"Well," he said. "She and I did date for a minute. We had potential before you came along."
"You went on a few lousy dates whereas I was engaged to Dex. What kind of person hooks up with her friend's fiance?"
He crossed his arms and gave me a knowing look. "Darcy."
"What?"
"You're looking at one. Remember? I was one of Dexter's groomsmen? Ring a bell?"
I sniffed. True, Marcus and Dex had been college buddies, friends for years. But it just wasn't a comparable situation. "It's not the same. Female friendships are more sacred; my relationship with Rachel has been lifelong. She was my very best friend in the world, and you were, like, the very last one stuck in the groomsman lineup. Dex probably wouldn't even have picked you except that he needed a fifth person to go with my five girls."
"Gee. I'm touched."
I ignored his sarcasm, and said, "Besides, you never painted yourself as a saint like she did."
"You're right about that. I'm no saint."
"You just don't go there with your best girlfriend's fiance. Or ex-fiance. Period. Ever. Even if a gazillion years elapsed, you still can't go there. And you certainly don't hop in bed with him one day after the breakup." Then I hurled more questions his way: Did he think it was a one-time thing? Were they beginning a relationship? Could they actually fall in love? Would they ever last?
To which Marcus shrugged and answered with some variation of: I don't know and I don't care.
To which I yelled: Guess! Care! Soothe me!
Finally, he caved, patting my arm and responding satisfyingly to my leading questions. He agreed that it was likely a one-time thing with Rachel and Dex. That Dex went over to Rachel's because he was upset. That being with Rachel was the closest thing to me. And as for Rachel, she just wanted to throw a bone to a broken man.
"Okay. So what do you think I should do now?" I asked.
"Nothing you can do," Marcus said, reaching over to open a pizza box resting near his guitar case. "It's cold, but help yourself."
"As if I could eat now!" I exhaled dramatically and did a spread eagle on the floor. "The way I see it is, I have two options: murder and/or suicide… It would be pretty easy to kill them, you know?"
I wanted him to gasp at my suggestion, but much to my constant disappointment, he was never too shocked by my words. He simply pulled a slice of pizza from the box, folded it in half, and crammed it in his mouth. He chewed for a moment, and with his mouth still full, he pointed out that I would be the prime and only suspect. "You'd wind up at a female corrections facility in upstate New York. With a mullet. I can see you now slopping out gruel with your mullet flapping in the prison yard breeze."
I thought about this and decided that I'd vastly prefer my own death to a mullet. Which brought me to the suicide option. "Fine. So murder is out. I'll just kill myself instead. They'd be really sorry if I killed myself, wouldn't they?" I asked, more for shock value than because I was really considering my own death.
I wanted Marcus to tell me that he couldn't live without me. But he didn't take the bait in the suicide game as Rachel had when we were in junior high, and she'd promise that she'd override my mother's classical music selections and see to it that Pink Floyd's "On the Turning Away" was cranked up at my funeral.
"They'd be so sorry if I killed myself," I said to Marcus. "Think they'd come to my funeral? Would they apologize to my parents?"
"Yeah. Probably so. But people move on fast. In fact, sometimes they even forget about you at the funeral, depending on how good the food is."
"But what about their guilt?" I asked. "How could they live with themselves?"
He assured me that the initial guilt could be assuaged by any good therapist. So after a few weeknights on a leather couch, the person, once racked with what ifs, would come to understand that only a very troubled soul would take her own life, and that one, albeit significant, act of betrayal doesn't cause a healthy person to jump in front of the number 6 train.