As I watch Margot maneuver around her kitchen, I ask if there's anything I can do to help. She shakes her head and pours tea from a big glass pitcher into three rock-cut glasses and Perrier into her own. Then she calls us to sit down, prompting Webb to say a quick blessing, a practice that seems more cultural than religious, as the two abandoned it, along with church attendance, while in New York.

As Webb finishes his short, formal prayer, and Margot smiles and says, "Enjoy!" I have the fleeting sense that we have little in common other than our shared past. But within seconds, that feeling is gone, as Margot and I move rapid-fire from topic to topic, discussing and analyzing everything and everyone with what most, Webb and Andy included, would view as excruciating detail. More than anything, it is why Margot and I are such close friends-why we connected in the first place, despite being so different. We simply love to talk to each other.

As such, we barely let the guys get a word in, covering New York and Atlanta gossip with equal scrutiny and fervor. We discuss our single New York friends who still get wasted every night and wonder why they can't meet a nice guy, and then the girls in her neighborhood who have full-time help so that they can play tennis, shop, and lunch every day.

"Who would you rather be?" I ask. "If you had to pick."

"Hmm," Margot says. "Not sure. Both extremes are sort of sad."

"Do you ever miss working?" I ask her tentatively. Although I can't imagine giving up my career, I'm not yet a mother-to-be. That might change everything.

Margot shakes her head. "I really thought I would… but I'm just so busy."

"Playing tennis?" Andy deadpans.

Margot's mouth twitches ever so defensively. "Some," she says. "But also decorating the house… getting ready for the baby… and doing all my charity work."

"She bagged the Junior League, though," Webb says, reaching for another helping of crepes. "It was too much to take. Even for her."

"I didn't say the Junior League was too much to take," Margot says. "I simply said that the Atlanta League is young. I felt like the old mother hen around all those early-twenty-something girls, most of them fresh out of college and already married to their high school sweethearts."

Webb's face lights up, as he says, "Speaking of… Tell your brother and Ellen who you hired to do our landscaping."

Margot says her husband's name in a playful reprimand, her fair skin turning azalea pink. I smile, ever amused at how easily she and Stella embarrass, even blushing on behalf of others, so great is their empathy. In fact, Stella can't even watch award shows-she is too nervous watching the acceptance speeches.

"C'mon," Webb says, grinning. "Go on and tell 'em, honey."

Margot purses her lips as Andy clamors, "Who?"

"Portera Brothers," Webb finally says, which everyone in the room knows is the last name of Margot's high school boyfriend, Ty, the one who still drops by every Thanksgiving.

"Portera Brothers?" Andy says, smirking. "As in Loverboy Ty?… Ty 'The Right Stuff ' Portera?"

"'The Right Stuff'?" Webb says.

"Margot didn't tell you about her little boyfriend's stirring Jordan Knight air-band performance in high school?" Andy says, standing, spinning, and singing, "Oh! Oh! Girl! You know you got the right stuff!"

"Wait a sec, Margot. Your high school boyfriend lip-synced to the Backstreet Boys?" Webb says, giddy with his fresh ammunition.

"Get it straight, Webb. It was the New Kids on the Block," Andy says. "And I think the year before he did Menudo, didn't he, Margot?"

Margot slaps the table. "No! He most certainly didn't do Menudo!"

I resist the temptation to point out that the only one at the table who can recite New Kids' lyrics is Andy.

"New Kids, huh? Well, I guess that helps ease the blow a little," Webb says, chuckling. "I mean, maybe the guy's gay now. Or in a boy band. Or, God forbid, both."

I smile, although I mentally put this comment in the category of "What makes Webb different from me"-I'm quite certain he has no gay friends.

Webb continues, "Seriously. Can y'all believe Margot hired her ex?"

"No," Andy says with exaggerated somberness. "I really, really can't. Disgraceful."

I know Andy and Webb are only joking, but my stomach still jumps thinking of the message waiting on my phone. The message I should have deleted. I look down at my plate, tapping a sprig of parsley with a tine on my fork.

"C'mon, Ellen!" Margot says, resting her elbows on the table, something she would never ordinarily do. "Help me out here!"

I cast about for a second, trying to think of something helpful but noncommittal. I weakly offer, "They're just friends."

"Just friends, huh?" Webb says. "The olllllle 'just friends' routine."

"Good Lord," Margot says, standing to clear her plate and Andy's.

"The Good Lord isn't on your side any more than Ellen here," Webb says. "Neither of them approves of these sort of reindeer games."

" 'Reindeer games'? Oh, grow up, Webb!… Ty is so grandfathered in it's not funny," Margot says, returning from the kitchen. "We made the transition to friends a zillion years ago. When we were still in high school. And he's been doing Mother and Daddy's yard for over a year now!"

"And that makes it better? That he's doing their yard, too?" Webb says, shaking his head. He looks at me and says, "Watch out. They're all disloyal. The pack of them."

"Hey! Don't lump me in with my folks and sister," Andy says. "I wouldn't use the guy. Even if I had a yard."

"Sorry, man," Webb says. "They're all disloyal except you. Even James."

"James doesn't have a yard either," Andy says.

"Yeah. But he plays golf with the guy. Disloyal bastard," Webb says.

"It's not a question of loyalty to anyone," Margot says. "And besides, it's not like he'll be over here doing the planting himself. He has employees for that… His company does great landscaping at the right price. That's all there is to it, Webster Buffington, and you know it."

"Yep," Webb says. "Keep telling yourself that and maybe you'll start to believe it."

"Oh, puh-lease, you act like I just put my prom portrait on the mantel!"

"I'm sure that'll be next," Webb says. He then turns to me and says, "Ellen, you still talk to your prom date?"

I shake my head decisively.

"Does he… uh, clean your apartment or prepare your taxes or anything like that?" Webb presses.

"Nope," I say.

"You talk to any exes, period?"

The follow-up is clearly for me, but I say nothing, dazed by the coincidence, and hoping that someone will jump in and save me. No such luck. The room falls silent. I look at Andy, as if the question were directed his way.

"What?" Andy says. "Don't look at me. You know I'm not friends with any girls, let alone exes."

"Lucy sent you a Christmas card a few years ago," I say, feeling the familiar stab of faint jealousy thinking about sweet, hot, little Lucy.

"With a photo of her kid on it," Andy says. "That's hardly a come-hither invitation… Besides, I never sent her a Christmas card."

"Yes, but you never sent them at all until we got married," I say, standing to help Margot clear the table.

Andy shrugs. As a lawyer, he certainly knows an irrelevant tangent when he sees one. "The point is-I don't talk to her. Period."

"And I don't talk to my exes, period," Webb says.

Andy looks at me expectantly.

"And I don't talk to my exes," I echo shamefully.

Anymore.

"Oh, get over yourselves," Margot says, wiping crumbs from Webb's placemat into her open palm. She looks up and then around the table, adding, "And, while you're at it, how about getting over your exes, too?"

That afternoon, Leo's message is far from my mind as Margot and I shop for gender-neutral newborn clothes at a boutique called Kangaroo Pouch, cooing over the exquisite, impossibly tiny items and finally selecting a white knit gown and matching receiving blanket for the baby's homecoming, along with a half-dozen fine-cotton onesies and an array of hand-embroidered booties, hats, and socks. I feel my nesting instinct kicking in, and for the first time, really wish I were pregnant, too. Of course I know that craving a baby while you shop for a layette for your best friend's firstborn is akin to wanting to get married while you watch her slip on a Vera Wang gown and twirl before a dressing-room mirror-and that there are plenty of not-so-fun-or-cute things that come with motherhood. Still, as we go on to cruise by a few houses for sale, "just for fun," I can't help thinking how nice it would be to relocate to Atlanta, live near Margot, and watch our children-cousins and best friends-grow up together in a happy, beautiful world filled with white camellias and sweet tea.

But by the time Margot and I are changing for dinner, thoughts of Leo have returned full-force, my cell phone burning a hole in my purse. So much so that I feel dangerously close to divulging everything to Margot. I remind myself that although she is my best friend, she is also Andy's sister. And, on top of that, she hated Leo. There is no way that that conversation would end well.

Instead I very casually resurrect the "Can you be friends with an ex?" debate, trying to feel my way through my emerging moral dilemma.

"So," I say as I fasten the side zipper of my charcoal pencil skirt. "Webb doesn't really care about Ty, does he?"