Then, just as Dex sat down beside Rachel, it hit me. Dex was tanned. Even Rachel didn't have her usual white glow. The realization slashed through my heart. They had gone to Hawaii together! I gasped. "Omigod. They're tan. She went on my trip to Hawaii! She went on my honeymoon! Omigod. Omigod. I'm going to confront them!" You hear people say that rage can be blinding, and I learned at that moment that it was true. My vision became blurry as I took one step toward them.

Marcus grabbed my arm. "Darce-do not go over there. Let's just leave. Now."

"He told me he was going to eat those tickets! How dare she go on my honeymoon!" I was crying. A couple standing near our bookcase bunker looked at me, then over at Dex and Rachel.

"You told me he offered them to you," Marcus said.

"That is totally beside the point! I wouldn't have taken you to Hawaii!"

Marcus raised his eyebrows as if to consider this. "Yeah-that is kind of fucked up," he conceded. "You have a point."

"She went on my honeymoon! What kind of a psycho bitch goes on her friend's honeymoon?" My voice was louder now.

"I'm leaving. Now." He took the stairs, two at a time, and as I turned to follow him, I got one more sickening visual: Dex leaning down to kiss Rachel. On her lips. Tan, happy, smitten, kissing couch consumers.

My eyes filled with tears as I rushed down the stairs, past Marcus, past the barware, out the door to Madison Avenue.

"I know, honey," Marcus said, when he caught up to me. For the first time, he seemed to have genuine empathy for my ordeal. "This has gotta be hard for you."

His kindness made me sob harder. "I can't believe she'd go to Hawaii," I said, hyperventilating. "What kind of person does that? I hate her! I want her to die!"

"You don't mean that," Marcus said.

"Fine. Maybe not death. But I want her to get a bad case of cystic acne that Accutane won't cure," I said, thinking that incurable acne would actually be worse than death.

Marcus put his arm around me as we jaywalked across Sixtieth Street, narrowly escaping a delivery guy on a bike. "Just forget about them, Darce. What does it matter what they do?"

"It matters!" I sobbed, thinking that there was no way around it: Dex and Rachel were a couple. I couldn't pretend otherwise. A wave of buyer's remorse washed over me. For the first time, I started to wonder if I should have stayed with Dex-if only to keep this from happening with Rachel. When my affair with Marcus began, the grass seemed so much greener with him. But after watching my former fiance furniture-shop, Dexter's pastures seemed blissfully bucolic.

Marcus hailed a cab, and then helped me inside. I cried the whole way down Park Avenue, picturing Rachel and Dex in all of the scenes that I had studied from our honeymoon brochures: the two of them in a Jacuzzi sipping champagne… at a luau grinning over a roasted pig amid native dancers twirling flames… frolicking in turquoise water… having sex under a coconut tree.

I remembered saying to Dex that we were a better-looking couple than any of the featured honeymooners in those brochures. Dex had laughed and asked me how I got to be so modest.

"Can we go to Hawaii on our honeymoon?" I asked Marcus when we arrived back at his apartment.

"Whatever you want," he said, sprawling on his bed. He motioned for me to join him.

"We should go somewhere even more exotic," I said. "Dex picked Hawaii, and if you ask me, Hawaii is a trite choice."

"Yeah," he said, wearing his "I want sex" expression. "Everyone goes to Hawaii. Now c'mere."

"Where will we go, then?" I asked Marcus as I reluctantly lay down next to him.

"Turkey. Greece. Bali. Fiji. Wherever you want." You promise?

"Yeah," he said, pulling me on top of him.

"And can we get a new, big apartment?" I asked, looking around at his stark white walls, his overflowing closet, and his hulking stereo equipment belching wires all over the scratched parquet floors, "Sure."

I smiled a sad but hopeful smile.

"But in the meantime," he said, "I know how to make you feel better."

"Just one sec," I said, as I picked up the cordless phone next to his bed.

Marcus sighed and gave me an exasperated look. "Who are you calling? Don't you call them!"

"I'm not calling them. I'm over them," I lied. "I'm calling Crate and Barrel. I want that table."

Rachel may have stolen Dex and my trip to Hawaii, but I was sure as hell going to have a nicer table.

But even the table (which was in stock) and sex with Marcus (which was incredible) did nothing to repair my mood. I just couldn't believe that Rachel and Dex were actually together-that their relationship was real. Real enough to go shopping for couches together. Real enough to go to Hawaii.

And from that day forward, I was totally obsessed with Rachel and Dex. They were two people cut entirely from my life, yet from my perspective, the three of us had never been so inextricably and permanently bound together.

twelve

Things only got worse when I turned thirty. I woke up on the morning of my birthday to my first dose of morning sickness. I was in bed with Marcus, on the side farthest from the bathroom, and barely made it over him to the toilet before I puked up the fajitas I had eaten for dinner the night before at Rosa Mexicano. I flushed, rinsed my mouth with Listerine, and brushed my teeth. Another wave overcame me and more red and yellow bits of pepper descended. I flushed, rinsed, brushed again. Then I collapsed onto the floor and moaned loudly, hoping that Marcus would wake up and come to my rescue. He didn't.

I thought to myself that Dex would have heard me puking. He was a very light sleeper, but at the moment, I chalked it up to him having greater compassion. Maybe Marcus wasn't nurturing enough for me. I moaned again, louder this time. When Marcus still didn't stir, I picked myself up from the cold tile and returned to bed, whimpering, "Hold me."

Marcus snored in response.

I nestled into the crevice between his arm and body and made some more needy sounds as I surveyed his clock. Seven thirty-three. The alarm was set for seven forty-five. I had twelve minutes before he officially wished me a happy birthday. I closed my eyes and wondered what Rachel and Dex were doing at that moment-and more important, what they were going to do about my birthday. This was their last chance, I had ranted to my mother and Marcus the night before. I wasn't quite sure what I expected or wanted them to do-but a phone call or e-mail seemed a step in the right direction.

Surely Rachel and Dex had discussed the issue in recent days. My guess was that Dex voted to leave me alone, Rachel to call. "I've been celebrating her birthday for over twenty-five years," she would say to Dex. "I just can't blow this day off. I have to call her." I could hear Dex saying back, "It's for the best. I know it's hard, but no good can come of it." How long had they debated the point? Perhaps it had escalated into an argument, maybe even a permanent rift. Unfortunately, neither Dex nor Rachel was particularly stubborn or argumentative. Since they were both pleasers by nature, I was sure that they had a calm, reasoned conversation and came to a unanimous conclusion about how to approach the anniversary of my birth.

One thing I did know for sure was this: if Dex and Rachel did not wish me a happy birthday in some form, there would be no redemption. Ever. My hatred for them was growing faster than the fruit flies had multiplied in our peanut butter jars in biology class sophomore year. I tried to remember what that experiment sought to prove, vaguely recalling something about eye color. Red eyes versus green eyes. I forgot the details. With Rachel as a lab partner, I hadn't needed to pay too much attention. She had done all the work. I suddenly wondered what color eyes my baby would have. I hoped for blue, or at least green like mine. Everyone knows blue eyes are prettier, at least on a girl, which is why there were so many songs about brown-eyed girls, to make them feel better. I listened to Marcus snore as I played with a tuft of hair on his chest. He had just the right amount.

"Hmm," he said, pulling me on top of him.

Having just puked fajitas, I wasn't in the mood for sex, but I caved. It seemed as good a way as any to begin my thirtieth birthday. So after a quick, perfunctory round, I waited for him to open his eyes and wish me a happy birthday. Tell me that he loved me. Reassure me that thirty wasn't old and that I had at least six good years left before I would need to think about plastic surgery. Ten, fifteen, twenty seconds passed with still no words from my boyfriend.

"Did you fall back asleep?" I demanded.

"No. I'm awake…" he mumbled, his eyelids fluttering.

The alarm clock sounded in a series of increasingly louder, high-pitched beeps. Marcus reached over and silenced his clock with a slap. I waited, feeling like Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles when her whole family forgot her birthday. Sure, it had only been a few minutes, whereas Molly's character had to endure a whole day of neglect, but after all I'd been through in recent weeks, all of the trauma and pain, those minutes felt like hours. It was bad enough that I had to turn thirty on a Monday and that I had to puke twice. But now the father of my child couldn't even muster a tiny, heartfelt "happy birthday" on the heels of gratuitous sex.

"I'm sick," I said, trying another angle for attention. "Morning sickness. I threw up twice."