Page 11

Pallissard

Suddenly, Marsh is back in the master bedroom of her house now, teleported like magic between the end of the last scene and the opening of this new one. The room is quiet and still, and everything is bathed in a gentle pink glow from the early sun through the blinds.

She’s under the covers, but her eyes are wide open, and her heart is racing a little, despite the peacefulness and familiarity of the scene. These quantum jumps still feel like the lurching moment of a roller coaster’s first dip. She takes a deep breath, willing her pulse to slow.

She’s here now. Right where she wants to be.

This new setting is so nostalgic, but maybe that’s a good thing. This time through, she knows exactly what she wants to do. She won’t let this chance go to waste.

Marsh nestles into the blanket and yawns. The clock shows that it’s after nine, and that makes her smile.

She missed these lazy mornings with Dylan so much.

Marsh pats the duvet beside her, searching, but his side of the mattress is already empty, the sheets thrown back. She can hear the soft sounds of bare feet padding around the master bathroom, and then the shower turns on.

Dylan is almost incapable of getting ready quietly in the mornings, no matter how hard he tries. He’s a noisy tooth brusher, towel fluffer, sink splasher, just like a little boy. The only time he ever managed to be as hushed as he is now was early on in their marriage, just after Harper was born, when he would try to get downstairs without waking Marsh on the weekends so he could cook breakfast and bring it to her in bed.

The smile lingering on her lips grows even bigger at that memory. She buries her face in the pillow and curls her arms to her chest to pantomime sleep, so as not to spoil Dylan’s surprise.

Everything is finally back to the way it’s supposed to be.

Everything is right again.

The shower turns off just as Marsh realizes that her wedding ring is not on her finger.

What?

Confused, she lifts her head to study her hand. She’s still staring at that bare expanse of skin as the footsteps leave the bathroom and enter the bedroom.

Marsh looks up—but it’s not Dylan standing there in a towel.

It’s Ren.

She bolts upright in bed.

“What the fuck!”

“What?” Ren jumps, startled. “What’s wrong?”

Moms4Marsh: Whoa!!!

JesterG: I was so ready to see Dylan!

TopFan01: Same! That caught me off guard!

Marsh is naked just below the camera frame, she realizes. She grabs the blankets up around herself.

What’s happening?

She chose to go back to before Dylan cheated on her. None of it happened! That horrible night, her careening drive home from his office, furiously locking him out of the house by changing the alarm code, the call she made to a lawyer the next morning, the divorce—

So what’s going on now?

Where is Dylan? Why is Ren here?

And why isn’t she wearing her wedding ring?

“Did you have a nightmare or something?” Ren asks, coming over to her side of the bed.

Marsh takes a deep breath. “Maybe,” she finally allows.

He leans forward to kiss her forehead. She lets him, trying to play it cool until she has more context. “Coffee?” he asks. “We could drink it out on the back porch, and let the sun chase away the bad dream.”

“That sounds good,” Marsh says.

Ren hops up and heads for the kitchen still in just his towel. Why is he so comfortable half-nude in her home in this episode? She wants to ask.

Then a gut-wrenching thought strikes her.

“Oh no,” Marsh moans, a hand on her forehead.

Is she the cheater this time around?

Are she and Ren having an affair instead of Dylan and his mistress?

Marsh scrambles into a shirt and leggings. Her hair is a mess, but she doesn’t care. She tears out of the bedroom, then returns and snatches Ren’s jeans draped casually over the top of the dresser before rushing downstairs.

“Oh, thanks,” Ren says as he sees Marsh round the corner. He tosses the used coffee filter in the trash— he knows right where the trash is, in the cabinet beside the sink —and reaches for the jeans. He whips off the towel without a thought, right in the middle of the kitchen, like Marsh has seen his body a million times before.

Moms4Marsh: Yowza! Starting a Ren fan club!

Marsh feels the heat rise on her face as she flicks the block of scrolling text away, and tries not to peek as Ren hops into each pant leg.

She should be figuring out what happened with Dylan!

“I just, you know, with Harper still being pretty young...” Marsh starts, her voice low so that Harper can’t hear from her room, if she’s already awake.

Ren gives her a funny look. “We dropped her off at her dad’s last week, though.”

Marsh looks down at her bare finger again.

She still doesn’t know entirely what this means, but two things are now starkly clear: that even without his infidelity, Marsh and Dylan still couldn’t make it work and divorced anyway, and she also still met Ren in the aftermath.

Marsh is not sneaking around on her husband with Ren. She’s just with Ren. Because her marriage is over. Again.

She tries to cover a wave of frustration by turning to the cupboard to pull out two mugs.

Was this a sign from the universe, that she and Dylan were never supposed to be together? Or that she and Ren are? Or did she just not choose right, last time? Should she keep going down this path, or try again?

As Marsh frets, she turns the mugs over in her hands. They’re cheap, free swag that Dylan got at an academic event; both are bright Sharp Purple and have the same cheesy logo.

Her eyes narrow as she notices the text.

Tenth Annual Intercollegiate STEM Fundraiser

Chrysalis Conference

Reach For New Heights! Change Your Life!

Notamackerel: Is it just me, or is that word following Marsh around?

Moms4Marsh: Shh! We’re going to miss their conversation!

“I definitely will be fully dressed outside the bedroom once Harper moves back, though,” Ren is saying as he pours the pot of coffee first into Marsh’s mug, then his, oblivious to the logos on them. “That goes without question, obviously.”

“Moves back?” The words are out of Marsh’s mouth before she remembers she already should know.

Ren eyes her oddly again. “Harper’s staying with him all summer, because Pallissard is right around the corner from his apartment. Remember?”

Pallissard.

The Pallissard Institute of Music. The best high school for music in the country. To be good enough to audition and be accepted to that school has been Harper’s unwavering goal since she started the violin at seven.

“Are you okay?” Ren asks, concerned by Marsh’s expression.

“I’m great,” Marsh insists.

She’s still in limbo, free-falling through all these choices as she scrambles to open a parachute, but this news about Harper is beyond her wildest dreams. Her marriage still flopped, and Harper’s still a little distant, but she’s now attending Pallissard’s summer program—a miracle Marsh didn’t even know could happen in this show—and she herself seems to have landed on her feet with Ren.

Maybe that last choice didn’t lead to exactly what Marsh expected, but this life is definitely not bad .

She nods decisively, starting to smile. “It just sometimes still feels like a dream.”

Ren smiles back and wraps her in a hug. “A good one, though?” he asks.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” Ren repeats, looking concerned.

“I’m just not hungry,” Marsh says.

He frowns. “Okay. It’s just, you’re the one who suggested we go to brunch in the first place.”

Marsh did. She took one sip of her coffee, and then poured the rest down the sink and declared that she wanted to go to brunch as Ren stared at her in bewilderment, still waiting for his own mug to cool. She wasn’t hungry, she was just too full of energy. There are so many differences in this episode, and she wants to explore them all. She wants to drive straight to Pallissard to watch Harper practice. She wants to call Dylan and ask him what the hell happened this time, that the two of them still couldn’t make it work even without the affair. She even wants to jump right back into bed with Ren to see how good things are on that front in this reality. Most of all, Marsh just wants to get out of the house, to start experiencing this new life. Brunch was the first thing she thought of.

But here under their table’s striped umbrella, their ice waters sweating in the warm morning, some of the earlier exhilaration has worn off. If anything, she feels even more unmoored than before, and just as antsy.

She should have chosen somewhere else, is the problem.

This is the brunch spot that she and Dylan used to go to every weekend, when Harper was a baby.

Those were some of the best days. The waiters would set Harper up in a high chair and she’d gleefully demolish a whole plate of pancakes while Marsh and Dylan watched in delight. He’d tell Marsh about a camping trip another teacher took his family on the other week, suggesting maybe the three of them could buy a little tent and show Harper the stars, and Marsh would tell him about an experimental pop-up restaurant she’d passed, and wanted to try.

There was so much fun still, back then. So much more to look forward to.

“Marsh?” Ren coaxes.

This life is good, she knows.

But also, she chose this option because she was trying to her find her way back to Dylan again. Because maybe what she wanted was to be married. To still be a family.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Marsh pronounces, and lurches up from her chair as Ren jumps halfway out of his.

“Do you want me to get a to-go bag?” he asks.

“Sure,” she says as she dashes toward the inside of the café. “Actually, no. Never mind.”

It might not even matter in a few minutes.

In the bathroom, Marsh lets the sink run and listens to the water.

“Am I being ungrateful?” she whispers to the mirror. “There’s just so much here that’s different than it was before.”

But isn’t this the point of this show? Not to get something different, but to get exactly what she wanted?

There’s someone in one of the stalls behind her, Marsh realizes just as the lock begins to slide open. She turns off the faucet and pretends to fix her hair, embarrassed that whoever’s there might have heard her mumbling, but when their eyes meet in the reflection, she spins around in relief.

“Thank God you’re here!” Marsh exclaims as Talia joins her at the sink.

“Sorry I’m late. I didn’t know you two were going to shoot off to a café so quick,” she says. “Catch me up! How are things in this new life?”

“I’m not sure,” Marsh replies. “Things are definitely different, but not the way I expected. I was trying to give Dylan one more chance, but he’s still gone anyway.”

“You’ve got Ren,” Talia offers. “And Harper’s doing so well!”

“She really is,” Marsh agrees enthusiastically. This Pallissard development is incredible. She’s truly grateful for that. “Her music studies are something I want to protect. Can we do that, even if we keep tweaking other things?”

“Of course! I’ll make a special note of it,” Talia replies. She opens the huge leather tote bag on her shoulder and pulls out the Show Bible again. “Let’s see what we’re working with for this episode.”

Talia checks to make sure the counter is dry, and then lays the Show Bible down and opens it up. Marsh can’t help but stare at how much it’s grown since the last time she saw it. Each choice has to be carefully documented, but has she really already changed so much? It feels like she’s barely begun.

“Interesting,” Talia pronounces as she looks up from the page. “It looks like we could try again to repair your marriage with Dylan by jumping even further back than the night he was unfaithful, to some other pivotal moment in your relationship. Can you think of one?”

Marsh shakes her head—and then freezes as a memory occurs to her.

Talia’s eyes practically glow with hunger.

“What is it?” she asks excitedly.

“Uh. Never mind.”

She shakes her head, but Talia is like a hound with a scent. There’s no getting out of it now.

At last, Marsh swallows and looks down. “When Harper was about five, that was when Dylan and I hit our first rough patch. Not a rough patch, just a bit of a rut, I guess. Things weren’t bad, they just weren’t as new as when we were dating. And with a young kid, we’d fallen into kind of a routine.”

“Believe me, we all know how that feels,” Talia sympathizes, and the comments flood in to agree. “So, what happened?”

“Well, Dylan’s birthday was coming up, and I wanted to do something big,” Marsh answers. “Book a trip, go to a really nice restaurant, whatever he wanted. I asked him if he had any ideas. I thought he would be excited, but he seemed reluctant at first. He just kept telling me whatever I wanted would be great. I couldn’t figure out why. Finally, I got it out of him.”

She hesitates, nervous.

“What did he ask for?” Talia’s beautiful face shines at her like the sun, urging her on.

“He said...”

The words get stuck in her throat for a moment, and then she spits them all out at once, an awkward jumble.

“He said he had this fantasy and wanted to try a threesome, if I would be into it.”

LunaMágica: No way!

JesterG: Our sweet, innocent little Marsh—in a threesome?!!

MeiMei22: 不可能 ! No way this isn’t scripted!

“How adventurous!” Talia giggles as Marsh whips back to the sink and washes her hands vigorously, just to have something to do. Talia sidles up next to her. “What did you say?”

“I sort of said yes that night, but took it back the next morning,” Marsh admits. “I think he knew I wasn’t serious, just stunned, and honestly, I don’t know if he was totally ready, either. I don’t think he expected me to agree in the first place, let alone stick to it. We laughed it off over breakfast, and it never came up again.”

“Do you think it changed anything?”

“I don’t know,” Marsh muses. “But even though we didn’t go through with it, he’d been vulnerable to me, and I hadn’t embarrassed him. I thought that was worth something.” She pauses for a moment. “But I do wonder sometimes what would have happened if we’d tried it.”

“You think it might have helped bring you closer?” Talia suggests. “Made things better?”

“Or made things worse,” Marsh argues, but she’s mostly saying it because she knows she’s live on a billion screens right now, not out of any real conviction. What she’d actually admitted to Jo in the weeks after, and privately to herself for many years after that, was that she really did wonder. Who hadn’t really, who had been in a monogamous relationship for decades? But she also knows that she never actually could have screwed up the nerve to do something that adventurous, no matter how curious she was.

Well, not in that life, anyway.

But isn’t that why she’s here now, on the show?

“That certainly does sound like a very pivotal event in the relationship,” Talia says slyly. “What a perfect moment to revisit, to try to save your marriage again. If you want.”

Marsh is blushing even more now. “But—”

“Don’t worry,” Talia says. “The cameras will be very tasteful, as they always are, if you do go there. Just hints at what’s happening. And I promise I won’t barge in for an interview midtryst.” She giggles.

Marsh nods, but she’s still mortified. After all, she just admitted to everyone in her life— and the world —that their meek little Marshmallow once considered turning things upside down in the bedroom.

And if she keeps going this way, she’s going to have to consider it all over again in the next episode.

“Take your time,” Talia offers generously.

Marsh tries not to think about Ren still out there on the patio, waiting for her to come back with that concerned look on his face. If she goes back in time, it’ll sort of feel like erasing him, in a way. He was so sweet earlier this morning, so happy to just be with her, making coffee.

Almost too happy, honestly. Dylan had never cared that much about the little things, had he? Or was it just that after so many years, it was harder for her to recall all the good moments?

But Talia is still grinning at Marsh.

It’s clear what she wants Marsh to do. What everyone wants her to do—the corners of her vision are literally vibrating from the effort of containing the screaming comments pane—but she’s surprised to find that the pressure to say yes, this time, is more comforting than terrifying.

Maybe what she’d been wanting back then wasn’t an easy way out of the encounter, after all.

Maybe what she’d been wanting was permission.

“I know this might feel like a big choice, but you can make as many of them as you want. Or unmake them. That’s the whole point.” Talia tilts her head a little as she winks, the way she always does right before she says the phrase she knows Marsh, and everyone else in the world, will recognize. “As we all know—you could have All This ...”

“ And More, ” Marsh finishes, the first hint of her own shy grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.