Not writing a word on his blue book until he thought through his entire answer.
He clears his throat. 'Not with Alice. But yes with Suzanne.'
No wonder Suzanne has always bothered Darcy so much. She wants to be the only one he has ever loved. I remember how she used to beat down Blaine in high school: 'You didn't love Cassandra, did you? Did you?' Until he finally just said no. Only you, Darcy.
'Why not with Alice?' I ask. I'd rather hear about the one he didn't love first.
'I don't know. She was a sweet girl. As sweet as they come. I don't know why I didn't love her. It's something you can't really control.'
Dex is right. It has nothing to do with the other person's inherent worth, the sum of their fine attributes. It is something you can't will yourself to feel. Or not feel. Although I have done a pretty good job of it over the years. Just look at Joey. I dated him for two years and never felt even a fraction of what I'm feeling now.
'Of course, it was just high school,' he continues. 'How serious can you really be at that age?'
I nod, thinking of sweet little Brandon. Then I ask Dex about Suzanne. 'So you loved her?'
'Yeah. But that wasn't going to work in the long run. 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.
Chapter 10
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.
