The Rehearsals

by Annette Christie

He nodded, trying to maintain control of his emotions. There was a lot to process in what Megs had just said. On the one hand, she’d said she loved him. Past tense. On the other hand, she’d just admitted Leo wasn’t what she wanted. Tom could work with that.

  They continued to watch the stars speckle the sky as the dark curtain fell on the day.

  “Do you want to head back to the boat?” Megs eventually asked.

  They were ending the day together. He clung to hope just as he was clinging to this rock wall. “Sure.”

  “I’ll make up the bed in the galley for you,” Megan continued.

  Of course she was taking the V-berth bed for herself.

  Sleeping on the bench of the boat’s kitchen was only slightly more comfortable than spending the night in the rental car. Still, there were hatches overhead offering him a view of the stars, and knowing Megs was a few feet away gave him comfort.

  As he replayed the loops they’d shared, he thought back to his apologies. To the times she’d said sorry about what had happened with Leo eight years ago. To her insistence that it was a mistake that hadn’t been repeated.

  To the fact that she’d repeated it so recently, as they’d tumbled through this day that wouldn’t end.

  He thought about how she wasn’t with Leo now; she’d willingly spent the day with Tom instead. And it had been one hell of a day. The best in a long time.

  Even so, they were in separate beds tonight. One perfect day speckled with a series of belated conversations didn’t mean they would sleep side by side tonight. Or maybe ever again.

  Tom just knew that he finally and unequivocally really, really wanted to.

  Day

  7

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Megan

  With the morning sun came no surprise or anger. No emotional vegetative state. Just a feeling of deep and weighted bereavement as Megan realized she was back in the hotel room. She’d gotten as far as another country and yet here she was again. The same pajamas. The same bed. Donna minutes away from bursting into the room.

  Despite all her efforts, good and bad, Megan had lost her future. Not just the one with Tom that had been erased that first night. She’d lost any future. With anyone. Or no one. It was as complex and disorienting as looking through a prism; all she could see was the same refracted day over and over again. No consequences, sure, but also no rewards.

  Last night, after she’d turned the bench seat in the boat’s galley into a bed for Tom and given him a pillow and a sleeping bag, she gazed at him with fondness, thinking about the way they could have fun together, how easy it was to laugh and open up. To sit in comfortable silences. In a lot of ways, he remained her best friend, and so it was a consolation knowing they wouldn’t hate each other forever.

  Talking about their regrets and worries in Sidney had felt so good. Saying some of their apologies out loud had been a baptism.

  Not enough to save them. Just enough to heal them a little.

  She was surprised at how candidly they’d been able to broach the topic of Leo, which wasn’t easy for her and definitely couldn’t have been easy for Tom. And yet once she’d said all those things out loud, she’d been able to better process her fixation on Leo. Lying in the V-berth of Happy Accident, waiting for sleep to come, she’d thought it all over and found herself feeling surprisingly angry at him for what he’d done to Tom, leaving the note on her windshield knowing how Tom had felt about her. Showing up to the wedding as Tom’s best man and yet fully ready to break up the marriage if he could.

  Who did that to his best friend?

  Of course, Megan wasn’t sure she’d treated Tom any better. The thought sat low in her stomach.

  Any lingering feelings she’d had for Leo were officially and unambiguously extinguished, making it time to repaint her future all over again.

  What she wanted from her life, should she ever be able to reclaim it, was on the tip of her tongue. During lunch with Leo, she’d discovered she still wanted her job at GQ—or something like it. As for all those other holes in the hypothetical days ahead…perhaps if she held very still, the answers would come.

  Her epiphanies were undermined by a darker truth: Even if she caught the wants, the words, the magical recipe to concoct a better life, did it matter? Her life wasn’t her own.

  Megan pulled the covers up to her chin. Mourning what she’d lost—what she was actively losing—wasn’t going to make this repeated day any better. She needed answers. As though on cue, her phone rang. Tom’s name lit up the screen.

  “Hello?”

  “Megs.” Her name came out rushed, full of excitement. “Remember when you said we needed to do things right? To get out of this?”

  “Yeah.” She wriggled her toes, trying to warm them up and shake out her darker thoughts.

  “I think we got it wrong.”

  She snorted. “You think?”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “Yeah. Experiment with me?”

  “I’m not interested in a threesome, Tom. Unless the third person is Idris Elba, and I don’t think he’s on the island.”

  She could practically hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Let’s try to be our best selves today. Take everything we’ve said to each other—even the stuff that hurt, the stuff that seemed like bullshit—and be better.”

  She let out a sigh that could’ve extinguished a forest fire. Hadn’t they tried that already?

  She sat with his proposal, the soft sounds of his presence in her ear. Perhaps this suggestion wasn’t about trying to get out of the loop.

  There was a nucleus in that thought. She just needed to get to it.

  Without waiting for her answer he added, “See you at the rehearsal dinner.”

  The line went dead.

  Even though the call was over, Megan kept staring at her phone. People were able to carry around the collective knowledge of the ages in their pockets and yet nothing could give her a concrete answer on how she, Megan Givens, could be her best self.

  Because, ultimately, being her best self really was what the “doing everything right” day had been about. She’d tried placating her mother with encouragement and support and agreed to house her younger sister, even though Brianna despised Megan 50 percent of the time. She’d kicked Leo to the curb repeatedly and attempted to make nice with Tom. She’d folded and contorted herself to fit in the spaces everyone else had formed around her.

  But.

  In all the incarnations of this bastard of a day, the only thing that had felt like the incontrovertibly right thing to do was when she identified Carol’s issue (or at least one of her issues; you could construct the New York City skyline from Carol’s issues) and had a separate plate made up to help her feel more comfortable.

  And in all the incarnations, the only time she’d felt as though she’d found the eye of the storm was when she and Tom were being honest and swapping secrets in Sidney.

  Megan pulled the covers over her head and kicked her feet in frustration like a child.

  “Oh! Am I interrupting something?”

  Megan flipped the white duvet back, folded it across her stomach. Her mother seemed horrified at the thought that Megan wasn’t alone.

  “Good morning, Mom.” Megan got out of bed. She strode to the bathroom and closed the door to pee and give herself more time to think. When she emerged, wrapped in the hotel robe, she found her mother staring out the window, her fingers grazing the curtains.

  “You can see Gran and Granddad’s boat from here.”

  “I know.” She stood by her mother, willing herself to feel affection for the woman who never did her best.

  Maybe because she didn’t know how.

  Donna’s mood shifted and she tossed her hair; her eyes were brimming with tears and locked on the ceiling. “I need something to wear to the rehearsal dinner tonight.”

  And there.

  Megan saw it.

  Megan had spent a lifetime trying to appease her mother and it’d only reinforced her
behavior. But what if this wasn’t about her mother trying to make the day about her, so the solution to this problem wasn’t fixing Donna’s ensemble? “Why do you need a new dress?” Megan asked.

  The simplicity of the question, the desire Megan was showing for a real answer, clearly caught Donna off guard. Odds were she’d rehearsed this production in the elevator—the lines she’d say to Megan, the blocking to illustrate this grand offense by Gran.

  Donna should know by now she couldn’t change the way Gran behaved or what she said. The only thing she could control was how she reacted to Gran.

  “Your grandmother—” Donna began. Megan cut her off with a wave. She took her by the hand and sat her down on the edge of the bed.

  “Mom. Listen to me. If you have a problem with Brianna, you need to talk to her, not whisper into my ear about it. If you have a problem with me, you need to talk to me about it, not gossip with Brianna. And if Gran’s hurting your feelings—”

  “This isn’t about Gran!” Donna shouted.

  “Then what’s it about?” Megan sensed her mom was on the cusp of a breakthrough, so she needed to tread carefully. “Because I’ve got a hunch it’s not about the dress.”

  “It is.” Donna’s commitment to stubbornness outshone every commitment she’d ever made to a man.

  “Mom…” Megan gently squeezed Donna’s hand. “Please. Just be honest with me. Are you maybe feeling a bit insecure right now? Do you think that’s what this is about?”

  It was as though Megan was a kid playing Jenga and she’d finally removed the block that made her mom’s facade tumble. With an exasperated sob, Donna said, “Fine. You want to know what this is about? This is about me needing to feel my best during a very stressful weekend when I’m being judged and I’m alone and I don’t have anyone to put his arm around me and tell me I’m beautiful. You have that every single day. I’ve had to fight for it.”

  An overwhelming sense of pity washed over Megan as she took in her mother. Donna was a ridiculous person. Megan had a lifetime of stories to support that theory. But she was starting to see that Donna’s bid to split her daughters’ affection so it might shine more brightly on her was rooted in her unbearable insecurity. She’d searched for this validation in every father figure she’d paraded through her kids’ lives.

  Maybe Donna had even pretended to go to all those job interviews because she didn’t think she was good enough to ever get the job.

  Meanwhile, Megan had spent half her life being the mother in the house and the other half clinging to Tom because he was stable. He represented commitment and roots and everything her mother hadn’t.

  She’d chosen Tom in opposition to her mother as much as she’d chosen him because she loved him.

  And yet one didn’t negate the other. Maybe part of her attraction to Tom was based on his stability, but that wasn’t what had carried them through twelve years. What had carried them were all the little things, their shared memories and senses of humor, as well as all the big things, like Tom’s good heart and Megan’s desire to see him happy. They’d lost their way when they’d tried too hard to please everyone instead of just being honest with each other. With themselves.

  Megan was flooded with a new comprehension of what being her best self meant. She didn’t need to contort herself to fit in the spaces the people in her life left for her. She had to create space for herself. That was the key. That was how she’d get out of this day. Or at least, it was worth a shot.

  Once again, Megan allowed her mother to be the child, knowing she had to indulge her one last time in order to establish necessary boundaries.

  “I love you, Mom. And you are beautiful no matter what you wear. That said, I need you—Brianna and probably Alistair too—we all need you to try harder.” Her hands still clasped over Donna’s, Megan squeezed. “I will support you if you need help writing a résumé, looking for a job. I will support you as you look for love if that’s what you really want. But I’m not going to try to solve your problems for you anymore and I’m not going to enable you to define your self-worth through a man.”

  Donna was rendered speechless. Megan gave her mother a hug and ushered her out the door.

  The day Megan had confessed to her mother that she’d secretly applied to Harvard with Paulina’s help and gotten in, Donna had clucked her tongue and said, “Well, you aren’t actually going, are you?” When Megan replied that she was, Donna stopped speaking to her. The morning Megan had packed Paulina’s old Nissan, ready to drive across the country, only Brianna had stood on the doorstep to wave her off. Donna had remained at the breakfast table, sipping instant coffee, pretending to read the newspaper.

  Change did not come to Donna easily. She might complain about her life, but she was comfortable in it, and any ripples rattled her, made her revert to adolescent tactics of punishment.

  So, while Megan hoped her talk with her mother might spur an evolution, she was staying realistic. Megan could change herself and she could recalibrate her expectations of other people, but she couldn’t make others change. And that realization was oddly freeing.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Tom

  For the first time in a long time, Tom was fired up. Trying to remain calm and complacent had gotten him nowhere.

  He’d called Megs from the ferry, serendipitously hitting a sweet spot where he got cell service for long enough to make his case. He could picture her so clearly as he convinced her to participate in today’s experiment: creases on her cheek from the pillowcase, snuggling into the covers like a linen nest, desperately trying to warm her freezing feet.

  Once he hung up, he made a mental list of what he needed to do. Number one scared him in the best possible way. This rev inside him was so satisfying, he wished Henry Winkler a very good morning and then walked around the ferry, unable—not wanting—to sit still.

  At the bow, two men with graying hair were reenacting the famous “king of the world” scene from Titanic. There was an innocence in their joy, despite their age. An undercurrent of love that must have made everything in their periphery fade at the edges.

  Sea air whipped at his suit jacket and collar, ruffling Tom’s hair. Staying inside would’ve been more comfortable, controlled, but Tom didn’t want comfort today. He wanted the shrillness of the wind in his ears, his eyes tearing, as he contemplated his life. Not the path that had gotten him here, that had already been trudged, but whether or not he was satisfied with where he was going.

  It’d been assumed since Tom’s birth that he’d attend Harvard. He was a legacy, after all. There were family photos displayed in crystal frames of baby Tom dressed in a Harvard V-necked sweater.

  He didn’t regret Harvard. Not for a second. Not when it’d given him what he’d had with Megs. Even with Leo. His best friends had taught him to shake off stress and cackle at the absurd.

  Megan and Leo had been there to absorb his love, something his immediate family had always refused with a discomfort that bordered on embarrassment. For that alone, he couldn’t regret Megs. Especially after the day they’d had in Sidney. The flap of the butterfly wing that knocked everything into place.

  Surprising even himself, Tom realized he didn’t regret law school either. The nightly pile of reading that seemed to reproduce when his back was turned had exhausted him and required an increase in his glasses prescription, but his law homework hadn’t been all bad. It’d taught him to see things from multiple angles. Plus, he’d made some friends in law school. Friends he missed and kept meaning to catch up with. If he ever got out of this day, reconnecting with them would be toward the top of his to-do list.

  He didn’t hate law, didn’t hate the work. He hated the type of law he practiced at Prescott and Prescott.

  Or maybe he did hate law. Maybe he wished he’d become a history professor or a librarian.

  If he was ever going to figure out what he wanted, he needed to start forging that path for himself. Today. And the next day and the next.

  Tom
was officially done being a coward.

  Once the ferry had docked, Tom caught a cab to the golf course, leaving the rental car at the hotel in case Megs needed it.

  “It’s about damn time, Spare Parts,” Brody called to him upon his arrival. “You didn’t bother changing? Showering? I can smell you from here.”

  One would’ve thought that being raised by withholding parents would’ve brought Tom and Brody together, but their closeness was superficial. Tom couldn’t help but note that Brody’s confession about his divorce had occurred in only one of the loops.

  But Brody could wait. The fire in Tom was burning. He had to find his father.

  He marched into the clubhouse that wasn’t shiny enough to impress John, wryly noting the symbolism. Tom would probably never be good enough to impress John either.

  Upon seeing Tom, John pointedly looked at his watch and wordlessly made his way out to the tee, Tom marching after him.

  If John had taken note of Tom’s mood, he didn’t acknowledge it as he carefully placed his clubs in the back of a cart and slid behind the wheel.

  “I need to talk to you, Dad.”

  “Is it about last night’s dinner? You aren’t getting cold feet about Missouri, are you? Look, if Megan’s having trouble adjusting to the idea of moving, you just have to—”

  “This isn’t about the merger or the dinner. That all went well, no worries there.” Of course that was all his father cared about. “I need to talk to you about something else.”

  “Fine.” John tugged on his gloves, presumably so his flesh didn’t have to touch the scuffed steering wheel. “We’ll talk on the first hole. Tell Broderick to hustle.”

  Instead of waiting for his sons to climb in the cart, he pulled a U-turn and drove off, assuming they’d follow. Brody walked out, squinting in the sun despite his visor. “Have I told you about my favorite new drinking game?”

  “Two planes and a ferry,” Tom muttered, sliding into the driver’s seat of another cart.