Page 17 of Remember Me

I had grown up on the stories of how my mother and father met and fell in love. They called each other their lightning strike. They were at a mutual friend’s wedding, being held outside near a lake. A storm arose midway through the ceremony and the guests and wedding party alike scattered. My mother tripped, her high heels catching on the soft sod. My father, being a gentleman, started to assist and it was at that moment that a bolt of lightning struck the lake right beside them. It was in that moment that they saw each other, and they knew. No questions. No doubts. Just each other.

It was hokey and romantic and not anything I’d ever considered for myself. I was perfectly content working on my degree, playing a little ball, dating the occasional chick.

I’d never planned on a lightning strike of my own. Once it happened, though, I wasn’t going to ignore it. That’s the thing about lightning strikes. They’re impossible to disregard.

“How were you my friend?” Birdie asked, making me realize I’d stopped talking.

“We were never just friends. But when I finally talked you into a ‘purely platonic’ evening, I knew I needed to be careful if I didn’t want to scare you off.”

“Okay…”

“So, I took you to a batting cage.” Her eyebrows rose. “Then I plied you with chili cheese dogs and vanilla ice cream cones at the Dairy Queen.It became our thing.”

It was genius. I got to touch her, purely as a means of adjusting her stance, of course. The looks she had sent over her shoulder told me she knew exactly what I was doing.

The flush in her cheeks told me she didn’t mind.

When I took my own turn in the cage, I caught her watching me with that same flush of awareness, biting her lip and running her eyes like a physical caress over my form.

“You really liked checking out my form,” I told her, waggling my brows.

“I’m sure that’s all it was,” she said, choking back a laugh. “I was just innocently checking out your form.”

“There was nothing innocent about it, smalls. You were hot for my body.”

“Hmm. And how long was it before we sealed that deal, out of curiosity?”

“Four fucking months.” I remembered those four months and the blue balls that memorialized them well.

Birdie laughed outright. “Should I apologize for making you work for it?”

We had just arrived at the math building, and I stopped just outside the door, my hand on the handle and my eyes direct on Birdie’s. “Never.” The air was charged between us as I remembered, and she imagined. She looked away and I opened the door.

“Why’d you decide to teach?” Birdie asked as we entered.

The humongous brick building housed both my classroom and my office. I led the way to my classroom first, glancing back at her question.

“I was inspired by a high school teacher,” I answered, inserting my key into the lock and swinging the door open.

My classes were held in a first floor amphitheater-style room, with rows of tiny desks ascending from a dais in the front with a tech podium and desk. I had found it strange, at first, to stand in the center of a group of students as a professor. Only last year I’d been part of that audience when I wasn’t serving as a TA, finishing up my last couple of grad classes.

It quickly became completely normal, though. I’d wanted to teach since I was in high school, when the trig teacher I’d been assigned to had shown me that I could actually do math, and a switch had flipped in my brain.

I jogged down the steps to my classroom desk and opened the drawer, shuffling around for the flash drive I needed to make modifications to for tomorrow’s class. Birdie waited on the uppermost step, looking around curiously.

“I struggled with math for years and had all but given up on ever actually learning anything. I figured I just didn’t have a mathematical brain, but instead just had possessed physical or kinesthetic intelligence. That’s why I was such a good ball player,” I told Birdie now, shrugging. My voice echoed in the empty room.

“Like how good?”

“Good enough to have done something with it if that’s what I wanted.” Finding what I needed, I closed and locked the drawer and climbed the steps to Birdie.

“You could have gone pro?”

I kept forgetting she didn’t know any of this stuff. The history between us. The things that made us who we were.

“I could have,” I said. I placed a hand on the small of her back and led her from the room, closing and locking up behind me. “But I knew I’d be an even better teacher than I would an athlete, because I’d struggled. A teacher, Mr. Bo, opened my eyes to the possibilities.” I directed her down the hall. “My office is this way.”

I had an ulterior motive for bringing her to my office. When I opened the door, would the memory of the night of the accident come rushing back? I wasn’t sure, if I was honest with myself, whether I wanted that to happen or not. But then again, it could be the best thing for us. Get us over this hill we seemed to have stalled on. Steeling myself, I opened the door and motioned her inside. I watched her expression closely for something to indicate how she was feeling, but her face was as diffident as it had been since she had awakened. I walked past her and started combing the bookcase for the text I needed.

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