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January 1, 2046
Hallee
The morning sun pierces the curtains, shining through my eyelids and alerting me that it’s January 1st.
It’s January 1st, and the light has done this before, this bed has held me before, this smell has calmed me before.
I remember.
Miles’s mother was right—it was possible all along.
My eyes stay shut, avoiding being the ones to call the time of death on our love. Dean should be asleep next to me, but my back is too cold. He always keeps me warm. My hands work up the courage, reaching over to barely touch where he should be. Every ounce of composure leaves my body as wrinkled bed sheets meet my fingertips.
“Oh shit, you’re awake!” his voice rings in my ears.
My eyes fly open, and there he is. The love of my life, standing and staring. I don’t dare to even breathe.
“I’m sorry—”
No. Don’t apologize because then it’s true, and it can’t be true because if it’s true then I’m alone. Wasn’t I always, though? Love did a good job of hiding it, but I think I always was.
“It’s okay,” I breathe out.
No it’s not, but it’s not his crime to apologize for. His eyes fall, like how they do when he’s disappointed in himself, and it throws a knife at my chest. Hitting me full speed, it tears apart my ribcage to get to my heart. Must’ve made it, because this immediate hollow ache—this has to be death.
I’m going to be sick.
Shoving Dean to the side feels like breaking the law, but I barely make it to the sink before emptying my stomach, over and over.
His hands write the language of our love onto my back, replacing the ghost of his fingers from the night before. Even now, he’s my greatest comforter.
“There’s no way to explain that I’m not usually this type of guy without sounding totally like that type of guy,” he explains, awkwardly chuckling in the silence.
You’re not , my wide eyes blink, but his strained eyes have forgotten our secret language.
We’re both at a loss of words for very different reasons, and the expanse between our souls has me dry heaving for the next five minutes. Dean disappears, probably innocently fleeing from his own apartment because of the books in his room. He always thought it was a girlie hobby, never even picked one up. Not a single book all year.
“I didn’t know what you’d like, so I grabbed it all,” he says, walking through the doorway holding every drink he can, and another wave of nausea crashes into me. He looks like he did the first time I stayed over.
He does know what I like, or at least, he did. My Dean knows everything about me. This Dean is a shell of him. Still mine, though. How can that be? To belong to someone as you were, and still belong to them after you aren’t what you were?
Love umbrellas over change, I guess.
Denial overtakes me as I stare into his galaxy eyes. It pushes me right into him, and my arms hug tightly around his waist. The longer he hesitates, the tighter I squeeze, because there has to be a point when the pressure will click and restore what was lost.
Please, Dean, hold me like you used to. His mind forgot. Did his body forget me, too? I have to get out of here, I can’t breathe.
Setting the drinks on the counter, his arms finally fall into place. It’s exactly where they used to, but it’s still not the same. This timid, forced, and empty touch feels like needles pricking my skin. Death would’ve been better than enduring this kind of loss. Fuck them for doing this to us.
How could they do this to us?
“Thank you,” I mutter.
“No big deal,” he replies.
It is, in fact, the biggest deal, but he thinks the thank you is for the help today. A part of it is, but most of it’s not. The truth is, I never thanked him for loving me. Why didn’t I do it when I could?
He made me believe I was easy to love. Do you know how hard it is to convince me of something? Even the most critical part of me believed it by the end. Did he know how thankful I was before he forgot? I need to know, but he won’t know, and I don’t either, so I never will. I do know that my love was enough for him, always, and his love will get me through this.
Avoiding eye contact, I grab the Sprite and walk out of the room. Is this the last time I’ll be able to look into his eyes?
Hudson’s voice talking to Matt punches me in the gut. “What’s your favorite color?” he asks.
Doubling over, I drop to the floor with my drink. How did I forget I’d see them too? Please, someone help me breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
“Don’t have a favorite, but red makes my skin crawl. Not sure why,” Matt answers.
Losing his first victim will remind him that red reminds him of fire.
“I like blue, I think. Can’t quite remember, but blue seems right,” Hudson replies, laughing as if this is funny.
He’s always laughing. Except last night, when he wasn’t. Did he laugh with Avery before the year ended?
He’s wrong. Blue used to be his favorite, but it changed to green because of her. Green reminds me of a fairy , he used to say. His favorite person reminded him of one too.
I never figured out what they were. Don’t even know if they figured it out, but it doesn’t matter now. I couldn’t even save my own fairytale. There’s no way I could have saved theirs too.
“Ah, a fuck and flight!” Hudson jokes, tapping Matt’s arm and side-eyeing me. “Where ya going, sweetheart? Why don’t you stick around?”
Apparently, friends can break your heart too. The shattering of being reduced down to a fuck and flight blurs my vision.
We used to joke about how those days were in the past for us, clinging together as if we were the only six people on the planet. The ultimate ride or dies—friends until death separates us. Careless, to not take into account the death of our souls.
“Wait!” Dean calls as I run to the front door.
Instinctively, my hand freezes on the doorknob. Tapping it three times with my pinky gives me the strength to turn. My face is a river, a natural flowing stream, and he’s staring while standing on the edge.
“I’m sorry about them, I—” Confusion lines his face as he does a double take of his best friends. He doesn’t know how to apologize for them because he doesn’t know who they are. Doesn’t know how to say goodbye to me, either, but he was never supposed to have to.
Rubbing the back of his neck, he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”
Someone, end this.
“What is your name?”
Please, finish me off.
“I’d love to see you again. You’re absolutely radiant.”
Sunshine.
The missing nickname snaps my bones. Broken by my favorite person in the world, how cruel is that?
Tension thickens the air, attempting to revive our history. For him, this is the beginning of what could be. For me, this is the excruciating breakup of what already was.
As my stomach rolls again, I swallow down vomit and the pain of his silence. Begging for him to ask me to stay, my soul digs its claws down my rib cage. Each scratch is a deeper and deeper plea. Please, ask me , I blink. His blank stare splits my spine.
I’m so sorry , I blink.
“Goodbye, Dean. I like your books.”
Slamming the apartment door behind me, I place my hand on the outside. “I love you,” I breathe.
One.
Two.
Three.
My soul exits my body, watching as I float to the elevator. Did it sound like home to him? Hearing his name on my lips.
As the elevator carries me away from the battlefield, I finally sink to the floor. Does anyone know a surgeon? There’s a Dean-shaped hole in my heart. Please, stitch him back into me before it concaves and crushes off my blood flow.
Dean
“Good lay, man,” one of the guys calls out, but I’m frozen, imagining her hand on the doorknob. Am I crazy, or did her pinky tap it three times? Nothing makes sense anymore.
Open it. Open it. Open it , my heart demands. Could she still be there?
“Come sit,” the other guy insists, patting the couch beside him.
Each step over replays the devastation in her eyes as I asked her name. How could I have treated that beautiful, radiant woman like she was dispensable?
Who have I become?
I woke up before her, and immediately felt guilty for not recognizing the body sleeping so peacefully in my shirt. She looked as if she’d done it so many times before. Honestly, I wanted to stay there with her, but the longer I lay there, the more the implication of the situation set in, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
She didn’t even stir when I carefully moved her off me as if I could break her. Assuming a shower would jog my memory, I tip-toed and started the water. Instead of walking me down the steps of how I’d gotten here, it rained down confirmation that I have no recollection of last night.
Or the night before last.
Or the night before that.
Turning off the shower, I stepped into the fog-filled room and wiped a circle on the mirror. For a few seconds, I stood there staring and pleading for my mind to toss out a name that fit my reflection. Instead, there was silence and the bizarre realization that I don’t know who I am.
Or I hadn’t, until she said it.
Dean.
The sound of that name on her lips awoke all of my senses, shaking me out of my confusion and filling the air with the comforting smell of sweet vanilla. It was almost familiar, that vanilla.
“She called you Dean, so that rules out one of the three,” the one with the black hair says, pointing at the three binders sitting on the coffee table.
Reading the spines, I glance at Hudson and Matt. Which is which?
The one with the buzz cut tosses mine into my lap and urges, “Open the damn thing.”
“We sure?” I ask, trembling.
“Do it,” the other one insists.
Leaning in around me, the guys and I read about the world we live in. The first page is marked with basic identifying information, followed by an explanation of our situation.
The Gift of Forgetting .
A deep sigh leaves my lungs. It’s a brief description, but enough information to reassure us that this happens every year. We are safe, apparently.
“I need a minute,” I say, politely excusing myself.
The lightweight door slams behind me way harder than I intended.
“Sorry!” I yell, turning to take in the room that is allegedly my own.
The shining sun highlights the wrinkled sheets where two bodies lay last night. Makes a lump form in my throat, so I swallow it down and crawl back onto the right side. My heartbeat echoes off the walls of my chest. Why does it feel like I just lost something great?
What the—
The light catches a gold band on my finger as I place it on the pillow she slept on. Flipping my hand back and forth, I check for any unique qualities to it. Anything at all to explain why I have this.
An image of the woman reaching for the doorknob freezes in my mind like a paused movie. Her pinky tapped it three times, didn’t it? And next to her pinky . . . she had one too.
The vision dissolves into a figment of my imagination as I blink. Frustrated with my fickle memory, I wrestle with it for an hour. She had one. She didn’t. She did. She didn’t. She did.
Chills cover my arms as I remember the feeling of her all over me this morning. The way she fit perfectly in the nape of my neck, how tightly she hugged me, how long she held on, how devastated she looked saying goodbye. She knew my name, and it was familiar coming off of her lips.
Sliding the ring off, I hold it between my fingertips and raise it to the sun. The hollow ache in my chest grows as I read an engravement, hidden only for me to see.
She’s the one who looks like sunshine.
My hand flies to my chest, trying to calm my pounding heart. Even in her despair, the woman was radiant. A living, breathing light, and she had a matching ring.
Who was I before this morning?
Her voice is the first to talk to me, repeating over and over,
Goodbye, Dean. I like your books.
What a strange thing to leave me with. My eyes flick to the bookshelves lining the walls. Should I—?
No.
Well?
Anticipation shoots adrenaline through my fingers as my feet answer for me, carrying me to the books.
She was devastated. She knew my name.