The Marriage Pact (1) (22 page)

When
the initial strains of “Wonderful Tonight” echoed over the water from the dance
floor, Ravi and Nicole extracted themselves from a crowd of older women and
made their way to the floor. Rebecca jumped from her seat, nearly knocking it
into the pool, and grabbed John by the hand to head to the floor. Beth looked
at Ray, who shook his head. “Oh, come on,” she whined. “We’re never out without
the kids.”

Ray
relented and let his wife lead him to the floor. Marci turned to Jake and
Suzanne, ready for the next conversation, but Suzanne was staring across the pool
at Sanjay, Ravi’s very handsome friend from college. He looked especially good
in the white linen caftan he wore tonight, which highlighted his dark skin and
easy height. “Mmm...” Suzanne said, chewing the straw in her empty rum and Coke
glass. “I wouldn’t mind making
his
mama mad.”

“Suzanne!”
Marci said in exaggerated outrage. But Suzanne was already pushing out of her
seat and adjusting her top so it showed more of her cleavage. In seconds, she
had sauntered to the other side of the pool and was chatting with Sanjay, who
looked not at all unhappy to have his conversation with another friend
interrupted.

“Guess
it’s just us,” Jake said. “Wanna dance?”

“Sure,”
Marci said, feeling a little wobbly-kneed as he took her hand. To distract from
this, she asked the question that had been on her mind since her arrival. “So
what’s up with Rebecca?”

Jake
snorted. “I know! Weird, right? I’m not sure, but I think...” He trailed off.

“What?”

“I
think she’s actually trying to make me
jealous
. I know it’s crazy, but
over the last few months, since before you came home, I’ve noticed that she’s
been going out of her way to spend time with me and stuff. I didn’t think
anything of it at first, you know; we’ve been friends for so long and all,
but...”

“Wow,”
Marci said, even though she was not at all surprised.

“Yeah.
She asked me a while back to go to this concert with her—in a couple of weeks,
actually—and I said ‘yes’ because it was before she was acting so intense. Now,
though, I sort of feel as if she thinks it’s a date or something. I wish I
could ask you guys to come, but I think it’s sold out.”

He
put his hands on her waist as they swayed, and she realized both how tired she
was and how good it felt to be held. They moved closer as the music
transitioned from Eric Clapton to a mournful Indian artist belting out a
beautiful melody. Marci put her head on Jake’s chest and he moved one hand to
her neck, cradling her against him. “You do look really great tonight,” he said
softly.

He
didn’t wear cologne, but she could smell his shampoo or deodorant, clean and
masculine. It mingled with the fragrance of the blooms all around them, and the
thick humid scent of a summer night in Georgia. Out of the corner of her eye,
she could see Nicole and Ravi, their faces pressed together at the forehead,
whispering softly to each other.
They were going to be parents
. The
thought was still a little unreal. Some part of her would always think of Nicky
has her lanky little sister with braces and acne.

Directly
in front of her were Rebecca and John, dancing awkwardly. Behind them, Suzanne
had managed to persuade Sanjay into one of the larger pool chairs and was
already curled up on his lap, laughing dramatically at something he’d said.
Marci felt adrift at sea; life around her seemed to be standing still and
sailing onward all at once. She needed an anchor.

She
turned her head to face Jake, and kissed him lightly on the lips. He smiled.
“What was that for?”

“Jake.”
She took a deep breath. The words were tensed on the catapult and ready to come
out, waiting only for her brain to signal that it was time to speak.

“Marci,”
he said playfully, mocking the seriousness of her tone.

“Jake,
what if I said yes?”

Athens, Georgia – September 2004

The
next few months passed in a surreal sort of blur. The march of time seemed
marked by something significant every week. Nicole called to say they had heard
the baby’s tiny heartbeat. Ravi got a long-hoped-for promotion at the station,
allowing them to upgrade to a two-bedroom apartment in Georgetown. Suzanne
dated and discarded two more men, not including poor Sanjay, who had been
deserted entirely the day after the wedding. Marci’s mom was busy planning a 60
^th
birthday party for her dad, which he did not want, but pretended to be thrilled
about for his wife’s sake. And, of course, there was always Georgia football.

More
like a religion in their house than a pastime, Marci had, incredibly, almost
forgotten during her time away how seriously her parents took the University of
Georgia’s football season. As they packed the ancient family minivan with red
and black everything—lawn chairs, tent, even the portable grill with an
enormous red and black G on it—she tried to remember whether her parents had
been this fanatical about Georgia games when she was in college. Whether it was
blocked from her memory by embarrassment or vast quantities of alcohol, she
could not be sure.

Now,
of course, they were tailgating with the Stillwells, whose considerable
financial means took the art of school fanaticism to an entirely new level.
They made the trip to Athens around midday on Friday before the Saturday home
game. They had a circuit of favorite restaurants and bars they systematically
visited while waiting for space to begin clearing in the student parking lots,
so they could set up their camper and adjoining tent well in advance. Everyone
went out to dinner and had a few drinks, and then Jake, his dad, and the other
men all returned to sleep in the RV while his mom and the ladies spent the
evening in Athens’ nicest downtown hotel, which the Stillwells had reserved for
every home game weekend until 2020.

The
Thompsons had been invited to join this overnight ritual, but thus far they had
continued their own family tradition of waking at the crack of dawn and driving
up to Athens just in time for breakfast. The two families would meet by
midmorning at the Thompsons’ tailgating compound on the North Quad, and then
sit in lawn chairs watching the day unfold while Kitty Stillwell—clad
head-to-toe in Georgia gear, including earrings, sandals, and purse—popped in
and out of the RV with more food than anyone could dream of eating.

Marci
liked to watch the North Quad of campus fill with partiers as the hours wore
on, particularly for late games when there was more time for the consumption of
alcohol. It was people-watching at its best: the sororities and the
fraternities who all dressed up for games as though they were going to a
cocktail party rather than a sporting event, middle-aged drunks reliving their
wonder years at the university, people playing corn hole and cards and Frisbee
on the grass. Sometimes she’d focus on the quad full of people and try to
picture it on a quiet spring day when she was a student here, remembering her
religion class in that building or taking a nap between classes on that bench.
It was difficult to imagine it was the same place.

She
was lost in one such reverie when Jake came from behind her and put his hands
on her shoulders. “Hi, honey,” he said. “Honey” still sounded weird to her,
coming from Jake. “Your dad and I were just going to walk downtown for a bit.
Do you want to go?”

“That’s
okay,” she said. “I’ll hold down the fort here.”

Jake
and her dad had become very close since their engagement. This made her happy,
but was also a little surreal. She’d never had a boyfriend who met her parents
more than once or twice. Obviously Doug had not met anyone she loved. With
Doug, she couldn’t even have dinner in a public place.

Jake,
on the other hand, had known her parents and friends for more than a decade,
and he fit into her life like a puzzle piece. Her family adored him. His
parents had been more than welcoming to her, especially Jake’s dad, who admired
her aspirations to be a writer and never shamed her for not being successful at
it, yet. She was very comfortable with the ease in which they came together but
it was an adjustment being part of a relationship that was so...legitimate.

Her
mind frequently wandered back to the night they got engaged, and the decision
that had changed her life so completely. She did this with something that was
not quite excitement, not quite regret. It could best be described as sort of
an observant awe, as though she had spent the last three months sitting in a
theater, watching her own life with passive interest and wondering what would
happen to the main character next.

At
Nicole’s wedding, almost immediately after Marci had mentioned Jake’s proposal—
had
it really been a proposal? Or more like calling in a bet?
—Jake had had no
time to respond. As if on cue, her mother had appeared to herd them off the
dance floor as the entire party sent off the happy couple with well-wishes and
birdseed and catcalls.

As
guests filed out, Jake had helped Marci and her parents direct all the packing
and loading of the rented equipment, the wedding gifts, and the leftover food
and cake. He helped with the lifting of boxes and shuffling of cars, and it was
nearly 2:00 a.m. by the time they were alone again, with Marci driving him back
to his truck at the Waterford Inn.

At
first the silence was almost unbearable, but finally Jake spoke. “So earlier...
was that you or the gin and tonic talking?”

She
didn’t know the answer to this. “Both?”

“Well,
you can take it back now that you’re sober, you know. I won’t be hurt.”

“What
if I don’t want to take it back?” she said, and her whole body tingled. She
loved Jake, of course. In one way or another she always had. Now it had
occurred to her that they really
could
do this, and it felt like the
answer to everything. She could put Doug behind her and have the happy ending
every girl had always wanted.

But
was it the right happy ending? And what if he didn’t want her? What if he’d
been joking about the whole thing, or had changed his mind after seeing the
train wreck that she was when she left Austin? What if she’d just made a
pathetic idiot of herself by bringing it up?

He
was quiet for the rest of the ride. She gripped the steering wheel, uncertainty
eating away at her. A voice inside screamed:
Take it back! Make a joke! For
God’s sake, do something!
But words failed her. As each mile slipped away
under the wheels, the opportunity to change her mind seemed to disappear, too.

When
she pulled up next to his truck at the Waterford Inn, he turned to her in the
darkness. She turned off the engine and faced him. “Okay,” he said, as though
getting ready to direct the action in one of his films. “I’m going to ask you
this, and I don’t want you to answer right now. Go home, sleep, think about it,
and call me tomorrow. Don’t do this unless you want to, unless you really want
me
.
I will always be your friend no matter what. Okay?”

She
nodded.
Unless you really want
me. Was he referring to Doug? How much
had he guessed?

“I
never told you this,” he went on, “but leaving you behind to go to NYU was one
of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Did you know that?”

No,
she didn’t
.

“Yeah,
I turned around twice on the drive there. I even went to a pay phone off the
interstate and dialed your number. But I thought I was too young to feel about
someone the way I felt about you. And I guess in a way, I was right. That’s
part of the reason I went. I was afraid if I stayed in Athens we might end up
together and then break up. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing you like that.
Do you know what I mean?”

She
did. He took her hands in his earnestly.

“And
it’s kind of been that way ever since. I watched so many of my friends move in
with people and end up never speaking again, or worse, getting married and having
custody battles over their kids. Fighting over their DVD collections and
Pottery Barn furniture, making stupid rules about who could go to their
favorite restaurant and when. Two of my friends in grad school actually went to
court fighting about their dogs. Their goddamn
dogs
, Marci.”

It
wasn’t funny, she knew, but she couldn’t help but imagine two adults in a
courtroom with treats in their pockets, trying to get the dogs to choose them.

“I
dated these women, all perfectly nice for the most part, and it never ended
well. I’d start noticing a classmate or coworker, or even just the really nice
girl at the coffee shop...then we’d date, it would fall apart, and I’d lose
what I had to start with. I lost friends. I lost colleagues and collaborators.
I had to switch coffee shops twice.”

“Sounds
like I’m going to have to chaperone you whenever you get coffee from now on,”
Marci teased.

“Yeah,
maybe,” he said, picking up on her playfulness but not losing momentum.
”Anyway, I kept thinking that if I kept you at a distance, kept you as my
friend, at least I’d get to keep you. You know?”

She
realized that she
did
know. Looking back, with each failed relationship
on her part or each girl who came and went through Jake’s life, she’d always
felt a bit relieved that they still had each other. Looking back, she supposed
wrapped in that relief was also hope that their turn was still to come, or at
least, was out there and still possible. Now here it was, right in front of
her.

“But
I guess over the last couple of years, whenever we’ve seen each other, I...
Well, I guess I started feeling like maybe those other relationships didn’t
work out because they weren’t
you
. I haven’t said anything because the
timing never seemed right, and I knew you were involved with someone in
Austin.”

She
sucked in a breath. Not now.
Anything but Doug
.

“You
don’t have to tell me anything about it,” he said, seeing her flinch. “Just
tell me that it’s over.”

“It’s
over.”  She knew that much.

“Good.”
He nodded, closing a mental door. “Marci, I’ve loved you for a long time.
You’re my best friend. I’m sorry I don’t have a ring, but...”

“Yes,”
she said, cutting him off. She couldn’t bear to hear the actual words. “Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”
Tears flowed down her cheeks and she hugged him tightly. A few minutes later,
she followed his red truck—which had only replaced the decrepit blue Jeep a
couple of years earlier—down the inn’s long driveway. As he turned toward the
interstate and she headed home to her parents’ house, she tried a few thoughts
on for size.

There
goes my fiancé. That’s my husband. My husband’s truck.

Weird.