"You think Darcy and Dex bet on that?" he asks.

I laugh because I had been wondering the same thing.

"How did it go?" Darcy yells into the phone the next morning.

I am just out of the shower, dripping wet. "Where are you?"

"In the car with Dex. We're on our way back to the city," she says. "We went antiquing. Remember?"

"Yes," I say. "I remember."

"How did it go?" she asks again, smacking her gum. She can't even wait until she gets home to get the scoop on my date.

I don't answer.

"Well?"

"We have a bad connection. Your cell is breaking up," I say. "I can't hear you."

"Nice try. Give me the goods."

"What goods?"

"Rachel! Don't play dumb with me. Tell me about your date! We're dying to know."

I hear Dex echo her in the background. "Just dying!"

"It was a lovely evening," I say, trying to wrap a towel around my head without dropping the phone.

She squeals. "Yes! I knew it. So details! Details!"

I tell her that we went to Gotham Bar and Grill, I ordered the tuna, he had lamb.

"Rachel! Get to the good stuff! Did you hook up?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Why not?"

"I have my reasons."

"That means you did," she says. "Otherwise you'd just say no."

"Think what you want."

"C'mon, Rachel!"

I tell her no way, I am not going to be her car-ride entertainment. She reports my words to Dex and I hear him say, "Bruce is our car-ride entertainment. Tell her that."

Tunnel of Love is playing in the background.

"Tell Dexter that's Bruce's worst alb.u.m."

"They're all bad alb.u.ms. Springsteen sucks," Darcy says.

"Did she just say this alb.u.m is bad?" I hear Dex ask Darcy.

Darcy says yeah and a few seconds later "Thunder Road" is blaring. Darcy shouts at him to turn it down. I smile.

"So?" Darcy asks. "Are you going to tell us or not?"

"Not."

"If I promise not to tell Dex?"

"Still not."

Darcy makes an exasperated sound. Then she tells me that she will find out one way or another and hangs up.

The next I hear from Dex is on Thursday night, the day before we are scheduled to leave for the Hamptons.

"Do you want a ride? We have room for one more," he says. "Claire's coming with us. And your boyfriend's in."

"Well, in that case, I'd love a ride," I say, trying to sound breezy and casual. I need to show him that I've moved on. I have moved on.

At five o'clock the next day, we are a.s.sembled in Dexter's car, hoping to get ahead of the traffic. But the roads are already clogged. It takes us an hour to get through the Midtown Tunnel and nearly four hours to make the 110-mile drive to East Hampton. I sit in the backseat between Claire and Marcus. Darcy is in a giddy, hyper mood. She spends most of the car ride facing the three of us in the backseat, raising various topics, asking questions, and generally carrying the conversation. She makes things feel celebratory; her good moods are as infectious as her bad ones are contaminating. Marcus is the second most talkative in our group. For a thirty-mile stretch, he and Darcy are a running comedy routine, making fun of each other. She calls him lazy, he calls her high maintenance. Claire and I chime in occasionally. Dex says virtually nothing. He is so quiet that at one point Darcy yells at him to stop being such a bore.

"I'm driving," he says. "I need to concentrate."

Then he looks at me in the rearview mirror. I wonder what he's thinking. His eyes give nothing away.

It is getting dark when we stop for snacks and beers at a gas station on Route 27. Claire sidles up to me in front of the chips, loops her arm through mine, and says, "I can tell he really likes you." For a second I am startled, thinking that she means Dex. Then I realize she is talking about Marcus.

"Marcus and I are just friends," I say, selecting a can of Pringles Light.

"Oh, c'mon now. Darcy told me about your date," she says.

Claire is always in the know about everything-the latest trend, the hot new bar opening, the next big party. She has her manicured fingers on the pulse of the city. And knowing the details of Manhattan's singles is part of her bag too.

"It was just one date," I say, happy that Darcy has not determined what happened with Marcus, despite a barrage of questioning. She even probed him with an e-mail; he forwarded me the message with his subject line reading "Nosy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"Well, the summer is long," Claire says wisely. "You're smart not to commit until you see what else is out there."

We arrive at our summer house, a small cottage with limited charm. Claire found it when she came out alone in mid-February, disgusted with all of us for not sacrificing a free weekend to house-hunt. She organized everything, including setting up the other half of the share. As we tour the house, she apologizes again for the lack of a pool, and laments that the common areas aren't really large enough for good parties. We rea.s.sure her that the big backyard with a grill makes up for that. Plus, we are close enough to the beach to walk, which, in my opinion, is the most important thing about a summerhouse.

We unpack the car and find our bedrooms. Darcy and Dex have the room with the king-sized bed. Marcus has his own room, which could come in handy. And Claire has her own room-a reward for her efforts. I am rooming with Hillary, who blew off work today and took the train in last night. Hillary is always blowing off work. I don't know anyone more laid-back about work, particularly at a big firm. She comes to work late every day-closer and closer to eleven with each pa.s.sing year-and she refuses to play the games that other a.s.sociates play, like leaving a jacket on the back of their chair or a cup full of coffee on their desk before leaving at night so that partners will think they've only left for a short break. She billed fewer than two thousand hours last year and therefore received no bonus. "Do the math and you'll realize that making a bonus comes out to less per hour than flipping burgers at McDonald's," she said this year on the day checks were handed out.

I call her on my cell now. "Where are you?"

"Cyril's," she shouts over the crowd. "Want me to stay here or meet you guys somewhere?"

I pa.s.s along the question to Darcy and Claire.

"Tell her we're going straight to the Talkhouse," Darcy says. "It's already late."

Then, as I expected, Claire and Darcy insist on changing their clothes. And Marcus, who is still wearing his work clothes, goes to change too. So Dex and I sit in the den, opposite each other, waiting. He holds the remote control but does not turn the TV on. It is the first time we have been alone since the Incident. I am conscious of sweat acc.u.mulating under my arms. Why am I nervous? What happened is behind us. It is over. I must relax, act normal.

"Aren't you going to doll up for your boyfriend?" Dex asks quietly, without looking at me.

"Very funny." Even the mere exchange of words now feels illicit.

"Well, aren't you?"

"I'm fine in this," I say, glancing down at my favorite jeans and black knit top. What he doesn't know is that I already put much thought into this outfit when I changed after work.

"So you and Marcus make a swell couple." He glances furtively at the staircase.

"Thanks. So do you and Darcy."

We exchange a lingering look, too loaded with potential meaning to begin to interpret. And then, before he can respond, Darcy bounds down the stairs in a curve-hugging chartreuse sheath. She hands Dex a pair of scissors and crouches at his feet, lifting her hair. "Can you cut the tag, please?"

He snips. She stands and spins.

"Well? How do I look?"

"Nice," he says, and then glances at me sheepishly as if the one-word compliment to his fiancee might somehow upset me.

"You look awesome," I say, to show him that it doesn't. Not in the least.

We pay the cover and make our way through the ma.s.sive crowd at Stephen's Talkhouse, our favorite bar in Amagansett, saying h.e.l.lo to all of the people we know from various circles back in the city. We find Hillary at the bar with a Budweiser, wearing cutoff jeans, a white scoop-neck T-shirt, and the kind of plain blue flip-flops that Darcy and Claire would only wear to their pedicurist. There is not a pretentious bone in Hillary's body, and as always, I am so happy to see her.

"Hey, guys!" she yells. "What took you so long?"

"Traffic was a b.i.t.c.h," Dex says. "And then certain people had to get ready."

"Well, of course we had to get ready!" Darcy says, looking down to admire her outfit.

Hillary insists that we need a kick start to our evening and orders a round of shots. She hands them out as we stand in a tight circle, ready to drink together.

"To the best summer ever!" Darcy says, tossing her long, coconut-scented hair behind her shoulders. She says it at the start of every summer. She always has wildly high expectations that I never share. But maybe this summer she will be right.

We all throw back our shots, which taste like straight vodka. Then Dex buys another round, and when he hands me my beer, his fingers graze mine. I wonder if he does it on purpose.

"Thank you," I say.

"Anytime," he murmurs, holding my gaze as he did in the car.

I count to three silently and then look away.

As the night wears on, I find myself watching Dex and Darcy interact. I am surprised by the territorial pangs I feel as I observe them together. It is not exactly jealousy, but something related to it. I notice little things that didn't use to register. Like once, she slipped her four fingers into the back of his jeans right at the top. And another time, when he was standing behind her, he gathered all of her hair in one hand and sort of held it up in a makeshift ponytail before dropping it back at her shoulders.

Right now, he leans in to say something to her. She nods and smiles. I imagine that his words were "I want you tonight" or something along those lines. I wonder if they have had s.e.x since he and I were together. Surely, yes. And that bothers me in some weird way. Maybe that happens whenever you watch someone on your List with someone else. I tell myself that I have no right to be jealous. That I had no business adding him to my List in the first place.

I try to focus on Marcus. I stand near him, talk to him, laugh at his jokes. When he asks me to dance, I say yes without hesitation. I follow him onto the crowded dance floor. We work up a good sweat, dancing and laughing. I realize that although there is no great chemistry, I am having fun. And who knows? Maybe this will lead to something.

"They're dying to know what happened on our date," Marcus says into my ear.

"Why do you say that?" I ask.

"Darcy inquired again."

"She did?"

"Yup."

"When?"

"Tonight. Right after we got here."

I hesitate and then ask, "Did Dex say anything?"

"No, but he was standing right next to her looking pretty darn interested."

"Some nerve," I say playfully.

"I know, the nosy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds... And don't look now, but they're staring at us." His face touches mine, his whiskers scratching my cheek.

I drape my arms over his shoulders and move my body flush against his. "Well then," I say. "Let's give them something to look at."

So what's the deal with you and Marcus?" Hillary asks me the next morning as she picks through the pile of clothes that have already acc.u.mulated beside her bed. I resist the urge to fold them for her.

"No deal, really." I get out of bed and promptly start to make it.

"Potential?" She pulls on a pair of sweats and ties the drawstring, cinching them at hip level.

"Maybe."

Last year Hillary broke up with Corey, her boyfriend of four years, a nice, smart, all-around great guy. But Hillary was convinced that as good as the relationship was, it wasn't good enough. "He's not the One," she kept saying. 1 remember Darcy informing her that she might revise that opinion in her mid-thirties, a statement Hillary and I both rehashed at length later. A cla.s.sic, tactless Darcyism. Yet, as time pa.s.ses, I can't help wondering if Hillary made a mistake. Here she is, one year later, embroiled in the fruitless blind-dating scene while, rumor has it, her ex has moved into a Tribeca loft with a twenty-three-year-old med student who is a dead ringer for Cameron Diaz. Hillary claims that it doesn't bother her. I find that very hard to believe, even for someone with her moxie. In any case, she doesn't seem to be in a hurry to find a Corey replacement.

"Summer potential or long-term potential?" she asks me, running her hands through her short, sandy hair.

"I don't know. Maybe long-term potential."

"Well, you looked like a total couple last night," she says. "Out there dancing."