I clear my throat. "So did Darcy mention him at all?"

"Not really... But I must admit, I kind of fell down on my lookout job. I have a good excuse." She grins.

"What's your excuse?"

"I met someone!''

"No way! Who? Do I know him?"

"No. He lives in Montauk. His name is Julian. Rachel-I didn't believe in the whole soul-mate thing until I met him."

"Start from the beginning," I tell her. There is no better audience for someone in love than someone in love.

She tells me that he's thirty-seven, a writer, never been married. She met him on the beach. She was going for a walk, he was going for a walk. Both of them were alone, moving in the same direction. He kept stopping to examine sh.e.l.ls, and she finally caught up to him and introduced herself. They ended up going back to his house, where he made her tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad. Tomatoes and basil from his garden, fresh mozzarella. She says they couldn't stop talking-that he is brilliant, handsome, sensitive.

"So did you see him after that day?"

"Oh, yeah. We hung out the whole weekend... Rach, it's like we skipped all the bulls.h.i.t. It's hard to explain... We are just together already. He is the best."

"When can I meet him?"

"He's coming this weekend. You can meet him then."

"I can't wait."

I am happy for her, but a little envious. I a.s.sume Julian isn't engaged. Les calls, interrupting our moment. I don't answer, feeling incapable of dealing with him. Hillary also seems unable to move out of her chair and go to her office to check her own messages. Our firm and all the drones in it can wait. We are talking about love.

After Hillary leaves my office, I go back to obsessing over Dex, waiting for an e-mail or call. When the phone finally rings, I jump.

But it's only Darcy, asking if I'm free for lunch.

I tell her yes. I hate the idea of seeing her, but I need to know what is going on. Maybe Dex has told her something.

We meet at Naples, a restaurant in the lobby of the MetLife Building. There is a line, so I suggest we go across the street to a deli. She says no, that she has been dying for pizza. I say fine, we'll wait for a table. I study her face for possible breakup signs. Nothing new, although her hair looks more sun-streaked. She is wearing it in a low, neat ponytail. Aquamarine earrings dangle just below her lobes.

"Do I have something on my face?" Darcy asks, swiping at her cheeks.

"I was just looking at your earrings. They're pretty. Are they new?"

"No. Dex gave them to me a long time ago."

"When? For your birthday?"

"No... I can't remember exactly. Just a random gift."

I feel a surge of jealousy, but tell myself that much has changed since then.

Darcy asks me how my weekend was.

"Fine," I say. My heart flutters just thinking about it. "You know. Lots of work... How was yours?"

"Awesome. You should have been there. Great parties. Great bands at the Talkhouse. OmiG.o.d, it was so much fun. You and Dex picked the wrong weekend to work."

You and Dex. You and Dex. You and Dex.

"Did Dex have to work the whole time?" I ask, for good measure.

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, what else is new? I'm marrying a workaholic."

"He can't help his hours."

Or how he feels.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she says. "But I bet you anything he volunteers for half the stuff he gets stuck working on. I swear he enjoys it. It makes him feel important." Her voice is slightly snide. Perhaps this is the prelude to her story about their huge fight.

"You think?"

"I know," she says, as we are led to a table outside. "And I guess you know Hillary met a guy, right?"

"Yeah, she told me. Did you meet him?"

"Briefly."

"What did you think?"

"He's not bad-looking. Not my type-too artsy-fartsy. But still pretty cute. Wonders never cease."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask, knowing full well that she means Hillary meeting a cute guy is an unlikely event.

"Look at her. She doesn't care about her appearance at all. Half the time she doesn't even act like a girl."

"I think she's pretty."

Darcy gives me a "Get real" look.

I think of Hillary's wrinkled pants and chipped toenail. "Just because she's not a girly-girl doesn't mean she's not attractive."

"She's over thirty. She needs to start wearing makeup. The au naturel c.r.a.p went out in the seventies."

"Well, apparently Julian doesn't agree."

"Yeah, well, we'll see how long that lasts," she says, dipping her bread into a plate of oil.

Yeah, we'll see how much longer you and Dex last. I think of the red dice, tucked safely into the Altoids tin, and am instantly overcome with remorse. I don't want her to be hurt. I wish there was a way for Dex and me to be together and for Darcy not to be hurt. Why are happy endings so hard to come by? I refocus on Hillary and Julian. "I think she's really into him," I say.

"Uh-huh," she says, rolling her eyes. "You do know her ex is with a new girl, right?"

"Yeah. Of course I know that. She couldn't care less about Corey anymore. And she dumped him, remember?"

"Well. Yeah. But then he started dating a twenty-three-year-old hottie and prancing around the Talkhouse right in front of her... and that's when she is suddenly so convinced that Julian is her guy. Coincidence? I don't think so."

I tell her that I think she's being mean. "Stop raining on her parade."

"Okay. Fine. Whatever. Next topic," Darcy says, dabbing her napkin at the corners of her mouth. "When did you last talk to Marcus?"

"Last week sometime."

She leans forward and tells me that he brought me up several times over the weekend.

"That's nice," I say, my eyes still on the menu. Marcus feels like ancient history.

She makes a face. "Why are you so lukewarm about him? Don't you think he's cute?"

"Yeah. He's cute," I say.

Our waiter arrives at the table to take our orders. Darcy asks for an individual pizza. I tell him that I'd like a Caesar salad.

Darcy objects. "Don't you want more than a salad?"

I can tell she's irritated that I'm getting a salad and she's ordering a pizza. She likes to be the dainty eater. So I appease her and say, "Caesar salads are substantial, and actually very fattening."

"Well, you'll have to eat some of my pizza. I can't eat the whole thing by myself." She is talking to me, but it is for the waiter's benefit. He smiles at her. She makes her expression friendly and open. I catch her moving her left hand under the table so he can't see her ring.

As he turns to leave, she says, "Oh, and can you make sure they don't burn the bottom of my pizza? Sometimes they burn the bottom. And 1 like my pizzas-how shall I say it-rare?" She moves her ponytail in front of one shoulder.

He laughs and winks. "No problem."

"He's too young for you," I say, not caring that he's still within earshot.

"What?" she says innocently. "Oh, puh-lease. I wasn't flirting."

Before she can launch into another topic, I must determine if there is any domestic trouble yet brewing. I use a wedding angle. "So what did you decide on the CDs?"

"The CDs?" She looks confused. "Oh, right, those things. I haven't given them another thought. I took the weekend off from wedding planning. Besides, I think those CDs might be too much trouble. Maybe I'll just do nuts or mints after all. They make these cute heart-shaped Altoids tins. Maybe we'll get those. You know how much Dexter loves his Altoids."

"Mmm... I didn't know that."

"Yeah," she says. "The cinnamon kind."

Dexter doesn't phone until late that night, and I miss the call because I am reviewing doc.u.ments in a conference room. His message is brief: "Hi, Rach. Sorry I haven't called today... The whole day's been a fire drill getting ready for this pitch on Thursday. I really should have done some of this work over the weekend... Not that I'd do it differently. It was worth it to be with you. I miss you. I'll talk to you soon."

His message leaves me feeling hollow. That's it? A review of his work schedule? And using an annoying banker expression like "fire drill," no less. The next thing I know he's going to be telling me he's "in the weeds"another one of those "I'm so busy" banker phrases. And more important, he doesn't say anything about Darcy, about when I will see him next, about anything. Just that he misses me. It feels as though he is slipping away, my shot at happiness dissipating. I start to get panicky, but then tell myself to be patient. Dex will do the right thing. He will be with me in the end.

I finally see Dex on Thursday night. He arrives at my place late, exhausted from work. We talk for a few minutes before he falls asleep with his head on my lap as I watch a Sopranos rerun. Tony is cheating on Carmella again. My empathy for her is huge and all-encompa.s.sing, ironic because she is the wife, and not the other woman. I think of Darcy, compare our feelings for Dex. She doesn't love him as I do. She can't possibly. This will be my final rationalization in the home stretch.

I nudge him a little after midnight, tell him he should probably get home. He reluctantly agrees and tells me again how sorry he is about his crazy work schedule. I tell him I understand, I know what it's like. He kisses me and gives me a long hug. And then he is off to be with Darcy again. As he's walking out the door, I ask him what he's doing over the weekend. I try to appear nonchalant, but in my heart I am grasping at straws, hoping that he will dole out a few hours for me.

"My dad and his wife are visiting. I didn't tell you that?"

"No. No. You didn't. That's nice though. What are you going to do?"

"You know-the usual. Dinners. Maybe a show."

I picture the four of them out on the town. It hurts that I can't meet his father, driving home the point all the more: I am not with Dex. I am the other woman. I think of all the other women who get the random Thursday nights, but never the holidays or the special family occasions or the important work dinners. Excluded when it really matters. Then I think to myself that Dex hasn't even given me any of the a.s.surances, false or otherwise, that the other woman always gets in the movies. Nothing but a couple of "I love yous" and some red dice.

On Sat.u.r.day night Hillary convinces me to join her and Julian. I feel guilty for crashing their dinner, but agree, not wanting to be alone with my thoughts about Dex. I have been obsessing about the cozy family weekend, Dex smiling amid all the inevitable wedding chatter, pretending that he is right on schedule with his nuptials. Maybe he is right on schedule. I have no idea what is going on, and the waiting and wondering is so much harder to take after our weekend together.

So I trek down to Gramercy and meet Hillary and Julian at I Trulli, an Italian restaurant. We sit at a small round table in the beautiful back garden, surrounded by brownstone walls, a patch of navy-blue sky above us. The patio is lit by candles, and tiny white lights are intertwined in the tree branches. The setting could not be more romantic. Except for the fact that I am the third wheel.

After fifteen minutes, I know I like Julian. He is not at all affected, but speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully-he uses "favor" instead of "like better," "pleasant" instead of "nice," and "outset" instead of "start." They are simple alternatives, not flamboyant thesaurus entries, so I know he is not showing off. (I once went on a date with a guy who used the words "salubrious," "sartorial," and "loquacious" in one evening. I declined his invitation for date number two, for fear that he would show up wearing an ascot.) And although Julian is not traditionally handsome, I like the way he looks. His curly, longish hair, tanned skin, and dark-brown eyes make me think of a Portuguese fisherman.

I watch Julian laughing at something Hillary just said, leaning toward her. n.o.body would ever guess that they only met a week ago. Their interaction is fluid and natural, and she is doing none of the things that women do in the new stages of a relationship. She asks him twice if she has spinach in her teeth and she eats every last bit of her pasta, then insists that we order dessert.

Over our slices of cheesecake, Hillary and I tell Julian how much we hate our jobs. He asks why we don't just quit. We say it's not that easy, golden handcuffs, paying off our loans, blah blah blah. And besides, what else would we do? He looks at me and says yes, what else would you do? I glance at Hillary, wanting her to answer first.

"Hill would open an antiques shop," he says, touching her wrist. "Right?"

Hillary smiles at him. They have covered her dreams already. My bet is that she opens her shop in downtown Montauk.

"So what about you, Rachel?" Julian asks again, his dark eyes probing.

It is a common question during law-firm interviews, right up there with "Why did you decide to go to law school?" at which point you give the pat answer about the pursuit of justice, when what you are really thinking is Because I'm a type-A high achiever with no idea of what else to do; I would have gone to med school, but blood makes me I tell him that I don't know, embarra.s.sed by the truth of it.

"Maybe if you quit your job, you'd figure it out more quickly," Julian says in his calm voice. "Poverty, hunger-these things help you think more clearly."

My cell phone rings. It is a jarring note. I apologize, say I thought I had turned it off before dinner. Maybe it is Dex. Maybe he sneaked off to the bathroom to call me.

"Who is it?" Hillary asks. I can tell that she, too, is wondering if it's Dex.

"I'm not sure."

"Well, check it out," she says. "We don't mind, do we?"

Julian shrugs. "Not at all."

I can't resist. I remove my phone from my purse and listen to the message. It's only Marcus. He says he knows it's late but wondered what I was up to.

"Marcus," I say, unable to hide my disappointment.

Hillary reminds Julian of who Marcus is-the guy from our house. He nods, says of course he remembers him.

"Why don't you call him? Ask him to come over," she says. "We'll order another bottle of wine."

She is sweet to offer, but I can tell that she is ready for the shared part of the evening to be over. And I don't want more charity. I say no, I'm tired, it has been a wonderful dinner but I should really get home. Julian makes eye contact with our waitress and asks for our check with a scribbling flourish in the air.

When we leave the restaurant, Hillary asks me if I'm going to take a cab. I tell her no, I think I'll walk.

"Forty-some blocks?"