"Darcy, just stop it. I want you to be happy. I want you and Marcus to be happy. Can't you want the same for me?"

"Marcus and I broke up," I blurted. All pride was out the window now.

Dex raised his eyebrows, his mouth forming the beginning of a question-when or maybe why. But he changed his response to, "Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"I miss you, Dex," I said. "I want us to be together again. Isn't there any way?"

He shook his head. "No."

"But I still love you." I linked my arm around his. "And I think that we still have something-"

"Darcy." He pulled roughly away, his features rearranging in a preachy expression. I knew this face well. It was his "my patience has expired" face. The face he got after I posed the same question a dozen times. "I'm with Rachel now. I'm sorry. There's no chance of us ever getting back together. Zero."

"Why are you being so cruel?"

"I'm not trying to be cruel. You just need to know that."

I put my face in my hands and sobbed harder. Then, suddenly, I had an idea. It was an awful, low thing to do, but I decided that I had no choice. I stopped crying, cast him a sideways glance, and said, "The baby is yours."

Dex was unfazed. "Darcy. Don't even start with that Montel Williams DNA-testing crap. That baby is not mine, and we both know it. I heard what you told Rachel. I know when we last had sex."

"The pregnancy is further along than I thought. It's yours. Why do you think Marcus and I broke up?"

"Darcy," Dex said, raising his voice. "Do not do this."

"Dex. The baby is yours. My doctor did an ultrasound to confirm the fetus's age. It happened earlier than I thought. It's yours," I said, shocking even myself with the disgraceful tactic. I told myself that I would come clean later. I just needed to buy some time with Dex. I could get him back if I just had time to work my magic. He wouldn't be able to resist me as Marcus had. After all, Marcus was impossible, weird about commitment. But Dex had been mine forever. There had to be some lingering feelings.

"If you're lying about this, it is unforgivable." His voice was almost shaking, and his eyes were wide. "I want the truth. Now."

I sucked in my breath, exhaled slowly, and maintained eye contact while I lied again. "It's yours," I said, feeling ashamed.

"You know I'm going to want proof."

I licked my lips, stayed calm. "Yes. Absolutely. I want you to take a blood test. You'll see that it's yours."

"Darcy."

"What?"

Dex put his head in his hands and then ran them through his thick, dark hair. "Darcy… Even if it is mine, I want you to understand that this baby won't change a thing between us. Not a thing. You got that?"

"What does that mean exactly?" I asked, even though it was pretty clear what he was driving at. After all, Marcus had just made the same point to me the night before. I had the concept down.

"We're over. Finished. It's never going to happen again with you and me. Baby or no baby. I'm with Rachel now."

I stared at him, feeling outrage well up inside of me. It was all so unbelievable! So utterly inconceivable! How could he be with Rachel? I stood and paced over to the window, trying to catch my breath.

"So tell me the truth right now. Is it mine?" he asked.

I turned and looked at him. He wasn't going to fold. You come to know a person well in seven years-and I knew that once Dex made up his mind, there was absolutely nothing that I could say to change it. His jaw was clenched. There was no opening for me. Besides, as brazen as I could be, I knew I could never actually go through with a ploy like this one, even as a temporary measure. It was just too awful, and I only felt worse for having tried it.

"Fine," I said, throwing up my hands. "It's Marcus's baby. Are you happy?"

"Actually yes, Darcy. I am happy. No, ecstatic is more the word." He stood and pointed angrily at me. "And the fact that you could lie about such a thing confirms to me-"

"I'm sorry," I said before he could finish his sentence. I was crying again. "I know it was really low… I just don't know what to do. Everything is falling apart for me. And-and-you're with Rachel. You took her on our honeymoon! How could you take her on our honeymoon? How could you do that?"

Dex said nothing.

"You did, didn't you? You went to Hawaii with her?"

"The tickets were nonrefundable, Darcy. Even the hotel was already paid for," he said, looking guilty.

"How could you do that? How? And then I see you two in Crate and Barrel, shopping for couches. That's how I knew about Hawaii. You were all tan. Shopping for couches… All tan and happy and buying couches." I was babbling now, a total mess. "Are you moving in together?"

"Not yet…"

"Not yet?" I said. "So you are eventually? Are you serious?"

"Darcy, please. Stop this. Rachel and I didn't do this to hurt you. Just like you didn't get pregnant to hurt me. Right?" he asked in his "please be reasonable" tone.

I looked out the window again at a pile of trash on the curb. Then I returned my gaze to Dex. "Please be with me again," I said softly. "Please. Give me another chance. We had seven good years together. Things were good. We'll forgive each other and move on." I walked back over to him and tried to hug him. He stiffened and recoiled like a puppy resisting the grasp of an overzealous child.

"Dex? Please?"

"No, Darcy. We don't belong together. We aren't right for each other."

"Do you love her?" I asked under my breath, truly expecting him to say no or that he didn't know or that he wouldn't answer the question.

But instead he said, "Yes. I love her." I could see in his eyes that he wasn't saying it to be mean; he was saying it out of a sense of loyalty to her. It was that committed, resolute look of his. It was Dex being a good person, being true to his new girlfriend. I marveled at how fast old loyalties, ones that took years to build, could be ripped apart and replaced. I knew I had lost him, but I felt desperate to recruit a small piece of his heart back to me. Make him feel even a sliver of what he used to feel for me. "More than you ever loved me?" I asked, looking for one small scrap.

"Don't do this, Darcy."

"I need to know, Dex. I really need to know the answer to that," I said, thinking that he couldn't possibly love her more in a few weeks than he had loved me when he had proposed after years together. It just wasn't possible.

"Why do you need to know, Darce?"

"I just do. Tell me."

He stared down at the coffee table for a long minute in that dazed way of his where he doesn't blink. Then he looked around the apartment, his eyes resting on an oil painting of a dilapidated, pillared house surrounded by terraced fields and a solitary oak. We had purchased the painting together in New Orleans right at the beginning of our relationship. We had spent nearly eight hundred dollars on it, which seemed like a huge sum of money at the time, as Dex was in law school and I had just begun to work. It was our first big purchase as a couple-an implicit acknowledgment of our commitment to each other. Sort of like buying a dog together. I remember standing in that gallery, admiring our painting, as Dex told me that he loved the way the early evening shadows fell across the front porch. I remember him saying that dusk was his favorite time of day. I remember we grinned at each other as the clerk bubble-wrapped our painting. Then we returned to the hotel, where we made love and ordered a banana split from the room service menu. Had he forgotten all of that?

I guess I had forgotten such moments when my affair began with Marcus. But I remembered every such occasion now. Regret surged through me. What I would have given to have a big ol' redo, take back everything with Marcus. I looked at Dex and asked the question again. "Do you love her more than you ever loved me?"

I waited.

Then he nodded and said so softly that it was nearly a whisper, "Yes. I do. I'm really sorry, Darcy."

I stared at him incredulously, trying to process what he was saying, how it could be possible that he could love Rachel so much. She wasn't that pretty. She wasn't that fun. What did she have that I didn't have besides a few measly IQ points?

Dex spoke again. "I can tell you're in a bad place right now, Darcy. Part of me would like to help you, but it just won't work. I can't be that person for you. You have friends and family you need to turn to… I really have to go now." His voice was distant, his gaze detached. In a few seconds, he would walk out, hail a cab, and cross the park to see Rachel. She would greet him at her door, her brown eyes sympathetic, probing for details about our meeting. I could hear her asking, "How did it go?" and stroking Dexter's hair as he told her everything. How I had lied about the baby, then begged, then cried. She would feel both pity and disdain for me.

"Fine. Get out. I don't want to talk to you or her ever again," I said, realizing that I had said pretty much the same thing in Rachel's apartment. This time, my words had a watered-down, weak effect.

Dex bit his lower lip. "Please be well," he said, gathering up his briefcase and the shoebox of junk he didn't want any more than he wanted me. Then he stood and walked out of his old apartment, leaving me for good.

sixteen

It was incomprehensible. In my entire lifetime-throughout high school, college, and my twenties-I had never been dissed by a guy. Not dumped. Not stood up. Not even slighted. And there I was-a two-time loser all in a week's time. I was completely alone, didn't even have a prospect in sight.