She was right, Alec was cute. But he was also all about image. He was the kind of guy who retires his college cool-boy uniform of filthy, intentionally broken-in baseball caps, fraternity party T-shirts, and woven leather belts, swapping it for his twenty-something urban cool-boy uniform of gripping, cotton-spandex T-shirts, tight black pants with a slight sheen, and loads of hair gel. He told too many “a guy walks into a bar” jokes (none funny) and “I’m a badass trader” war stories (none impressive). When he bought me a drink on that first night, he threw down a one-hundred-dollar bill and told the bartender in a loud voice that he was sorry but he didn’t have anything smaller. In a nutshell, he epitomized what Darcy and I call TTH—for Trying Too Hard.
But Alec was smart enough, fun enough, and nice enough. So when he asked for my number, I gave it to him. And when he called and asked me out to dinner, I went. And when he propositioned me, four dates later, ribbed condom in hand, I shrugged inside but said yes. He had a great body, but the sex was just average. My mind often wandered to work, and once when I heard SportsCenter in the background, I even pretended he was Pete Sampras. Many times I came close to breaking up with him, but Darcy kept telling me to give him another chance, that he was rich and cute. Way richer and cuter than Nate, she’d point out. As if that was what it was all about.
Then one night, Claire spotted Alec kissing a petite, somewhat trashy-looking blonde at Merchants. When the girl went to the bathroom, Claire confronted Alec, warning him that if he didn’t confess his infidelity, she would tell me herself. So the next day Alec called and sputtered an apology, saying he was getting back together with his ex, who I assume was the girl at Merchants. I almost told him that I had wanted to break up too—it was the truth. But I cared so little that I didn’t bother setting the record straight. I simply said okay, best of luck. And that was that.
Every now and then I run into Alec at the New York Sports Club near work. We are very cordial to each other—once I even used the StairMaster beside his, not caring that my face was broken out or that I was wearing my sloppiest gray sweats (Darcy says they should never be worn in public). On that occasion, we made small talk. I inquired about his girlfriend, letting him ramble on about their upcoming trip to Jamaica. It took no effort at all to be nice, another clear indication that I had nothing real invested in our relationship. In some ways, in fact, I shouldn’t even put Alec in the serious-boyfriend category. But because I slept with him (and see myself as the sort of woman who would only sleep with someone in a legitimate relationship), I put him in that unfortunately exclusive club.
I review my three boyfriends, the three men I slept with in my twenties, searching for a common thread. Nothing. No consistent features, coloring, stature, personality. But one theme does emerge: they all picked me. And then dumped me. I played the passive role. Waiting for Hunter and then settling for Joey. Waiting to feel more for Nate. Then waiting to feel less. Waiting for Alec to go away and leave me in peace.
And now Dex. My number four. And I am still waiting.
For all of this to blow over.
For his September wedding.
For someone who gives me that tingly feeling as I watch him sleeping in my bed early on a Sunday morning. Someone who isn’t engaged to my best friend.
Six
On Saturday night, I cab down to Gotham Bar and Grill with an open mind and a positive attitude—half the battle before any date—thinking that maybe Marcus will be the someone I am looking for.
I walk into the restaurant and spot him right away, sitting at the bar, wearing baggy jeans and a slightly wrinkled, green plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up haphazardly—the opposite of TTH.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say, as Marcus stands to greet me. “Had some trouble getting a cab.”
“No worries,” he says, offering me a stool next to his.
I sit down. He smiles, exposing two rows of very white, straight teeth. Possibly his best feature. Either that or the cleft in his square chin.
“So what can I get you?” he asks me.
“What are you having?”
“Gin and tonic.”
“I’ll have the same.”
He glances toward the bartender with a twenty extended and then looks back at me. “You look great, Rachel.”
I thank him. It’s been a long time since I’ve received a proper compliment from a guy. It occurs to me that Dex and I didn’t get around to compliments.
Marcus finally gets the bartender’s attention and orders me a Bombay Sapphire and tonic. Then he says, “So, last time I saw you we were all pretty wasted…That was a fun night.”
“Yeah. I was pretty out of it,” I say, hoping that Dex told me the truth about keeping Marcus in the dark. “But at least I made it home before sunup. Darcy told me you and Dex were out pretty late that night.”
“Yeah. We hung out for a while,” Marcus says, without looking at me. This is a good sign. He is covering for his friend but has trouble lying. He takes his change from the bartender, leaves two bills and some coins on the bar, and hands me my drink. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” I smile, stir, and sip from the skinny straw.
An emaciated Asian girl wearing leather pants and too much lip liner taps Marcus on the arm and tells him that our table is ready. We carry our drinks, following her to the restaurant area beyond the bar. As we sit, she hands us two oversized menus and a separate wine list.
“Your server will be with you shortly,” she says, before flipping her long, black hair and waltzing off.
Marcus glances at the wine list and asks if I want to order a bottle.
“Sure,” I say.
“Red or white?”
“Either.”
“Do you think you’re going to have fish?” He looks at the menu.
“Maybe. But I don’t mind red with fish.”
“I’m not very good at picking wines,” he says, cracking his knuckles below the table. “You wanna have a look?”
“That’s okay. You can pick. Whatever is fine.”
“All right then. I’ll wing it,” he says, flashing me his “I never skipped a night wearing my retainer” smile.
We study our menus, discussing what looks good. Marcus slides his chair closer to the table, and I feel his knee against mine.
“I almost didn’t ask you out, since we’re in the same summer house and all,” Marcus says, his eyes still scanning the menu. “Dex told me that’s one of the cardinal rules here. Don’t get involved with someone in your house. At least not until August.”
He laughs as I store away this fact for later analysis: Dex discouraged our date.
“But then I thought, you know, what the hell—I dig her, I’m going to call her. I mean, I’ve been thinking about asking you out since Dex first introduced us. Right when I moved here. But I was seeing this girl from San Francisco for a minute in there and thought I should wrap things up before I called you. You know, just to make it all neat and kosher. So I finally ended that deal…And here we are.” He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand as if relieved to make this confession.
“I think you made the right decision.”
“To wait?”
“No. To call.” I give him my most alluring smile, fleetingly reminding myself of Darcy. She doesn’t have the market cornered on female attractiveness, I think. I don’t always have to be the serious, dowdy one.
Our waitress interrupts the moment. “Hello. How are you this evening?”
“Fine,” Marcus says cheerfully, and then lowers his voice. “For a first date.”
I laugh, but our waitress musters only a stiff, tight-lipped smile. “Can I tell you about the specials?”
“Go for it,” Marcus says.
She stares into the space just above our heads, rattling off the list of specials, calling everything “nice”—“a nice sea bass,” “a nice risotto,” and so on. I nod and only half listen while I think about Dex telling Marcus not to ask me out, wondering what that means.
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“So would you like to start with something to drink?”
“Yeah…Think we’re going with a bottle of red. What do you recommend?” He squints at the menu.
“The Marjorie pinot noir is superb.” She points down at the wine list.
“Fine. That one then. Perfect.”
She flashes another prim smile my way. “And are you ready to order?”
“Yes, I think we are,” I say, and then order the garden salad and tuna.
“And how would you like that done?”
“Medium,” I say.
Marcus orders the pea soup and the lamb.
“Excellent choices,” our waitress says, with an affected tilt of the head. She gathers our menus and turns on her heels.
“Man,” Marcus says.
“What?”
“That chick has zero personality.”
I laugh.
He smiles. “Where were we?…Oh yeah, the Hamptons.”
“Right.”
“So Dex says it’s never a good idea to go out with someone in your own house. And I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m not playin’ by your dumb East Coast rules.’ If we end up hating each other, we hate each other.”
“I don’t think we’re going to hate each other,” I say.
Our waitress returns with the wine, uncorks the bottle, and pours some into his glass. Marcus takes a healthy sip and reports that it’s great, skipping the usual pretentious ceremony. You can tell a lot about a guy by watching him take that first sip of wine. It’s not a good sign when he does the whole swirling thing, burying his nose into the glass, taking a slow, thoughtful sip, pausing with a furrowed brow followed by a slight nod so as not to appear too enthusiastic, as if to say, this passes, but I have had plenty better. If he is truly a wine connoisseur, that’s one thing. But it is usually just a bunch of show, painful to observe.
As our waitress pours my wine, I ask Marcus if he knows about the bet.
He shakes his head. “What bet?”
I wait until we are alone again—it’s bad enough that our waitress knows this is a first date. “Dex and Darcy had a bet about whether I’d say yes when you asked me out.”
“Get outta here.” He drops his jaw for effect. “Who thought you’d go and who thought you’d diss me?”
“Oh. I forget.” I pretend to be confused. “That’s not the point. The point is—”
“That they are so up and in our business!” He shakes his head. “Bastards.”
“I know.”
He lifts his glass. “To eluding Dex and Darcy. No sharing details of tonight with those nosy bastards.”
I laugh. “No matter how great—or how bad—our date is!”
Our glasses touch and we sip in unison.
“This date is not going to be bad. Trust me on that.”
I smile. “I trust you.”
I do trust him, I think. There is something disarming about his sense of humor, and easy, Midwestern style. And he’s not engaged to Darcy. A nice bonus.
Then, as if on cue, Marcus asks me how long I’ve known Darcy.
“Twenty-some years. First time I saw her she was all dressed up in this fancy little sundress, and I was wearing these dumb Winnie-the-Pooh shorts from Sears. I thought, now there’s a girl with style.”
Marcus laughs. “I bet you looked cute in your Pooh shorts.”
“Not quite…”
“And then you were the one who introduced Darcy and Dex, right? He said you were good friends in law school?”
Right. My good friend Dex. The last person I slept with.
“Uh-huh. I met him first semester of law school. I knew right away that he and Darcy would make a good match,” I say. A bit of an exaggeration, but I want to set the record straight that I never considered Dex for myself. Which I didn’t. And still don’t.
“They even look alike…No mystery as to how their kids will turn out.”
“Yes. They will be beautiful.” I feel an inexplicable knot in my chest, picturing Dex and Darcy cradling their newborn. For some reason, I had never thought beyond the wedding in September.
“What?” Marcus asks, obviously catching my expression. Which doesn’t mean that he is perceptive, necessarily; my face is just less than inscrutable. It is a curse.
“Nothing,” I say. Then I smile and sit up a bit straighter. It is time for a transition. “Enough about Dex and Darcy.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I hear you.”
We start the typical first-date conversation, discussing our jobs, our families and general backgrounds. We cover his Internet start-up that went under and his move to New York. Our food arrives. We eat and talk and order another bottle of wine. There is more laughter than silence. I am even comfortable enough to take a bite of his lamb when he offers it to me.
After dinner, Marcus pays the bill. It is always an awkward moment for me, although offering to pay (whether sincerely or with the fake reach for the wallet) is so much more awkward. I thank him, and we make our way to the door, where we decide to get another drink.
“You pick a place,” Marcus says.
I choose a new bar that just opened near my apartment. We get in a cab, talking the whole way to the Upper East Side. Then we sit at the bar, talking more.
I ask him to tell me about his hometown in Montana. He pauses for a beat and then says he has a good story for me.
“Only about ten percent of my senior class went to college,” he starts. “Most students don’t even bother with SATs at my high school. But I took the thing, did fine on it, applied to Georgetown, and got in. Of course, I didn’t mention it to anyone at school—just went about my business, hanging with my boys and whatnot. Then the faculty catches wind of the Georgetown thing and one day my math teacher, Mr. Gilhooly, takes it upon himself to announce my good news to the class.”
He shakes his head as if the memory is painful. “So everyone was like, ‘So what? Big fucking deal.’” Marcus imitates his bored classmates by folding his arms across his chest and then patting his mouth with an open hand. “And I guess their reaction pissed Mr. Gilhooly off. He wanted them to truly grasp the depth of their inadequacies and future doom. So he proceeded to draw this big graph on the board showing my earning potential with a college degree versus their earning potential bussing tables at Shoney’s. And how the gap would get worse and worse with time.”
“No way!”
“Yeah. So they’re all sitting there like, ‘Fuck Marcus,’ right? Like I think I’m hot shit ’cause I’m going to make six figures someday. I wanted to kill that dude.” Marcus throws up his hands. “Thanks for nothing, Mr. Gilhooly. Way to win me some friends.”
I laugh.
“So what the fuck am I supposed to do now? I gotta fight the image of dork gunner boy, right? So I go out of my way to show everybody I don’t give a shit about academics. Started smokin’ weed every day, and never stopped the practice in college. Hence, well, you know, my finishing next to last at Georgetown. I’m sure you’ve heard about the remote?” he asks, peeling the label off his Heineken.
I smile and tap his hand. “Yeah. I know the story. Except the version I heard was that you were dead last.”
“Aww, man!” Marcus shakes his head. “Dex never gets that shit right. My one-point-six-seven beat someone out! Next to last, dude! Next to last!”
After two drinks, I glance at my watch and say it’s getting late.
“Okay. I’ll walk you home?”
“Sure.”
We stroll over to Third Avenue and stop in front of my apartment.
“Well, good night, Marcus. Thank you so much for dinner. I had a really nice time,” I say, meaning it.
“Yeah. So did I. It was good.” He licks his lips quickly. I know what is coming. “And I’m glad we’re in the same house this summer.”
“I am too.”
Then he asks if he can kiss me. It is a question I don’t usually like. Just do it, I always think. But for some reason it doesn’t bother me coming from Marcus.
I nod and he leans over and gives me a medium-long kiss.
We separate. My heart isn’t palpitating, but I am content.
“You think Darcy and Dex bet on that?” he asks.
I laugh because I had been wondering the same thing.
“How did it go?” Darcy yells into the phone the next morning.
I am just out of the shower, dripping wet. “Where are you?”
“In the car with Dex. We’re on our way back to the city,” she says. “We went antiquing. Remember?”
“Yes,” I say. “I remember.”
“How did it go?” she asks again, smacking her gum. She can’t even wait until she gets home to get the scoop on my date.
I don’t answer.
“Well?”
“We have a bad connection. Your cell is breaking up,” I say. “I can’t hear you.”
“Nice try. Give me the goods.”
“What goods?”
“Rachel! Don’t play dumb with me. Tell me about your date! We’re dying to know.”
I hear Dex echo her in the background. “Just dying!”
“It was a lovely evening,” I say, trying to wrap a towel around my head without dropping the phone.
She squeals. “Yes! I knew it. So details! Details!”
I tell her that we went to Gotham Bar and Grill, I ordered the tuna, he had lamb.
“Rachel! Get to the good stuff! Did you hook up?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“I have my reasons.”
“That means you did,” she says. “Otherwise you’d just say no.”
“Think what you want.”
“C’mon, Rachel!”
I tell her no way, I am not going to be her car-ride entertainment. She reports my words to Dex and I hear him say, “Bruce is our car-ride entertainment. Tell her that.”
Tunnel of Love is playing in the background.
“Tell Dexter that’s Bruce’s worst album.”
“They’re all bad albums. Springsteen sucks,” Darcy says.