The Status of All Things: A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  But as I sit here now, staring at the candy-coated status update sitting on my computer screen, I wonder if those Debbie Downers have been onto something when they tell it like it is. (Well, except the ones who post about government conspiracy theories—those people are just cray-cray.) Obviously, always trying to make my own life look like a Norman Rockwell painting wasn’t getting me anywhere. Maybe it was time to be real.

  I quickly delete the disingenuous words I’d just written and type a new status, hitting send before I can talk myself out of it.

  Thank you all for thinking of me. I’m devastated that I’m not getting married. I wish I could do the past month over. Please DM me if you have access to a time machine.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Be careful what you wish for, people. You just might get it.

  The high-pitched beeping of the alarm jolts me awake from a dream—I was standing on the balcony of my bridal suite, watching Max and Courtney making out on the beach as the soft waves lapped over them. I tried to yell at them—to find out what the hell they thought they were doing—but no sound could escape my throat. I attempted to move but my feet felt like they were glued in place. I had no choice but to watch helplessly as they laughed in between kisses, Courtney biting Max’s lip playfully.

  “Fuck you both!” I scream into my pillow, where a pool of saliva has formed.

  “Good morning to you too!” a voice says—one that sounds identical to Max’s. But it can’t be him. He’s probably entangled in Courtney’s floral bedspread. And she’s probably biting his lip just like she was in my dream.

  I bolt upright to find Max wrapped in the sheets beside me, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?” I demand.

  Max cocks his head to the side and frowns at me. “I live here, remember?”

  “Not anymore you don’t!” I hiss, trying to figure out what happened last night—how Max ended up in my bed. My head throbs like it would from a hangover, but I couldn’t remember having any alcohol. My mind foggy, the last thing I recall is talking to Max on the phone and melting down after.

  I flinch as Max puts his hand on my arm. “Honey? Are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m about as fine as anyone would be after what you did!” I jump out of bed and back away from him. “Did you slip in here last night after I was already asleep? I didn’t think I’d need to change the locks. I think you’d better leave—now. I’m sure your girlfriend is wondering where you are. She wouldn’t be too happy to find you back here with me.”

  Max rolls off the bed and steps gingerly toward me, as if I’m a wounded animal he wants to help without getting bitten. “It’s me, Max, your fiancé. Last time I checked, you’re my only girlfriend. One I plan to marry in a month.”

  The room starts to spin and I grab the edge of the dresser to steady myself. Had it all just been a terrible nightmare?

  “That’s not possible. It’s already July 1.”

  “Okay, now you’re really scaring me . . .” Max inches closer, his plaid pajama pants hanging loose around his waist, exposing his tight abdomen, and I picture Courtney running her hands over it. Then I imagine cutting her hands off with the ginormous twelve-inch chef’s knife we had registered for at my insistence.

  I shudder and yank one of his white T-shirts out of the drawer and throw it at him. “Could you please put this on? I can’t think.”

  He pulls the cotton V-neck over his head. “There—now will you listen to me?” He eyes me cautiously. “Look at your finger. You’re still wearing your ring.”

  That proves nothing. I still wore it after you left me.

  I stare at the diamond for a moment. “This doesn’t prove anything. You need to do better than that to convince me that we’re still engaged,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.

  Max grabs his phone off the nightstand, drops it on the floor, and kicks it over to me, probably afraid I’ll start foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. “Check the date. It’s June 1.”

  I feel his eyes on me as I inspect his phone. The date does say June 1. I quickly check his texts—there are ones that I’d sent him thirty days ago, the last asking if he’d pick up orange chicken from our favorite Chinese place on his way home. “How did you do this?” I ask.

  “Do what?”

  “Change the date on your phone. Delete all my other texts from the month of June. Was it Rafael? Did you put him up to this?” I ask, referring to his best man, who is an IT expert. “And if so, why? It makes no sense why you would go to these lengths to get back together with me. You made it clear how you felt.”

  Max takes a deep breath. “Katie, I swear, I have no idea what you are talking about. Is the stress from the wedding getting to you? Is that what’s going on?”

  I race down the stairs without answering him.

  Where had all the wedding presents gone? The ones that had just been piled in the corner under the blanket Jules had tossed on top of them.

  “Max!” I yell. “What did you do with the wedding gifts? They were right here,” I say as I stand in the empty space where they’d been. “We need to send them back!”

  Max comes to the top of the stairs. “What presents? You were just saying yesterday that you were surprised none had arrived yet.”

  I press my eyes shut. “Max, I have no idea why you’re doing this,” I say as he slowly descends the staircase, his hand making a squeaking sound as he slides it down the wrought iron railing. “Listen, the jig is up!” I tug the handle on the refrigerator door, expecting to find only half a bottle of chardonnay and a tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. But the shelves are stocked and right smack in front is the Styrofoam carton from Chin’s. The same container full of orange chicken that we’d eaten thirty days ago. Or last night, depending on whom you asked.

  “What the hell?” I say as I open the lid and smell the chicken, the aroma still fresh.

  “My sentiments exactly!” Max walks up and pulls me into his chest, and I drink in his familiar scent.

  It must have all been a nightmare. Thank God.

  “Seriously, babe. Are you okay? Do you need to go back to sleep?”

  “No,” I say, and pull Max closer. “I’m perfect.” I give him a deep kiss, letting the heartache drift from my body as we touch lips. “I just had a really bad nightmare.”

  “Obviously!” He blinks several times as if trying to reason away my strange behavior. He flashes his uneven grin, reminding me of the selfie I’d deleted off my computer. Or thought I’d erased. Or thought I had taken in the first place. I’m losing it.

  I think back to the look in Max’s eyes when he told me he couldn’t marry me, the shame I felt as we broke the news, the anguish that stirred inside of me when I came home to an empty condo. The sound of his voice cracking when he told me he’d fallen in love with my friend Courtney. “It really was. You have no idea!”

  “I’ve never seen you like that. You sounded so—” Max rests a bag of Sumatra beans on the counter.

  “Crazy?” I offer.

  “I was going to say psycho.” Max turns and a smile plays on his lips and I feel the knots in my shoulders loosen. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I look at him now, taking in his wavy hair that always sticks up at the cowlick when he wakes up in the morning, the way his right dimple appears just when you’ve forgotten about it, the slightly chipped tooth from a childhood hockey game that he refused to have fixed because he thought it gave him character, and decide to keep the details of the nightmare to myself. Knowing Max, it would only make him feel bad to hear that he’d been such an asshole, even if he’d only done it in my dreams. That’s the kind of guy he was.

  “I’m so sorry for jumping all over you like that—you didn’t do anything wrong. It felt so real—I’ve never had a nightmare like that before. I just need to shake it off and I’ll be fine,” I say definitively
, even though I’m still able to recall every nuance, every pain, every single last moment. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget any of it.

  “You sure?”

  I nod.

  “Okay, why don’t you go up and take a shower?” Max suggests. “And I’ll make you some of this,” he says, pointing to the bag of coffee. “Extra, extra bold, just the way you like it.”

  “Thank you,” I say, leaning my head against his shoulder and wrapping my arms tightly around his body, not wanting to let go.

  Max hadn’t left me. Thank God.

  As I head up the stairs, I still feel the bad dream pushing on my chest—a small burn reminding me how devastated I’d felt only minutes before. I scrub my body hard in the shower, trying to wash away the emotional residue the nightmare has left on me, but it refuses to disappear, like one of those hand stamps you get at a theme park. Giving up, I finally push open the glass door, the steam enveloping me as I wrap my robe snugly around my body. I rub the foggy mirror in a circular motion so I can see myself, and as I take in my wet, stringy hair, I wish I had gotten that blowout yesterday. I absolutely despise blow-drying my hair—so much that Jules and I have a pact: if either of us wins the lottery, we will hire the other a full-time stylist.

  I slide my laptop out of my computer bag and perch on the edge of the bed, pulling up my Facebook page, the photo I’d posted where I was mischievously sticking my head out from behind the dressing room curtain when I was at the boutique for my final wedding dress fitting filling the screen. I close my eyes for a moment, calmed by the memory of the feel of the organza gown hugging my body as I twirled in front of the three-way mirror, tears springing to my mom’s eyes as she’d watched.

  This wedding is still happening.

  Then Courtney’s face appears in my feed, and I click on a picture she’d taken after her appointment at Drybar—the one that I hadn’t joined her for. A shiver runs through me as I study her chestnut-colored eyes. I know now that she hadn’t really stolen my fiancé, but for some reason I still felt inexplicably angry with her, a raw rage that I’d never experienced before—one so intense it compelled me to want to find her and pluck every last silky hair out of her scalp.

  I click back over to my own page, desperate to get away from Courtney’s perma-grin, her row of perfectly even beauty pageant teeth making my stomach hurt. For a split second, I consider grabbing my phone and pointing it at the bathroom mirror, capturing my hair as it looks in this moment, soggy and limp, half straight, half wavy, framing my face and making me look like a poodle that’s just come in from the rain. Then I’d upload it to Facebook and write:

  The wet dog look is severely underrated. #whoneedsblowdryers

  But of course I can’t do that. The only pictures I post have been taken by someone I’ve instructed to hold the camera far above my head and angle it just so. By the time I edit and upload the picture, I look like the latest celebrity on the cover of Vogue, like a plastic version of myself.

  Glaring at my blow-dryer resting on the edge of the black-and-white tile countertop in my bathroom like we’re in a standoff, I know I’ve already lost this battle. The dryer and I both know I need him. I don’t care what those magazines say. A little mousse combined with a few zaps of my hair through the diffuser does not give me beachy waves. I quickly type my status.

  Thinking of the time we’d all save if we had hair that would magically blow-dry itself. Is that possible? #wishingformiraclehair

  • • •

  When I look up again and see my reflection in the mirror, I jump back, my arm inadvertently knocking the blow-dryer off the counter and sending it cascading down to the floor. I blink several times, but when I look at myself again, nothing has changed—the wet, stringy hair I had just moments ago has been transformed into smooth strands I’d never been able to achieve on my own.

  Am I still dreaming?

  I peer over the top of the stairs to see if Max is still in the kitchen. I spot him just where I’d left him, now pouring coffee into his favorite mug—the one with a picture of a bull and the word España printed on the side in bold block letters that he’d bought before we’d boarded our flight home from Barcelona last year. We have to get something! Even if it is a cheesy airport souvenir, he’d joked.

  If this is a dream, how do I get the hell out of it?

  I punch myself in the leg. Pinch my ear. I even kick that part of the bed that sticks out just far enough for me to stub my toe on it regularly. It hurts like hell, but still, nothing changes.

  I try to think, letting out a gasp when I finally put the pieces together.

  It was my status update.

  Reaching for my laptop again, I check what I’d just written—that I’d wished for miracle hair. The ceiling starts to swirl as I remember the update I posted last night—or at least what I had thought had been last night—the one where I’d wished I could do the past thirty days over again. Had my last two status updates actually come true?

  “It can’t be,” I say to myself.

  “What can’t be?” Max asks as he strides into the bedroom holding out my favorite mug, lime-green with a huge chip on the rim that I refuse to get rid of, even though my lip brushes against the sharp edge each time I take a sip.

  “Nothing,” I say quickly.

  “Wow, your hair looks great—I didn’t even hear you turn on the blow-dryer!” Max says.

  Because I didn’t!

  “I got a new one—it’s the as seen on TV one. You know, perfect hair while you barely lift a finger,” I say, deciding I’m being sort of honest as I quickly recall the infomercial I’d seen late one night and the blow-dryer I’d come very close to actually buying.

  Max smiles as he grabs a towel from the closet. “I never thought that stuff really worked. Now maybe I’ll have to buy that Grill Daddy they’ve been advertising?”

  “Maybe,” I murmur. “Hopping in the shower?” I ask hopefully as I quickly grab the evidence proving I wasn’t being truthful, the lemon-yellow blow-dryer I’ve had for years—and slide it under the sink before Max spots it. If this was really happening—if my status updates were actually coming true—I needed to test it again to be sure. Right now.

  “The last grill-cleaning tool you’ll ever need,” Max says, mimicking the deep tone of the announcer’s voice from the commercial as he brushes past me and clicks the bathroom door shut.

  My eyes dart around the room the minute the water turns on. What is something simple I could wish for? Something Max wouldn’t notice? Oh, God—did I really believe this was happening? Jules and Liam would have a field day with this—I imagined telling them the story over drinks, Jules rolling her eyes and Liam spitting out his whiskey after I uttered the words time travel, asking me if Doc was waiting for me outside in his DeLorean. “Only one way to find out if this is real,” I whisper as I bring my shaking fingers to my keyboard.

  I write an update about wishing I’d bought those gorgeous new wedges last week and count to three before stepping into the large walk-in closet that Max and I share. Sitting next to the ivory satin heels I planned to wear on my wedding day are the strappy gold sandals I had drooled over when I’d spotted them at Nordstrom, finally walking out of the store without so much as trying them on after convincing myself that I’d already spent more money on the wedding than we’d planned.

  “Holy shit,” I say under my breath. My Facebook statuses are coming true.

  I have no idea why or how. All I know is they are. And not only am I the proud new owner of a glorious pair of shoes and hair so beautiful that it begs to be taken out to dinner, but I have gone back in time, which means my nightmare isn’t just an ugly dream, it is real. And in just one month, Max is going to break my heart all over again at our rehearsal dinner. And then he’ll start his new life with Courtney, leaving me to pick up the pieces. I rub the skin between my eyes where a sharp pain is throbbing, not sure I c
an handle having all of this happen to me again. Or maybe this is an opportunity for me to change the course of my life?

  Tears fall as the questions start to fill my mind. Is Max already plotting our relationship’s demise? Has he already fallen out of love with me? And the most important of all: Can this be fixed?

  Max had sworn he had never cheated on me with Courtney. If that were true, then maybe I could alter our course. Maybe I have been sent back in time because I’m supposed to alter our course. For some reason, I’ve been given the power to make any wish come true. I could make myself ten pounds lighter, become the owner of that pale green Craftsman beach house in Malibu that I’ve always drooled over, or I could make Courtney as bald as CeeLo Green. The world has just become my oyster. The question is, where do I plan to start?

  CHAPTER SIX

  A true best friend loves you even when it seems like you’ve gone off the deep end.

  The quote I posted on Facebook this morning is on my mind as I watch Jules compute what I’ve just told her. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to repeat that,” Jules says as she expertly kneads a mound of pizza dough between her fingers. “Very slowly.”

  As soon as Max left for work, I’d raced to Jules’ ranch-style home tucked into the hills of Studio City so I could tell her everything. And as I watch her make the pepperoni pizza for that night’s dinner, I repeat the story of Max breaking up with me in Maui, finding out he was in love with Courtney, and traveling back in time. As the details spill out of me like a dam that has burst, Jules never blinks as she furiously flattens the dough with a rolling pin while also fielding questions from Ellie and Evan as they get ready for school. Where’s my backpack? Do we have a stapler? Where is my other pink shoe?