmas tree ornaments..."

"Can't. We have too many Jewish guests-and honestly, I think some people who celebrate Kwanza," she interrupts, proud of her diverse guest list.

"Okay. But you get the point. That genre. Permanent keepsakes: ornaments, homemade CDs with your favorite songs."

She becomes perky. "I like the CD idea! But wouldn't that be expen-siver I give her a look that says, yeah, but you're worth it. She eats it up. "But what's another few hundred dollars in the scheme of things, right?" she asks.

I'm sure her parents would love this statement. "Right," I patronize.

"So we could have, like, The Darcy and Dex Soundtrack and put our all-time favorite songs on it," she says.

I wince.

"Are you sure it's not cheesy? Tell me the truth."

"No, I like it. I like it." I want to change the subject but worry that this will spark a discussion of my maid-of-honor shortcomings. So instead I strike a thoughtful pose and tell her that although the CDs would be time intensive and expensive, they would make a lovely, special favor. Then I ask her if Dex would like the idea.

She looks at me as if to say, who cares what Dex wants? Grooms don't matter. "Okay. Now help me think of some songs."