Emily Giffin - Love the one youre with

Of course there was that one time with Leo in his office …

I desperately try to push the memory out of my head by kissing Andy again, this time on his mouth. But as is the way when you're trying not to think of something, the scene only grows more vivid. And so, suddenly, I am doing the unthinkable. I am kissing my husband while picturing another man. Picturing Leo . I kiss Andy harder, desperate to erase Leo's face and lips. It doesn't work. I am only kissing Leo harder. I work at the buttons on Andy's shirt and slide my hands across his stomach and chest. I take my own sweater off. We hold each other, skin to skin. I say Andy's name out loud. Leo is still there. His body against mine.

"Hmm, Ellen," Andy moans, his fingers stroking my back.

Leo's hot hands are digging into my back with crazy pressure, urgency.

I open my eyes and tell Andy to look at me. He does.

I look into them and say, "I love you."

"I love you, too," he says, so sweetly. His expression is frank, sincere, earnest. His face is the face I love.

I squeeze my eyes shut, concentrating on the feel of Andy growing hard against my thigh. Our pants are still on, but I center myself over him, grinding back against him, saying his name again. My husband's name. Andy . There is no confusing who I am with right now. Who I love. This works for a while. And continues to work as Andy leads me to our bedroom where the all-or-nothing radiator is either dormant or sputtering steam everywhere. Right now, the room is downright tropical. We push away our goose down comforter, and slide against our soft sheets. We are completely undressed now. This bed is sacred. Leo is gone. He is nowhere.

And yet, moments later, when Andy is moving inside me, I am back in Leo's apartment on the night the not-guilty verdict finally came down. He is unshaven and his eyes are slightly glazed from our celebratory drinks. He hugs me fiercely and whispers in my ear, "I'm not sure what it is about you, Ellen Dempsey, but I have to have you."

It was the same night I gave myself to him completely, knowing that I would belong to him for as long as he wanted to keep me.

And, as it turned out, even longer than that.

Margot calls the next morning long before the sun is up-or, as Andy would say, before anyone in their right mind is up. Andy seldom gets agitated, but three things consistently set him off: people who cut in lines; bickering about politics in social settings; and his sister calling too early in the morning.

"What the hell ?" he says after the second ring. His voice is scratchy, as it always is the morning after a few beers, which we ended up downing the night before at a Third Avenue bistro, along with burgers and the best shoestring fries in the neighborhood. We had a good time, laughing even more than usual, but our dinner didn't jettison Leo any more than sex had. He was stubbornly there with me all night, remarking on the crabby man at the table beside us and the Joni Mitchell background music. As I finished my third beer and listened to Andy talk about his work, I found myself drifting back to the morning Leo told me that my face was his favorite in the world. He said it just like that, utterly matter-of-factly and unsentimentally over coffee. I was wearing no makeup, my hair pulled back in a ponytail, sun from his living room window streaming in my eyes. But I believed him. I could tell he meant it.

"Thank you," I said, blushing, thinking that his face was by far my favorite, too. I wondered if this, more than anything else, is a sign of true love.

Then he said, "I will never get tired of looking at you… Never."

And it is this memory, perhaps my top-ranking memory of Leo, that once again fills my head as the loud ringing continues in our bedroom. Andy groans as the caller finally gives up, waits a few seconds, and tries again.

"Let it go to voicemail," I say, but Andy reaches across me and grabs the phone from my nightstand. To be sure of the culprit, he checks caller ID-which is completely unnecessary. Short of an outright emergency, it can only be Margot. Sure enough, her husband's name, Webb Buffington, lights up the screen, along with Atlanta, Georgia, where, much to my disappointment, they returned last year. I always knew the move was inevitable, particularly after she met Webb, who was also from Atlanta. As much as Margot loved New York and her career, she's a Southern girl at heart and desperately wanted all the traditional trimmings that come with a genteel life. Moreover, Webb was, in his words, "So over the city." He wanted to golf, wanted to drive, wanted space for all his fancy electronic toys.

As evidenced by this morning's call, Margot and I still talk daily, but I miss the face-to-face time with her. I miss having brunch on the weekends and drinks after work. I miss sharing the city-and some of the same friends. Andy misses her, too, except in intrusive moments like these, when his sleep is impacted.

He jams the talk button with his thumb and barks into the phone, "Jesus, Margot. Do you know what time it is?"

I can hear her high voice say, "I know. I know. I'm really sorry, Andy. But it's legitimate this time. I promise. Put Ellen on. Please?"

"It's not even seven o'clock," he says. "How many times do I have to ask you not to wake us up? That the only decent part of my job is the late start time? Would you do this if Ellen were married to someone else? And, if not, how about asking yourself if you shouldn't respect your own brother just a little bit more than some random guy?"

I smile at some random guy, thinking that the guy wouldn't be random if I were married to him. Then I think of Leo again and cringe, knowing that he will never only be some random guy to me. I get Andy's point, though, and I'm sure Margot does, too, but he doesn't give her a chance to respond. Instead, he thrusts the phone at me and dramatically buries his head under his pillow.

"Hey, Margot," I say as quietly as possible.

She issues a perfunctory apology and then trills, "I have news !"

They are the exact words, the same singsongy, confiding tone she used when she called me the night she and Webb got engaged. Or, as Webb is fond of saying in the retelling of their betrothal, before she could even muster a yes to him. He is exaggerating, of course, although she did call me first, even before her mother, which gratified me in a way I couldn't quite pinpoint. I think it had something to do with not having my own mother and the reassurance that friends might supplant family, even in the absence of death.

"Omigod, Margot," I say now, fully alert and no longer concerned about disturbing Andy.

Andy uncovers his head and says with a contrite, almost worried, expression, "Is she all right?"

I nod happily, reassuringly, but he continues to look fearful as he whispers, "What is it?"

I hold up a finger. I want confirmation even though there is absolutely no doubt in my mind what her news is. That voice of hers is reserved for exactly two things-weddings and babies. She had at least three significant promotions at J.Crew and had been blase about every one. It wasn't so much modesty as it was that she never cared all that much about her career, despite how good she was. Maybe because she knew it had a self-imposed expiration date. That at some point around thirty, she would voluntarily retire and begin the next phase of things, i.e., marry, move back to Atlanta, and start a family.

" Are you?" I ask, fast-forwarding to envision Margot, swollen-bellied, in a couture maternity gown.

"Is she what?" Andy mouths.

I look at him, wondering what else he thinks we could possibly be talking about. I feel a surge of affection for his boyish cluelessness. Yes, Andy, she is making snickerdoodles this morning . Yes, Andy, she is in the market for a baby grand piano .