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drawn up by a lawyer, and as long as I’m prepared for
the possibility that it might end in divorce, I should go for it.”
    Nina is Suzy’s older sister and she
is—and I mean this in the kindest possible way—completely terrifying. She graduated
Summa from Yale, got an MBA from Harvard, and currently works as some kind of
business consultant, though I never understand her job. She always has a cell
phone glued to her ear and a painful expression on her face. Suzy once told me
she makes like two hundred grand a year, and to top it all off, she looks like
a super model.
    “She wouldn’t tell your parents
would she?”
    “No. Nina knows how much they love
Luke, and she knows my mother would have heart failure if she heard that I
turned down a marriage proposal from him. Two unmarried daughters in their
thirties has been a bit much for her to take.”
    “Well,” I say pointedly, “that
might be changing soon.”
    She stares at me. And then she starts
to laugh. “I can’t believe this is happening to me! Do you think I should I do
it? Should I say, yes, and marry him?”
    “I can’t tell you what to do, but
I will say that I think you guys are good together.”
    Suzy nods. “I know. We think
exactly alike. It’s almost scary sometimes the way we can read each other’s
minds.”
    I’m still wearing the too tight
sundress and the shoulder straps are pinching me, so I peel out of it.
    “That’s way too small Kate. Let me
go and tell the saleswoman to find you a larger size, okay?”
    After she leaves, I look at myself
in the mirror and unexpectedly feel a sharp sense of loss. Suzy will marry Luke
and it’ll be the end of an era. Tears fill my eyes and I’m ashamed of myself. I
know I should be happy for her, but I can’t help it. I am happy for Suzy.
I want good things to happen to her, but I’m sad because our friendship won’t
be the same anymore. We’ll still be friends, and we’ll still do girl stuff
together, but things will change as they invariably do when somebody gets
married.
    And then inexplicably I find myself
thinking about Ben and how he’s fallen into my life again. Wouldn’t it be
strange if things did change and if he were a part of it?
     

Chapter Four
     
    The Past….
     
    After Ben and I slepttogether
in his apartment that night we became inseparable, or as inseparable as two
people can be who have completely different interests besides sex. Most
weekdays he either came by my work to drink coffee before his shift at the bar,
or he’d call me on my days off when things were slow to ask me what I was doing.
    “Painting my toenails,” I said,
positioning the phone with my knee up so I could talk and still paint.
    “What color?”
    “Dark red.”
    “Sexy.”
    I laughed coyly. “You think so?”
I’d been known to paint my nails weird shades, but have toned it down since I started
dating Ben.
    “You have such pretty feet. I can
think of all sorts of things I’d like to do with them.”
    “You’re a pervert.”
    “Yeah, I guess I am.” He laughed.
“Are you coming over tonight?”
    “Yes, but let’s go out to dinner
or a movie instead of staying in all night.”
    Ben sighed. “We should just watch
a DVD.”
    “Come on, I really want to go out
to a movie.”
    “You should go with someone else
then. We’ll never make it through the whole thing anyway.”
    I knew he was right. Obviously Ben
didn’t like sitting in a theater, but we also groped each other so much that it
was pointless to be there in the first place. We usually left early so we could
fall into bed together. It wasn’t a big deal. I thought it was sort of fun, but
Ben thought we were wasting too much money. I was tempted to point out that he
didn’t have to grope me, that he could keep his hands to himself, but I didn’t
think that sounded nice and I also didn’t know if I could keep my hands
to myself.
    “All right, fine.” I gave in.
    Later that night I met him at his
apartment where we ordered