Darcy returns with the shots but Dex refuses his, so Darcy insists that I do two. Before I know it, the night starts to take on that blurry quality, when you cross over from being buzzed to drunk, losing track of time and the precise order of things. Apparently Darcy has reached that point even sooner because she is now dancing on the bar. Spinning and gyrating in a little red halter dress and three-inch heels.
“Stealing the show at your party,” Hillary, my closest friend from work, says to me under her breath. “She’s shameless.”
I laugh. “Yeah. Par for the course.”
Darcy lets out a yelp, claps her hands over her head, and beckons me with a come-hither expression that would appeal to any man who has ever fancied girl-on-girl action. “Rachel! Rachel! C’mere!”
Of course she knows that I will not join her. I have never danced on a bar. I wouldn’t know what to do up there besides fall. I shake my head and smile, a polite refusal. We all wait for her next move, which is to swivel her hips in perfect time to the music, bend over slowly, and then whip her body upright again, her long hair spilling every which way. The limber maneuver reminds me of her perfect imitation of Tawny Kitaen in the Whitesnake video “Here I Go Again,” how she used to roll around doing splits on the hood of her father’s BMW, to the delight of the pubescent neighborhood boys. I glance at Dex, who in these moments can never quite decide whether to be amused or annoyed. To say that the man has patience is an understatement. Dex and I have this in common.
“Happy birthday, Rachel!” Darcy yells. “Let’s all raise a glass to Rachel!”
Which everyone does. Without taking their eyes off her.
A minute later, Dex whisks her down from the bar, slings her over his shoulder, and deposits her on the floor next to me in one fluid motion. Clearly he has done this before. “All right,” he announces. “I’m taking our little party-planner home.”
Darcy plucks her drink off the bar and stamps her foot. “You’re not the boss of me, Dex! Is he, Rachel?” As she asserts her independence, she stumbles and sloshes her martini all over Dex’s shoe.
Dex grimaces. “You’re wasted, Darce. This isn’t fun for anyone but you.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll go… I’m feeling kind of sick anyway,” she says, looking queasy.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t you worry,” she says, now playing the role of brave little sick girl.
I thank her for my party, tell her that it was a total surprise—which is a lie, because I knew Darcy would capitalize on my thirtieth to buy a new outfit, throw a big bash, and invite as many of her friends as my own. Still, it was nice of her to have the party, and I am glad that she did. She is the kind of friend who always makes things feel special. She hugs me hard and says she’d do anything for me, and what would she do without me, her maid of honor, the sister she never had. She is gushing, as she always does when she drinks too much.
Dex cuts her off. “Happy birthday, Rachel. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He gives me a kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks, Dex,” I say. “Good night.”
I watch him usher her outside, holding her elbow after she nearly trips on the curb. Oh, to have such a caretaker. To be able to drink with reckless abandon and know that there will be someone to get you home safely.
Sometime later Dex reappears in the bar. “Darcy lost her purse. She thinks she left it here. It’s small, silver,” he says. “Have you seen it?”
“She lost her new Chanel bag?” I shake my head and laugh because it is just like Darcy to lose things. Usually I keep track of them for her, but I went off duty on my birthday. Still, I help Dex search for the purse, finally spotting it under a bar stool.
As he turns to leave, Dex’s friend Marcus, one of his groomsmen, convinces him to stay. “C’mon, man. Hang out for a minute.”
So Dex calls Darcy at home and she slurs her consent, tells him to have fun without her. Although she is probably thinking that such a thing is not possible.
Gradually my friends peel away, saying their final happy birthdays. Dex and I outlast everyone, even Marcus. We sit at the bar making conversation with the actor/ bartender who has an “Amy” tattoo and zero interest in an aging lawyer. It is after two when we decide that it’s time to go. The night feels more like midsummer than spring, and the warm air infuses me with sudden hope: This will be the summer I meet my guy.
Dex hails me a cab, but as it pulls over he says, “How about one more bar? One more drink?”
“Fine,” I say. “Why not?”
We both get in and he tells the cabbie to just drive, that he has to think about where next. We end up in Alphabet City at a bar on Seventh and Avenue B, aptly named 7B.
It is not an upbeat scene—7B is dingy and smoke-filled. I like it anyway—it’s not sleek and it’s not a dive striving to be cool because it’s not sleek.
Dex points to a booth. “Have a seat. I’ll be right with you.” Then he turns around. “What can I get you?”
I tell him whatever he’s having, and sit and wait for him in the booth. I watch him say something to a girl at the bar wearing army-green cargo pants and a tank top that says “Fallen Angel.” She smiles and shakes her head. “Omaha” is playing in the background. It is one of those songs that seems melancholy and cheerful at the same time.
A moment later Dex slides in across from me, pushing a beer my way. “Newcastle,” he says. Then he smiles, crinkly lines appearing around his eyes. “You like?”
I nod and smile.
From the corner of my eye, I see Fallen Angel turn on her bar stool and survey Dex, absorbing his chiseled features, wavy hair, full lips. Darcy complained once that Dex garners more stares and double takes than she does. Yet, unlike his female counterpart, Dex seems not to notice the attention. Fallen Angel now casts her eyes my way, likely wondering what Dex is doing with someone so average. I hope that she thinks we’re a couple. Tonight nobody has to know that I am only a member of the wedding party.
Dex and I talk about our jobs and our Hamptons share that begins in another week and a lot of things. But Darcy does not come up and neither does their September wedding.
After we finish our beers we move over to the jukebox, fill it with dollar bills, searching for good songs. I push the code for “Thunder Road” twice because it is my favorite song. I tell him this.
“Yeah. Springsteen’s at the top of my list, too. Ever seen him in concert?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Twice. Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love.”
I almost tell him that I went with Darcy in high school, dragged her along even though she much preferred groups like Poison and Bon Jovi. But I don’t bring this up. Because then he will remember to go home to her and I don’t want to be alone in my dwindling moments of twentysomethingness. Obviously I’d rather be with a boyfriend, but Dex is better than nothing.
It is last call at 7B. We get a couple more beers and return to our booth. Sometime later we are in a cab again, going north on First Avenue. “Two stops,” Dex tells our cabbie, because we live on opposite sides of Central Park. Dex is holding Darcy’s Chanel purse, which looks small and out of place in his large hands. I glance at the silver dial of his Rolex, a gift from Darcy. It is just shy of four o’clock.
We sit silently for a stretch of ten or fifteen blocks, both of us looking out of our respective side windows, until the cab hits a pothole and I find myself lurched into the middle of the backseat, my leg grazing his. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, Dex is kissing me. Or maybe I kiss him. Somehow we are kissing. My mind goes blank as I listen to the soft sound of our lips meeting again and again. At some point, Dex taps on the Plexiglas partition and tells the driver, between kisses, that it will just be one stop after all.
We arrive on the corner of Seventy-third and Third, near my apartment. Dex hands the driver a twenty and does not wait for change. We spill out of the taxi, kissing more on the sidewalk and then in front of Jose, my doorman. We kiss the whole way up in t
he elevator. I am pressed against the elevator wall, my hands on the back of his head. I am surprised by how soft his hair is.
I fumble with my key, turning it the wrong way in the lock as Dex keeps his arms around my waist, his lips on my neck and the side of my face. Finally the door is open, and we are kissing in the middle of my studio, standing upright, leaning on nothing but each other. We stumble over to my made bed, complete with tight hospital corners.
“Are you drunk?” His voice is a whisper in the dark.
“No,” I say. Because you always say no when you’re drunk. And even though I am, I have a lucid instant where I consider clearly what was missing in my twenties and what I wish to find in my thirties. It strikes me that, in a sense, I can have both on this momentous birthday night. Dex can be my secret, my last chance for a dark twenty-something chapter, and he can also be a prelude of sorts—a promise of someone like him to come. Darcy is in my mind, but she is being pushed to the back, overwhelmed by a force stronger than our friendship and my own conscience. Dex moves over me. My eyes are closed, then open, then closed again.
And then, somehow, I am having sex with my best friend’s fiancé.
baby proof
It was subtle at first, as changes in relationships typically are, so it is hard to pinpoint the genesis. But, looking back, I think it all began when Ben and I went on a ski trip with Annie and Ray, the couple who had set us up on our first date. I had known Annie since our bingeing college days, so I noticed right away that she was sticking with Perrier. At first she claimed to be on antibiotics for a sinus infection, but the whole antibiotic excuse had never slowed her in the past so I dragged the truth out of her. She was eight weeks pregnant.
“Was it planned?” I blurted out, thinking surely it had been an accident. Annie adored her career as a documentary filmmaker and had a million different causes on the side. She had never expressed an interest in having children, and I couldn’t fathom her making time for motherhood.
Annie and Ray clasped hands and nodded in unison.
“But I thought you didn’t want kids,” I said.
“We didn’t want kids right away,” Annie said. “But we feel ready now. Although I guess you’re never completely ready!” She laughed in a high-pitched, schoolgirlish way, her cheeks flushing pink.
“Hmm,” I said.
Ben kicked me under the table and said, “Well, congratulations, guys! This is awesome news.” Then he shot me a stern look and said, “Isn’t that wonderful news, Claudia?”
“Yes. Wonderful,” I said, but I couldn’t help feeling betrayed. Ben and I were going to lose our favorite traveling companions, our only close friends who were as unfettered as we were by babies and all their endless accoutrements.
We finished dinner, our conversation dominated by talk of children and Westchester real estate.
Later, when Ben and I were alone in our room, he chastised me for being so transparently unsupportive. “You could have at least pretended to be happy for them,” he said. “Instead of grilling them about birth control.”
“I was just so shocked,” I said. “Did you have any idea?”
Ben shook his head and with a fleeting expression of envy said, “No. But I think it’s great.”
“Don’t tell me you want them now, too?” I asked him, mostly joking.
Ben answered quickly, but his words registered flat and false. “Of course not,” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Over the next few months, things only got more troubling. Ben became all too interested in the progress of Annie’s pregnancy. He admired the ultrasound photos, even taping one to our refrigerator. I told him that we were not a “tape things to the refrigerator” kind of family.
“Jeez, Claudia. Lighten up,” Ben said, appearing agitated as he pulled down the murky black-and-white image and slapped it into a drawer. “You really should be happier for them. They’re our best friends, for chrissake.”
A short time after that, right before Annie and Ray had their baby, Ben and I planned a last-minute weekend getaway to the resort where we had been married. It was early January when the abrupt disappearance of Christmas decorations and tourists always makes Manhattan seem so naked and bleak, and Ben said he couldn’t wait until early March for our tentatively planned trip to Belize. I remember tossing some shorts and a new red bikini into my leather duffel and remarking how nice it was to have spontaneity in our relationship, the freedom to fly off at a moment’s notice.
Ben said, “Yes. There are some wonderful things about our life together.”
This sentence struck me as melancholy—even ominous—but I didn’t press him on it. I didn’t even pressure him to talk when he was uncharacteristically taciturn on our flight down to the Carribbean.
I didn’t really worry until later that night when we were settling into our room, unpacking our clothes and toiletries. I momentarily stopped to inspect the view of the sea outside our room, and as I turned back toward my suitcase, I caught a glimpse of Ben in the mirror. His mouth was curled into a remorseful frown. I panicked, remembering what my sister, Maura, once said about men who cheat. She is an expert on the topic as her husband, Scott, had been unfaithful with at least two women she knew of. “Look out if they’re really mean or really nice. Like if they start giving you flowers and jewelry for no reason,” she had said. “Or taking you away on a romantic getaway. It’s the guilt. They’re trying to make up for something.” I tried to calm down, telling myself that I was being paranoid. Ben and I always took spontaneous trips together; we never needed a reason.
Still, I wanted to dispel the lingering images of Ben pressed against a sweaty bohemian lover, so I sat on the bed, kicked off my flip-flops, and said, “Ben. Talk to me. What’s on your mind?” He swallowed hard and sat next to me. The bed bounced slightly under his weight and the motion made me feel even more nervous. “I don’t know how to say this,” Ben said, his voice cracking. “So I’ll just come out with it.”
I nodded, feeling queasy. “Go ahead.”
“I think I might want kids after all.”
I felt a rush of relief and even laughed out loud. “You scared me.” I laughed again, louder, and then opened a Red Stripe from the minibar.
“I’m serious, Claudia.”
“Where is all of this coming from? Annie and Ray?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just…it’s just this feeling I have,” Ben said, making a fist over his heart.
At least he hasn’t cheated on me, I thought. A betrayal of that magnitude could never be erased or forgotten. His fleeting wish for a child would surely go away. But as Ben continued to spout off his list of reasons why a baby might be a good thing—stuff about showing children the world, doing things better than our parents had done—my relief gave way to something else. It was a sense of losing control. A sense that something was slipping away.
I tried to stay calm as I delivered a rather eloquent speech. I told him that all of that parenthood stuff wasn’t who we were. I said that our relationship was built upon our unique twoness, the concept that three or more is a crowd. I pointed out that we couldn’t have taken this last-minute trip. We’d be anchored to home all the time.
“But we’d have other things,” Ben said. “And what if we really are missing out on something great? I’ve never heard a single person say they regret having a child.”
“Would they admit it if they did?” I said.
“Maybe not,” Ben said. “But the point is, I don’t think they ever would.”
“I totally disagree… I mean, why are there boarding schools? The mere existence of boarding schools proves something, right?” I asked. I was partly kidding about the boarding schools, but Ben didn’t laugh.
I sighed and then decided to change the subject altogether, focus on having fun. Show Ben what we’d be missing with children.
“Let’s get changed and go to dinner,” I said, turning up “One Love” on our portable CD player and thinking that there’s nothing li
ke a little Bob Marley to put you in a childfree, unencumbered state of mind.
But despite my best efforts to have a good time, the rest of our weekend passed with an increasing tension. Things felt forced between us, and Ben’s mood went from quiet to lugubrious. On our third and final night on the island, we took a cab to Asolare, a restaurant with incredible views of Cruz Bay. We ate in virtual silence, commenting only on the sunset and our perfectly prepared lobster tail. Just as our waitress brought us our coffee and sorbet, I looked at Ben and said, “You know what? We had a deal.”
As soon as the words came out, I knew how utterly ridiculous I sounded. Marriage is never a done deal. Not even when you have children together, although that certainly helps your case. And the irony of that seemed overwhelmingly sad.
Ben tugged on his earlobe and said, “I want to be a father.”
“Fine. Fine,” I said. “But do you want a baby more than you want to be my husband?”
He reached out and put one hand over mine. “I want both,” he said as he squeezed my fingers.
“Well. You can’t have both,” I said, trying to keep the angry edge out of my voice.
I waited for him to say that of course he’d always pick me. That it was the only thing in the world he was really sure of. “So? Which is it?” I said.
It wasn’t supposed to be a test, but it suddenly felt like one. Ben stared down at his cappuccino for a long time. Then he moved his hand from mine and slowly stirred three cubes of sugar into his mug.
When he finally looked up at me, there was guilt and grief in his gray-green eyes, and I knew I had my answer.
love the one you’re with