Something Borrowed - Emily Giffin [43]
Things started out right for him. He did well on the SATs, graduated as our salutatorian, and was voted most likely to succeed, picked over Amy Choi, our valedictorian, who was too quiet and mousy to win votes for anything. He went to Stanford, and after graduation took a job at an investment bank even though he majored in art history and had no interest in finance. He instantly despised everything about the banking culture. He said pulling all-nighters was unnatural, and realized that he preferred sleep to money. So he traded his suits in for fleece and spent the next several years drifting up and down the West Coast snapping pictures of lakes and trees, gathering friends along the way. He took writing classes, art classes, photography classes, funded by the odd bartending job and summers in Alaska's fisheries.
That's where he met Brandi—"Brandi with an /'" as I called her before I realized that he genuinely liked her, and that she wasn't just a fling. A few months into their romance, Brandi got pregnant (insisting she was part of that woefully unlucky .05 percent on birth-control pills, although I had my doubts). She said that abortion was out of the question, so Ethan did what he thought to be the right thing and married her at City Hall in downtown Seattle. They sent out homemade marriage announcements featuring a black-and-white photo of the two hiking. Darcy made fun of Brandi's way-too-short-and-tight jean shorts. "Who the hell hikes in Daisy Dukes?" she said. But Ethan seemed happy enough.
And that summer, Brandi gave birth to a baby boy… an adorable, bouncing Eskimo baby boy with eyes that turned coal black almost immediately. Brandi, with blue eyes that matched Ethan's, begged for forgiveness. Ethan promptly had the marriage annulled, and Brandi moved back to Alaska, probably to track down her native lover.
I think Brandi soured Ethan on the whole fresh-air, live-off-the-land kind of life. Or maybe he just wanted something new. Because he moved to London, where he writes for a magazine and is working on a book about London architecture, an interest he didn't acquire until he landed on British soil. But that's how Ethan is. He figures things out along the way, always ready to back up and start over, never bowing to pressure or expectations. I wish I could be more like him.
"So what did you do for your birthday?" Ethan asks.
I shut my office door and blurt it out. "Darcy had a surprise party for me, I got wasted, and hooked up with Dex."
I suppose this is what happens when you're not accustomed to having secrets. You don't learn the art of holding back. In fact, I am surprised I have lasted this long. I hear static in the line as the news travels across the Atlantic. I panic, wishing I could suck the admission back in.
"Get the fuck outta here. You're kidding me, right?"
My silence tells him that I'm serious.
"Ohhh, shhhit." His voice is still smiling.
"What? What are you thinking?" I need to know if he's judging. I need to know what he thinks of me, if he is siding with Chanel Suit.
"Wait. Whaddaya mean, hooked up? You didn't sleep with him, did you?"
"Um. Yeah. Actually I did."
I am relieved to hear him laugh, even though I tell him that it's not funny, that this is serious business.
"Oh, trust me. This is funny."
I picture the dimple in his left cheek. "And what exactly is so amusing?"
"Miss Goody Two-shoes screws her friend's fiancé. This is raw comedy at its best."
"Ethan!"
He stops laughing long enough to ask if I could be knocked up.
"No. We had that covered."
"So to speak?"
"Yeah," I say. Any pun I ever make is an accident.
"So no harm done, right? It was a mistake. Shit happens. People make mistakes, especially when they're wasted. Look at me and Brandi with an i."
"I guess so. But still…"
Ethan whistles and then says the obvious—that Darcy would flip if she ever found out.
My other line rings. "You need to get that?"