by Emily Giffin
“I can’t wait, actually,” I said, surprised by how much I wanted to share John and Thomas with her.
Ethan nodded and then glanced at me sideways. “Any other calls you want to make?”
I could tell that he was thinking of Rachel so I said her name as a question, the two syllables lingering in the room, sounding both comforting and menacing at once.
“Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”
“As a matter of fact, I think I will call her,” I said resolutely. “And then Annalise. And then Meg and Charlotte.”
It was the right order.
“Are you sure you want to talk to Rachel?” he asked.
I nodded. I couldn’t put it into words, but in some inexplicable way, I felt compelled to forge an official truce with my ex–best friend. No matter what had happened in the past, or what the future held for us, I wanted Rachel to hear the news of Thomas and John’s birth from me. So I dialed her number on Ethan’s mobile before I could change my mind. As I listened to her phone ring, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted her to answer or for her machine to pick up.
I got the one thing I hadn’t banked on.
“Hell-o,” Dex said cheerily.
I panicked, gave Ethan a wide-eyed look of horror, and frantically mouthed, “Dex!”
He grimaced empathetically and then made a motivating fist in the air and whispered, “Go on. Do it. Ask to speak to Rachel.”
So I did, gathering strength by glancing down at John, who was making a soft, sucking noise in his sleep. Dex was ancient history. Literally two lifetimes ago.
I took a deep breath and said, “Hi, Dex. It’s Darcy. Is Rachel there?”
“Hello, Darcy,” Dex said formally. Then he paused as if he were some kind of gatekeeper, suspecting trouble from abroad. “Rachel’s right here,” he finally said.
There was another long pause, and a rustling on the line. I pictured him covering the phone and coaching her, saying something like, “Don’t let her suck you into a conflict.”
I thought back to the last time I had seen Dex, in our old apartment, and felt ashamed of the stunt I had tried to pull. I guess my reputation was deserved, and I couldn’t blame him for being wary of me now.
“Hi, Darcy,” Rachel said timidly, her voice crackling over the distance. It was a voice I had heard nearly every day for twenty-five years, and I felt amazed at how it could now sound both familiar and utterly foreign.
“Hi, Rachel…I had something—I wanted to tell you something,” I babbled as my heart raced. “I had my babies last night. Two boys.”
“Congratulations, Darcy,” she said. Her voice was warm and sincere. “I’m so happy for you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“What are their names?” she asked tentatively.
“John Noel and Thomas Ethan.”
“I love those names,” she said, and then hesitated. “After Ethan?”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering if Ethan had told her how close we had become. If he hadn’t, she was likely thinking that I was trying to infringe on her turf as Ethan’s close female friend. It wasn’t beyond the pale of my old tricks, and I felt another flicker of embarrassment over the person I used to be. Still, I resisted the urge to explain why the names were appropriate, and instead, rattled off the other birth statistics.
“How do you feel?” she asked softly.
I could feel myself relaxing as I said, “I’m fine. It wasn’t a bad delivery…I’m just really tired now, but from what I hear, it only gets worse.”
I laughed, but Rachel stayed serious. She asked if my mother was coming to help.
“Uh-huh. I just talked to her,” I said. “You are only the second person I’ve called.”
I wanted her to know the order. I wanted it to count as my between-the-lines apology. I didn’t feel up to a full-blown examination of our friendship, but I wanted her to know that I was sorry about what had happened between us.
After a long pause, she said, “I’m really glad you called, Darcy. I’ve been thinking of you so much lately, wondering how you are.”
“Yeah. I got your note. And the blankets,” I said. “They’re really special. I love them. Thank you.”
“You’re so welcome,” she said.
“So how are you?” I asked, realizing that I wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. I wanted more of her.
“Fine. I’m fine,” she said somewhat hesitantly.
“What has been going on in your life?” I asked, referring to Dex, but also everything else.
“Well…I paid off my loans finally, and quit my job. I do legal work for an AIDS foundation in Brooklyn now.”
“That’s great,” I said. “I know you must be much happier.”
“Yeah. I like it a lot,” she said. “It’s so nice not to worry about billable hours…. And the commute’s not too bad.”
I could tell she was avoiding any mention of Dex, so after another few seconds of silence, I said, “So you and Dex are doing well?”
I wanted to show her I was fine with the status quo. And although it still felt funny to think of them together, I really was remarkably okay with things. How could I begrudge anyone happiness when I felt so fulfilled and contented?
She made an umm sound, hesitated, and then said, “Didn’t Ethan tell you?”
“About your engagement?” I guessed.
“Um…well, actually…Dex and I are…married,” Rachel said softly. “We got married yesterday.”
“Wow,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
I waited for a wave of jealousy or bitterness to hit me. Or at least a healthy dose of wistfulness. Instead, I felt the way I do when I read about a celebrity wedding in People. Interested in the details, but not wholly invested in it.
“Congratulations,” I said, understanding why Dex sounded wary of my call. The timing was definitely suspect.
“Thank you, Darcy,” she said. “I know…this is all so bizarre, isn’t it?” Her tone was apologetic.
Was she sorry for marrying Dex? For not inviting me? For everything?
I let her off the hook, and said, “It’s fine, Rachel. Truly. I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you, Darcy.”
My mind filled with questions. I considered censoring them, but then thought, why not ask?
“Where was your ceremony?” I asked first.
“Here in the city. At the Methodist church on Sixtieth and Park.”
“And your reception?”
“We had it at The Inn at Irving Place,” she said. “It was very small.”
“Was Annalise there?”
“Yeah. Just a few friends and our families…I wanted you to be there, but…” Her voice trailed off. “I knew you wouldn’t come. Couldn’t come, I mean.”
I laughed. “Yeah. That would have been sort of weird, huh?”
“Yeah. I guess so,” she said wanly.
“So where are you guys living now?” I asked.
She told me they had bought an apartment in Gramercy—which had always been Rachel’s favorite neighborhood in the city.
“That’s awesome…. And are you going on a honeymoon?” I asked, thinking of their trip to Hawaii, but refusing to succumb to negative emotion.
“Yeah…We leave for Italy tonight,” she said.
“Oh. That’s great. I’m glad I caught you.”
“Yeah. Me too,” she said.
“So I hope you have a good time in Italy. Give Dex my best too. Okay?”
She said that she would do that. Then we congratulated each other again, and said good-bye. I hung up and looked at Ethan through fresh tears. The kind that come after you’ve survived an ordeal.
“I was going to tell you,” Ethan said. “But with your preterm labor, I didn’t want to upset you, and yesterday wasn’t the day for it…. Besides, I thought Rachel should tell you herself.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m surprisingly fine with it…I guess you were invited?”
He nodded. “Ye
ah. But I never planned on going.”
“Why not?”
“You think I would have left you?”
“You could have.”
He shook his head emphatically. “No way.”
“You’re closer to her,” I said, perhaps to gauge his feelings for me, but also because I felt guilty that he had missed one of his best friend’s weddings because of me.
“I’m closer to you,” he said earnestly.
I smiled, feeling no sense of victory over Rachel, just an incredible closeness to Ethan. I wondered if he felt the way I did—or whether it was only love for a friend.
“And just look what I would have missed,” Ethan said, gazing down at John and Thomas.
I thought about the two events—the birth of my babies and Rachel’s wedding—transpiring virtually simultaneously, on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
“Can you believe it all happened on the very same day?” I asked him.
Ethan shook his head. “Frankly, no. I cannot.”
“Guess I’m never going to forget their anniversary.”
Ethan put his arm around me and let me cry some more.
On the day of our discharge from the hospital, Geoffrey stopped by to visit us during his rounds. He shook Ethan’s hand, kissed me on the cheek, and admired my sons.
“What a nice guy,” Ethan said after Geoffrey had left the room.
“Yeah, he could win the ex-boyfriend-of-the-year award,” I said, thinking that as nice as Geoffrey was, I was still certain that I had done the right thing in breaking up with him. The fact that our relationship had weathered the transition to friendship so seamlessly was just further confirmation.
I put on the sweater that Ethan had given me for Christmas as he reswaddled John and Thomas in Rachel’s blankets, handing me both bundles, one in each arm. Then Ethan finished packing our belongings, which had spread to every corner of the room.
“I don’t want to go,” I said.
“Why not?” he asked.
I tried to explain my feeling of wanting to stay in the hospital forever, with a fleet of nurses and doctors catering to me and my children. I felt envious of the women just going into labor, and told Ethan that I’d take the pain all over again for a few more nights at the inn.
Ethan reassured me that I had nothing to worry about. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “You’ll see.”
It was that we that held me together through those first crazy days and weeks at home. It got me through the fear that my babies would suddenly stop breathing, the frustration with breast-feeding, my insecurity during bath time, and all the other mundane but seemingly insurmountable tasks. Most of all, it got me through the agony of the sleepless nights. You hear parents of one newborn talk about how grueling the lack of sleep is, but experiencing the endless cycle of waking-feeding-changing with twins is simply not to be believed. Let’s just say I understood why sleep deprivation is the number-one form of torture for political prisoners.
Our days weren’t much easier. Laundry and dishes and bills accumulated at an alarming rate. Food disappeared even more quickly, and we often resorted to opening dusty canned goods rather than schlepping our delirious selves the few blocks to the grocery store. There were many days when we didn’t even change out of our pajamas or brush our teeth before late afternoon. And I certainly didn’t have the energy to put on makeup or blow-dry my hair or even look in the mirror except in passing, catching horrific glimpses of my matted hair, sunken eyes, and a lingering fifteen pounds, mostly around my middle.
In short, it wasn’t exactly a breeding ground for romance, but there it was anyway, blooming between Ethan and me, evident in every small act of kindness. It was love as a verb, as Rachel used to say. Love that made me more patient, more loyal, and stronger. Love that made me feel more complete than I had ever felt in my glamorous, Jimmy Choo–filled past.
Yet on the surface, Ethan and I remained “just friends.” They were two words that haunted me, especially when Ethan went off, every few days, to spend time with Sondrine. She was still his girlfriend. I was just his friend. Sure, we were friends who exchanged soulful glances, friends who slept in a bed filled with sexual tension, friends who found any excuse to touch, but I worried that we’d never take that perilous leap of faith toward becoming a real couple, a permanent team. I had nightmares of a tragic ending: Ethan marrying Sondrine while I returned to New York with Thomas and John. I would awaken, sweating and teary, tasting the grief and heartbreak I’d face if I had to spend the rest of my life wondering just how incredible we could have been together, if only one of us had stepped up and taken the chance.
Then, one afternoon in late April, as Ethan and I took the boys out for our daily walk around Holland Park, he solemnly reported that the night before, over oysters at Bibendum, he had ended things with Sondrine. I felt a rush of excitement and opportunity. I also sensed uneasiness between us. Our last obstacle was gone, but now what?
I let out a nervous laugh and said in a teasing tone, “Kind of weird to dump someone over oysters, isn’t it?”
“Well,” Ethan said, his eyes focused on the path ahead of us. “I’m not always the slickest guy…as you well know.”
His “as you well know” seemed loaded with meaning and made me even more anxious. So I stumbled on, rambling about how I thought you weren’t supposed to eat oysters in months containing the letter r.
“We had rock oysters—fins de clair—which you can eat year-round. But thanks so much for your concern,” he said, yawning with feigned nonchalance.
“Anytime,” I said, as we strolled around the top of the Cricket Lawn. A long minute passed, the silence between us thickening.
“How do you feel?” I finally asked, choosing my words carefully. “About the breakup?”
Ethan glanced at me with raised brows. “It was a long time coming. I think I was just too sleep-deprived to get around to it sooner, you know?”
I nodded. I knew.
“I just didn’t feel that close to her,” he continued. “After this long, I should have felt closer to her. Or at least had the sense that I knew her…I mean, I knew her taste in music, art, food, travel, literature. But I still didn’t know her. Or maybe I just didn’t want to know her badly enough.”
I nodded again, noticing that we were both walking at a faster clip and avoiding eye contact.
“There was other stuff too,” he chattered nervously. He stopped pushing the pram long enough to reach down and adjust John’s cap, which had slipped down over his eyes, and then said, “She was so relentlessly anti-American. I’m the first guy to step up and criticize our government. But it raised my hackles when she did it. I found myself constantly grinding my teeth to keep from saying, ‘Your ass’d be speaking German if it weren’t for us.’”
I smiled, pretending to be distracted by a nearby three-on-three football game.
“And then there’s her scent…,” he said.
“What? She doesn’t bathe enough?”
He shook his head. “No. She’s perfectly clean. And she wears nice perfume and all of that. But there’s something about her actual, natural scent. The way her skin smells. I just didn’t like it…. So you know, it’s hard to fix that one.”
“Do I have a scent? When I’m not wearing perfume?” I asked, suddenly worried that Ethan didn’t like mine either, and that I was only imagining our physical, chemical connection.
Ethan glanced at me, blushing scarlet. “Yeah. You do have a scent,” he said slowly.
“And?” I asked, my heart pounding.
He stopped walking, turned to face me, and stared into my eyes. “You have an almost citrusy scent. Sweet, but not too sweet.”
His expression removed my last trace of doubt. I was sure now—Ethan loved me as much as I loved him. I smiled, feeling light-headed and breathless as he wrapped his hand around mine, his other still gripping the handle of the pram. We had held hands many times before, but this time was different. It was a precursor to something more.
Sure enough, Ethan pulled me against him. Then he closed his eyes, buried his face in my neck, and inhaled.
“Yeah. You smell like an orange,” he whispered. “An orange in your stocking on Christmas morning.”
An electrical charge passed through my body, and I learned what it means to be weak in the knees. I closed my eyes and put my arms around Ethan’s shoulders, holding on tightly. Then, right in the middle of Holland Park, amid footballers and dogs and babies, Ethan and I shared our first real kiss. I’m not sure how long it lasted—ten seconds or five minutes or something in between—but I do know that everything in the world seemed to halt, except our hearts, thudding against each other. I remember his warm hand slipping up under my jacket and shirt, his long, slender fingers pressing into my back. I remember thinking how much I wanted to feel all of his skin against mine.
When we finally separated, Ethan said my name in a way nobody had ever said it, his voice filled with equal parts affection and desire. My eyes welled as I looked into his. He was still Ethan, the scrawny kid on the playground and my best friend. But he was also someone new.
“I think you know the real reason Sondrine and I broke up,” he said.
“Yeah. I think I do,” I whispered.
I could feel myself beaming, bursting with anticipation of what was to come. That afternoon and every day to follow. I hooked my hand over his elbow, as we turned the pram around and headed toward home.
Two Years Later
It is a brilliant summer day in London. I am waiting in Holland Park, wearing an ivory gown made of chiffon so soft I can’t stop touching it. The dress comes to a V in the back, and the front is gathered over the bustline and accented with a shimmering of beads. The skirt is a loose A-line—romantic and simple—and it sways just right in the breeze. The woman at the Kensington bridal shop told me that the design was inspired by the Edwardian era—which sounded like something Ethan would love. It was the first dress I tried on, but when you know something is right, you just know.
As the string quartet begins to play, I peek around the corner of the Belvedere, into the gardens, and allow myself a glimpse of Ethan. We’ve only been apart twenty-four hours, but for us, it is a long stretch. Whether it is our separation, his Armani suit, or the emotion of the day, he has never looked more handsome. I feel a tightening in my chest, and take rapid, shallow breaths to keep from crying. I don’t want to ruin my mascara so early in the day. For a moment, I wish I had my father to lean on or a bridesmaid to trail behind. But no, I made the right decision. I am walking solo on my wedding day, not out of spite or to make a statement, but rather as my own private symbol of how far I’ve come.