Something Blue - Emily Giffin [57]
Claire, the biggest gossip hound in Manhattan, had added me to her inside scoop. So I added her to my ever-growing list of enemies—of people who would be sorry to have crossed me.
* * *
seventeen
For the next few days I cranked up.
"I Will Survive," Ace of Base's "I Saw the Sign," and other inspiring songs as I racked my brain, trying to come up with a plan, a way to escape the shame of so much rejection. I needed a fresh start, a change of venue, a new cast of characters. I scoured my list of contacts in the city, but everyone was somehow linked to Dex or to Claire or to my firm. I seemed to be without options. And then, just as true despair set in, a call from Indianapolis showed up on my caller ID. It was Annalise, my last girlfriend standing.
"Hi, Annalise!" I answered, feeling guilty for all the times in the past that I had dismissed her as boring, neglected to call her back, even scoffed at her suburban, kindergarten-teaching existence. I felt especially bad for not meeting her new baby, Hannah, when I was back in Indy.
"I'm so glad you called!" I told her. "How are you? How is Hannah?"
I listened patiently as Annalise gushed about her baby and complained about the lack of sleep. Then she asked how I was doing, her tone implying that she already knew my tale of woe. Just in case she was missing some details, I filled her in on everything. "My life is falling apart, and I don't know what to do," I cried into the phone.
"Oh, wow, Darce," Annalise said in her heavy Midwestern accent. "I don't know what to say. I'm just… really worried about you."
"Well, you should be worried," I said. "I'm at the absolute end of my rope. And this is all Rachel's fault, you know."
I was yearning for one derogatory comment about Rachel, her other best friend. Just a tiny dig would have felt like a cooling salve. But Annalise was not one to be mean, so she only made a concerned clucking noise into the phone and then said, "Can't you and Rach just try to work things out? This is just too sad."
"Hell no!"
Annalise made another remark about forgiveness, one of those annoying religious comments that had become her trademark after marrying Greg, a Bible beater from Kentucky.
"Never," I said. "I'll never forgive her."
Annalise sighed as Hannah Jane fussed in the background, making an annoying, and escalating, ehh, ehhh, ehhhhhh sound that wasn't exactly igniting my mothering instinct.
"So, anyway, I just think I need a change of scenery, you know? I thought about the Peace Corps or some outdoorsy type of adventure, but that's not really my scene. I like my creature comforts. Especially now that I'm pregnant…"
That's when Annalise suggested that I return home for a few months, live with my parents, and have the baby in Indianapolis. "It'd be so fun to have you here," she said. "I'm in this amazing playgroup at church. You'd love it. It might be really grounding for you."
"I don't need to be grounded. I need the opposite. I need an escape. Besides, I can't go back to Indy. It just feels like such a downgrade. You know, like I'm selling out, settling, cashing in my chips, admitting defeat."
"Okay!" Annalise giggled good-naturedly. "I get the picture. We know we're small potatoes, don't we, Hannah?"
Hannah howled in response.
"You know what I mean. You like it there, and that's great for you. But I'm just not a small-town kind of girl…"
"You're far from small-town," Annalise said.
"And besides, I'm not speaking to my mother," I said, explaining what a bitch she had been upon hearing my news.
"Why don't you go to London and stay with Ethan?" she said, referring to Ethan Ainsley, our high school friend who was in London, writing some book.
The second she said it, I knew it was the answer. It was so obvious, I marveled that I hadn't thought of it first. I would sublease my apartment and head off to jolly ol' England.
"Annalise, that's a marvelous