I have always done my best thinking in the shower. The night is for worrying, dwelling, analyzing. But in the morning, under the hot water, I see things clearly. So as I lather my hair, inhaling my grapefruit-scented shampoo, I pare everything down to the essential truth: what Dex and I are doing is wrong.

We kissed for a long time last night, and then he held me for even longer, few words passing between us. My heart thumped against his as I told myself that by not escalating the physical part we had scored a victory of sorts. But this morning, I know it was still wrong. Just plain wrong. I must stop. I will stop. Starting now.

When I was little, I used to count to three in my head when I wanted to give myself a fresh start. I'd catch myself biting my nails, jerk my fingers out of my mouth, and count. One. Two. Three. Go. Then I had a clean slate. From that point forward I was no longer a nail-biter. I used this tactic with many bad habits. So on a count of three, I will shake the Dex habit. I will be a good friend again. I will erase everything, fix it all.

I count to three slowly and then use the visualization technique that Brandon told me he used during baseball season. He said he would picture his bat striking the ball, hear it crack, see the dust fly as he slid safely into home base. He focused only on his good plays and not the times he screwed up.

So I do this. I focus on my friendship with Darcy, rather than my feelings for Dex. I make a video in my head, filling it with scenes of Darcy and me. I see us hunkered down in her bed during an elementary-school sleepover. We are discussing our plans for the future, how many kids we will have, what we will name them. I see Darcy, ten years old, propped up on her elbows, pinkies in her mouth, explaining that if you have three kids, the middle one should be a different sex from the others so everyone has something special. As if you can control such things.

I picture us in the halls at Naperville High, passing notes between classes. Her notes, folded in intricate shapes, like origami, were so much more entertaining than Annalise's notes, which simply reported how bored she was in class. Darcy's were chock-full of interesting observations about classmates and snide remarks about teachers. And little games for me to play. She'd put quotes down the left-hand side of the page and people's names on the right for me to match. I'd crack up as I drew a line from, say, "Nice brights, buddy" to Annalise's father, who made that comment every time drivers forgot to turn off their high beams. She was funny. Sometimes cutting, even downright mean. But that only made her funnier.

I rinse my hair and remember something else, a memory that has not surfaced before. It is like finding a photograph of yourself that you never knew was taken. Darcy and I were freshmen, standing beside our locker after school. Becky Zurich, one of the most popular girls in the senior class (but not the nice kind of popular, more the mean, feared variety) walked by us with her boyfriend, Paul Kinser. With her virtually nonexistent chin and way-too-thin lips, she really wasn't pretty at all, although at the time she somehow convinced a lot of people, including me, that she was. So when Paul and Becky passed us, I looked at them, because they were popular seniors, and I was impressed, or at the very least, curious. I'm sure I wanted to hear what they were talking about so that I could glean some insight into being eighteen (so old!) and cool. I think it was only a casual glance in their direction, but maybe it was a stare.

In any case, Becky gave me an exaggerated stare back, making her eyes pop out like a cartoon. She followed this with a hyenalike, lip-curling sneer and said, "What're you lookin' at?"

Then Paul chimed in with "Catching flies?" (I'm sure dating Becky made Paul meaner, or maybe he just figured out that being mean earned him action later.)

Sure enough, my mouth was wide open. I snapped it shut, mortified. Becky laughed, proud to have shamed a freshman. She then reapplied her pink frosted lipstick, inserted a fresh piece of Big Red into her mean little mouth, and made one final face at me for good measure.

Darcy had been shuffling through books in our locker but clearly caught the gist of the exchange. She spun and eyed the pair with revulsion, a look she had practiced and mastered. She then imitated Becky's shrill laughter, craning her neck unnaturally backward and rolling in her lips to make them invisible. She was hideous—and looked exactly like Becky in midchortle.

I stifled a smile while Becky looked momentarily stunned. She then gathered herself, took a step toward Darcy, and spat out the word "bitch." Darcy was unflinching as she stared right back at the senior duo and said, "It's better than being an ugly bitch. Wouldn't you agree, Paul?"

It was Becky's turn to stare, mouth agape, at her newly discovered adversary. And before she could formulate a comeback, Darcy threw in another insult for good measure. "And by the way, Becky, that lipstick you're wearing? It's so last year."

Everything about that moment is suddenly in sharp focus. I can see our locker decorated with pictures of Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. I can smell that distinct, starchy, meat-based odor of the nearby cafeteria. And I can hear Darcy's voice, forceful and confident. Of course, Paul had no response to Darcy's question, as it was clear to all four of us that Darcy was right—she was the prettier of the two. And in high school that sometimes gives you the last word, even if you are a freshman. Becky and

Paul scurried off and Darcy just kept talking to me about whatever it was we had been talking about, as if Becky and Paul were totally insignificant. Which they were. It just took a lot to realize that at fourteen.

I turn off the water, wrap a towel around my body and another over my head. I will call Dexter as soon as I get to work. I will tell him that it has to stop. This time I really mean it. He is marrying Darcy, and I am the maid of honor. We both love her. Yes, she has flaws. She can be spoiled, self-centered, and bossy, but she can also be loyal and kind and wildly fun. And she is the closest thing to a sister that I will ever have.

During my commute, I practice what I will say to Dex, even talking out loud at one point on the subway. When I finally arrive at work, I have my speech so memorized that it no longer sounds scripted. I've inserted the proper pauses into my Declaration of Mind-set and Future Intent. I am ready.

Just as I am about to make the phone call, I notice that I have an e-mail from Dex. I open it, expecting him to have reached the same conclusion. The subject line reads "You."

You are an amazing person, and I don't know where the feelings that you give me came from. What I do know is that I am completely and utterly into you and I want time to freeze so I can be with you all the time and not have to think of anything else at all. I like literally everything about you, including the way your face shows everything you're thinking and especially the way it looks when we are together and your hair is back and your eyes are closed and your lips are open just a little bit. Okay. That's all I wanted to say. Delete this.

I am breathless, dizzy. Nobody has ever written words like this to me. I read it again, absorbing every word. / like literally everything about you too, I think.

And just like that, my resolve is gone again. How can I end something that I have never experienced before? Something I have been waiting for my whole life? Nobody before Dex could make me feel this way, and what if I never find it again? What if this is it?

My phone rings. I answer it thinking it could be Dex, hoping it's not Darcy. I can't talk to her right now. I can't think about her right now. I am buzzing from my electronic love letter.

"Cheers, baby."

It is Ethan, calling from England, where he has lived for the past two years. I am so happy to hear his voice. He has a smiling voice, always sounding like he's on the verge of laughter. Most things about Ethan are just as they were in the fifth grade. He is still compassionate, still has cherub cheeks that turn pink in the cold. But the voice is newer. It came in high school—with puberty—long after friendship had replaced my schoolgirl crush.

"Hi, Ethan!"

"What's the statute of limitations on wishing someone a happy birthday?" he asks. Ever since I went to law school, he loves throwing out legal terms, often with a twist. "Strawberry tort" is his favorite.

I laugh. "Don't worry about it. It was only my thirtieth."

"Do you hate me? You should have called and reminded me. I feel like an absolute ass, after eighteen years of never forgetting. Shit. My mind is going and I'm still in my twenties—not to rub it in."

"You forgot my twenty-seventh too," I interrupt him.

"I did?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think I did."

"Yeah—you were with Bran—"

"Stop. Don't say that name. You're right. I forgot your twenty-seventh. That makes this infraction somehow less egregious, right? I didn't break a streak… So how is it?" He whistles. "Can't believe you're thirty. You should still be fourteen. Do you feel older? Wiser? More worldly? What did you do on the big night?" He fires off his questions in his frenetic, attention-deficit-disorder way.

"It's the same. I'm the same," I lie. "Nothing's changed."

"Really?" he says. It is like him to ask the follow-up. It's as if he knows that I am holding back.

I pause, my mind racing. Do I tell? Not tell? What will he think of me?

What will he say? Ethan and I have remained close since high school, although our contact is sporadic. But whenever we do talk, we pick up where we left off. He would make a good confidant in this emerging saga. Ethan knows all the major players. And more important, he knows what it's like to screw up.

Things started out right for him. He did well on the SATs, graduated as our salutatorian, and was voted most likely to succeed, picked over Amy Choi, our valedictorian, who was too quiet and mousy to win votes for anything. He went to Stanford, and after graduation took a job at an investment bank even though he majored in art history and had no interest in finance. He instantly despised everything about the banking culture. He said pulling all-nighters was unnatural, and realized that he preferred sleep to money. So he traded his suits in for fleece and spent the next several years drifting up and down the West Coast snapping pictures of lakes and trees, gathering friends along the way. He took writing classes, art classes, photography classes, funded by the odd bartending job and summers in Alaska's fisheries.

That's where he met Brandi—"Brandi with an /'" as I called her before I realized that he genuinely liked her, and that she wasn't just a fling. A few months into their romance, Brandi got pregnant (insisting she was part of that woefully unlucky.05 percent on birth-control pills, although I had my doubts). She said that abortion was out of the question, so Ethan did what he thought to be the right thing and married her at City Hall in downtown Seattle. They sent out homemade marriage announcements featuring a black-and-white photo of the two hiking. Darcy made fun of Brandi's way-too-short-and-tight jean shorts. "Who the hell hikes in Daisy Dukes?" she said. But Ethan seemed happy enough.

And that summer, Brandi gave birth to a baby boy… an adorable, bouncing Eskimo baby boy with eyes that turned coal black almost immediately. Brandi, with blue eyes that matched Ethan's, begged for forgiveness. Ethan promptly had the marriage annulled, and Brandi moved back to Alaska, probably to track down her native lover.

I think Brandi soured Ethan on the whole fresh-air, live-off-the-land kind of life. Or maybe he just wanted something new. Because he moved to London, where he writes for a magazine and is working on a book about London architecture, an interest he didn't acquire until he landed on British soil. But that's how Ethan is. He figures things out along the way, always ready to back up and start over, never bowing to pressure or expectations. I wish I could be more like him.

"So what did you do for your birthday?" Ethan asks.

I shut my office door and blurt it out. "Darcy had a surprise party for me, I got wasted, and hooked up with Dex."

I suppose this is what happens when you're not accustomed to having secrets. You don't learn the art of holding back. In fact, I am surprised I have lasted this long. I hear static in the line as the news travels across the Atlantic. I panic, wishing I could suck the admission back in.

"Get the fuck outta here. You're kidding me, right?"

My silence tells him that I'm serious.

"Ohhh, shhhit." His voice is still smiling.

"What? What are you thinking?" I need to know if he's judging. I need to know what he thinks of me, if he is siding with Chanel Suit.

"Wait. Whaddaya mean, hooked up? You didn't sleep with him, did you?"

"Um. Yeah. Actually I did."

I am relieved to hear him laugh, even though I tell him that it's not funny, that this is serious business.

"Oh, trust me. This is funny."

I picture the dimple in his left cheek. "And what exactly is so amusing?"

"Miss Goody Two-shoes screws her friend's fiancé. This is raw comedy at its best."

"Ethan!"

He stops laughing long enough to ask if I could be knocked up.

"No. We had that covered."

"So to speak?"

"Yeah," I say. Any pun I ever make is an accident.

"So no harm done, right? It was a mistake. Shit happens. People make mistakes, especially when they're wasted. Look at me and Brandi with an i."

"I guess so. But still…"

Ethan whistles and then says the obvious—that Darcy would flip if she ever found out.

My other line rings. "You need to get that?" Ethan asks.

"No. I'll let it roll to voice mail."

"You sure? It could be your new boyfriend."

"Ask yourself if you're being helpful," I say, although I'm relieved that he is not preachy and serious. That's not Ethan's style, but you never know when someone is going to take the moral high ground. And there is definitely moral high ground all around here, particularly considering that Darcy is a friend of his too. Not as close as he and I are, but they still talk occasionally.

"Sorry. Sorry." He snickers. "Okay. Just one more substantive question."

"What?"

"Was it good?"

"Ethan! I don't know. We were drunk!"

"So it was all sloppy?"

"C'mon, Ethan!" I say, as if I'm not thinking about the particulars. Meanwhile, a snapshot of the Incident flashes through my brain—my fingers pressed into Dexter's back. It is a perfect, airbrushed image. There is nothing sloppy about it.

"So you've spoken to him since?"

I tell him about the Hamptons weekend and the date with Marcus.

"Nice touch. Going for his friend. That way, if you marry Marcus, you guys can be swingers."

I ignore him and continue with the rest—the ride to the jitney, last night, a summary of the e-mail.

"Wow. Shit. So… do you have feelings for him too?"

"I don't know," I say, even though I know that the answer is yes.

"But the wedding's still on?"

"Yeah," I say. "As far as I know."

"As far as you know?"

"Yes. It is."

Silence. He is not laughing anymore, so my guilt returns in full force.

"What are you thinking now?"

"I was just wondering where you want this to go," he says. "What do you want from it? Is it a fling, or do you want him to call off the wedding?"

I flinch at the word "fling." That's not what it is at all, but at the same time, I don't think I want Dex to call off the wedding. I can't imagine doing that to Darcy. I tell Ethan that I don't know, I'm not sure.

"Hmm… Well, has he mentioned the engagement at all?"

"No. Not really."

"Hmm."

"What? What does 'hmm' mean?"

"It means I think he should call the shit off."

"Because of me?" My stomach drops at the thought of being responsible for Darcy's canceled wedding. "Maybe he just has cold feet?"

I hear my voice rising hopefully at the suggestion of mere cold feet. Why does part of me want it to be that simple? And how can I be so thrilled to be near Dex, so deeply moved by his e-mail, and still want, on some level, for him to marry Darcy?

"Rach—"

"Ethan, I know what you're going to say."

I don't know exactly what he is going to say, but I have a hunch from his tone that it has something to do with where things are going to end up if I don't cease and desist. That it's going to blow up somehow. That someone—likely me—is going to get hurt. But I don't want to hear him say any of it.

"Okay. Just be careful. Don't get busted. Shit."

I hear him laughing again.

"What?"

"Just thinking of Darcy… It's sort of satisfying."

"Satisfying how?"

"Oh, come on. Don't even tell me that part of you doesn't like zinging her a little bit. There's some poetic justice here. Darcy's been riding roughshod over you for years."

"What are you talking about?" I ask, genuinely surprised to hear him describe our friendship like that. I know I've been feeling more irritated by her recently and I know that she has not always been the most selfless of friends, but I've never thought of her as riding roughshod over me. "No she hasn't."

"Yeah, she has."

"No. She hasn't" I say more firmly. I'm not sure who I am defending—me or Darcy. Yes, there was the matter of you, Ethan. But you don't know about that.

"Oh, please. Remember Notre Dame? The SATs?"

I think back to the day we all received our SAT scores, sealed in white envelopes from Guidance. We were all tight-lipped, but dying to know what everyone else got. Finally Darcy just said at lunch, "Okay, who cares. Let's just tell our scores. Rachel?"

"Why do I have to go first?" I asked. I was satisfied with my score, but still didn't want to go first.

"Don't be a baby," Darcy said. "Just tell us."

"Fine. Thirteen hundred," I said.

"What was your verbal?" she asked.

I told her 680.

"Nice," she said. "Congratulations."

Ethan went next. Fourteen ten. No surprise there. I forget what Annalise got—something in the low eleven hundreds.

"Well?" I looked at Darcy.

"Oh. Right. I got a thirteen hundred five."

I knew instantly that she didn't have a 1305. The SAT is not scored in increments of five. Ethan knew too, because he kicked me under the table and hid a smile with his ham sandwich.

I didn't care that she lied per se. She was a known embellisher. But the fact that she lied about her score to beat me by five—that part really figured. We didn't call her on it. There was no point.

But then she said, "Well, maybe we'll both get into Notre Dame."

It was her Ethan power move in the fifth grade all over again.

Like a lot of kids in the Midwest, my dream growing up was to attend

Notre Dame. We're not Irish or even Catholic, but ever since my parents took me to a Notre Dame football game when I was eight, I wanted to go there. To me it was what a college should be—stately stone buildings, manicured lawns, plenty of tradition. I wanted to be a part of it. Darcy never showed the slightest interest in Notre Dame and it irritated me that she was infringing on my terrain. But I wasn't too worried about her taking my spot. My grades were higher, my SATs were probably higher, and besides, more than one student from our high school got into Notre Dame every year.

That spring, the acceptance and rejection letters trickled in slowly. I checked the mailbox every day, in agony. Mike O'Sullivan, who had three generations of alumni in his family and was the president of our class, got into Notre Dame first. I assumed that I would be next, but Darcy got her letter before I did. I was with her when she got the mail, although she wouldn't open the envelope in front of me. I went home, hoping guiltily that she had received bad news.

She called an hour later, ecstatic. "I can't believe it! I got in! Can you believe it?"

In short, no. I couldn't. I mustered up a congratulations, but I was crushed. Her news meant one of two things: she had taken my spot, or we would both go to Notre Dame and she would upstage me for four more years. As much as I knew I would miss Darcy when I went away, I felt strongly that I needed to establish myself apart from her. Once she got in, there would be no perfect resolution.

Still, I wanted that acceptance more than I had ever wanted anything. And I had my pride on the line. I waited, prayed, even thought about calling the admissions office to beg. One sickening week later, my letter arrived. It looked just like Darcy's. I ran inside, my heart pounding in my ears as I sliced open the envelope, unfolded the paper that held my fate. Close… you are very highly qualified… but no cigar.

I was devastated and could barely speak to my friends in school the next day, especially Darcy. At lunch, as I fought back tears, she informed me that she was going to Indiana anyway. That she wanted nothing to do with a school that would turn me down. Her charity upset me all the more. For once, Annalise spoke up. "You took Rachel's spot, and you didn't even want to go thete?"

"Well, it was my first choice. I changed my mind. And how was I supposed to know it would happen like this?" she said. "I assumed she would get in; I only beat her by a few points on the SAT."

Ethan had had enough. "You didn't get a damn thirteen hundred five, Darcy. The SAT is scored in increments of ten."

"Who said I got a thirteen hundred five?"

"You did," Ethan and I said in unison.

"No I didn't. I said a thirteen ten."

"Omigod!" I said, looking at Annalise for support, but her gumption had run out. She claimed that she had forgotten what Darcy said.

We argued for the rest of the lunch hour about what Darcy had said and why she had applied to Notre Dame if she didn't want to go there. We both ended up crying, and Darcy left school early, telling the school nurse she had cramps. The whole thing blew over when I got into Duke and talked myself into being happy with that result. Duke had a similar look and feel—stone buildings, pristine campus, prestige. It was just as good as Notre Dame and maybe it was better to broaden my horizons and leave Indiana.

But to this day I wonder why Notre Dame picked Darcy over me. Maybe a junior male member of the admissions staff fancied her photo. Maybe it was just Darcy's typical good luck.

In any case, I'm glad that Ethan refreshed my memory about Notre Dame. It replaces the Becky Zurich showdown in the forefront of my mind. Yes, Darcy could be a good friend—she usually was—but she also screwed me at a few pivotal moments in life: first love, college dream. Those were no small matters.

"All right," I say to Ethan. "But I think you're overstating the point a little. I wouldn't use the term 'roughshod.'"

"Okay, but you know what I mean. There's an undercurrent of competition."

"I guess so. Maybe," I say, thinking that it isn't much of a competition when one person consistently loses.

"So, anyway, please keep me posted. This is good stuff."

I tell him I will.

"Oh, one more thing," he says. "When are you going to visit me?" ooon.

"That's what you always say."

"I know. But you know how it goes. Work is always crazy… I'll come soon, though. This year for sure."

"Good enough," Ethan says. "I really do miss you."

"I miss you too."

"Besides," he says. "You might need a vacation by the time you're through with all of this."

After we hang up, I note with satisfaction that Ethan never told me to stop. He only said to be careful. And I will do that. I will be careful the next time I see Dexter.