The Rehearsals

by Annette Christie

“Nothing to worry about.” Megan kissed the tip of his nose. He wrapped his arms around her, rolled her over onto her back, and brushed her hair away so he could get a better look at her face.

  “Hi,” he said, his voice low, tender.

  “Hi.”

  He kissed her, tenderness turning into passion. Lust. But the mention of pregnancy was messing with her head. Unwillingly, she began thinking of the time she and Tom had come up with ridiculous baby names. The thought buffeted her with nostalgia for their lost intimacy. From the beginning, pleasure had been only a small component of being with Tom. She’d had plenty of that during her high-school hookups. She and Tom shared a connection, yes. But above everything else, the power of having sex with Tom stemmed from their willingness to be completely vulnerable to each other.

  For Megan, that vulnerability was in the details, in the way she’d let him take in what gravity did to her large-ish breasts, which she’d always kind of hated; in the way he let her see his body convulse when he climaxed; in the way they would be open with each other about what felt good and what didn’t.

  It was the place they were most honest, something they’d obviously had trouble with everywhere else.

  Leo pulled away ever so slightly. “Where’d your mind go, Givens?”

  She took in his flickering eyes, the way the sun darkened his skin and lightened his hair. They had known each other forever, but achieving the intimacy she craved would take time. It wasn’t fair to compare where she was with Leo to where she’d been with Tom. It was easier to be vulnerable when you started at the age of eighteen.

  “If my red Solo cup birth control failed and I accidentally got knocked up, what would you want to name the baby?” When Leo’s brow furrowed, she understood he wasn’t in on the gag. She opened the door for the inside joke a little wider. “I mean, you do a lot of traveling, so maybe you’d want to name it United Airlines Flight 7421.”

  “I love how secretly weird you are,” Leo said, cracking a smile. “But I’m not having kids. Not even hypothetical ones.”

  “Oh.” It’d been assumed for so long that Megan would be a mother, planned by Tom’s parents, pushed by Donna, that Megan realized she wasn’t actually sure how she felt about having kids.

  “It just seems irresponsible to bring a kid into the world only to inherit the environmental crisis and a sociopolitical hellscape.”

  It was an opinion held by a lot of people Megan knew. She didn’t disagree. Selfishly, though, she’d always wondered what it’d be like to have a child in her arms. Her own child. A little one to love and nurture the way Paulina had with her. “I mean, you’re not wrong.” Kids weren’t a deal-breaker for Megan, she decided. Leo made some compelling points.

  “Is that…okay?”

  The fear in his voice tapped on her chest. She took his face in her hands and kissed away the worried lines between his eyebrows. “Of course it’s okay. I’m not going anywhere, Leo.”

  He held her tightly, their bodies cocooned in the tornado of sheets. The gurgling of his stomach broke their mood and they both dissolved into laughter.

  “Hungry?”

  “Famished,” Leo admitted. “You want to get some dinner? We could order room service.”

  But Megan couldn’t respond. Her brain hitched at the word dinner. She rolled over to look at the clock: 7:25 p.m. She was almost half an hour late for her rehearsal dinner. Anxiety rippled through her, but before it could burst, she remembered she didn’t have to go.

  She didn’t have to go.

  “Dinner. Yes,” she said. “Then what?”

  Leo made a great production of stretching out his arms, his biceps flexing as he linked his hands behind his head. Megan marveled that she found even his little tufts of armpit hair sexy. Everything about Leo was alluring.

  “I have to go to Belize on Sunday to do a quality-control check on the tours down there. You want to come?”

  Megan tried to wrap her head around the idea of giving every obligation she had the middle finger and literally running away with Leo. Assuming, of course, time started moving again.

  She could do that. She could run away with the one who’d gotten away.

  It felt as though someone had just taken a sledgehammer to the shackles she’d been wearing for years. “Dinner, then Belize.”

  The shock registered on his face. “You mean it? You’ll come?”

  Megan grabbed her dress from where it had pooled on the floor and held it up to her chest. “I absolutely mean it. Belize with you sounds perfect. I’ll just run to my room and get the rest of my stuff.”

  On the off chance tomorrow decided to make an appearance, she couldn’t let this escape pod fly away without her. She wanted to head for a new life as quickly as possible.

  Before she left, Leo reached out, his fingers grazing along her arm until his hand found hers. “We’re doing this.”

  The sides of her mouth curved up. “We’re doing this.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tom

  Megs wasn’t at the rehearsal dinner—Tom had peeked through the windows and checked. Not knowing where else to look, he paced their hotel room, still wearing the clothes from the gift shop. He’d spent the past several hours trying to formulate what he wanted to say to Megs, but the words were still jumbled in his mind, syllables thrown into a popcorn maker, spinning and bursting when they got too hot.

  The faint beep of the key card startled him. He waited what felt like hours for the doorknob to turn and then there she was. Flushed, her hair wild, wearing a wrinkled dress.

  And Tom thought he’d had an erratic day.

  “Hey.” It was the first hot syllable that popped out of his mouth.

  “Hey.” There was surprise in her voice. She hadn’t expected to see him here.

  Making conversation was hard when you couldn’t work out how you felt about the other person. Two years ago, when he’d proposed, he knew. A week ago, when they’d lain in bed talking about what to pack for their honeymoon, he knew. For the past twelve years, with every fiber of his being, he knew…but this time-loop thing was telling him over and over again that, actually, he knew nothing.

  “I guess you’re playing hooky from the dinner too.” Not the coolest start.

  “I didn’t really see the point,” she replied flatly.

  “Yeah.” He adjusted his collar, which was scratching at his neck.

  “What are you wearing?” she asked, scrutinizing his chinos and pastel Roche Harbor golf shirt at the same moment he said, “Should we talk?”

  Their feet seemed rooted to the spot, neither sure whose question should be responded to first.

  “I threw my luggage into the ocean,” Tom reminded her.

  “I don’t really have time to talk right now, but if things keep going the way they’ve been going, never fear. We’ll have eternity.”

  This wasn’t a new concept to Tom. He didn’t know what he thought about the afterlife, but deep down he’d always figured he’d be with Megs for eternity. It was part of the reason why, as their relationship matured, they’d stopped marking holidays like Valentine’s Day and their anniversaries. And they never could decide which anniversary deserved the most attention. Was it the day they first sat together in Natural Disasters? Their first date? Their first kiss? The day they officially moved in together?

  They compensated by scooping all these events under one umbrella and surprising each other randomly with an anniversary gift or dinner. One time Megs borrowed a karaoke machine from work and changed the lyrics to the Cure’s “Mint Car” to include highlights from their relationship. Another time Tom made a terrible scrapbook composed of ticket stubs, the receipts from takeout orders they’d shared, podcast recommendations she’d written down for Tom’s commute to work, and that one pair of her underwear that had torn when they’d had sex up against the kitchen cupboards and it’d gotten snagged on the handle of a drawer.

  Looking at her now, mascara flaked under her eyes, clothing askew, he felt
a warmth for her spreading through his chest. He not only wanted to forgive her for cheating on him—he knew he could.

  “Have you checked your phone?” Megs asked, breaking the heavy silence.

  “Not in a while. Why?” He pulled out his phone. An almost never-ending scroll of messages flashed on his lock screen. If this were a real day and he believed in the future, his anxiety would be spiking. Instead, he laughed, partially because it was funny, this idea of crucial things (keeping their families content, making sure the events of the weekend went smoothly) suddenly becoming meaningless. His laugh was also an attempt to break the tension between them. Because there was something different about Megs’s behavior right now. This morning she had been angry. Now she was angry with a purpose and he didn’t know what that purpose was.

  “I’m assuming yours is blowing up too. Guess this is what happens when you bail on your own wedding.” She grabbed her suitcase out of the closet and began throwing in clothes and toiletries seemingly at random.

  A chill spread through him.

  She was about to leave him.

  That was what was driving her. A need to leave. Now.

  Panic bubbled inside him. He wasn’t ready to go through this alone, to endure this loop with a Megs-shaped hole in him. There were things that still needed to be said. “Wait—” He strode the length of the room and took her hand. “Can we talk?”

  “What’s there to talk about?” She spun on him, shaking him off. “Nothing’s fixed here, Tom. I think we got it wrong. Hasn’t it occurred to you that this whole loop is about us being apart, not us being together?”

  Her sudden anger pushed him back. “What are you talking about?”

  “I slept with Leo.”

  Were they on the same loop? He knew they’d fought at the docks that morning, but surely she wasn’t so full of disdain she couldn’t have a conversation with him. And why was she presenting this like it was new information?

  “I know you did.”

  “No. Tom. I slept with Leo.”

  The realization came in slow motion. Suddenly her appearance made sense.

  His naïveté gripped him, embarrassed him. Of course she had. Because they’d both decided to let anarchy reign supreme today, so she’d run to the person who’d coined the phrase. The person she’d probably wanted all along.

  The one she didn’t see as a coward.

  There was no forgiveness to be had here. No resolution, no divine intervention. If she was going to blow up the world they’d created, then so was he. Still, he couldn’t help trying to get one last barb in to cover his humiliation. His defeat.

  “Great. Congratulations.” He threw up his hands. “Because I screwed a bartender.”

  Not exactly true, but…

  “Excellent. I hope you enjoyed it.” She grabbed the door handle and pulled, her suitcase half zipped, clothes spilling out. “Have a nice life.”

  “Yeah. Enjoy fucking Leo.”

  She slammed the door behind her and he waited until he could no longer hear her footsteps in the hall before he collapsed on the bed.

  They never talked about it, but he and Megs had nearly broken up once, back when they were twenty-five. He was a first-year associate and, on a whim, she’d applied for a position at GQ in London, thinking it’d be fun to live abroad and be closer to Paulina and Hamza.

  “Come with me,” she’d said to Tom from across their kitchen table, which had a small pad of Post-its under one leg to keep it level. Even so, the table tilted slightly anytime either of them rested an elbow on it.

  He’d encouraged her to apply, not thinking through what would happen if she got the position. She frequently applied for jobs in far-off places as a method of blowing off steam. It seemed like an adorably quirky coping mechanism, not something that could actually alter their lives. But now the offer had come in, and so had the threat to the life they shared.

  “I can’t come with you,” he’d replied. It’d taken years for him to get to where he was. Now he was mere months away from making a paycheck he could be proud of. Hopping on a plane and leaving it all behind seemed scary. Unreasonably scary.

  He leaned forward, searching for a sign she didn’t really mean it, wasn’t really interested in dropping everything she’d worked for too. The table tilted.

  “Can’t you?” she’d asked. Pleaded. “It would be amazing. You know it would. Just you and me and occasionally Paulina and Hamza. Why not?”

  But they’d already made plans. They were living their plans. Harvard, grad school for her, law school for him, then New York. They’d done this together. Where was the Megs who loved checking off items on her to-do list?

  I can’t come with you and Can’t you? swirled between them. He was still waiting for that sign that she didn’t mean all this. Didn’t really want to leave.

  “Do you want me to go without you?” she said finally.

  When the words stretched between them, he felt like the table was the only thing holding him up. Dust particles that were usually invisible danced around them as the sun came through the kitchen window.

  The pain in her eyes as she waited for him to answer was agonizing, and soon they were both crying. He reached for her and she reached back. They moved from the kitchen to the couch, where they held each other. In the end, the conversation didn’t go any further and Megs never left. He’d never felt quite as close to tragedy.

  Though, as far as disasters went, Tom would now classify it as only about a two on his own personal Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale.

  Today he was hitting a five.

  He’d been close…so close to actually being able to forgive her. And all she wanted to do was get the hell away from him. His eyes prickled. A lump formed in his throat.

  This time was no near miss; she was truly leaving him. And she’d slept with his best friend. Again. Megs had been everything to him and he really had just been…a placeholder.

  He wanted to punch a wall; he wanted to cry. They’d ended things more than once on this never-ending day. But there was something about watching her pack her bags, presumably to run off with Leo, that made it all seem final. She’d made her choice.

  He peeled off his chinos and pastel golf shirt and climbed into the hotel bed naked. The adrenaline from their sudden fight and the punctuation of the slamming door waned. If the universe would let him, Tom would sleep forever.

  Day

  5

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Megan

  Despite falling asleep wrapped in Leo, Megan awoke to Donna bursting into her room.

  Bleary-eyed, Megan squinted and sarcastically saluted Donna. She passed by her to loudly pee with the door open.

  “What are you…” Donna covered her eyes, scandalized. “Maybe you and Tom have this kind of relationship, but that’s not the way to keep a man.”

  A thousand comebacks flashed through Megan’s mind. Instead of speaking, she grabbed her hotel robe and threw it on over her skimpy pajamas. Tuning out her mother’s monologue, she walked out of the room.

  Her hair resembled an otter’s den, she was sure her cheeks were creased from her pillowcase, and her morning breath was so potent she could taste it. Still, Megan trudged down the hallway, got in the elevator, got out in the lobby, and slumped in a wingback chair.

  She was approached by the desk clerk, the same one ready to check in all the guests she couldn’t seem to get rid of for the wedding she couldn’t seem to stop. “Can I get you something, miss?” he asked, so polite it bordered on aggression.

  “Nope.” Megan squinted at him, her eyes still adjusting to the new-old day. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Perhaps you might be more comfortable—”

  Megan let her head flop back so she could get a better look at this poor hotel employee. He was clearly ill-equipped to deal with the creature that time forgot in his lobby.

  “I’m the bride,” she told him through gritted teeth.

  Evidently, those were the three magic
words, because he scuttled off to use the front desk as a shield.

  Megan had no idea what Tom was going to be up to today. She’d already decided that if he walked by, she’d high-five him and tell him to keep walking. She wasn’t in the mood for another screaming match or an insincere heart-to-heart.

  Given all the talking they’d done on this day from hell, one would think they’d be getting closer. Instead, she’d never felt so distant from him.

  While she waited, she doodled on the pad of paper next to the lobby telephone, trying to beat herself at tic-tac-toe. She drew swirls that went on for as long as the page allowed, imagining herself falling through the inked eye of the tornado, trying to decide what was on the other end. Trying to decide why this was happening to her.

  Problem-solving was so ingrained in Megan, she imagined it had its very own gene. Though she definitely hadn’t gotten that gene from her mother.

  Her body begged for coffee, for sustenance. She was experiencing a perverse pleasure in denying herself these basic needs. Megan was not going to make one more move until she took care of item one on today’s to-do list.

  Finally, bathed in sunlight and the accompanying breeze when she opened the door, Paulina appeared. She was holding her stomach, complaining the baby had the hiccups and that its bouncing made her look like the host of some alien species. Hamza laughed, rubbed her belly gently, and stage-whispered to the baby to stop torturing its mother.

  Megan watched them as though she were removed, an audience to their play. She wanted their easy love so much, her eyes pricked with tears. If soul mates existed, she was looking at a pair of them right now. With the sleeves of the hotel robe, she wiped the tears away, taking a deep breath to steady herself. The motion caught Paulina’s attention.

  “Megan!” Paulina threw her purse into Hamza’s arms and rushed over as quickly as her body would allow. “You’re going to have to stand up to get this hug I have locked and loaded, because if I so much as bend over, I’m a goner. My center of gravity is not what it used to be.”