Something Borrowed (18 page)

She's Jewish

and was very up-front about her expectations of me.

She wanted

me to convert, raise our kids Jewish, the whole nine yards. And

maybe I would have been okay with that I'm not very religious

but I wasn't okay with the fact that she made it a bright-line rule. I

saw a life of her browbeating me into shit. Just like her mother

does to her father. Besides, we were too young to commit It still

killed me when she walked, though."

"Is she married now?"

"Funny you ask that. I actually just heard from a mutual friend

that she got engaged. About a month after " He stops, looks

uncomfortable.

"After you did?"

"Yeah," he whispers. He pulls me against him and kisses me hard,

erasing any thoughts of Darcy. We undress and slide under the

covers.

"You're cold," he says.

"I'm always cold when I'm nervous."

"Why are you nervous? Don't be nervous."

"Dex," I say into his neck.

"Yeah, Rach?"

"Nothing."

His body covers mine. I am not cold anymore.

We kiss for a long time, touching everywhere.

I don't know the time, but it is just getting dark.

I almost stop him, for all of the obvious reasons. But also because

I'm thinking we should wait until we can spend a night together.

Then again, that might never happen. And likely I will never

shower with him, watch him shave in the morning. Or read the

Sunday Times over coffee, whiling away the hours.

We'll never

hold hands in Central Park or cuddle on a blanket in Sheep's

Meadow. But I can have him now. Nothing is stopping us from

this moment.

I can see just a fraction of Dexter as we move together his

sideburn with a trace of gray, his strong shoulder, his seashell of

an ear. My fingertips graze his collarbone, then hold on more

tightly.

I can't stop thinking about Dex. I

know that we won't end up togethei, that he will marry Darcy in

September. But I am content to live in the moment, and allow

myself the daily pleasure of obsessing. Nothing lasts forever, I tell

myself. Especially the good stuff. Although typically you aren't

faced with a hard deadline. I think of a few other examples of

concrete, predetermined endings. Take college, for example. I

knew that I would go away for four years, accumulate friends and

memories and knowledge, and that it would all come to an abrupt

end on a set date. I knew that on this day, I would collect my

diploma and pile my belongings into a U-Haul bound for Indiana,

and the Duke experience would be done. A chapter closed forever.

But that awareness didn't stop me from enjoying myself, sucking

all of the joy out of the deal.

So that is what I am doing with Dex. I am not going to dwell on

the end at the expense of the here and now.

Tonight I am home when Dex phones from work to say a quick

hello and tell me that he misses me. It is the sort of call a

boyfriend makes to his girlfriend. Nothing covert or complicated

about it. I pretend that we are together for real. The phone rings

again a second after we hang up.

"Hey," I say, in the same hushed tone, thinking that it is only a

follow-up call from Dex.

"What's that voice?" Darcy asks, yanking me back to reality.

"What voice?" I ask. "I'm just tired. What's going on?"

She launches into the details of her latest work crisis, which

typically amounts to no more than a paper jam at the copier. This

one is no exception. A typo on a flyer for a club opening. I resist

the urge to tell her that the target audience won't notice a

misspelling, and instead ask her who is going to the Hamptons

this weekend. I feel my senses heighten, anticipating Dexter's

name. He already told me that he was going, convincing me that I

had to go too. It will be awkward, but worth it, he said.

He has to

see me.

"Not sure. Claire might be having friends in town. Dex is in."

"Oh, really? He doesn't have to work?" I ask, sounding a bit too

surprised. I feel a stab of worry, but Darcy doesn't notice my false

tone.

"No, he just finished with some big deal," she says.

"Which deal?"

"I don't know. Some deal."

Dexter's job bores Darcy. I have observed the way she can shut

him down, interrupting him in the middle of a story, transitioning

back to her own petty concerns. Am I fat? Does this look good on

me? Will you come there with me? Do that for me.

Reassure me.

Me. Me. Me.

As if on cue, she tells me that she is considering sending in a tape

to

Big Brother, that it would be fun to be on the show.

Fun for an

exhibi-tionist. I can think of few things more horrifying than

being on national television, out there for the world to judge,

assess, tear apart.

"Do you think I'd get picked?" she asks.

"You'd have a good chance."

She is pretty enough to get picked, and she has a vivid personality exactly what they look for on reality television. I study

my own face in the mirror, think of Dex telling me that I look like

a J.Crew model. Maybe I am attractive. But I am nowhere near as

pretty as Darcy, with her precise features, incredible cheekbones,

bow-shaped lips.

Now she is laughing loudly into the phone, telling me another

story about her day. She hurts my ears. The word

"strident" comes

to mind, and as I study my reflection again, I decide that although

I'm far from beautiful, perhaps I have a softness that she lacks.

It is Thursday, the day before we leave for the Hamptons. Dex is

over. We had planned on waiting until next week to see each other

alone, but we both finished work early. And well, here we are,

together again. We have already made love once. Now I am

resting my head on his chest. As he breathes, his chest lifts my

face slightly. Neither of us speaks for a long time, then he asks

suddenly, "What are we doing?"

There it is. The Question.

I have thought of it a hundred times, worded the inquiry exactly

like that, with the same intonation, the same emphasis on the

word "doing." But every time I answer it differently: We are following our hearts.

We are taking a chance.

We are crazy.

We are self-destructive.

We are lustful.

We are confused.

We are rebelling.

He is afraid of marriage.

I am afraid of being alone.

We are falling in love.

We are already in love.

And the most common: we have no idea.

This is the one I offer up. "I don't know."

"Neither do I," he says softly. "Should we talk about it?"

"Do you want to?"

"Not really," he says.

I am relieved that he doesn't. Because I don't. I am too afraid of

what we might decide. Either choice is scary. "Let's not, then. Not

now."

"Then when?" he asks.

For some reason, I say, "After July Fourth."

It sounds arbitrary, but it has always been a benchmark of sorts,

the summer midpoint. Even though more than half the summer is

left after the Fourth of July, the part that follows is the faster half,

the part that always flies by. June, although a day shorter, feels so

much longer than August.

"Okay," he says.

"No examining anything until July Fourth." I state the rule clearly,

as I would at the outset of a law-school exam. My voice is firm,

even though I'm not sure what we've just decided. That we are

finished as of July Fourth? Or maybe no, he couldn't think that I

meant that is when he would tell Darcy he can't go through with

marrying her. No, that is not what we just decided. We simply

decided to decide nothing. That is all.

Still, picking the date scares me. I picture a giant countdown of

days, hours, minutes, seconds. Like the clocks set up in 1999 for

the countdown to the new millennium. I remember watching the

seconds roll off such a clock in the post office near Grand Central

Station sometime in December. That clock made me nervous,

frantic. I wanted to attack my to-do list, clear my desk of backedup

calls, finish it all immediately. At the same time, watching

those numbers tick by paralyzed me. I had too much to do, so why

do anything at all?

I try to calculate the number of hours left before July Fourth. How

many nights we will have together. How many times we will make

love.

My stomach growls. Or maybe it's his. I can't tell because I am flat

against him. "Are you hungry? We can order food," I say, and kiss

his chest. "Or I can make us something."

I imagine myself whipping up a tasty snack. I can't cook, but I

would learn. I would make an excellent, nurturing wife.

He tells me that he doesn't want to waste time eating.

He can get

something on his way home. Or just go to bed hungry.

He says he

wants to feel me against him until it's time to leave.

The next day I ask Dex if there were any problems when he

returned home. It is a vague question, but he knows what I am

asking. He says that Darcy was not home when he got in, so he

had time to shower, reluctantly wash me off him. He says that

Darcy had left him a message: "It's eleven and you're not

answering your cell or your phone at work. You're probably

having an affair. I'm going out with Claire."

It is her usual tongue-in-cheek accusation when Dex works late.

She asks him if he's having an affair, never believing that he would

do such a thing. She changes the person every time, selecting a

random female name from his office. The less attractive the

woman, the more amused she is. "I know you're in love with

Nina," she'll say, knowing that Nina is a chubby word processor

from Staten Island with fake nails adorned with glitter art.

I think of Dex returning home last night. A whole scene unfurls in

my mind Dex stealing into his apartment, hurrying to shower and

get in bed, waiting for the key to turn in the lock, pretending to be

asleep when Darcy enters their room. She hovers over him,

studying him in the dark.

"How was your date with Nina?" she asks in a wry, loud voice.

He wipes his eyes with his fists as people do on television when

they're awakened from a sound sleep. "Hi," he says wearily and

then pretends to fall back asleep.

She cuddles up to him in bed, tossing out an "I love you."

His jaw clenches, but he says it back. What choice does he have?

He falls asleep thinking about me. Thinking that her chin is too

sharp against his chest.

I am watching them on the beach, down by the water.

Darcy and Dex standing together in the not-too-hot June sun.

This weekend is the first that I have seen them together since Dex

and I soberly, willfully, made love. I am wearing dark sunglasses

so I can study them from my towel without being obvious, while

Claire babbles to me about what else? the wedding.

What if the

night is chilly? Should we buy matching wraps, a light, gauzy

cardigan? I nod and murmur that it is a good idea.

Dex has just finished a quick swim, even though the water is

freezing. Now they are talking, huddled close together.

Perhaps he

is giving her the report on the water temperature. She hesitantly

steps closer to the ocean's reach, just enough to let the water coat

her feet. They are both smiling. Dex kicks water onto her shins

and she shrieks, turns, and scampers a few feet from him. I can

see the muscles strain in her long, tanned legs. She is wearing the

nude-colored bikini. Her hair is down, blowing around her face.

He laughs, and she raises her index finger as if to scold him and

then walks toward him again. They are engaged in a full-fledged

frolic. It pains me to watch them, but I can't stop. I can't look

away.

I feel as if they are putting on a show. Well, Darcy is always

putting on a show. But Dex is a willing participant.

Surely he

knows we are all watching. That I am watching. It is always that

way when you are in a group and someone decides to go for a

swim or walk to the water. The ocean is like a giant stage. It is

natural that the others watch, if only for a moment. Dex must be

aware of this, yet he is still in full-throttle playful-couple mode.

He should be brooding on his towel, napping, or reading a

novel something dark, to give me the impression that he is

confused, upset, torn. But instead he is splashing Darcy and

grinning.

Marcus cups his mouth with his hands, yells down at them. "How

cold is it?"

"Freaking freezing!" Darcy announces, her hand stroking Dex's

back, while he reports a manly "Nah, it feels good.

Come on

down!"

Rage commingles with hurt. For the first time, I completely regret

having sex with Dex. I feel foolish, suddenly sure that it meant

next to nothing to him. Tears sting my eyes as I force myself to

turn away from them, slip on my headphones. I order myself not

to cry.

Before I can hit play, Marcus asks me what I'm listening to. I have