"Are you sure Marcus wants to get married?"

"Positive."

"Do you think Dex suspects anything?" I ask quietly. For some reason, I don't want him to hear this question.

"No. But to be honest, I think he sensed how distant I've been. That's probably why he called it off. You know, he said he didn't love me… because he felt that I had turned away from him first."

"I see."

"I'm shocked at how calm you are. Thank you for not hating me."

"Yeah… I don't hate you."

"I hope Dex takes it as well. At least as far as Marcus goes. He's going to hate him for a while. But Dex is rational. Nobody did this on purpose to hurt him. It just happened."

And right when I think that this story is winding up as neatly and tightly as a Three's Company episode, with its get-out-of-jail-free ending, I see Darcy stare at something behind me. By the look on her face, I think that Dex has emerged from his hiding place. I turn around, fully expecting to see him. But no, the door is still closed. I face Darcy again. She is still staring behind me, her expression stony and trancelike.

And then she asks, "Why is Dexter's watch on your nightstand?"

I follow her eyes again. Sure enough, his watch is most definitely on my nightstand. Dexter's watch. My nightstand. There is no way out. At least not one that I can think of.

I shrug and stammer that I don't know. If there were any doubt before this moment as to my ability to think on my feet, that is cleared up now. I mumble, "Oh, it's not his watch. I have one like it… I bought it in England." My voice is shaking. I am a complete mess, a dying calf in a hailstorm.

Darcy leaps from my bed and grabs the watch from my nightstand, flipping it over and reading the inscription. '"All my love. Darcy,'" she says. Then she looks at me with pure hatred, demonstrating how I should have reacted to her Marcus news.

"What the fuck?" she asks. It is a cold, hard question. Her eyes narrow. "What the fuck!" she screams again, but this time it is a statement. Which means that I don't have to answer.

I stand as she pushes roughly past me into the bathroom. I follow her as she whips the shower curtain violently to the side. Only two tan Aveda bottles, a pink plastic razor, and a dwindling bar of soap.

I begin formulating a story: Dex came over to tell me about the breakup. He took his watch off, to woefully read the engraving. He was beside himself with grief. I comforted him briefly, at which point he left to wander in the park, alone.

But it is too late for explanations. The thirty-second window for explaining is over. Darcy's long, skinny fingers are gripping my closet doorknob.

"Darcy, don't," I say, clearly indicating that her ex-fiance is behind door number two. I stand in the way, my back against the door.

"Move!" she bellows. "I know he's in there!"

I move, because what else am I supposed to do? She is right. We all know that he is in there. But as she opens the door, part of me actually thinks that Dex will have found a way to fold himself more neatly and tightly into a back corner of my closet. Or maybe he got out, somehow fled during the four seconds that Darcy and I stood gridlocked in my bathroom. Or maybe he miraculously found a secret opening in the back as in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

But no, he is there, crouched right where I last saw him, holding his jeans and his shirt, wearing striped navy boxers, staring up at us. He unfolds himself and stands upright.

"You liar!" Darcy screams, thrusting her finger into his chest.

He ignores her and dresses calmly, putting one foot into his jeans and then the other. The sound of his zipper is loud in the room.

"You lied to me!"

"You have got to be kidding me," Dex says, finding the armholes in his T-shirt. His voice is low and restrained. "Fuck you, Darcy."

Darcy's face grows red and she is spitting as she yells, "You said there was nobody else in the picture! And you're fucking my best friend!"

I whimper her name like a broken record. "Darcy. Darcy. Darcy."

She ignores me, staring at Dex. I wait for him to defend us, cast a spin on the facts, tell her that there has been no fucking. Nothing at all until today, when he came over to seek comfort. But Dex says calmly, "Isn't that a bit of the pot calling the kettle black, Darce? You and Marcus, huh? Having a baby? I guess congratulations are in order."

I expect her to make a statement about loyalty and love and friendship. I expect her to accuse us of doing it first. But she only looks at me and then Dex and then says that she knew it all along, and that she hates us both very much. And that she always will. She walks over to the door.

"Oh, Darcy?" Dex says.

"What?" She shouts the word, but the look in her eyes is needy, expectant.

"May I have my watch back, please?"

She hurls the evidence overhand at him. Clearly it is meant to strike and hurt him. But her aim is bad and it ricochets off my wall, skating across the parquet back to her feet, inscription up. She looks at it and then at me.

"And you! I never want to see you again! You are dead to me!"

She slams the door and is gone.

Chapter 23

Darcy wastes no time in getting het version of the story out. Starting with Jose, apparently. On our way out of the building, minutes after Darcy's departure, we pass my doorman. For once, he is not grinning. Failing in the gatekeeping function is the stuff that can get a doorman fired. He looks worried.

"Hi, Jose," Dex and I say in unison.

"Aw, man, I'm really sorry I let her up," he says. "I, uh, didn't know… you know…"

"No. Not at all," I say. "Don't worry, Jose."

"Did she give you an earful?" Dex asks cheerfully, as if the whole thing were just a crazy little mix-up instead of a life-defining moment for at least four people.

Jose has tacit permission to smile again. "Uhh… you could say I got an earful. Heh, heh. But don't worry." He laughs. "I don't believe what she said about you… not most of it, anyway."

He slaps hands with Dex as though they are old pals, which I guess they are becoming. I walk Dex to the corner. He is going home to salvage as many belongings as he can fit into his luggage-we both believe that Darcy is a slash-and-burn kind of girl, fully up to the task of taking scissors to his wardrobe.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he says.

I nod.

"And you're sure it's okay if I stay with you for a few days?"

He has asked me the question three times now.

"Of course. Stay as long as you want," I say, thinking that now he not only wants me, but he needs me too. It is a good feeling to be needed by Dex.

We stand facing each other in the street for a moment before Dex flags a cab and leans down to kiss me. Without thinking, I turn my head to give him a cheek. Then I remember that we no longer need to hide. I turn my face again, and our lips meet in daylight.

I return to my apartment in a state of semishock. I feel as if I should do something ceremonious. Write in my journal, which has been untouched for months (I could never bring myself to write about Dex, just in case something happened to me). Dance around my apartment. Cry. Instead I focus on the mundane, what I am good at. I shower, unpack, water my plants, open my mail, drag two fans out of my closet and plug them in near my bed, and eat a couple of stale Fig Newtons.

Dex returns an hour later with his full array of tan Hartmann luggage and two black Nike gym bags, all stuffed haphazardly with clothes, shoes, papers, toiletries, even some framed photographs. "Rescue mission accomplished," he says. "She wasn't home."

I survey the bags. "How did you haul all that stuff over here so fast?"

"It wasn't easy," he says, wiping sweat from his brow. His gray T-shirt is wet around the pits and across his chest.

"You can hang your suits in the front closet," I say, still focusing on the practical, unable to absorb everything, although the presence of Dex's belongings is helping with that.

"Thanks." He shakes out a few dark suits and white shirts and looks at me. "Don't be alarmed. I'm not moving in."

"I'm not alarmed," I say, as I watch him hang his clothes. Although in truth, I am filled with sudden trepidation. What next? What now? I never planned on this-the temporary living arrangement, the end of my friendship with Darcy, the strange and sudden change in the status quo. "I just can't believe it."

He puts his arms around me. "What can't you believe?"

"Everything. Any of it. Us."

I close my eyes just as my phone rings. I jump. "Shit. You think it's her?" I am almost afraid of Darcy, of what she will do.

"I doubt it. She's off with Marcus, I'm sure."

I answer it.

"Is this true?" my mother asks, in a panic. "What I hear from Mrs. Rhone? Say it's not so, Rachel. Please tell me!"

"That depends on what you heard." I choose my words carefully, and then mouth to Dex that it is my mother.

He makes a face and grabs the arm of my sofa as though he is bracing for a meteor to fall into my apartment. I'd prefer a meteor to this conversation.

"She tells me that Dex canceled the wedding?"

"That is correct."

"And that you are somehow involved with Dex?… I told her there must be some mistake, but she was sure. She's very upset. Your father and I were speechless."

"Mom, it is complicated," I say, an admission by any measure.

"Ra-chel. How could you?" She has never sounded more disappointed in me. All of my hard work, accomplishments, years of being a good daughter-it is all down the drain. "Darcy is your oldest friend in the world! How could you?"