Something Borrowed Part 32

I snort. "Ha."

"Is that what she told you?"

After all these years, I have never aired my feelings about their two-week elementary-school romance. "She didn't need to tell me. Everybody knew it."

"What are you talking about?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The reunion?" he asks.

"Our ten-year?" I ask, knowing of no other reunion. I remember the disappointment I felt when Les insisted that I had to work. Those were the days before I knew to lie. He had scoffed at me when I said I couldn't work, that I had to go to my ten-year reunion.

"Yeah. She didn't tell you what happened?" He takes a long drag, then turns his head, exhaling away from me.

"No. What happened?" I say, thinking that I am going to fall apart and die if Ethan slept with her. "Please tell me you didn't hook up with her."

"h.e.l.l, no,' he says. "But she tried."

As I finish the rest of my pint and steal a few sips of Ethan's, I listen to him tell the story of our reunion. How Darcy came on to him at Horace Carlisle's backyard afterparty. Said she thought they should have one night together. What would it hurt?

"You're kidding me!"

"No," he says. "And I was like, Darce, h.e.l.l, no. You have a boyfriend. What the f.u.c.k?"

"Was that why?"

"Why I didn't hook up with her?"

I nod.

"No, that's not why."

"Why then?" For a second, I wonder if he's going to come out of the closet. Maybe Darcy is right after all.

"Why do you think? It's Darcy. I don't see her that way."

"You don't think she's... beautiful?"

"Frankly, no. I don't."

"Why not?"

"I need reasons?'

"Yes."

"Okay." He exhales, looks up at the ceiling. " 'Cause she wears too much makeup. Cause she's too, I don't know, severe."

"Sharp featured?" I offer.

"Yeah. Sharp and... and overplucked."

I picture Darcy's skinny, high-arched brows. "Overplucked. That's funny."

"Yeah. And those hipbones jutting out at you. She's way too skinny. I don't like it. But that's not the point. The point is-is that it is Darcy." He shudders and then takes his beer back from me. "Hold on. Let me get another round." He crushes out his cigarette and strolls over to the bar, returning with two more beers. "There you are."

"Thanks," I say, and then set about chugging mine.

He laughs. "Man! I can't let you outdrink me."

I wipe the foam from my lips with the back of my hand and ask why he didn't tell me about Darcy and the reunion before now.

"Oh. I dunno. 'Cause it was no big deal. She was wasted." He shrugs. "Probably didn't even know what she was doing."

"Yeah, right. She always knows what she's doing."

"I guess so. Maybe. But it really wasn't significant."

That explains why she thought Ethan was gay. Turning her down-it must be the only explanation. "Guess her fifth-grade charms wore thin on you."

He laughs. "Yeah. We did go out once upon a time." He makes little quotes in the air as he says "go out."

"See. You picked her over me too."

He flashes his dimple. "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about now?"

"On the note. The check-the-box note."

"What?"

I sigh. "The note that she sent you. The 'Do you want to go out with me or Rachel?' note."

"That's not what the note said. It didn't say anything about you. Why would it say anything about you?"

"Because I liked you!" Somehow I am embarra.s.sed admitting it, even after all these years. "You knew that."

He shakes his head firmly. "Nope. Did not."

"You must have forgotten."

"I don't forget s.h.i.+t like that. I have a bomb-a.s.s memory. Your name was not in the note. See. I'd know because I liked you back then." He peers at me from behind his gla.s.ses and then lights another cigarette.

"Bulls.h.i.+t." I feel myself blush. It's only Ethan, I tell myself. We are adults now.

"Okay." He shrugs and inverts the cover of his matchbook. Now he looks embarra.s.sed too. "Don't believe me."

"You did?"

"Big time. I remember always helping you out in four square so that you'd get to be king. I'd always pound the king when you were in the queen position. Tell me you didn't notice that."

"I didn't notice that," I say.

"As it turns out, you're markedly less perceptive than I once thought...

Yeah, I liked you. I liked you all through junior high and high school. And then you dated Beamer. Broke my heart."

This is big news, but I still can't get past the fact that my name wasn't in that note. "I swear I thought Annalise saw it."

"Annalise is a sweet girl but such a lemming. Darcy probably told her to say that your name was in the note. Or somehow tricked her into thinking it. How is Annalise, anyway? Did she have her kid yet?"

"No. But any minute now."

"Is she going to the wedding?"

"If she's not in labor," I say. "Everybody is but you."

"And you. Terrible thing about your spleen."

"Yeah. Tragic." I smile. "So you're sure my name really wasn't in the note?"

I am focusing on evidence from twenty years ago. It is absurd, but I ascribe all kinds of meaning to it.

"Positive," he says. "Pos-i-tive."

"d.a.m.n," I say. "What a b.i.t.c.h."

He laughs. "I had no clue that I was the man. Thought it was all about Doug Jackson."

"You were not the man. It was all about Doug Jackson," I say. "That's the point-I was the only one who liked you. She copied me." Again, I notice how juvenile I sound whenever I describe my feelings about Darcy.

"Well, you didn't miss much. Going out with me consisted of sharing a few Hostess cupcakes. Wasn't very exciting. And I still hooked you up in four square."

"So maybe Dex will hook me up the next time we all play four square," I say. "That would be really..." I can't think of the right word. I can feel myself getting drunk.

"Nifty? Brilliant? Smas.h.i.+ng?" Ethan offers.

I nod. "All of those. Yes."

"Feeling better?" he asks.

He is trying so hard. Between his efforts and the beer I feel somewhat healed, at least temporarily. I consider that I am thousands of miles away from Dex. Dexter-who did have my name as an option when he chose, instead, to check the box next to Darcy's name. "Yes. A little better. Yes."

"Well, let's recap. We determined that I never picked Darcy over you. And that she didn't get into Notre Dame."

"But she did get Dex."

"Forget him. He's not worth it," Ethan says, and then glances up at the menu scrawled on a blackboard behind us. "Now. Let's get you some fish and chips."

We eat lunch-fish, French fries, and mushy peas that remind me of baby food. Comfort food. And we have a couple more pints. Then I suggest that we go for a walk, see something England-y. So he takes me into Kensington Gardens and shows me Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived.

"See this gate? That's where they piled all the flowers and letters when she died. Remember those photos?"

"Oh yeah. That was here?"

I was with Dex and Darcy when I found out that Diana had died. We were at the Talkhouse and some guy walked up to us at the bar and said, "Did you hear that Diana died in a car crash?" And even though he could only have been talking about one Diana, Darcy and I both asked, Diana who? The guy said Princess Diana. Then he told us that she died in a high-speed crash while the paparazzi chased her through a tunnel in Paris. Darcy started bawling right on the spot. But for once it wasn't the give-me-attention tears. They were genuine. She was truly devastated. We both were. Several days later we watched her funeral together, waking at four a.m. to see all of the coverage, just as we had done with her wedding to Prince Charles sixteen years earlier.

Ethan and I meander through Kensington Gardens in a drizzle, without an umbrella. I don't mind getting wet. Don't care that my hair will frizz. We pa.s.s the palace and circle a small, round pond. "What's this pond called?"

"Round Pond," Ethan says. "Descriptive, huh?"

We walk past a bandstand and then over to the Albert Memorial, a huge bronze statue of Prince Albert perched on a throne. "You like?"

"It's pretty," I say.

"A grieving Queen Victoria had this thing built when Albert died from typhoid fever."

"When?"

"Eighteen sixty- or seventy-something... Nice, huh?"

"Yeah," I say.

"Apparently she and Al were pretty tight."

Queen Victoria must have been sadder than I am now, I suppose. I then have a fleeting thought that I'd prefer losing Dex to illness than to Darcy. So maybe it's not true love if I'd rather see him die... Okay, I wouldn't rather see him die.

The rain starts to come down harder. Other than a few j.a.panese tourists who are snapping pictures on the steps of the memorial, we are alone.

"You ready to head back?" Ethan points in the opposite direction. "We can explore Hyde Park and the Serpentine another day."

"Sure, we can go back now," I say.

"Your spleen acting up in this weather?"

"Ethan! I have to go to the wedding."

"Just blow it off."

"I'm the maid of honor."

"Oh, right] I keep forgetting that," he says, wiping his gla.s.ses on his sleeve.

As we walk back to his flat, Ethan chuckles to himself.

"What?"

"Darcy," he says, shaking his head.