The Rehearsals

by Annette Christie

  She wasn’t wearing the necklace, he noted. Over the past six days he’d been watching with vague interest, clocking the days she wore it and the days she didn’t. He could still clearly recall the afternoon he’d bought it for her. It was a week before Valentine’s Day. Falling in love with Megs wasn’t something he could pinpoint with a date or a word or a kiss. It was more of an inevitability. Something he was destined to do, to feel. But he hadn’t been ready to tell her yet. He’d had a lifetime of what’d felt like rejection, mostly from his parents, and he didn’t think he could take rejection from her. And so he’d promised himself he’d bide his time and wait to tell her when he felt ready. (As it turned out, she beat him to the L-word punch months later over ice cream.) Still, he’d never experienced a Valentine’s Day with a girlfriend—definitely not someone he felt this strongly about. There had to be some way to commemorate it. To tell her how he felt without actually telling her.

  He went to a jewelry store and was subsequently talked into the necklace by a salesman who assured him it was the height of fashion and romance. Megs had gushed and worn it every day despite its on-the-nose pendant. Now he was so well acquainted with her taste, he could go into a jewelry store and easily pick out something she’d love. But he was still proud of that necklace, of what it represented.

  He hoped she’d wear it again. Another day. Another loop.

  Megs had grown quiet. It was time to perk her up.

  “Remember in college when you said you couldn’t wait until you could read for fun again?”

  She threw her head back and groaned. “That was when I’d accidentally signed up for that advanced mythology course and spent an entire semester reading Homer and Virgil and other verbose white dudes.”

  “When’s the last time you read something for fun? Not for work or for some book club my mom pressured you into joining?”

  She squinted at the sun and wrinkled her nose. “I can’t remember.”

  “I saw at least three bookstores in this town.” Tom wiped his hands on a napkin and stood up. “If we’re stuck in this day forever, we might as well catch up on our reading.”

  “Excellent plan.” Megs licked a dab of icing off her lips, sending a current through Tom.

  They strolled up Beacon Street, window-shopping and admiring the bronze statues artfully positioned along the way.

  “I love this place,” Megs gushed. “I could spend a few repeating days in this town.”

  “Me too.”

  They found an indie bookshop on the corner of a lazy intersection and popped in. The store sprawled, warm and inviting, with an array of merchandise and lots of kindly staff.

  “I’m going to become polyamorous,” Megs announced. “I’m going to marry that cinnamon roll and this bookstore.”

  It’d been years since Tom had seen her so unencumbered. The woman he fell in love with was shining through. It made him ache with a desire to stay in this day.

  She wandered around the shelves, picking up the occasional book and reading the back. He took a different route, keeping an eye out for her, enjoying seeing her be Megs again.

  They stayed in there for as long as they pleased, exciting the staff when they approached the register with their arms full of everything from commercial thrillers to feminist poetry and local-interest coffee-table books.

  “Best day ever,” he whispered to her as they watched their total hit the hundreds.

  She eyed him with an expression that was a cross between suspicion and total agreement. The combination was enough for now.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Megan

  Swap Vancouver Island for the Amalfi coast and the day was going similarly to how Megan had envisioned their honeymoon. When she let everything go, all her thoughts of real life and the days before and beyond this one, she felt an easy clarity. But then she’d snap back to reality and find herself confused all over again.

  Even so, she couldn’t help but compare this day to how she’d felt when she’d chosen Leo. Really chosen him. There’d been no easy clarity, no answers, no peace. Just questions that expanded and multiplied.

  Megan shouldn’t have been surprised. Her relationship with Tom was at its strongest when it was the two of them against the world. And so, as they carried their bookstore loot back to the park and stretched out in the shade, flipping through their newly purchased books—sharing photos and passages with each other—of course she could delude herself into thinking that if this day had never looped and she and Tom hadn’t fought, maybe they could’ve had a good life together.

  However, she and Tom weren’t the only factors in the equation. There would always be interfering parents and high-maintenance siblings and Leo and Midwest states. Which meant what Megan had to fix was herself. She might not have gotten the solitude in Montana she’d wanted to figure this all out, but spending a day on the water and in a charming seaside town, away from the wedding bedlam at Roche, was almost as good.

  Megan was pleasantly astonished to find having Tom around was a welcome comfort. Since the whole time loop started, he was the one person she didn’t have to wear a mask for. There was something to be said for that.

  She could be as messy as she wanted with him. As together as she wanted. Being able to just be relaxed her in a way she hadn’t experienced in years. From behind the wisps of her hair blowing around in the breeze, she snuck peeks of his profile: the strong jaw she’d always adored, the slope of his nose, his eyebrows that got so bushy, every few weeks he’d put his head in her lap so she could trim and tweeze them into submission. The custom usually devolved into them laughing as she threatened to tweeze her initials into his eyebrows.

  Megan tried to reconcile that image of easy companionship with what had obviously been brewing underneath.

  She put down a book of West Coast photography and stretched out her legs. “Who do you think we’d be if we’d grown up in stable, loving households?”

  Tom looked up from a book of poetry by Amanda Lovelace. “Do such households exist?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure out who I’d be if I hadn’t spent my childhood forging signatures on field-trip forms for Brianna while my mom was cruising for guys at the bar. If I’d had parents like Paulina and Hamza.” Her eyes became hot with tears. Tom reached out to rub her calf, his face full of empathy. “I think that was part of what I loved about our time at Harvard,” she went on. “I was so far away from everyone else, it was like I got to take up space for the first time. To make mistakes and…”

  She was veering too close to Leo territory and Tom’s hand stilled. Even if they had a million more versions of this day, she wasn’t sure if they’d ever truly forgive each other.

  “I’m sorry,” Tom said.

  His apology—and the timing of it—was unexpected. She kept her tone light. “For what?”

  “For all the times I made it harder for you to take up space.”

  She took those words from him. Held them in her hands to feel the weight, the depth. And then made herself a promise: she was going to stop measuring herself against her childhood and people like John and Carol.

  “That said…” Tom put his book down, folded his hands in his lap. “I think who you are at your core is who you’d be regardless.”

  She sniffed derisively, wondering if Tom still knew her better than anyone. “Oh yeah? And who’s that?”

  “The most capable, efficient, bravest, and warmest person I know.”

  The compliment hit its mark. She resisted reaching out to him, though the instinct was there. Instead, Megan settled into the reassuring feeling of finally being in a place where she and Tom could perhaps be friends again.

  Because she didn’t have to lose everything to this never-ending day. And she was starting to see what she wanted to keep.

  Megan might not be able to control how every day in this loop began, but she could certainly control how each ended, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do right now.

  Chapt
er Thirty-Two

  Tom

  Come on.” megs held her hand out.

  “Where are we going? What about all these books we bought?”

  She shrugged. “Let other people come by and read them. The sun’s setting soon.”

  “You want to head back?” The last thing Tom was keen on doing right now was manning the bowline while Megan took them out of the slip. They were docked next to a very expensive-looking yacht. However, she was holding out her hand to him, and it felt like forever since she’d done that. Tom was willing to do almost anything if it meant holding Megs’s hand. “We can head back, if that’s what you really want.”

  “Never.” Megs pointed to the man-made break in the water. “I want to climb that.”

  Unsure about how much better lumbering up and over a wall of giant boulders was than potentially running Happy Accident into a cranky billionaire’s boat, he let her help him to his feet. Sadly, she let go of his hand as soon as he was standing. She took off and Tom followed along behind, thinking about the conversation they’d just had.

  It was a seemingly small moment of honesty. Something they’d once had in truckloads. He had scores of memories of them lying on the lumpy mattress in their first New York apartment, the light of the moon streaming through the tablecloth they’d hung as a makeshift curtain, sharing secrets like they were kids at a sleepover.

  Over the past few years, their secrets had gone unshared and their conversations had become about trivial daily things, not fears or epiphanies or lofty thoughts about their future. It was part of growing up, Tom told himself as he and Megs climbed over the fence and went down the hill to the rock breaker made entirely of grayscale boulders that separated the marina from the open ocean. You stopped thinking in expansive ways and started dealing with the day-to-day.

  But he wasn’t sure that was true or that he wanted it to be. He just knew he wanted to stop thinking about Megs and Leo anytime he heard her say the word mistake. In any context.

  “Are you sure we’re allowed to do this?” Tom asked as Megs started her precarious ascent up the first boulder.

  “Oh, we’re definitely not allowed to do this.” She cast a backward glance at him. “But we’re doing it anyway.”

  He wiped perspiration from the back of his neck and climbed up after her. Once at the top, they walked along as though on a slightly uneven balance beam.

  “Have you done this before?” He was trying to keep the worry from his voice, although what was the point? Megs of all people knew he was a chicken when it came to heights. He tried not to look at the thrashing ocean below. This wasn’t like falling into the water in Hawaii; the sea here was cold enough to induce hypothermia. Probably within minutes. Plus, odds were he’d crack his skull on the jagged rocks on the way down. He swallowed hard and kept taking gingerly steps.

  “Brianna, Alistair, and I did this when we were teenagers. Gran and Granddad took us here for Canada Day a couple of times. These were the best seats for the fireworks. I suspect they’ll be the best seats for the sunset.”

  When she finally stopped walking and crouched down, Tom nearly wept with relief. He was quite a ways behind, but she waited patiently until he sat next to her.

  Once seated, his center of gravity nice and low, he allowed himself to look up and out rather than down. “Wow.”

  The marina was quiet, despite nearly every slip being filled by a sailboat or yacht. Behind them, the ocean crested. Ahead, on the other side of the breaker, the water in the marina looked like glass, like a mirror. He was amazed at how different the ocean could be on either side of the wall.

  “Yeah. Not a bad view, huh?” She gave him a crooked smile. “God, I love it out here. Forgive me, New York, but West Coast, best coast.”

  He laughed. “Traitor.”

  On the open-ocean side of the wall, the horizon line seemed forever away. A handful of boats moved so slowly across the water, they might as well have been still. As the sky lit up in pinks and oranges and colors that reminded Tom of a candy shop, he decided sharing secrets definitely wasn’t just for kids at a sleepover. Or something you ever grew out of. Light-years away, a single brave star emerged before night fell completely.

  “When you called me a coward…” The memory snagged, creating a layer of emotion in his throat.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Megs immediately replied, her shoulders dropping.

  “No, no, you were right. I think that’s why it hit me so hard.” A rock beneath him wobbled and he splayed his fingers on either side to steady himself.

  “You’re okay,” Megs murmured. “This thing is steadier than you and I combined.”

  Tom could see the regret pass over her face as soon as she said it.

  He let the moment roll off and away before continuing. “I let my dad make all my choices for me.”

  She nodded.

  “Like I was too scared to make any choices for myself.” He smiled sadly. “You being the exception.”

  “We chose each other,” she confirmed so softly he felt his heart breaking all over again.

  “Yeah. We did. As it turns out, I’m pretty good at making my own decisions—when it happens.”

  “You think so?”

  He knew she was referring to the absolute war zone their relationship had exploded into, but he still stood by their discussion in Natural Disasters and the necklace and the ice cream and all the New Year’s Eve parties and the proposal and everything else in between.

  “Yeah, I think so.” He wanted to take her hand so badly. To hold it as long as he could this time, not just in a fleeting moment of rising to his feet. “I’m sorry about asking you to make concessions for my career goals—goals that weren’t even mine. I did that even before I took that job in Missouri.”

  She shrugged, and he knew they were both thinking about New York, about London, about all the things that could have been. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Yes, it does.” Carefully, so as not to plunge to a watery grave, he turned to face her. “It was a cowardly, dick move. Every time. And I regret it so much.”

  “I can’t really hold it over your head when I have one or two regrets of my own.” She bit her lower lip and he cursed the image of her and Leo that flashed in his mind.

  “Speaking of that particular regret…” Tom cleared his throat. “I’m also really sorry I lied to you about that note. The one you thought I left on your windshield in college.”

  “Tom, I—” Megs tried to wave off his words.

  “No, I mean it. And I want you to know why I did it.”

  The sky was getting darker, but the moon was big enough to illuminate them. He could see her eyes as clearly as if a spotlight shone above her.

  “How I felt about you…it was bigger than I knew how to say. I could kiss you and cook for you and buy you a cheesy necklace…”

  Tom watched her instinctively reach for the pendant that wasn’t there.

  “But I didn’t always know how to tell you. Words were much scarier. And so when you were upset that night and really opened up to me, and Leo wrote you that note…” Tom wanted to cry, to let every painful memory be exorcised through his tear ducts. “I saw that his note was exactly what you’d needed. I wanted to be the person who’d made you feel the way his words had. And so I let you believe the note was mine.”

  She nodded slowly, deliberately. The air was growing colder. She rubbed at the goose bumps on her legs.

  “Can I…” More stars were appearing, each one giving Tom courage to ask for the answers he knew could hurt him the most. “Can I ask? Why Leo?”

  She stiffened beside him, obviously not expecting him to try and traverse this particular road. Her silence was thoughtful, and he let her take all the time she needed. When she finally spoke, it came out steady. Strong. “He loved me. The real me, the true me—whatever you wanted to call it. And when I was with him, I didn’t feel like I had to try so hard for his approval.”

  “Do I make you feel that way?” T
om couldn’t patch the break in his voice before it emerged. “Like you have to try and be someone you’re not?”

  She shook her head. “No, not you, but…”

  “My family.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah. Although I think my family makes me feel that way too. And I make myself feel that way, which is really irritating.” She smirked, giving him a sidelong glance. “I don’t think I’ve been doing myself any favors there.”

  Tom wanted to feel better and he didn’t. Not yet. He tried to banish those pervasive thoughts of what Megs must’ve looked like making love to his adventurous best friend. He tried to focus on what really mattered. “If I didn’t make you feel that way, was Leo a way of punishing me? For not standing up to my family?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “I think being with Leo was about a life I thought I wanted but was afraid of. You know I’ve always had to be steady, responsible. To hold everything and everyone together because when Paulina and Gran weren’t around, I was the only one left to do it. Do you know what my mom said the first time she met Leo?”

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but still asked. “What?”

  “‘Oh, he’s the best kind of trouble, isn’t he?’” Megs did her Donna impression, which was pretty good. Her face fell. “I loved Leo and was afraid to be with him because I thought choosing him was reckless. It was the Donna thing to do.”

  He swallowed the growing lump in his throat. “So being with me was a way not to turn into your mother?” That prospect was almost as bad as being a placeholder.

  “No.” Megs turned to him fiercely. “No. I chose you because I loved you. Leo was just this…this alternate reality that was appealing until I realized it wasn’t what I wanted. It was a make-believe life that didn’t actually fit me or make me feel safe like I thought it would. I’m so sorry I hurt you, Tom. Not just the first time, years ago. If the second time I chose Leo hurt, I’m sorry for that too.”