Page 50 of Remember Me

She was at the counter, working on an arrangement.“Yes, dear?”

“I know I just got here a little while ago, but I think I need to leave. I don’t feel so good.”

Her head came up, arrangement forgotten. “What’s wrong? Let me call Hayes.”

“No — I’ll be okay. My head just won’t stop pounding, and it’s making me sick.”

“Go sit down.” I started to argue and she cut me off. Phone in hand, she was already dialing. “No, ma’am. You’re white as a sheet. Hayes. Birdie’s not feeling well. She said it was a headache, but it’s making her nauseous and she’s pale... yes. Okay, see you in a few.”

Maggie shooed me onto the couch in her office and covered me with a light afghan draped over its back. I didn’t attempt to argue. I felt miserable. Closing my eyes, I let myself drift.

It wasn’t long before I felt a touch skim across my cheek bone and opened my eyes to see Hayes. He was squatting by the sofa, a line of worry bisecting his brow. I started to sit up, and with a hand at the middle of my back he helped.

“Big. I’m fine. You didn’t need to come out here.”

“I called the doctor; told him you had been having these headaches. He called a prescription for something in.” He handed me a cup of water and a couple of pills.

I studied them in my palm. “Is it something that’s okay to take when you’re pregnant?” Anxiety arose. I had not taken any medicine for the headaches since I had left the hospital. I was afraid to, afraid it would hurt the baby.

“Yeah, he made sure of that.”

I gave him a tired smile in response and took the medicine. The couch dipped as he sat down beside me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. “Thanks. I missed you when I woke up this morning.”

Hayes looked at me curiously. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. I wanted to tell you: I remembered something.” Despite the pain in my skull, excitement hammered at me. I reached for his hand. “I’m not certain what the catalyst was, but I woke last night, well after midnight. And the memory was just there. It was like…” I bit my lip, trying to figure how to explain it. It barely made sense, even to me. “You know when you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle, and you have your edge pieces all framed out, and a few spots here and there completed, but then there are these gaps?”

“Of course.”

“All of the other pieces are pushed to the side, and you might have them sort of categorized…blues, pales, trees, skin. They’re right there. At the edges of your consciousness. You know they exist, but they make no sense. There’s no order to them. The Scrabble game was like finding the right spot for one of those pieces. When I awoke, it was slotted into place. It was as if the memory had been there all along.”

Dipping his head, Hayes kissed me softly. Our lips clung before he pulled back, breath shallow. “What did you remember?”

“The party at the baseball house.” I said. The look on his face was tender, open, and suddenly I was afraid I was giving him too much confidence. What if that was the only piece I ever regained? I tried to backtrack. “But Hayes…I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Right now, I just remember you as this guy I sat with beside a fire pit.”

He pulled away from me, jaw tight, and I set my teeth against the sudden chill.

“I hear you loud and clear,” he said. “Ready to go?”

“That’s not… Hayes, don’t be mad…”

“Come on, Birdie.”

The ride home was long and silent. Staring out the window as winter trees flashed by, I found myself longing bitterly for a time machine.

I desperately needed a do-over.

“I promise to plant kisses

like seeds on your body,

so in time you

can grow to love yourself

as I love you.”

Tyler Knott Gregson

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