Page 16

The Midseason Special!

Marsh stares at Talia for a few more seconds, then at the little velvet box again.

“I think...” she starts to say.

But before she can finish her sentence, someone shouts her name, and everyone turns as Jo hurries into the lounge, out of breath.

“Jo! Harper’s going to be so happy you came,” Marsh says, before she remembers what she’s holding. “Wait, I have to tell you something!”

“Later,” Jo says, beckoning, not noticing her hands at all. Finally, Marsh realizes that her best friend doesn’t look excited, but flustered.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

Jo points down the hall, back toward the auditorium. “Dylan’s gotten into a little bit of a tiff,” she says. “You better come quick.”

“Good lord, what now?” Marsh groans, sliding off her stool.

“Go ahead, I’ll catch up,” Talia says, taking her wallet out to cover the drinks with her RealTV corporate card.

Marsh shoves the ring box back into Ren’s pocket, and takes his coat with her as she hurries down the hallway after Jo. “What’s the matter with him lately?” she’s saying, dodging other guests as they rush. Her ankle wobbles a little in her tall shoes, and she nearly bumps into an usher—

Huh?

She stumbles.

Was that Alexis Quinn again?

The moment was lightning fast, but she could have sworn it was!

Marsh cranes her neck, but Jo is leaving her behind, and the crowd has shifted.

“Marsh!” Jo calls, and Marsh hurries to catch her again.

Maybe she was wrong.

But she doesn’t think so.

Something weird is going on.

“How bad is it?” Marsh asks once they’re even again.

“When I left to find you, pretty heated.” Jo reaches the door into the auditorium and pushes it open.

Marsh bursts into the theater, searching the room. She spots Dylan standing in the middle of one of the aisles, making angry, clipped gestures—at Ren .

“Unbelievable,” she sighs angrily.

The lights are about to go down, the show is minutes away from starting, and the two of them are in the center of the audience, arguing like two immature teenagers as the other guests give them strange, surprised looks.

What has gotten into Dylan? He could be a little grumpy sometimes, but Marsh never would have believed he could be this rude, to cause a scene at his own daughter’s first concert.

She dashes over as fast as she can, furious.

“Marsh,” Ren says as he spots her. “There you are!”

“What is going on?” She gasps. “Have you both lost your minds! This—”

But Dylan cuts her off. “Marsh, listen to me.” He looks desperate and unmoored again, the way he looked at his apartment earlier. “I don’t know what it is, but something is wrong with Ren. He—”

“Dylan, stop,” Marsh pleads. “This is ridiculous.”

“It’s not! You know it’s not! And now”—he points at Ren—“he’s up to something, I know it.”

“No, he’s not, he—”

“No, listen! Ren just said, ‘Marsh can’t find out!’”

“Dylan—”

“Marsh!” Dylan insists. “He’s got a secret! I’m telling you, something is going on!”

“I know something is going on!” Marsh shouts in frustration, and jams her hand into Ren’s pocket.

Dylan still looks confused, but Ren’s face changes from shock to panic as he realizes that Marsh is holding his jacket—and has accidentally found the ring—at the same moment that she yanks the little box out.

“Nothing is wrong with Ren,” she finally says, her tone weakening with each word.

She’d been so focused on getting the two of them to stop fighting, but now the adrenaline is fading, and the drama of the thing she’s just done is dawning on her. Everyone is watching, gripped by the moment. She’s still not used to the idea of billions of viewers watching her on their screens, but somehow, an auditorium of a hundred people staring at her from a few feet away is more intimidating, in this moment.

“He’s just... nervous.”

“I realized I’d forgotten to take my coat,” Ren finally says, equally bashful. “I was rushing to get back to you. I was so worried you were going to notice it in there.”

“Sorry,” Marsh says. She holds the box up higher, and laughs. “I did.”

Slowly, Ren takes the little velvet cube from her and holds it with both hands, as if it’s an anchor. He swallows hard, looking very nervous, but determined.

“Well, this was not the way I had planned to do this, but...”

He’s sinking to one knee, and Marsh is staring at him. People are gasping and aww-ing for her, and the world is starting to spin. No—she’s just hyperventilating!

TopFan01: This is it!

Fortunata111: It’s happening!!!

Ren puts his finger on the clasp.

“Marsh,” Dylan says, trying to cut off Ren’s all-important question, but Marsh ignores him. “Marsh!”

“You shut up,” she says to him, still staring at Ren. “For once in your life, just shut up.”

Ren takes a deep, trembling breath. He’s so nervous, his bottom knee wobbles a little as he balances.

“I knew from the moment I met you, when we were just teenagers, that you were the one for me,” he says, stammering a little. “I let you go once because I was stupid and young—and I’ve spent decades regretting it. I’d always wondered what it would be like if, somehow, in some way, we could have had a do-over.”

Moms4Marsh: He has no idea how literal that statement is!

Ren swallows again, but his eyes are shining.

“I can still hardly believe I have a second chance now, but I’m not going to let it go to waste this time.”

He opens the box, and the diamond dazzles on its band.

“Marsh, love of my life, will you marry me?”

As Ren stares up at her, and Dylan stands just behind him, holding his breath as he waits with the rest of the crowd for Marsh’s answer, her gaze drifts up and across the room, to the auditorium doors. Talia is there now, clutching the Show Bible tightly. She’s waiting for the next choice. A choice that’s going to alter the course of the rest of Marsh’s season—and her life.

“I will,” Marsh finally says.

“What?” Ren is staring up at her from his kneel. “You will?”

“I will.” A grin bursts across her face. “I do.”

A burst of cheers erupts all around Marsh from the audience. Ren laughs with delight as he staggers to his feet, and then he kisses Marsh deeply as his arms engulf her.

Moms4Marsh: SO ROMANTIC!!!

LunaMágica: True love!!!!

Someone in the audience exclaims, “That was perfect—just like a movie!” And it makes Marsh laugh, even as she dabs her eyes. The crowd is still clapping as Ren pulls back and fumbles with the box to get the ring out.

“I was so nervous,” he says to her, clumsy with joy. “I’m still shaking.”

The ring comes free, and Marsh holds out her hand. It’s a solitaire on a platinum band. The diamond is huge, she thinks as Ren slides the ring delicately onto her finger. Almost embarrassingly so. How did he afford something like this? Did he spend his entire savings on it? He’s too good to her.

“It’s beautiful,” Marsh says.

As Marsh and Ren, and the entire theater, marvel at her new ring as she holds it out, tilting her finger back and forth so it catches the light, another hand suddenly clamps down on her wrist.

“Hey!”

Dylan has grabbed Marsh and is practically dragging her toward the door out of the auditorium.

“Dylan!” Ren cries, outraged, but Dylan doesn’t slow. The crowd titters, and whispers fill the room at the drama. “ Dylan! Let her go!” Ren shouts, starting after her.

“It’s okay!” Marsh calls back.

This is not okay at all! is actually what she’s thinking. To be letting Dylan drag her away, moments after she accepted a marriage proposal from someone else! But things are so complicated. Dylan isn’t her husband, but that doesn’t erase the decades of history they have together. And he’s clearly breaking down from the anomalies he’s noticed, and is only going to get more frantic and disruptive unless Marsh can set him straight.

“I’m sorry, Ren. He’s—he’s Harper’s father,” she pleads. “Just give me one second.”

Ren stares after Marsh, fuming, but finally nods and lets her go.

Dylan pulls her away as fast as the two of them can walk. He bursts through the doors with a bang and lurches into the hall, still going strong.

“Thank you very much for ruining Ren’s proposal!” Marsh snaps as he hurries them along.

“Yeah, he’s a real Prince Charming,” Dylan sneers. “The clingy, desperate guy from high school who won’t give up finally wears down the girl.”

Marsh snorts at him. “Oh, now you’re jealous? I haven’t seen him for decades, and our paths just crossed again. And Ren is amazing! He’s romantic, and fun, and—”

“Romantic and fun.” She can practically hear his eyes roll as he hustles. “Wasn’t he the one who started the whole Marshmallow thing you hate so much?”

Notamackerel: What?? Damn!

TopFan01: That was Ren, who came up with her nickname?!

LunaMágica: The recap didn’t mention that!

“I don’t hate it!” Marsh snaps back, furious. She doesn’t know if she’s angry because he’s throwing it in her face, or because now the world knows.

He chuckles. “That’s a lie.”

“He meant it as a compliment.” Marsh growls. “Not that I ever got any from you!”

“Oh, you’d rather I had been—how did you put it? Cloying? That was how you described him when we first got together, I think,” Dylan sneers. “Smothering. A cringe boyfriend. We’ll see how long you two last this time through.”

Marsh gasps at him, livid. “Unbelievable!”

She hadn’t hidden this from the recap, she wants to tell her viewers. She hadn’t hidden anything! She’d merely been protecting Ren. What was one silly nickname? Who deserved to be dragged through the mud, on live television, no less, for their first, fumbling attempts at teenage romance?

And he’s fantastic now, she’d add. So fantastic, it’s like the show engineered him itself!

By now, Dylan has pulled her down the hall, into the lobby, and almost through the doors leading out into the parking lot.

“Dylan!” Marsh flings him off, refusing to move. “What the hell is the matter with you? You’re the one who blew up our marriage. That was your choice, not mine. Now I’m not allowed to be happy again?”

“This is not about Ren,” he insists. “Not really.”

“Well, then what is it about?” she snaps. “Because if it’s all right with you, I’d rather be spending the first moments of my engagement with my new husband-to-be, not my old one.”

That barb finally lands, and despite how upset he is, Dylan laughs dryly for a second.

“That’s exactly it, though,” he says at last. “I just keep feeling—I’m not sure. We’re divorced, but it doesn’t seem real. I feel like just yesterday, we were still together. Or things were different. Or something!”

“What are you saying?” she asks.

“I don’t know!” he cries, but his telltale shoulders say he does. “I have this memory of bringing Harper to see you at work, and I helped you flirt with someone, and because we’d been divorced for so long, it was just fun. But I also remember seeing Ren in your kitchen for the first time after an overnight, and feeling so... sad about it. It was so fresh. But both of those things can’t be true. Did I dream them? Were they nightmares? Am I going insane?”

“Dylan,” Marsh says, but his hands are on her arms, holding her gently in place. Even though she’s furious, there’s a disarming familiarity to his touch. Or maybe because of it.

This was the last way he did touch her, in the real world. Four days after she’d discovered him, when she finally allowed him to come over and take some of his things.

She couldn’t stop crying, even though she made no movement, no sound. It wasn’t even like crying, it was more like her face was simply leaking. Like a tap was broken somewhere in her body. He’d known that if he moved closer, she’d shake him off, because she’d have to, even though she wouldn’t want to. So he’d just stayed that way, his hands on her arms, for nearly an hour. The two of them both near and far from each other at the same time.

“And what the hell is up with that word?” Dylan says suddenly, startling her back. He’s pointing at the ticket window. Not at the window, but at the announcement for tonight’s show adhered to the glass.

Marsh doesn’t know much about classical music—but the song Harper is supposed to play is called “Chrysalis in D Minor.”

That gets her attention.

“What do you mean?” she asks, unnerved.

“It’s like...” He trails off. “It’s familiar. I’ve seen it before, a bunch of times.”

LunaMágica: See, something is going on! Dylan has noticed it, too!

“Where?” Marsh asks, struggling to remain calm.

“I don’t know!” He throws up his hands. “But I swear, I know it.”

“Maybe you do. It must be a popular piece, if Pallissard has chosen it.”

Dylan groans. “No, not like that. Like it wasn’t a song, always.”

“Of course it is,” Marsh replies, even though she knows what she’s saying isn’t true. “Maybe you’ve heard it before in movie soundtracks and—”

“Don’t do this. Don’t try to play this off.” Dylan takes her shoulders again, more firmly this time. “I have a memory that you were never a lawyer.” His voice is quieter, even more urgent. “That you never finished law school. Isn’t that impossible?”

“You gave me the briefcase,” Marsh says, even though she’s no longer sure which episode that was, or if it happened at all.

“I burned that briefcase the weekend we signed the divorce papers,” Dylan says. “I went on a guys’ camping trip to clear my head, and got too drunk after everyone went to sleep. I threw it into the campfire.” He looks down at his hand. “I burned myself getting it back out, but it was too damaged to save. I’m supposed to have a scar here. You asked me what it was the next time I came to pick up Harper for band rehearsal, and I was so embarrassed, I lied and said I did it grilling dinner for myself.”

Marsh is staring at his completely unblemished hand, unable to turn away.

She does remember that scar. Remembers assuming he was curt because he was trying to show her that she wasn’t supposed to worry about him anymore now that he was single, that it was no longer her job, and that had hurt almost as much as imagining him playing out his ridiculous bachelor fantasies, trying to impress some new woman.

“See?” Dylan says, seeing how intent Marsh’s gaze has become. He’s sweating, almost sick with fear. “What the fuck is going on, Marsh? What’s happening to us?”

He could have said “what’s happening to me, ” or “what’s happening to you, ” but he didn’t.

It’s the “us” that finally breaks her.

“It’s the show,” she admits.

Stupid, she thinks.

Too late now.

Dylan doesn’t get it at first. “What show?”

“ All This and More ,” she says. “The reality TV show.”

Dylan is still staring at her, completely uncomprehending. “What?”

Marsh gestures feebly around the empty lobby. “We’re in the show. It’s happening right now.”

Dylan doesn’t move for a moment. Then he blinks. “You’re telling me... you’re saying...”

Marsh smiles nervously. “I’m the season three star.”

As Dylan continues to gape at her, there’s a flurry of movement around the edges of the lobby. Now that Marsh has outed them, the Bubble’s cameras emerge from the periphery to capture the reaction scene up close, in relentless, automated symphony. Suspended rigs unlatch themselves from chandeliers and ceiling panels, lights flare. Lenses and mics flank the two of them from every side as Dylan spins around, a horrified look on his face.

“We’re...” Dylan swallows hard. “We’re in the Bubble?”

Marsh nods.

“Mallow,” he says.

His voice is wounded, betrayed.

TopFan01: Uh-oh

N3vrGiv3Up: This is not good...

Marsh’s heart falls. She’d been hoping maybe Dylan would be intrigued.

But clearly, he’s not.

“How could you?” he asks.

“How could I what?” she retorts. “Do something for myself, for once? Take control of my life? Go after all the things I wish I’d tried, if I hadn’t been sacrificing my dreams to take care of our family?”

“But it isn’t just your life,” Dylan argues. “It’s my life, too! It’s Harper’s life! Hell, it’s even Ren’s life. You’re changing things for all of us. And we don’t have a say.”

“Well, now you know how I felt, our entire marriage,” Marsh replies.

She doesn’t quite mean it, not to that degree, but the comment lands hard on Dylan—and she hates that she’s a little pleased at how guilty he looks.

“I’m trying my best to change my life without hampering anyone else’s,” she finally continues. “That’s why there have been so many quirks. I’m trying to make sure every detail is right—not just for me, but for you and Harper, too. There’s this book Talia is using. It’s called the Show Bible. She’s tracking everything that happens for me, so we can have a perfect record to refer to at every choice. I can—”

“What are you even talking about?” he yells. “Like she’s been spying on me?”

“No!” Marsh cries. “I only meant...”

She groans, frustrated. This isn’t going the way she wants at all.

“I’m not trying to hurt you while I do this,” Marsh finally says. “I just want to make things better for myself.”

She tries to touch his arm.

“You can understand that, can’t you?”

Dylan shakes his head. “Not like this.”

“I thought you’d be excited! I remember the first time you heard about quantum bubbling, you were so fascinated, you—”

He jerks away. “I was fascinated with the concept, Marsh! As a theoretical experiment!”

“But you loved the first season of All This and More !” she says. “We watched every episode together. We talked about it endlessly. You were obsessed with it!”

“Who wasn’t ?” He throws up his hands as he shouts, so loud Marsh bristles, and the urge to shout back swells. He knows all the buttons, exactly how hard to push them. “But that doesn’t mean that I wanted to do the same thing myself! And especially without me even knowing what was happening!”

He glares at her, bracing for the comeback. Begging for it, it almost looks like.

But Marsh knows even more about his buttons than he does hers.

“Well,” she finally says, once the silence has lingered a few seconds too long. Dylan has deflated like a sad carnival balloon, his fury absorbed into the cold sponge of her patient, reasonable tone. She could kill him with her tolerance, she knows. “Now you do know.”

“Yes, I do,” he says, but it’s a whine. “And I don’t consent.”

“Well, I’m not stopping the show.” She takes a slow breath. “This episode is only the midseason special.”

Dylan shakes his head, as if he can’t believe her.

Marsh thinks he might be about to say something else, but instead, he just gives her a long, terrified look. Then he turns and walks toward the lobby doors, to go out into the night.

“What are you doing?” she yells, surprised. “I meant it when I said I won’t stop! You can’t force me to!”

“You can have your show, then!” Dylan replies, shouting back at her again because she’s shouting at him. “But I want no part of it.”

“What does that mean?” Marsh snaps. “You’re just going to ignore your problems, or blame them all on me, just like you did before?”

“Not ignoring them,” he says. “Quitting.”

“What?”

But his gait doesn’t slow, and he doesn’t turn around. “I quit the show.”

The cameras rush in on Marsh, and the comments explode with exclamation points.

TopFan01: Can he actually do that??

JesterG: Is it even possible?!

“Dylan, wait!” Marsh calls.

He storms out.