Page 48

Serendipity

The old, dented bell clangs against the glass door of the bar as Marsh pushes it open and slips inside.

The bar is her local dive, a dark and stuffy place where she’s always felt not cool enough to fit in. Tonight, she’s got too much on her mind to notice. Or perhaps, she’s learned to be a little bolder in this path, she imagines her lovely host would tell her.

In any case, there are only a handful of patrons, all of them sitting far apart at the beat-up wood counter, and Marsh chooses a stool in the corner where she can also be alone. She sinks into the ratty cushion with a sigh.

What a disaster.

All of that work to get her marriage back on track, pushing herself to places she never thought she’d be courageous enough to go—only to have the whole thing fall apart at the final hour.

Why would the show do that? she wonders, as she ponders Ren’s surprise appearance in her bedroom. How handsome and eager and nervous he looked, standing there in the doorway, half in shadow.

She’s purposefully not called Talia again yet, because the last thing she needs right now is a chipper pep talk, but she knows what she would say if she were here: that this is great for ratings! A little bit of drama will get viewers to invest in her character.

Stories have to have complications to be meaningful, she can imagine her host proclaiming. That’s just good craft!

But that last episode wasn’t just any episode. It was Marsh’s big chance to change the course of her marriage—basically, her life, if it had worked.

She was so close.

Too close?

She shakes her head and pulls her cardigan tighter—under the sweater and jeans, she still has Le Fascination on—and dismisses that thought. Yes, All This and More might give contestants a gentle, encouraging nudge in one direction or another, but it would never do something as dramatic as trying to choose Marsh’s life partner for her.

It must have just been sheer dumb luck that Ren ended up in that scene.

Coincidences really do happen in real life, sometimes.

As Marsh sits in exhausted silence, the bartender finishes mixing something at the counter, and then a dark, caramel-colored old-fashioned in a heavy glass slides just next to Marsh’s hands atop a Sharp Purple napkin.

“Wow,” she muses, pulling the glass closer to her as the dark, inviting liquid swirls. “My favorite. How did you know—”

But the words die on her lips as she looks up at the bartender.

“Lucky guess,” Ren says, with a wink.

Marsh just stares, shocked.

JesterG: Whaaaaat

StrikeF0rce: This guy is everywhere!

“Okay maybe not that lucky of a guess.” He chuckles. “You looked like you might need something strong, and I’ve got a personal spin on the old-fashioned that most people love. I just made you the drink I’m best at.”

Ren smiles a little wider, charmingly. Marsh hasn’t blinked yet.

One coincidence is just that.

But two?

She finally shakes her head, flabbergasted at this second surprise appearance.

Where is Dylan right now? she wonders. Sure, the threesome path was a long shot, but Marsh was willing to try even that for him, to save things. So why isn’t he here now, commiserating with her? Laughing over what a weird disaster the night turned out to be? Promising that even though they didn’t go through with it, he loved that they’d tried, and that the experiment had brought them closer together? That their love was stronger than ever?

Why is Marsh alone in their neighborhood bar in this episode?

But she’s not actually alone, she revises.

Ren is here.

He’s always here for her.

Maybe two coincidences aren’t just two coincidences.

Maybe they’re a sign.

“You all right, miss?” Ren finally asks. “I can make you something else, if you don’t want an old-fashioned. It’s on the house, don’t worry about it. Anything you want.”

“No, it’s not that,” Marsh finally says. She looks at him warily. “You don’t... recognize me?”

“Uh.” He shrugs, embarrassed. “Are you a regular? I just started here.”

Marsh shakes her head, then nods. “No. I mean, yes, I’m a regular. This is my local spot. But I meant, do you recognize me from before?”

Is she asking about the last scene, or high school?

She did make a choice not to pursue the tryst—this episode probably erased that reality for him, as if it never happened.

Ren is studying Marsh intently, his face unreadable for a moment as he digs back through his memory. Then, a light goes on in his eyes, and he gasps happily.

“Oh my God,” he cries. “Marsh?”

Despite the oddness of their last encounter still hanging over her, Marsh can’t help but break into a smile as well.

“I can’t believe it!” Ren says, slapping his forehead. “Wow, you look great. You look amazing ! This is incredible. How long has it been? So, you live here now? What do you do?”

Marsh feels suddenly shy, but Ren is so enthusiastic, talking a mile a minute like a little kid who can’t control himself, that it’s hard to stay that way. After a few minutes, she’s relaxed, and is alternating between trying to answer his rapid-fire questions and laughing at his antics.

She hadn’t expected to be joking about anything tonight, but it’s almost like the whole evening has been washed away, the slate wiped clean. It’s just so nice to be with someone so thrilled to be in her presence, treating her like the interesting, gorgeous woman she wants to be— will be, by the season finale, she promises herself.

In fact, she feels happier than she has in a long time. Sure, she was excited to step out of her comfort zone with Dylan, but that was mostly novelty and nerves. Here, now, she’s really having fun.

“So,” Ren finally says, and she realizes he’s looking down at her hands around the old-fashioned. At her wedding band.

“Seven years this month,” she replies.

“Congratulations.” Ren whistles.

Marsh manages a smile. “Thanks.”

She would never cheat on Dylan. That’s his area of expertise, she thinks, scoffing. But she just wishes the subject hadn’t come up yet. She wanted to keep enjoying the innocent flirtation, that little buzz of electricity in every word and glance, that feeling of being attractive to another person, for a few minutes longer.

She doesn’t want to lie.

Just pretend, for a little bit.

“Any kids?” Ren asks.

“One daughter. She’s five. Her name is Harper.”

“Marsh, that’s awesome,” Ren says. “Really awesome. I bet you’re a great mom.”

Marsh smiles again, more genuinely this time, but she knows her posture is still stiff. Any second, he’ll pick up on it, and the whole mood will chill, that magnetic pull will vanish, gone as easily as it arrived. “What about you?” she asks, to turn the conversation onto Ren. “Anyone special in your life?”

Ren shrugs and turns back to the counter to make Marsh a second round. The stools have all cleared out, and she and Ren are the only two left in the bar, she realizes.

They’ve been talking for hours.

“Nope,” he answers as he sets down another old-fashioned in front of Marsh, and then takes a sip from one he made for himself. He savors the drink, and then leans his elbows on the counter in front of her.

“Just ‘nope’?” Marsh asks, smirking. “I haven’t seen you since high school, and that’s all I get?”

He laughs. “I spent a lot of my twenties traveling. I’d change places whenever I felt like it, and find a bar in that new city. Upscale clubs, quirky cocktail spots, dives, whatever I could find. I’d mix drinks, meet the locals, have conversations, learn the place. Then I’d pack up and move again.”

As he describes his nomadic life, he gestures to a collage of weathered postcards tacked up behind the cash register. Places he’s been, or wants to go, he seems to mean. One of them is especially eye-catching: a collage of sunny beaches and lush jungles, and the words Come to Mexico! beckoning near the bottom.

ChilangoCool: ?Una pista!

LoboAzul: ?Ven a México, Marsh!

Marsh sighs wistfully. “Sounds romantic.”

“It was,” Ren agrees. “But also a little empty. It took me a while to realize I kept moving so much not because the places got old after a while, but because I was lonely there.”

“Wise words,” Marsh says.

Ren shrugs. “I had to grow up a bit to admit what I really want.”

“And what’s that?” she asks. “What you really want?”

Ren looks at her. Suddenly, there’s more of that pull in the air again. She can feel it between them, like they’re two halves of a magnet, teetering.

“You know, you’re different from back then,” he says, grinning a little. “More...”

“Don’t even say it,” Marsh cuts him off. She takes a drink. “So are you.”

“How so?”

Marsh chuckles. “Well, considering the last time we talked, you made me a mixtape and were sobbing about how your life was over if we didn’t stay together through college—” she says, as he laughingly interjects, “Hey, I was seventeen!”—“and now you’re this handsome wandering bartender hero, like the bad boy out of some romantic comedy movie...”

“Handsome, am I?” Ren teases.

Marsh goes red. “I mean, I’m just saying, well, you—”

“Hey, it’s all right. Thank you for the compliment,” he says, clinking his glass against hers. “You’re even more beautiful than in high school.”

Marsh blushes again, and tries to cover it with another sip of her old-fashioned, but the warming liquid hits her tongue funny, and she ends up coughing, which just makes Ren—and eventually her—laugh harder.

“You really are,” Ren says.

“Oh, stop,” Marsh replies.

But she knows she doesn’t want him to.

Even if he was the puppy-dog desperate one who got his heart broken in high school, and has been carrying a little flame for her ever since, who cares? That just makes this chance meeting all the more sweet. It’s like they’re back on that incredible first date just before she was chosen for All This and More, right before she ruined everything. She’s got butterflies, and Ren is practically beaming at her as they talk, unable to help it. Just being in her presence has transformed him, made him come to life. Everything she says is hilarious to him, every little gesture the most graceful thing he’s ever seen. They’re perfect for each other.

It’s like the show designed him for her. She wants to laugh.

Maybe it’s not fair to expect Dylan still to be as flirtatious and smitten with her as he was decades ago, when the two of them first met—but who said anything about fair? This is reality TV. This is a fairy tale. This is All This and More .

She can do anything she wants.

Including something drastic.

Maybe she’s been going about this all wrong, Marsh considers as Ren laughs at yet another joke. Maybe she actually isn’t supposed to save her marriage on this show. Maybe her marriage is the very thing that’s been holding her back all this time.

Maybe she’s supposed to let Dylan go— permanently .

To give up on Dylan and pursue a relationship with Ren instead: Go to Episode 4