contrite.
'Yeah, I kissed Marcus. Big deal.'
'It's a big deal to me.' His face is so close to mine that I can smell the alcohol on his breath. 'I hate it. Don't do it again.'
'Don't tell me what to do,' I whisper fiercely back. Angry tears sting my eyes. 'I don't tell you what to do… You know what? Maybe I should tell you what to do… How about this one: marry Darcy. I don't care.'
I walk away from Dex, almost believing it. It is my first free moment of the summer. Perhaps the freest moment of my life. I am the one in control. I am the one deciding. I find a space on the back patio, alone in a massive crowd, my heart pounding. Minutes later, Dex finds me, grips my elbow.
'You don't mean what you said… about not caring.' Now it is his turn to be anxious. It never ceases to amaze me how foolproof the rule is: the person who cares the least (or pretends to) holds the power. I have proven it true once more. I shake his hand off my arm and just look at him coldly. He moves closer to me, takes my arm again.
'I'm sorry, Rachel,' he whispers, bending down toward my face.
I do not soften. I will not. 'I'm tired of the warring emotions, Dex. The endless cycle of hope and guilt and resentment. I'm tired of wondering what will happen with us. I'm tired of waiting for you.'
'I know. I'm sorry,' he says. 'I love you, Rachel.'
I feel myself weakening. Despite my tough-girl facade I am buzzing from being this near him, from his words. I look into his eyes. All of my instincts and desires-everything tells me to make peace, to tell him that I love him too. But I fight against them like a drowning person in a riptide. I know what I have to say. I think of Hillary's advice, how she has been telling me to say something all along. But I am not doing this for her. This is for me. I formulate the sentences, words that have been ringing in my head all summer.
'I want to be with you, Dex,' I say steadily. 'Cancel the wedding. Be with me.'
There it is. After two months of waiting, a lifetime of passivity, everything is on the line. I feel relieved and liberated and changed. I am a woman who expects happiness. I deserve happiness. Surely he will make me happy.
Dex inhales, on the verge of responding.
'Don't,' I say, shaking my head. 'Please don't talk to me again unless it's to tell me that the wedding is off. We have nothing more to discuss until then.'
Our eyes lock. Neither of us blinks for a minute or more. And then, for the first time, I beat Dex in a staring contest.
Chapter 20
It is two days after I delivered my ultimatum and one month before the wedding. I am still invigorated by my stand and filled with a soaring, positive feeling, stronger than hope. I have faith in Dex, faith in us. He will cancel. We will live happily ever after. Or something close to that.
Of course I worry about Darcy. I even worry that she might do something crazy when faced with her first dose of rejection. I have visions of her languishing in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, dark circles under her eyes, her hair stringy, her skin gray. In these scenes, I am there by her side, bringing her magazines and black licorice, telling her that everything is going to be okay, that everything happens for a reason.
But even if these scenes play out, I will never regret telling Dex the truth about what I want. I will never be sorry for going for it. For once, I did not put Darcy above myself.
As the days tick by, I go to work, come home, go back to work, waiting for the bomb to drop. I am sure that Dex will call at any moment with news. Good news. In the meantime, I steel myself, refusing to give in to my temptation to call him first. But after a full week passes, I start to worry and feel the shift back to my former self. I tell Hillary that I want to call him, knowing that she will talk me out of it. I remind myself of a woman on the wagon, dragging herself to an AA meeting in a last-ditch effort to resist her urges.
'No way,' she says. 'Don't do it. Don't contact him.'
'What if he was drunk and doesn't remember our conversation?' I ask her, grasping at straws.
'His tough luck.'
'Do you think he remembers?'
'He remembers.'
'Well. I wish I hadn't said anything.'
'Why? So you could have a few more nights with him?'
'No,' I say defensively.
Even though that is exactly the reason.
After another few days of torture, of being unable to eat or work or sleep, I decide that I must get away. I have to be somewhere else, away from Dex. Leaving town is the only way that I will keep myself from calling him, retracting everything for one more night, one more minute with him. I consider going to Indiana, but that is not far enough. Besides, home will only remind me of Darcy and the wedding.
I call Ethan and ask if I can visit. He is thrilled, says come anytime. So I call United and book a flight to London. It is only five days away, so I must pay full fare-eight hundred and ninety dollars-but it's worth every penny.
After I type my vacation memo, I go to drop it off at Les's office. Mercifully, he is away from his desk.
'He's at an out-of-the-office meeting. Thank gawd,' his secretary,
Cheryl, says to me. She is my ally, often warning me when Les is in a particularly foul mood.
'Just have a few things for him,' I tell her, heading into his den of horrors.
I put a draft of our reply papers on his chair, the vacation memo under them. Then I change my mind and move the memo to the top of the pile. He will be so pissed. This makes me smile.
'What's that smirk for?' Cheryl asks as I leave his office.
'Vacation memo,' I say. 'Let me know how much he curses me.'
She lifts her eyebrows and says, 'Uh-oh,' without losing her place on the document she is typing. 'Someone's gonna be in trou-ble.'
Les calls me that evening when he returns to the office. 'What's the big idea?'
'Excuse me?' I ask, knowing that my calm will nettle him further.
'You didn't tell me you were going on vacation!'
'Oh. I thought I did,' I lie.
'When was that?'
'I don't know exactly… Weeks ago. I'm going to a wedding.' Two lies.
'Christ.' He breathes into the phone, waiting for me to offer to cancel my trip. In the old days, back when I was a first-year, the passive-aggressive trick might have worked. But now I say nothing. I outwait him.
'Is it a family wedding?' he finally asks. This is where he draws the line. Family funerals and family weddings. Likely only immediate family. So I tell him that it's my sister's wedding. Three lies.
'Sorry,' I say flippantly. 'Maid of honor, you know.'
I let him rant for a few seconds and make an idle threat about getting another associate to take over the case. As if everyone is chomping at the bit to work with him. As if I would care if he replaced me. Then he announces with pleasure that this means no life outside the office for me until Friday. I think to myself that that won't be a problem.
Darcy calls minutes later. She is just as understanding. 'How can you book a trip so close to my wedding?'
'I promised Ethan I'd visit him this summer. And the summer is almost over.'
'What's wrong with the fall? I'm sure London is even more beautiful in the fall.'
'I need a vacation. Now.'
'Why now?'
'I just need to get out of here.'
'Why?… Does it have anything to do with Marcus?'
