Something Borrowed Read online

  Praise for Something Borrowed

  “This page-turning, heartbreakingly honest debut deftly depicts the hopeful hearts behind an unsympathetic situation.”

  —Entertainment Weekly, “Grade: A”

  “Something Borrowed is both hilarious and thoughtfully written, resisting the frequent tendency of first-time novelists to make their characters and situations a little too black-and-white. You may never think of friendships—their duties, the oblique dances of power, and their give and-take—quite the same way again.”

  —Seattle Times

  “Delightful, winning, and real.”

  —Glamour

  “Giffin depicts the complex, shifting relationship of Rachel and Darcy, friends since grade school, into the five months between Darcy’s engagement and her wedding date. A thrill to read.”

  —Washington Post

  “Something Borrowed captures what it’s like to be thirty and single in the city, when your life pretty much revolves around friendships and love and their attendant complexities.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Sharply observed and beautifully etched.”

  —Newark Star-Ledger

  “Dead-on dialogue, real-life complexity, and genuine warmth.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “One of the hottest books of the summer…Giffin avoids what could have been a cliché-ridden tale by skillfully developing Rachel and her best friend Darcy into three-dimensional characters.”

  —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Giffin’s compelling debut truly stands out. It is as much about the meaning and value of friendship as it is about love, and it takes some risky chances that pay off…. It’s a gamble to cast her heroine in a potentially unsympathetic light, but Giffin manages to create empathy for her likable characters without cheapening the complexity of their situation, making for a genuinely wining tale.”

  —Booklist, “Starred Review”

  “Something Borrowed surprisingly goes beyond a selfish quest for love to take a semi-critical look at female friendships.”

  —Ripsaw Magazine

  “A contemporary fairy tale.”

  —Time Out New York

  For my mother, with love

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Reading Group Guide

  Preview

  Acknowledgments

  Coming Soon by Emily Giffin

  One

  I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn’t need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cartwheels and her front handsprings (I couldn’t do a handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenza sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none—said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling—even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was.

  But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That’s when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday—in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case—somehow proven that an innocent man didn’t do it. And my husband would toast me: “To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my children, and the finest lawyer in Indy.” I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information.

  “You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?” she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. “We’ll be old by then. Birthdays don’t matter when you get that old.”

  I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn’t much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn’t quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn’t matter as much by the time we reached thirty.

  The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching the show Thirtysomething together. It wasn’t one of our favorites—we preferred cheerful sitcoms like Who’s the Boss? and Growing Pains—but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirtysomething was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surely last forever.

  Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time. Until about age twenty-seven, when the days of being carded were long gone and I began to marvel at the sudden acceleration of years (reminding myself of my mother’s annual monologue as she pulled out our Christmas decorations) and the accompanying lines and stray gray hairs. At twenty-nine the real dread set in, and I realized that in a lot of ways I might as well be thirty. But not quite. Because I could still say that I was in my twenties. I still had something in common with college seniors.

  I realize thirty is just a number, that you’re only as old as you feel and all of that. I also realize that in the grand scheme of things, thirty is still young. But it’s not that young. It is past the most ripe, prime child-bearing years, for example. It is too old to, say, start training for an Olympic medal. Even in the best die-of-old-age scenario, you are still about one-third of the way to the finish line. So I can’t help feeling uneasy as I perch on an overstuffed maroon couch in a dark lounge on the Upper West Side at my surprise birthday party, organized by Darcy, who is still my best friend.

  Tomorrow is the Sunday that I first contemplated as a fifth-grader playing with our phone book. After tonight my twenties will be over, a chapter closed forever. The feeling I have reminds me of New Year’s Eve, when the countdo
wn is coming and I’m not quite sure whether to grab my camera or just live in the moment. Usually I grab the camera and later regret it when the picture doesn’t turn out. Then I feel enormously let down and think to myself that the night would have been more fun if it didn’t mean quite so much, if I weren’t forced to analyze where I’ve been and where I’m going.

  Like New Year’s Eve, tonight is an ending and a beginning. I don’t like endings and beginnings. I would always prefer to churn about in the middle. The worst thing about this particular end (of my youth) and beginning (of middle age) is that for the first time in my life, I realize that I don’t know where I’m going. My wants are simple: a job that I like and a guy whom I love. And on the eve of my thirtieth, I must face that I am 0 for 2.

  First, I am an attorney at a large New York firm. By definition this means that I am miserable. Being a lawyer just isn’t what it’s cracked up to be—it’s nothing like L.A. Law, the show that caused applications to law schools to skyrocket in the early nineties. I work excruciating hours for a mean-spirited, anal-retentive partner, doing mostly tedious tasks, and that sort of hatred for what you do for a living begins to chip away at you. So I have memorized the mantra of the law-firm associate: I hate my job and will quit soon. Just as soon as I pay off my loans. Just as soon as I make next year’s bonus. Just as soon as I think of something else to do that will pay the rent. Or find someone who will pay it for me.

  Which brings me to my second point: I am alone in a city of millions. I have plenty of friends, as proven by the solid turnout tonight. Friends to Rollerblade with. Friends to summer with in the Hamptons. Friends to meet on a Thursday night after work for a drink or two or three. And I have Darcy, my best friend from home, who is all of the above. But everybody knows that friends are not enough, although I often claim they are just to save face around my married and engaged girlfriends. I did not plan on being alone in my thirties, even my early thirties. I wanted a husband by now; I wanted to be a bride in my twenties. But I have learned that you can’t just create your own timetable and will it to come true. So here I am on the brink of a new decade, realizing that being alone makes my thirties daunting, and being thirty makes me feel more alone.

  The situation seems all the more dismal because my oldest and best friend has a glamorous PR job and is freshly engaged. Darcy is still the lucky one. I watch her now, telling a story to a group of us, including her fiancé. Dex and Darcy are an exquisite couple, lean and tall with matching dark hair and green eyes. They are among New York’s beautiful people. The well-groomed couple registering for fine china and crystal on the sixth floor at Bloomingdale’s. You hate their smugness but can’t resist staring at them when you’re on the same floor searching for a not-too-expensive gift for the umpteenth wedding you’ve been invited to without a date. You strain to glimpse her ring, and are instantly sorry you did. She catches you staring and gives you a disdainful once-over. You wish you hadn’t worn your tennis shoes to Bloomingdale’s. She is probably thinking that the footwear may be part of your problem. You buy your Waterford vase and get the hell out of there.

  “So the lesson here is: if you ask for a Brazilian bikini wax, make sure you specify. Tell them to leave a landing strip or else you can wind up hairless, like a ten-year-old!” Darcy finishes her bawdy tale, and everybody laughs. Except Dex, who shakes his head, as if to say, what a piece of work my fiancée is.

  “Okay. I’ll be right back,” Darcy suddenly says. “Tequila shots for one and all!”

  As she moves away from the group toward the bar, I think back to all of the birthdays we have celebrated together, all of the benchmarks we reached together, benchmarks that I always reached first. I got my driver’s license before she did, could drink legally before she could. Being older, if only by a few months, used to be a good thing. But now our fortunes have reversed. Darcy has an extra summer in her twenties—a perk of being born in the fall. Not that it matters as much for her: when you’re engaged or married, turning thirty just isn’t the same thing.

  Darcy is now leaning over the bar, flirting with the twenty-something, aspiring actor/bartender whom she has already told me she would “totally do” if she were single. As if Darcy would ever be single. She said once in high school, “I don’t break up, I trade up.” She kept her word on that, and she always did the dumping. Throughout our teenage years, college, and every day of our twenties, she has been attached to someone. Often she has more than one guy hanging around, hoping.

  It occurs to me that I could hook up with the bartender. I am totally unencumbered—haven’t even been on a date in nearly two months. But it doesn’t seem like something one should do at age thirty. One-night stands are for girls in their twenties. Not that I would know. I have followed an orderly, Goody Two-shoes path with no deviations. I got straight As in high school, went to college, graduated magna cum laude, took the LSAT, went straight to law school and to a big law firm after that. No backpacking in Europe, no crazy stories, no unhealthy, lustful relationships. No secrets. No intrigue. And now it seems too late for any of that. Because that stuff would just further delay my goal of finding a husband, settling down, having children and a happy home with grass and a garage and a toaster that toasts four slices at once.

  So I feel unsettled about my future and somewhat regretful about my past. I tell myself that there will be time to ponder tomorrow. Right now I will have fun. It is the sort of thing that a disciplined person can simply decide. And I am exceedingly disciplined—the kind of child who did her homework on Friday afternoons right after school, the kind of woman (as of tomorrow, I am no longer any part girl) who flosses every night and makes her bed every morning.

  Darcy returns with the shots but Dex refuses his, so Darcy insists that I do two. Before I know it, the night starts to take on that blurry quality, when you cross over from being buzzed to drunk, losing track of time and the precise order of things. Apparently Darcy has reached that point even sooner because she is now dancing on the bar. Spinning and gyrating in a little red halter dress and three-inch heels.

  “Stealing the show at your party,” Hillary, my closest friend from work, says to me under her breath. “She’s shameless.”

  I laugh. “Yeah. Par for the course.”

  Darcy lets out a yelp, claps her hands over her head, and beckons me with a come-hither expression that would appeal to any man who has ever fancied girl-on-girl action. “Rachel! Rachel! C’mere!”

  Of course she knows that I will not join her. I have never danced on a bar. I wouldn’t know what to do up there besides fall. I shake my head and smile, a polite refusal. We all wait for her next move, which is to swivel her hips in perfect time to the music, bend over slowly, and then whip her body upright again, her long hair spilling every which way. The limber maneuver reminds me of her perfect imitation of Tawny Kitaen in the Whitesnake video “Here I Go Again,” how she used to roll around doing splits on the hood of her father’s BMW, to the delight of the pubescent neighborhood boys. I glance at Dex, who in these moments can never quite decide whether to be amused or annoyed. To say that the man has patience is an understatement. Dex and I have this in common.

  “Happy birthday, Rachel!” Darcy yells. “Let’s all raise a glass to Rachel!”

  Which everyone does. Without taking their eyes off her.

  A minute later, Dex whisks her down from the bar, slings her over his shoulder, and deposits her on the floor next to me in one fluid motion. Clearly he has done this before. “All right,” he announces. “I’m taking our little party-planner home.”

  Darcy plucks her drink off the bar and stamps her foot. “You’re not the boss of me, Dex! Is he, Rachel?” As she asserts her independence, she stumbles and sloshes her martini all over Dex’s shoe.

  Dex grimaces. “You’re wasted, Darce. This isn’t fun for anyone but you.”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll go…I’m feeling kind of sick anyway,” she says, looking queasy.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

>   “I’ll be fine. Don’t you worry,” she says, now playing the role of brave little sick girl.

  I thank her for my party, tell her that it was a total surprise—which is a lie, because I knew Darcy would capitalize on my thirtieth to buy a new outfit, throw a big bash, and invite as many of her friends as my own. Still, it was nice of her to have the party, and I am glad that she did. She is the kind of friend who always makes things feel special. She hugs me hard and says she’d do anything for me, and what would she do without me, her maid of honor, the sister she never had. She is gushing, as she always does when she drinks too much.

  Dex cuts her off. “Happy birthday, Rachel. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He gives me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Thanks, Dex,” I say. “Good night.”

  I watch him usher her outside, holding her elbow after she nearly trips on the curb. Oh, to have such a caretaker. To be able to drink with reckless abandon and know that there will be someone to get you home safely.

  Sometime later Dex reappears in the bar. “Darcy lost her purse. She thinks she left it here. It’s small, silver,” he says. “Have you seen it?”

  “She lost her new Chanel bag?” I shake my head and laugh because it is just like Darcy to lose things. Usually I keep track of them for her, but I went off duty on my birthday. Still, I help Dex search for the purse, finally spotting it under a bar stool.

  As he turns to leave, Dex’s friend Marcus, one of his groomsmen, convinces him to stay. “C’mon, man. Hang out for a minute.”

  So Dex calls Darcy at home and she slurs her consent, tells him to have fun without her. Although she is probably thinking that such a thing is not possible.