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January 1, 2046
Dean
Reach up, grab the book. It’s very simple, but I’ve been standing in front of this bookshelf for five minutes trying to force my shaky hands to work. The longer I wait, the more the anticipation builds. The anticipation is the worst part, right?
I can’t decide if one option or two hundred options is more overwhelming. One is what it is, but two hundred is whatever I choose. A comforting neon teal cover catches my eyes the most. Probably the best one to start with.
Breathe in comfort, exhale nerves. Breathe in comfort, exhale nerves. Breathe in comfort, and pull—down falls a small rectangle, not much bigger than the palm of my hand.
The noise it made landing on the hardwood plays on a loop in my mind as I pick it up and sit on the edge of my bed. For one second, I hesitate, bracing for the impact of whatever is to come.
One.
There she is, covered in paint, and laying against my chest. She’s smiling at the camera, and I’m smiling at her with an admiration as deep as the blue paint strokes on my face. Dark as the night sky, that paint.
As if it remembers holding her, my heart pounds harder, transporting me back into the melody of her laughter. I want to recreate one of my favorite book scenes , she’d said, mischief twinkling in her eyes. Whatever makes you happy , I’d agreed. We’d used each other as canvases until the sunset faded and the stars came out to play.
Open it , I can almost hear her say, and the room begins to sway as I immediately obey.
August 2043
My Dean,
The words ignite in my chest—I belong to someone.
She was devastated. She knew my name.
Inhaling deeply, I start again.
August 2043
My Dean,
Thanks for reminding me that it’s good to do things that matter to us, and for helping me turn this day into a work of art. I’m so glad the stars heard us. I’ll be yours to stare at today, and forever.
Love,
Your Sunshine—Hallee
Hallee, I whisper, as if it’s a secret I’m not supposed to know. Frantically jumping off my bed, I rush to the shelves and pull off as many books as I can hold. Unable to wait any longer, I sink to the floor and open the next cover.
There’s a picture of us in the kitchen, and it comes alive in my head. She’s spinning behind me while I stir the pot on the stove. Leans in for a kiss, and the oven timer cuts us off.
She was devastated. She knew my name.
October 2044
My Dean,
I love cooking with you. Well, watching while you try to teach me to cook. We both know everything I make is inedible, but I’ll spend forever spinning in the kitchen with you.
Love,
Your Sunshine—Hallee
Closing my eyes, endless memories project to the beat of my pulse. Me, carrying her out of a smoke-filled apartment. Her, crying because she burned dinner again. Pumpkins smashed on the apartment floor. Wishing on shooting stars.
Two Polaroids fall onto my lap as I open the next book—one of her smiling, and one of me. You better take the sunflower with you , I’d said that day. It belongs in the sun. To test the validity of these returning memories, I close the book. The cover should be—a sunflower field. Exactly as I remembered.
She was devastated. She knew my name.
March 2045
My Dean,
An old woman at the bookstore surprised me with this today. She saw me looking at it in the romance section, and it felt like a sign from the universe. You should read it. It reminds me of us.
Love,
Your Sunshine—Hallee
Tears soak the pages as I thumb through every single book on the shelf. There are years of memories, pictures, and letters that have all been hidden in plain sight—protected by the secrecy of my room.
I spend hours puzzling together our timeline, reflecting and rebuilding the stained glass window of our relationship with her scattered pieces of sun. More and more comes back to me as a tsunami demolishes the constructs of our government’s gift . It couldn’t withstand the aftershock of the earthquake her love started, but I could.
She started this. All this time, she’d been building our very own library love story to pull me back into her orbit.
I hope if it was important to me, I’ll find my way back to that passion somehow , I told her once. Can’t exactly remember when, but the words voice over the picture of her in my head. Why were her eyes so sad?
No wonder I never wanted to read a book. They were never important to me. The passion for me to find my way back to is her .
Surrounded by four years of love, I grab the final book on the shelf. Seems like an old classic—leather-bound, with a small flame on the spine but no other significant markings. There isn’t even a title engraved on the front but, just like the others, it has a picture in it.
She was devastated. She knew my name.
November 18, 2045
My Dean,
Our love story goes back further than I ever imagined. December 31, 2040, to be exact. It didn’t take long for me to connect the dots of how interwoven our lives have been once I learned our deepest fears manifest through nearly identical nightmares. For years, I believed it to be oblivion I could feel approaching, relentless in its search for me. Really, it was you.
It was always you, coming to save me from it all.
We were so young then, barely eighteen. It had to have been your first year as a firefighter. Despite it being New Year’s Eve, you all arrived quickly. I was barely holding onto consciousness when I heard you and forced out my final plea for help. I thought you’d left, and started counting the seconds until death collected me. As I made it to second fourteen, you risked it all.
You came back for me.
That’s where my memory of the night ends. It took two wandering years until you found me again in this life. For the last four, our lives have collided. Each passing New Year’s Eve has only been a pause in our timeless love.
This was my fourteenth second. My Hail Mary to the gods that you will finally pick up a book, and at least one of these will release an avalanche of memories reminding you of the life we’ve built.
Maybe it didn’t work, and you still don’t remember me. If that’s the case, I need you to know it’s not your fault. Maybe you never found these at all. Either way, I will never give up hope that somehow, somewhere, someday, you will come home to me.
I love you enough for the both of us.
Love,
Your Sunshine—Hallee
My rainfall of emotion smudges her beautiful handwriting as I struggle to breathe. The memory has been transported into my bedroom, filling my lungs with invisible smoke. Her helpless whimper reverberates through my head.
She’s right. It was only my first year; I could’ve easily missed her. Almost did, but something made me wait. That one extra second changed my entire world.
The walls close in as the face of the girl I carried out finally comes into focus. My Sunshine was the fourteenth life I had saved.
. . . the only peace for my soul is that our memory of this will be wiped clean in an hour.
It was my favorite gift, to forget. Now, I want nothing more than to remember every second of this beautifully broken life.