Page 4

An Old Flame

The recap screen is dark for a beat, to let the somber scene sink in. Talia doesn’t prompt Marsh for once, letting her have her space.

Finally, the area behind her begins to glow again, and eventually, Marsh appears sitting on her couch, her best friend Jo next to her, the coffee table in front of them covered in half-empty Chinese take-out containers.

“You don’t have to actually go out with any of them if you don’t want to,” Jo insists as she offers an egg roll. “Just make a profile and message some of them.”

By the end of that miserable year, our dear Marsh had finally stopped randomly bursting into tears whenever she thought of Dylan, but in place of that raw agony had settled a kind of cold, immovable numbness that was almost worse. She couldn’t enjoy food; she couldn’t have fun with friends; she couldn’t even smile. And her job, which she already didn’t love but was paying the bills, was on the rocks, because she could barely concentrate. Even Jo was at a loss as to what to do. Worst of all, sweet Harper was becoming affected, unsure of how to handle her mother’s crushing unhappiness.

“You know, when she was a baby, I used to think that Harper had gotten more of my personality than Dylan’s,” Marsh tells Talia, avoiding most of the scrolling caption. “She was such a gentle, sweet child, even when she was upset about something. But the older Harper has gotten, she’s become more and more like him.”

“Is that bad?” Talia asks.

“No, not at all!” Marsh cries. “I’m glad she has some of Dylan in her, to balance her out.”

It’s not diplomacy. She means it. Harper is a teenager, so she’s still awkward and shy, but there’s a sharper streak to her now. When she’s practicing violin, her eyes glow with focus just like her father’s do when he’s talking about physics, and she frowns exactly the same way when Marsh is annoying her.

And she seems to be annoying her more and more lately.

“Every parent of an adolescent worries about that,” Talia soothes when she admits it.

Marsh gives her a polite smile. “It shouldn’t be her job to take care of me, it should be the other way around,” she says. “I’m worried... I’m worried we’re slowly starting to grow apart.”

She is. But it’s more than just that.

Before, her daughter was too young to see Marsh as anything but a mother. But now, she’s old enough to also start to see her as a woman.

And Marsh is worried that all she sees is a timid, unadventurous one.

“Fine, just look at their pictures,” Jo bargains in the flashback. “You don’t even have to send a message!”

She’s talking about LoveMatch, of course. The worst, and only, place for Marsh to go to start dating again.

“Just flirt a little,” Jo urges. “See what’s out there.”

“I don’t care what’s out there,” Marsh replies stubbornly, but it’s a lie. Maybe it wasn’t at first—Marsh couldn’t imagine even looking at another man after Dylan, let alone more—but eventually, the ghost of desire always returns.

“Not even a little?” Jo teases. “Come on. I saw the way you looked at the Chinese food delivery dude just now.”

“So, he was cute,” Marsh fumes back. “That’s not a crime!”

“Neither is downloading LoveMatch.” Jo stares her down . “I can tell you want to. You just want permission.”

“Fine, I want to,” recap-Marsh groans.

But it wasn’t Jo’s permission she needed.

“Mom,” Harper’s voice interrupts right then.

Both Marshes look up to see a teenage Harper standing in the hallway in the footage, staring at her mother with her arms crossed, and the recap music stops dead, just like Marsh’s heart did the first time through this moment. How the world could live in a single sigh or laugh, a roll of Harper’s eye.

Who knew if Dylan was still seeing whoever had been in his office that night, or if he was seeing anyone at all. But to Marsh, it didn’t matter.

It only mattered that Marsh was considering dating again, and that Harper had heard her .

Then, mercifully, Harper giggles at Marsh’s horror-stricken face, and all the color comes back into the scene.

“Listen to Jo. Sign up for LoveMatch already,” Harper says. “I dare you.”

“So I did,” Marsh tells Talia as they sit below the recap. “I signed up. Actually, I remember as I waited for the download to finish that for the first time in years, I actually did feel the tiniest, most tentative flicker of hope.”

“Just to see what’s out there,” on-screen Marsh tries to convince herself. She uploads some photos, and sets her profile to “active.”

Talia looks inquisitively at the Marsh across from her.

She shakes her head. “It was... absolute hell.”

The music screeches as a collage of mortifyingly awful messages from potential suitors flood the screen, hundreds of little bubbles whose words could curl hair.

“I went on probably a hundred first dates,” Marsh says, her voice flat and lifeless, as the montage finally selects one such evening to play out. “Each one was worse than the last.”

She sits alone as the restaurant swirls around her, an appetizer untouched. Stood up, or the guy left before they’d even ordered—they all run together. Marsh stares at the empty chair, and at the next table, a young man gasps with joy as another young man gets down on one knee and holds up a little velvet box, and the whole restaurant applauds.

She opens up her phone to delete the app.

“But there must have been someone good out there,” Talia prompts desperately, as if she can stop recap-Marsh from doing it. “A diamond in the rough!”

“There was,” Marsh admits. “Just one.”

As recap-Marsh studies her phone, the embarrassing music and garish colors shift into a gentler, optimistic hue of Sharp Purple.

Talia cocks her head and raises an inviting eyebrow.

Marsh gets the prompt. “It’s the reason I’m sitting here today, really,” she says as a swirl of pixels crystallizes into a dramatic caption.

After a hellish, seemingly endless year on LoveMatch suffering through the worst, most pathetic dates she’d ever been on...

The words scrawl themselves over recap-Marsh’s face as she tosses away her crumpled tissue to bring her phone closer, and her expression changes from devastated to perplexed—and then, even happy.

... Something miraculous finally, finally happened in Marsh’s life.

Marsh looks directly into the camera, at Talia’s prompting. “Ren Kurosaki sent me a wink,” she says.

REN KUROSAKI: Marsh’s high school sweetheart—cue the nostalgia! If Jo is Marsh’s polar opposite, then Ren is definitely Dylan’s foil. He’s everything Dylan is not: softer, sweeter, more adoring. From the first instant, it was love at first sight for Ren. By the end of high school, their classmates joked that he wasn’t Marsh’s boyfriend, but rather her shadow!

Is he still the same devoted guy, all these years later? Can Marsh find new love with an old flame?

Ren is already at the bar they’ve chosen for a first date, and when he looks up as she walks in, he nearly falls off the stool.

“It’s been a long time,” Marsh says.

“It has,” he agrees. She’s trying to be smooth, but he’s grinning at her. A real, excited smile, not a polite one. “But you haven’t changed at all.”

Marsh smirks a little as she watches herself pretend not to notice how nervous Ren is. How his hand shakes just a bit as he reaches for his drink, or how he stammers for a second when he tells her how nice she looks. Ren is maybe not quite as handsome as Dylan, but he’s cute in his own way. And more importantly, he’s different . So present, so happy to be with her.

“I know we were young, but I’d always thought we were meant to be,” Ren admits on-screen, more relaxed now, after their second drink. “Whatever happened between us, back then?”

“Graduation,” Marsh says.

Marsh and Ren dated for two years, but when he only got into a local community college in their little hometown of Beaumont, Texas, and she won a small scholarship to Arizona State University, Marsh’s parents urged her to accept, even though it would mean leaving him behind. “That was just puppy love,” they told her. “This is your future.”

“I was so crushed!” Ren laughs at himself as the caption fades. “I remember thinking it was the end of the world!”

Marsh pushes down a tiny thrill and steals a bite off his plate with her fork to see what he’ll do. He pushes his food even closer to her.

“So,” she continues, encouraged, “I thought you were still living in Beaumont.”

Ren shakes his head. “Finally got myself outta there. Took me a little longer than you, but who’s keeping score?”

Marsh smiles. “And you’re a journalist here in Phoenix?”

“Phoenix and elsewhere—wherever the story is. But say ‘investigative reporter.’” He winks. “It sounds sexier like that.”

“It does,” Talia agrees, and winks back.

The rest comes out over another round of drinks—and then another. The two of them stay until the restaurant closes, the last ones on the recap screen.

He graduated with some useless degree, Ren tells Marsh, and then promptly left the country. He traveled all over as a backpacker at first, but after he realized he wasn’t too bad at writing, he began searching for stories he might be able to sell. The thrills, the close calls, the funny moments—she watches herself hang on every word. Even though it was a little grungy at the start, his life has been so exciting, so dynamic, so interesting. He even managed to write a big feature on the making of the All This and More show, which was published just after the first season concluded.

“Oh, I think I read that one,” Marsh recalls in the recap, as he mentions it. “I didn’t realize that was you. It was really good! I loved it.”

“Can you imagine being the contestant?” Ren says, and they both laugh. “How incredible would that be.”

Eventually, on-screen Marsh steers the conversation toward what she wants to know. On the romance front, Ren had been single awhile. He was once serious with a woman, but they broke it off after a few years. He was traveling too much, and she wanted children. She’s happily married with two kids now, and he still sends her a Christmas card every holiday.

“Oh my God.” Marsh rolls her eyes playfully at him, once he’s done with his monologue. “You are literally too perfect. You must have some baggage.”

“You,” he says.

Marsh looks up at him.

“You were my baggage.” His voice is soft. “I don’t know if I ever really got over you.”

She’d expected Ren to play it cool, but he messaged her that same night, as soon as she got home from the date. They went out again the next evening, and the evening after that. They went out every night for a week straight before Jo stomped over from her corner office to Marsh’s desk outside Victor’s and demanded that Marsh turn him down once, and meet her after work to spill all the details. On-screen, the two of them impatiently tap their feet in front of their work computers, staring at the clock. If Marsh was already in hot water with her boss because she’d been too sad for the last year to focus, she was equally distracted now for entirely different reasons.

As soon as five o’clock hits, they dash out of the building and to Marsh’s house so fast, they even beat Harper home from violin practice. Far too much wine and Chinese takeout later, they’re whispering giddily on the couch as Marsh recounts everything through an artful flashback sepia overlay.

“It was perfect, Jo!” Marsh says as she describes her and Ren’s first kiss. “Just perfect!”

Jo squeals like a teenager, bouncing around on the couch like the two of them are back at a high school sleepover.

“I haven’t seen you like this in a long time, Marsh,” she says at last, after hugging her. “It makes me happy.”

“I’m happy, too,” Marsh admits. “Things are finally going right.”

“What a love story,” Jo gushes. “The guy from high school with the biggest crush ever on you is still just as smitten after all these years. It’s so romantic!”

There’s a sneaky glint in her eye now.

“Speaking of romantic... I have something for you.”

“For me?” Marsh asks.

Jo picks up her purse, and then both of their wineglasses. “Come. We need your mirror.”

Jo leads her down the hall, Marsh nervous but curious. It’s the wee hours of the morning, but Marsh’s eyes still dart down the hall toward Harper’s room as they pass just to make sure that her door is closed. Whatever Jo has planned, it’s not for a young teenager to see.

Next, she’s in her bathroom, wrapped in her old robe and staring at the full-length mirror.

Below the screen, Marsh does the math again as she watches. How long it had been since she’d slept with another person besides Dylan? More than two decades. And how long it had been since she’d even slept with him, once things had started to get rocky? No comment.

Recap-Marsh takes another sip of wine and faces her mirror again.

Actually, she takes three more sips.

“You can do this.”

Then, as the camera pans modestly up to just her face and collarbones, she drops her robe.

“Okay. Not bad for forty-five,” she finally says, as authoritatively as she can.

Marsh chuckles, embarrassed but sympathetic, as recap-Marsh opens the other eye she’d been squinting shut out of terror. Experimentally cocks a hip.

“You’re a goddamn warrior,” she tells her reflection, nodding vigorously to inspire confidence. “You are sexy.”

But some other random part of her that’s supposed to be taut and toned starts nodding ever so slightly along with her, breaking the spell.

She sighs and takes a long swig of wine. “Fuck.”

“Did you put it on yet?” Jo hisses, muffled through the door.

Marsh snatches up her robe again. “I’m getting there,” she says.

Jo giggles. “You haven’t even taken it out of the package yet, have you?”

“I... am doing it now,” Marsh says.

She turns to the box of lingerie on the sink counter. The tissue paper is still arranged flirtatiously around it.

It’s strappy. Lacy. Red.

Lasciviously, embarrassingly red .

The tag, which is also made of lace, says the getup is called “Le Fascination.” Is that even proper French? She still has no idea.

“Can I see?” Jo whispers.

“One second,” Marsh protests. She gingerly lifts one of the straps with two fingers, like it’s a small snake.

“That’s it, I’m coming in.”

Before Marsh can stop the door, her friend is in the bathroom, too. Jo grins, grabs the lingerie, and begins dancing around with it over her clothes as they both chortle—and for a moment, recap-Marsh looks like she might just be brave enough to do this. To be the bold, sexy woman she wants to be. To wear Le Fascination and completely bowl Ren over. To make him hers.

To take back her life.

“Okay,” Jo finally says, wiping her eyes as the two of them catch their breaths. “So it’s been a while, and you’re nervous. But you want to do this, right?”

Despite the blush rising on Marsh’s cheeks, she nods.

Below the recap screen, Marsh turns to Talia.

“The truth is,” she starts, “I’d been taking things slow with Ren not because I was nervous and out of practice.”

Talia quirks a brow.

“Well, I was nervous and out of practice,” Marsh admits, a smile escaping her lips. “But it was also because this night felt like my last chance.”

“Last chance?”

“Every date with Ren had been great so far—except the last one. He seemed withdrawn, distracted. I thought the guy of my dreams was losing interest.”

The recap screen cuts back to Jo and Marsh, the two of them huddled in her bathroom as they share her glass of wine, Le Fascination lying between them, as she recounts the same story to Jo.

“When I finally told him, I could tell something was wrong, I’d been bracing for the worst,” recap-Marsh tells Jo. “‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ I was sure it was the end for us.”

“Oh my God,” Jo gasps, her hand over her mouth. “What did he say?”

Marsh grabs Jo’s fingers and laces her own through them, excited. “He confessed that he was just as in love with me as he’d been all those years ago, but he was worried that my hesitation to get physical meant I was still in love with Dylan. That I wasn’t ready to move on yet! And he was afraid of getting hurt.” She’s beaming. “Because what he wants with me... is serious. Serious, Jo!”

“I knew it! I knew it!” Talia shouts in exactly the same way Jo does in the recap at the same moment, their two voices melding into a squealing chorus, one in the past and one in the present.

“I did exactly what I thought you’d do,” recap-Marsh tells Jo. “I grabbed his perfect face and kissed him hard, and told him that I was more than ready. And that I was going to show him the next time I saw him.”

“Good girl,” Jo says proudly. She holds out Le Fascination again. “Ren is going to love you in this. It’s going to be the perfect night.”

“Perfect,” recap-Marsh repeats.

Present Marsh looks away from the screen, to Talia.

“I was going to light that goddamn marshmallow on fire,” she tells her.

“And?” Talia asks excitedly, on the edge of her seat.

“And then, last night, I messed it all up in the worst way possible,” Marsh says as Talia recoils in horror.

The music wails, tragic.

“I ruined everything .”