Something Blue - Emily Giffin [79]
He shook his head. "I don't believe you," he said. "You did not get into Notre Dame."
I started to sweat. How did he know? Had he seen my letter? Had he hacked into the Notre Dame admissions office's computer system?
"Why is my choice of colleges relevant here?"
"I'll tell you why it's relevant, Darcy. I'll tell you exactly why. You have always competed with Rachel. From way back in the day until now. Everything has always been a contest with you. And part of what's eating you up inside is that Dex picked Rachel. He picked her over you."
I tried to speak but he kept going, his words cruel, stark, and loud. "Dex wanted to be with her and not you. Never mind that you didn't want to be with him either. Never mind that you cheated on him too. Never mind that clearly you and he weren't at all right for each other and you both saved yourselves a divorce by calling it quits. You can only focus on one thing: the fact that Rachel somehow beat you. And it kills you, Darce. I'm telling you, as your friend, that you need to let it go and move on," he finished in his debate-team tone.
I shook my head. I told him that he was wrong. I told him that nobody, nobody in my position, could be happy for Rachel. I felt myself getting shrill, desperate to make him see things my way, just as I had tried to do with Marcus.
"It's like this, Ethan… even if they hadn't done a thing behind my back, even if this relationship had begun after we broke up, it would still be… just wrong. You just don't go there with a friend's ex. Period. How is it that men have trouble seeing that? It's a basic life principle."
"She loves him, Darce. That is a basic life principle."
"Would you stop rubbing it in! I don't want to hear the word love again. Whether they love each other is totally beside the point… You don't understand anything about friendship."
"Darcy. No offense—and I'm not saying this to be mean, because I care about you, which is why you're here right now for this purported visit," he said, making quotation marks in the air as he said the word visit. "But—"
"But what?" I asked pitifully, afraid of what he would say next.
"But I think you're the one who doesn't understand friendship," he said, speaking fast and furiously. "Not at all. Which is why you're sitting here essentially friendless. At war with Rachel. At war with Claire. At war with the father of your child. At war with your own mother, who, as far as you know, has no clue where you are! And now you're mad at me too."
"It's not my fault that you all betrayed me."
"You need to take a long, hard look in the mirror, Darce. You need to realize that there are consequences to your basically shallow existence."
"I'm not shallow," I said, only half-believing it.
"You are shallow. You're utterly selfish and misguided, with totally screwed-up values."
He had gone too far. I might be a bit on the shallow side, but the rest of his accusations were ridiculous. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? Misguided?"
"It means that you're, what, five months pregnant now? And as far as I can tell, you're doing nothing to prepare for this child. Nothing. You come to London for this so-called visit, but I see no signs of you returning to New York—and meanwhile, you have made no effort to seek any prenatal care here in London. On top of that, you don't eat particularly well, probably in an effort to stay thin at the expense of your baby's growth. You had two glasses of wine tonight. And instead of saving for the child you have to raise alone, you are throwing money to the wind on positively frivolous purchases. It's simply staggering to watch how utterly irresponsible and totally self-absorbed you're being."
I sat there, completely speechless. I mean, what do you say when someone tells you, essentially, that you're a shit friend, a horrible, irresponsible mother-to-be,