Page 49 of The Do-Over
ROB
Rob awoke to the feeling that something was deeply wrong.
For a moment he didn’t know where he was. What room was this? He sat up slowly, aware of various aches in his body, and looked around.
And then memories came flooding back in.
The car on the side of the road. Thea digging him out. Sitting across the table from her and taking in her appearance—she was so much older now. This house was hers.
And that was where the memories stopped.
He could actually feel the lack of them now. It was as if a gaping hole had been punched in his brain. The basketball game didn’t feel like something that had happened recently, even though it was the clearest memory he had before waking up in the car. It felt distant, murky, the way his memories of young childhood did. It felt as if time had gone by.
He got out of bed. There was a suitcase on a chair in the corner of the room. It was open and full of men’s clothing. He frowned at it for a moment, then made his way over and picked up a button-down shirt.
“I went back to the car,” said a voice from behind.
He turned. Thea was standing in the doorway, a mug of coffee cradled in her hands. “Morning,” she said. “I found that in the trunk of your car. The keys were in your pants pocket. I hope you don’t mind. I thought you would want your things.”
“No, that was—” He swallowed. “That was nice of you.” These are my things? Nothing in the suitcase looked like it belonged to him. Rob liked to wear jeans and sports jerseys and T-shirts with band names on them, not dress slacks and button-down shirts. And all these ties! Why did he need seven ties? And had he really been the one to pack them in these tidy little rolls? It looked like something someone’s mom would do.
“Um, I’ll leave you alone to get dressed,” Thea said. “But when you’re ready, there’s coffee and cinnamon rolls in the kitchen.”
Rob nodded. “That sounds good,” he said.
She disappeared, and he turned back to the suitcase, feeling just as confused and out of place as ever. If these were his things, shouldn’t there be something familiar in here?
He rifled through the suitcase, hoping to find something, but there was nothing. He had packed a few changes of clothes—and they were all the same kind, all more formal than anything he could remember wearing outside of a few special occasions. There was a toiletry kit—he dumped it on the bed and saw that it contained the kind of basic things that could have belonged to any man in the world. A pair of black shoes, a pair of sneakers, several balled-up dress socks and a couple of pairs that looked more appropriate for athletics. Underwear. A book he couldn’t remember ever having looked at in his life.
Come to think of it…
He picked up a pair of pants and looked at the label. They were larger than anything he’d ever worn—not unusually large, but definitely bigger than his size.
Unless his size had changed.
It made sense, of course. Thea’s body had changed in the years that had gone by. His must have too.
But there was something different about seeing her in an unfamiliar body versus knowing that he was in an unfamiliar body himself.
He ran his hands down his sides to his hips. The lines were familiar, but he did feel a little thicker than what he remembered. He frowned and lifted a hand to his face. Something was different there too—the shape of his jawline was a bit softer.
He pulled on a set of clothes, not taking much trouble to pay attention to what they were. Who cared if his shirt didn’t match his pants? There were bigger things to worry about at the moment. He went out into the hall.
Thea must have heard him because she peeked out from the kitchen. “Ready for breakfast?”
“Can you just point me to the bathroom?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, of course. It’s at the end of the hall.”
Rob went back into his room, grabbed his bag of toiletries, and went down to the bathroom, deliberately keeping his gaze low. He waited until he was standing right in front of the mirror. Then he drew a slow breath and looked up at his reflection.
He was shocked.
It wasn’t at all the same as looking at Thea had been. When he’d seen her, he had seen the same old face, the same girl he had loved. It had taken time for him to really notice the differences.
In his own face, the differences were the only thing he could see.
Not that they were particularly upsetting differences. He ran his fingers along his hairline, reassuring himself that it was where it should be. His father had begun losing his hair in his thirties. Rob didn’t seem to be dealing with that problem.
