The Darlings in Love Page 17

  Her phone buzzed. When she saw Jack’s name on her screen, she literally snorted. What, was he texting to tell her how they had nothing in common?

  But all he’d written was: hey, baby. how’s the movie?

  His calling her baby was usually something she loved, but now it just made her angry. It was like Jack really did think she was a baby, like he could just say whatever he wanted about her and she wouldn’t understand, even if she heard it repeated.

  She wanted to ask him why he’d said that about her—what he’d been thinking. But how could you write that in a text? Just imagining typing the whole story made her want to cry with frustration. She had to talk to him. But what was she supposed to do, call him from the ladies’ room of the theater and demand to know what he’d meant by saying that to Lily?

  Well, yeah.

  She took a deep breath and moved her thumb to press his speed dial, but then she hesitated. He was with his friends. They were all watching The Twilight Zone. If she called him now, he’d have to leave the room to talk to her, and when he came back in, they’d be all, What happened, man? And what if he told them? Worse, what if he answered and she started to tell him what Lily had said, and he just said, Look, I can’t really talk right now. We’re at a good part in the show.

  She couldn’t say it in a text. She couldn’t say it over the phone. They had to talk in person. But Jack didn’t seem to want to see her in person this weekend. So what was she supposed to do?

  Victoria stared at Jack’s text for a long time, as if she were trying to decipher an ancient language for which there was no Rosetta Stone. Then, in one swift and decisive motion, she snapped her phone shut and dropped it into her bag without typing anything.

  JANE HAD TOLD Victoria and Simon she’d meet them outside, and she made her way through the crowded, stuffy lobby to the street, savoring the memory of Humphrey Bogart’s face as he waited for Ingrid Bergman to meet him on the train. Waited and waited until he knew she was never going to show. It was so beautiful how they loved each other, so awful how they didn’t end up together. Each time Jane saw the movie, she felt the agony of their separation. And now that she had a boyfriend, the whole story was even sadder than before. She couldn’t imagine giving up Simon, not even if it was necessary to defeat the Nazis.

  She wandered to the edge of the sidewalk, then crossed the street to lean against the enormous stone fountain. This corner, with the Sherry-Netherland and the Plaza Hotel hovering over it, was one of her favorite spots in all of Manhattan, and she spun around, the chilly air a relief after the stuffy theater. Horse-drawn carriages made their way along Central Park, the clip-clop of hooves echoing through the square. Across the street, people poured out of the theater, one stranger after another, and then Jenny and Roman. A second later, they were joined by a tall redheaded guy wearing cool, rectangular-framed glasses, whom she hadn’t met. The three talked briefly before the boy shrugged, took out his phone, and sent a text. Then Roman and Jenny pointed west and started walking. Jane sat on the edge of the fountain waiting for Simon and Victoria, half registering that the boy checked his phone before turning to walk in the direction Jenny and Roman had gone. Just then, somebody called, “Todd,” and the boy spun around. Jane followed his eyes and saw Simon standing in front of the theater.

  Simon and Todd were at least ten feet apart from each other, and people kept walking between them, but neither of them moved toward the other. They stayed that way for a long, long moment before Todd finally took a step toward Simon. Simon hesitated, and then he took a step toward Todd, and a few seconds later they were standing facing each other. Todd said something, and Simon shook his head, then turned toward the street, across which Jane was waiting. Even though she was only about ten yards away from him, Simon didn’t notice Jane beyond the passing cars and crowds of people walking between them.

  Jane thought she should raise her hand to catch his attention, but something about how close he and Todd were standing made her hesitate. And then it was too late to wave; he had turned to face Todd again.

  Simon spoke. Todd leaned toward him, as though he couldn’t quite hear what Simon was saying. As he did, he placed his hand lightly on Simon’s hip. Simon spoke again, and whatever he said made Todd laugh, slip his fingers through the belt loops of Simon’s jeans, and jokingly shake him. Simon put his hands up as if to say, What can you do? Then he slipped his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.

  For a long minute they stood there, Todd’s hands on Simon’s waist, Simon’s hands in his own back pockets. Then Todd said something, and Simon took one hand out of his back pocket and briefly ruffled Todd’s hair. Todd said something else, and Simon nodded. Then Todd took his hands off Simon’s waist and began walking slowly backward, keeping his eyes on Simon. He called out something that Jane couldn’t hear, but Simon’s response was perfectly audible. “I said I’d think about it!” he called back, laughing.

  “Do that,” Todd responded. Then, finally, he turned around and headed west down the block.

  As Jane watched, Simon stretched his arms up over his head, then dropped them down and shook them. It reminded her of the acting exercises Mr. Robbins had had them do to warm up at the start of rehearsals.

  Jane kept watching. Simon interlocked his fingers and again reached his hands up over his head. He took his phone out of his pocket, studied it for a minute, laughed, then put it back without typing anything. Jane, perched precariously on the edge of the fountain, lost her balance, nearly tumbling backward into it. By the time she righted herself, Simon was pulling open the door to the lobby and stepping back into the theater.

  What had she just seen?

  Her heart pounded against her chest, and she had trouble catching her breath.

  Had she seen what she thought she’d seen?

  Her phone buzzed. Simon.

  where r u?

  im outside, she typed, but before she hit send, she paused. Should she tell him where she was? She raised her eyes to look at the theater. The crowd had thinned, and she could see Simon inside now, his back to the door, probably scanning the room for her.

  What had she seen?

  Nothing. She’d seen nothing. She’d seen her boyfriend talking with a friend. Just like a dozen guys standing in front of the theater right this second were talking with their friends. Her eyes moved over the people standing across the street from her. Most of the groups were made up of men and women, but there were a few clusters of just guys. She watched them. A twentysomething man said something to another twentysomething man. The second man laughed and said something. The first man laughed.

  They did not touch.

  They did not stand within a foot of each other.

  They did not ruffle each other’s hair.

  They did not put their hands on each other’s waists.

  Jane’s phone buzzed again.

  r u alive?

  As she stared at the screen, the phone buzzed once more. Another text from Simon.

  feeling kind of beat. might just go home now. is that cool?

  Jane felt strangely ill as she read Simon’s text, but all she typed back was k.

  His response came almost instantly. call u 2morrow. sleep tite.

  She didn’t respond. A second later, she saw him step out of the theater and walk in the same direction Todd, Roman, and Jenny had headed.

  Which was the opposite direction of his house.

  NATALYA WAS A little scared she might be going insane.

  Standing in the elevator as it ascended to Jane’s apartment, she felt elated. Ecstatic. She was the happiest girl in the world. But she also felt awful. And guilty. And more disgusting than something you’d scrape off the bottom of your shoe.

  As she pushed open the door to Jane’s apartment, her sense of guilt was heightened by the quiet, almost cold, “Come in,” with which Jane answered her knock. Were her friends mad at her for bailing on the movie? And if they were mad at her for that, would they be even madder when they found out
why she’d missed the movie? She really needed her friends to understand what she’d done. But what if they didn’t? What if they judged her? The possibility made her stomach clench into a tight ball of defensiveness and fear, but as soon as she stepped into the living room and saw Victoria’s tearstained face, she realized she was being paranoid. Maybe her friends were mad that she’d ditched them. But it was hardly the kind of thing Victoria would cry about.

  “What happened?” asked Natalya, crossing to sit on the edge of the couch beside Victoria. “Why are you crying?”

  Victoria took a deep, shuddering breath. “Nothing. Except that Jack is the biggest jerk ever.” She blew her nose as if for emphasis.

  “Wait, Jack was there?” Natalya was confused. Hadn’t Victoria said Jack couldn’t come?

  Victoria took a deep breath. “No,” she said angrily. “He wasn’t there.” She told Natalya what Lily had said to her in the bathroom.

  Natalya gasped. “Did you call him? Ask him what he meant?”

  Shaking her head, Victoria started to cry again.

  “He’s at this stupid Twilight Zone marathon with his stupid friends,” Jane explained. “It lasts like, all night long.”

  “Oh, Vicks.” Natalya tucked the blanket Victoria was wrapped in more firmly around her friend’s shoulders and pushed the hair out of her damp face. “I’m sure there’s been some kind of mistake. Jack loves you.”

  Victoria just made a quiet mewling sound in response, then whispered, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  Natalya and Jane exchanged a glance, and Jane shrugged.

  “Of course,” Natalya said. “Let’s talk about something else. I’m just going to get some water.” She went into the kitchen and took a long drink, and when she came back, something about the way Jane was looking at her made her stop a few feet from the couch.

  “What?” asked Natalya nervously.

  “I was just wondering what we could possibly find to talk about,” said Jane, her voice almost a parody of innocence. She slowly raised an eyebrow at Natalya. “Hmmm…What if we talk about what you’ve been doing all afternoon.” She gave the clock on the mantel a significant look before adding, “And evening.”

  “I…” Of course Natalya had planned on telling her friends everything, but now that she was standing there, facing them as if they were a jury and she was on trial, she felt self-conscious.

  “Hmmm; she hesitates.” Jane adopted a German accent. “Verry interesting, vouldn’t you say, Herr Doctor?”

  Victoria sniffed and blotted her eyes with a damp tissue before nodding.

  “Guys, you’re being really weird,” said Natalya, unconsciously edging backward. She stumbled against an ottoman and plopped down onto it.

  “We’re just asking about your afternoon with your friend Colin,” said Jane, her voice sugary on the word friend. “What’s weird about that?”

  “Nothing,” admitted Natalya uneasily.

  “Jane!” Victoria said protectively.

  “Fine.” Jane relented. She folded her hands under her chin as if in prayer. “Pretty please? Brighten our terrible day by telling us about your afternoon!”

  Slowly, Natalya rolled the ottoman she was sitting on toward her friends. “I’ve done a really bad thing,” she said, her voice quiet.

  “I knew it!” Jane pointed her finger at Natalya. “You guys fooled around, didn’t you?”

  “Jane!” cried Victoria, tossing her tissue on the floor. “Please! Do you have to be so…”

  “Direct?” Jane offered.

  Victoria had to smile at Jane’s accurate assessment of herself. “Exactly.”

  “There’s only one way to shut me up,” Jane informed them.

  “And that is?” asked Natalya.

  “Tell us everything.” Jane spread her arms wide on the last word. “Tell us everything, and I promise to be quiet for the duration of the tale.”

  So Natalya told.

  After their first kiss, Colin had pulled away briefly, and Natalya had been sure he was going to say he couldn’t kiss her again, that she had to go, that he’d made a terrible mistake. Instead, he’d looked at her for a long moment, traced his finger along the side of her face, and then kissed her again even more passionately, wrapping his arms around her so tightly she almost couldn’t breathe.

  “Oh my god, he loves you!” Victoria stared at Natalya, her eyes wide.

  Natalya bit her thumbnail nervously. She wanted to believe Victoria. But did she dare? “Do you know what he said? He said when I blew him off at the Met he basically locked himself in his room for a month, he was so bummed out!”

  Jane threw herself backward on the couch. “I am literally dying, this is so romantic.”

  Natalya drew the pattern of the rug with her toe. “He said he never stopped thinking about me from the second we met to the second we ran into each other in Washington Square Park.”

  “Wait, then: why didn’t he answer your e-mails saying you were sorry?” demanded Jane.

  Natalya tucked her legs under her and leaned forward. “He thought I just wrote them out of pity. He said he saw me later that night, after I blew him off. I was dancing with Morgan and Katrina, and he said I looked like I was having the time of my life. So he thought I was just saying I made a mistake to be nice.”

  “You mean he had no idea how much you liked him?” asked Victoria.

  It wasn’t clear if Natalya had even heard her. She sighed and touched her lips briefly. “It’s like I can still feel him kissing me.”

  “You see me dying, right?” asked Jane, crossing her arms on her chest and lying flat on the couch. “You see that I have died from the perfection of this love story.”

  “Oh my god,” Victoria wailed. “What if you hadn’t run into each other that day in the park? What if you’d never seen each other again?! You would never have known your true love.” She collapsed back against the couch. “This is so incredible. All this time, it’s like you were just…waiting for each other.”

  “Well, not exactly.” Jane sat up and crossed her legs. “Not to be a buzzkill, but what about Alison?”

  Victoria rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. “I completely forgot about Alison! How awful is that?!”

  Squinting at Natalya, Jane asked, “What about Alison? Or, I mean, were you too busy using your mouths for other things to discuss such irrelevant subjects as his sort-of girlfriend?” Jane put air quotes around sort-of.

  “No, we were not too busy doing other things with our mouths to discuss Alison.” Natalya closed her eyes briefly, as if to shut out the intrusive reality of Jane’s question.

  In her head, she saw the fire Colin had built in the fireplace, remembered how they’d kissed and kissed and kissed on the couch until they couldn’t kiss anymore, then played a game of speed chess by the light of the flames. Natalya had lost the game so badly even Colin had been surprised.

  “Hey,” he’d said as she was about to move her queen directly into the path of his bishop, “you see what you’re doing there, right?” He drew a line from his piece to hers, and she shook her head once, as if clearing an Etch A Sketch, then slid her queen back to its spot.

  “Sorry.” She stared at the board without seeing it. “I’m just really fuzzy or something.”

  Her hair had fallen in front of her face, and he pushed it out of the way so he could see her eyes. “You don’t have to apologize.” His eyes were enormous, and she watched the fire playing over the dark of his pupils. He smiled at her. “I’m a little fuzzy, too. Hmm…wonder why.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, smiling back at him. “I wonder.”

  But happy as Natalya was, all afternoon Alison had been flickering at the back of her mind like flames. Twice she’d opened her mouth to ask about her, and twice she’d closed it without saying anything. What was she supposed to ask? Um, about that whole “girlfriend” thing?

  But then, out of nowhere, Colin finally introduced the subject. “I need to explain about Alison, okay
?” They were sitting on the sofa, her back against his chest, studying the shadows playing over the ceiling.

  Her whole body had suddenly tensed, and she’d nodded, not trusting her voice to work, and he’d told her the story of their relationship.

  He’d met Alison at the dog park not far from their houses. Last spring they would run into each other every once in a while; then this fall they had started purposely meeting up on Saturday mornings to let their dogs (his, a Portuguese water dog; hers, a golden retriever) play together. When she’d invited him to be her date to MoMA’s gala in December (their mothers were on the board together), he’d thought they were going just as friends, but by the end of the night, it was clear she’d meant it as more than that.

  “I know I should have told you about her,” Colin had admitted. “But I didn’t know if you even thought about me like…you know, like that.”

  Here Jane interrupted the story. “I don’t get it,” she objected. “Why did he keep going out with her if he doesn’t like her?”

  “He does like her,” Natalya said. “I mean, she’s a great person. I like her.”

  “He just doesn’t like her the way he likes Natalya,” Victoria translated with an air of finality. “And now that he can have Natalya…” She trailed off.

  Natalya, who was lying with her stomach on the ottoman and her feet and head on the floor, said something incomprehensible.

  “What?” asked Jane and Victoria, leaning forward.

  Natalya sat up and faced her friends. “I said, ‘I feel terrible.’”

  “What could you have done?” demanded Jane, as if defending Natalya from herself. “You guys really like each other.”

  “It’s true,” agreed Victoria, and though her voice was calmer than Jane’s, she sounded just as definite. “It’s not like you wanted to hurt Alison. You just fell for someone who happened to have a girlfriend.”

  “And who fell for you back,” Jane added.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to feel really bad to Alison,” Natalya reminded them.