June, this year #3
Bonnie laughs. “Yeah, Mill, I’m with Dad on that one. Rufus really never struck me as the golfing type.”
Rufus?
She said Rufus, not Chris.
They think I’m married to Rufus. Oh my God.
I’m now in a world where I married Rufus, and the Masons are alive, and Bonnie and I are still friends.
Maybe we’re still friends because I ended up marrying Rufus — because he and I somehow got together legitimately, rather than continuing our illicit affair.
I look down at my left hand, which is gripping my plate of pie. On my ring finger are a glitzy, slightly ostentatious engagement ring — a large stone surrounded by tiny ones — and a wedding band in a white metal of some kind.
The room is swimming again, so I try not to think about it, and focus on finishing my apple pie while Angela and Frank go outside to clear the table. Bonnie’s expression has softened, and she’s looking more approving. “I’m happy to see you eating that, Mill. I swear, you’re getting so thin.”
She’s right. My wrists are tinier than I’ve ever seen them as an adult.
“I’ve lost weight,” I say, dumbly, looking up at her.
“No kidding. Not that you really had much to lose in the first place.” Bonnie holds her hand out to take my plate, but doesn’t stand with it.
She pauses, her eyebrows pinching with that look she gets when she wants to say something serious.
She studies my empty plate for a moment, then lifts her eyes to me.
“Mill . . . I know you don’t like talking about your marriage, but .
. . I guess it feels like you’ve been stressed for a long time now, and I don’t think it’s just about work.
So, when you’re ready to open up to me, I’m here.
” She gives me a pointed gaze, eyebrows raised, and gets up to go into the kitchen.
Stressed?
Yeah, just a little. I don’t even understand what universe I’m in.
Apparently one where I’m married to Rufus, the impossibly handsome professor I had an affair with when I was twenty.
Which, at the time, in my youthful stupidity, had seemed thrilling and intoxicating — at least to start with.
Now, it just seems super sleazy that a professor would sleep with his adoring student while cheating on his partner.
Not to mention a really terrible and dumb thing for me to do.
I rise on unsteady legs, and follow Bonnie into the kitchen.
Rufus aside, I’ve got to figure out how her parents are alive and well, and currently laughing on her deck.
Or, I should say, their deck, since this is evidently still their house.
I need to find out what happened the night they died — or didn’t die, apparently.
I lean against the counter, watching my best friend stack the dishwasher.
“Hey,” I say, attempting nonchalance. “I was thinking on the drive up here about that night at the Va-Va-Voom Diner — do you remember? When we had the fight with Ben about Amber.”
Bonnie pauses, still bent down over the plates, her blonde curls obscuring her expression. “Sure,” she says, slowly. “I mean, vaguely. Like, we both told him that she wasn’t right for him, and he got all shitty with us about it, something like that?”
And then he stormed out and left us, so your folks had to drive on icy streets to the diner to pick us up, and that was when it happened.
“Yeah,” I reply. “He got pretty mad about it. Didn’t he walk out in a pissy mood and abandon us there?”
“Uh, no, I don’t think so.” She straightens up and looks at me, eyebrows quizzical. “I mean, I think he might’ve done, but then came back inside, because I would’ve been staying at his place that night? I don’t really remember — it was years ago. Why do you ask?”
I turn away, pretending to busy myself with putting the bread back into the metal bin, hiding my reaction to this news. This tiny but universe-altering adjustment in our timelines.
He came back. In this life, he came back. We never needed to call the Masons to pick us up. They lived.
I breathe through my racing pulse. “Oh, I dunno,” I lie. “I was just thinking about him and Amber, and trying to remember that night — our come-to-Jesus talk with him about their relationship. We were such meddlers.”
Bonnie laughs, and resumes cleaning up. “Yeah. Not that it made much difference, given they’ve been married . . . what? Four years now? And they seem . . . okay. Maybe not deliriously happy, and she and I will never be close, but whatever. She’s fine, I guess.”
He married her?
Ben ended up actually marrying Amber?
Oh, fuck.
Still, I married Rufus, apparently, so I’m not one to judge.
This is all wrong. My knees wobble again, and I pull myself onto a stool at the end of the counter, watching my best friend wipe up crumbs around the toaster.
A rush of need to be honest with Bonnie washes over me.
I have to tell her. I have to tell Bonnie what’s happening to me — I can’t go through this alone.
And we swore we’d always tell each other everything, no matter what, once we’d made up after the whole Rufus thing at Northwestern. I can’t go back on that now.
“Bon?”
“Mmm-hmm?”
I blow out a big breath. “This is going to sound totally nuts, but . . . I’m in the wrong life, Bon.
I don’t know how it happened, and I know it’s impossible, but I walked through your basement door, and then found myself in a life where I was married to Chris, my old boyfriend from the Notables, and you and I weren’t friends anymore.
Then I did it again and found myself here, in a life where I’m married to Rufus, and you and I are still friends, and your parents are still alive. ”
She stops wiping the counter at this, but doesn’t look up. Her perfectly smooth brow furrows.
I press on. “In my real life, I’m single, and your parents died in a car crash that night we were at the diner.
That’s why I nearly fainted outside, Bon.
I haven’t seen your parents in six years.
I’ve been to their funeral, with you and Ben.
We buried them. And I haven’t seen Rufus since we ended our affair at Northwestern. ”
Bonnie turns to me, her face scrunched inscrutably, a blue sponge still in her hand.
“Mill . . . what are you even talking about?” She shakes her curls. “The sun really has gotten to your head. You’re talking cray-cray.”
“I know it sounds totally impossible. It is impossible . . . but it’s also true. This is not my real life. I’m not really married to Rufus. Not in the . . . reality where I’m from.”
She puts the sponge down and comes closer, examining my face. She can always tell if I’m lying to her — or to myself. She places a damp hand over mine on the quartz countertop.
“Mill. I don’t . . . Look. I’ve been worried about you, for a while now.
You always refuse to talk about it but, girl .
. . I know things with Rufus aren’t good.
And I don’t know where all this weirdness is coming from today, but it’s clear you’re struggling with life right now, and with what’s really happening.
You could even be, like, disassociating.
” She squeezes my hand, her gaze flitting between my eyes.
“We all love you, and we want you to be okay. I think . . . maybe it’s time we got you some help. Right? Will you let us help you?”
Help?
I don’t even know what “help” looks like, when you’re an apparently delusional person who believes they’re from another reality. But it could very likely involve a mental health facility, and I’m not about to do that. Not willingly.
Although, maybe I should. Maybe this is all a delusion. I mean, that would definitely make more sense than the reality — or realities — that I seem to be living. Maybe I do need professional treatment.
Still, I won’t go down that road without a fight.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry, Bon. I just . . . I don’t know what’s gotten into me. This sunstroke has me all over the map. I’m tired and confused, is all. I need to get myself home.”
I slide off the stool and give Bonnie a shaky hug before she can say another word.
Her body tenses for a second, as if bracing herself to argue, then relaxes beneath my tentative squeeze.
She’s clearly thought better of it — at least for now.
I know the last thing she wants is to have to give me some kind of mental health intervention, and now I’ve given her a temporary reprieve from that duty.
“If you’re sure,” she mutters into my ear.
I pull back, giving her a weak smile, and she turns away, struggling to meet my eyes. We may still be friends in this life, but there’s clearly a rift between us that I can do nothing about. And it seems to have a lot to do with my marriage.
I check my pockets and pull out new, different house keys, and a Honda car fob. In my back pocket is an Android phone in a floral-print case.
A new house, a new life, a new timeline. Some good things in it, like the Masons being alive and Bonnie being my friend, again — and several that are not so good.
One, Bonnie doesn’t believe me. And why would she? What I’m telling her seems impossible. Unhinged, even. No, I’m on my own here. Nobody would ever believe this story.
Two, I have a new husband to go home to. Again.
And there’s no clear way of getting back to my real home. My real life. I’m not sure I’ll ever get back there again.
My stomach churns and lurches, and a flood of thick saliva washes the back of my throat. I lean over the side of the counter, and throw up apple pie, cream, and ice tea into the Masons’ trash can.