There was no perfect rehearsal dinner. If there was one thing Megan had learned over the course of this repetitive hell, that was it. And yet tonight had been the best version she could’ve hoped for. Every now and then, particularly when she caught her grandparents holding hands under the table, she let herself imagine the dinner as the beginning to her own happy ending. That one day she’d be holding the hand of someone she’d spent a lifetime with.
It occurred to Megan that Begin as you mean to go on wasn’t the catch-all mantra she’d thought it was. Because beginning as you meant to go on was setting yourself up for stasis. Complacency. Her new mantra was Do your best and fuck the rest. Not as poetic, perhaps, though it had so far proven efficient.
Guests lingered over their desserts, mingling, discussing the wedding they anticipated the next day. A raw melancholy tugged at Megan’s chest. Even if tomorrow arrived as it should, she knew there could be no wedding. The Tom and Megan who had agreed to pledge themselves to each other were not the same people who sat here now.
She made her way around the room, chatting with family members, sharing jokes and anecdotes, all the while stealing glances at Tom.
Why did he have to look so devastating in that midnight-blue suit? She kept imagining running her fingertips along the collar of his dress shirt, nuzzling against his chest and smelling his familiar aftershave.
Between the day they’d shared in Sidney and the bold choices he’d made today, there was a newness to him. He was still the steady, sweet man she’d fallen for, but now there was an air of adventure, of unpredictability.
A 1990s R&B song came on that Megan and Brianna used to dance to in Donna’s kitchen, using whisks and spatulas in place of microphones, and she caught her sister’s eye.
“You never let me take the high harmony,” Brianna teased.
“I know. Controlling little thing, wasn’t I?”
“The mother I never had,” she said with faux wistfulness. “You’re still a controlling little thing, just with bigger boobs and a steady paycheck.”
The fondness for Brianna that Megan had been rediscovering that afternoon blossomed. Her life might be riddled with unhealthy relationships, but that didn’t mean she had to accept them as they were. And that’s why she turned to her sister and said, “Want to take a walk?” and held her breath until Brianna said yes.
They took off their heels and made their way down to the docks to where Happy Accident was moored, correcting each other’s reminiscences of summers past and laughing at who they’d been. They listened quietly to the trumpet music from the colors ceremony, sharing looks as they recalled the many nights they’d heard this same evening tradition as kids. She’d somehow missed it every other night.
“Do you think if Mom had been less of a lunatic, we’d be closer?” Megan asked her sister after the cannon shot boomed through the harbor, signaling the end.
“Maybe.” Brianna climbed aboard the old sailboat, took a seat behind the helm. “But if Mom’s a lunatic, that means you think I’m a lunatic too.”
“What are you talking about?” Megan’s surprise was genuine.
“Come on.” Brianna gave Megan a light shove to the shoulder. “All those comments you make when you’re trying to keep up with my dating life. You think I’m exactly like her.”
“No, I don’t.” The words didn’t feel right coming out of Megan’s mouth, something Brianna picked up on.
“Yeah, okay. I’m sorry I couldn’t be mature and self-possessed like you.”
Megan didn’t want to fight with her sister. Not tonight. Not perpetually. Without thinking about it she replied, “I’m sorry I came out of the womb a middle-aged woman.”
Brianna laughed, breaking the tension. “You did.”
“Someone had to be the mom in our house.”
They grew quiet, likely reflecting on the same highs and lows. Yes, Megan and her sister had a lot of happy memories from their childhood. They also had plenty of memories that bordered on trauma.
“Whenever Mom cornered me to gossip about some horrid thing you’d done, I jumped right into that ‘Isn’t Megan So Uptight’ cesspool with her.” Brianna rested her feet against the helm, pretending to steer with her toes. “I hate that I did that.”
“You weren’t the only one who fell for Mom’s little gossip traps. But don’t you think we were just so desperate for her attention, we took what we could get?” Megan turned to her sister. “We were kids, Bree. I’m actually pretty impressed with how we turned out considering what we had to work with.”
Brianna laughed again, a little bitterly this time. “Yeah. Speak for yourself. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my entire adult life has been a train wreck. And let’s not even get started on my teens.”
Megan thought about all the things Brianna had started only to quit them. The money she’d poured down the drain in an attempt to find a vocation she could stick with. Megan had been judging her sister rather than trying to help her find the root cause. To look after her.
“I don’t know if Tom and I will be in that SoHo apartment for long,” Megan said after a pause. “But I’d like to get you set up there, no matter where I end up. And if you need help with money…”
In the distance, yacht rock carried over, punctuated with faraway laughter and whooping. A group of weekend boaters were drunk and having a great time.
“I’m okay,” Brianna eventually replied. “I don’t know that I really want to be a filmmaker so much as I wanted…”
When she didn’t continue, Megan gently prodded, “What?”
“God, this is so embarrassing.” Brianna cast her eyes upward. They were glistening with tears. “I wanted to be less like Mom and more like you.”
An incredulous bark of a laugh escaped Megan’s lips. “Really?” Megan was touched. She never knew her sister had been turning to her, looking up to her, the same way Megan had looked up to Paulina.
Brianna shook her head. “We were raised in the same dysfunctional house and yet somehow—I don’t mean somehow, I know you worked hard—you wound up at an Ivy League school with a well-adjusted boyfriend who loves you. And then you got this cool artsy job at GQ and this apartment I’ve always wanted to move straight into. It just…I feel like a walking hot mess. Like you got all the shit-together genes and I ended up with the ones that made me a full-on disaster.”
“I think it’s obvious those disaster genes mostly went to Alistair.”
The sisters laughed, full-bellied and free.
“You got to be the opposite of Mom,” Brianna said, her voice thickening with emotion. “Leaving me to be like her.”
“Hey.” Megan put her arm around Brianna, overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of protectiveness. She could be Brianna’s Paulina. She’d be honored. Their heads tilted toward each other. “What if you and I stop defining ourselves in relation to Donna Givens altogether and actually just try to be ourselves?”
“Not to be all emo”—Brianna blew her bangs out of her eyes—“but I’m not totally sure who that person is.”
Megan’s heart ached for her sister. “You’re one of the funniest people I know. I wish I had your courage and sass. And whatever you decide to do, I’ve got your back.”
Brianna sank into the hug before pulling away. “All right, all right, future Mrs. Givens-Prescott. That’s enough nauseating honesty. Let’s get you back to your party.”
The first thing she saw when she finally arrived at the hotel suite was Tom looking more relaxed than he’d appeared in days. Perhaps even years.
He was seated at the table by the window, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, sexy-sensible hair in place, carefully taking off his watch.
Looking at him, Megan imagined a world in which their lives hadn’t imploded, this day hadn’t repeated. A world in which they would’ve proceeded with the wedding as planned.
There would’ve been love and happy memories. But one day, they’d find themselves sitting wordlessly side by side at the dinner table, realizing they’d allowed themselves to become another John and Carol or Brody and Emmeline or Donna and Whoever, their lives full of what-ifs.
She knew then that, as excruciating as reliving this day had been, the repetition had saved them from something much graver. Mistakes they wouldn’t ever have been able to correct.
It was time to say goodbye to Tom, time to truly let go of the life they’d imagined together.
“How was your day?” he asked her, still fiddling with the strap of his watch.
“Oh, you know.” She shrugged, dropped her shoes in the front entrance, and joined him at the table. “I told my mother she needed to start solving her own problems and stop relying on men for validation. I bonded with Paulina, went for a hike, then made up with my estranged sister.”
“Sounds eventful.” He smiled at her, not bothering to cover the sadness in his eyes.
“What about you? A tall and litigious bird told me you quit your job.”
“I did. That happened after I yelled at Brody to fix his marriage and stop being a dick to me and while I was yelling at my dad on the golf course for treating me like a citizen in his dictatorship.”
She resisted the temptation to reach for his hand. Instead, she settled on the words “That must’ve been hard.” And long overdue, she thought.
“I also said goodbye to Leo.”
“What a coincidence, so did I.” Suddenly nervous, she wished she had something to fiddle with. She reached for the heart pendant around her neck, remembering only when her fingers grazed her skin that she hadn’t put it on. She continued. “This morning, when you said we should be the best versions of ourselves…I thought about that a lot. I don’t think I’ve let myself be my best with you.” Her words stung him; she could see that in the set of his jaw. But she needed him to understand.
“There was this ease with us, and yet the more we let the outside world in, let our families in, the more I let that outside world shape who I was. I was making decisions based on either this bottomless fear of turning into my mother or what your family wanted. I told myself you couldn’t ever understand but I also didn’t let you try. I hate that I couldn’t just say, ‘Donna messed me up and now I’m afraid to do anything even remotely spontaneous’ or ‘Hey, I’m feeling pushed out of all the decisions that actually affect our life together.’”
Letting go of everything, even briefly, to imagine a life with Leo had taught Megan that letting go wasn’t necessarily what she wanted; that to get what she wanted, she had to face her fear of speaking up. Of allowing the messiness of life to gather and show.
“I get it,” Tom replied. “I thought if I could be the peacekeeper, it would make things easier for everyone, but all I actually accomplished was making you feel like you weren’t supported. And the whole thing was this misguided pursuit to get my father’s approval. A man who said he was proud of me only after I yelled at him and quit his firm. It’s pretty messed up.”
They locked eyes. He stopped fiddling with his watch and set it on the table.
There was one question that had been burning within Megan all afternoon on her hike. She had to ask. “What if we had known this all along? What if, that first day I sat next to you in Natural Disasters, we’d been able to just be ourselves? Wholly and honestly?”
He leaned his elbows on his knees, drew a hand over his face. “I don’t know.”
Megan knew. She and Tom could’ve had something spectacular. In fact, they had, in a lot of ways.
But the damage was done and it was also spectacular.
She shook those thoughts free. She couldn’t get caught on any more what-ifs.
“What are your plans for tomorrow should the actual tomorrow not arrive?” Tom asked.
Even if the repetition didn’t stop, Megan had decided on her hike today that she would try to have some semblance of a life, one that began in the hotel bed but always continued away from the wedding that would never happen. “I think I’m done jumping through these rehearsal hoops, regardless of what day it is when I wake up.”
“I figured. Me too.”
She only wished this knowledge they’d fought for, that had come at such a price, wasn’t for nothing. Because chances were, everything they’d done today wouldn’t matter.
She walked over to the minibar, pulled out a tiny bottle of champagne, and poured it into two disposable cups. When she offered one to Tom, he raised it with her. “To not repeating our mistakes tomorrow,” she said.
“Cheers.”