Chapter 16
HELP ME UNDRESS
VIOLET
What color feels like longing?
SilenceInMidnight: Dusky blue. Like twilight that never fully becomes night.
After wishing Rowan good night, I walk into my room with the new phone still in my hand. I set it down on the nightstand. The bedroom is cozy like the rest of the house, beautiful yet comfortable.
One wall is mostly window, letting the night spill in. I can see the dark shapes of trees outside, close enough to feel like they’re part of the room. Thick curtains frame the glass, easy to pull shut, giving privacy when the world feels like a lot.
The bed is an iron frame, with soft, layered blankets in calm, neutral colors.
In the corner, there’s a reading nook with a big comfy chair under a lamp, with a little side table that looks like it’s held plenty of cups of tea and half-finished books.
The room smells clean, like linen and wood, warm and safe.
I crawl into bed and lean back against the headboard, the pillows propped neatly behind me.
My phone trembles in my hand, or maybe it’s me trembling through it. Anticipation coils tight within me—part fear, part curiosity, part something that feels dangerously close to hope.
I want to know us, Rowan and me. But more than that, I want to know me.
What if the current me doesn’t like the old me?
I follow Rowan’s suggestion and open the questionnaire first. My answers take over an hour to read. I keep rereading them, pausing, absorbing. Every response feels like a voice echoing out of the dark, warm and unmistakably alive.
This was me!
I don’t know why I was so afraid. If anything, I’m… damn impressed by past me.
The optimism in my answers practically spills off the screen. The hope. The curiosity. The way she—I—seemed determined to meet life head-on, heart first, consequences be damned.
It feels strange to admire yourself like this, but I do. I really do. More importantly, I want to be her again.
Then I open Rowan’s responses. I can’t wait to know him the same way I get to know me, the ChaosInPurple me.
But it takes less than ten minutes. Compared to my half-page reflections, his few-word answers feel like doors only cracked open.
I feel oddly bereft. Still… the truth lies in plain sight. Even with our differences, even with his restraint and my overflow, at the core we wanted the same things, from the app and from our soulmate.
I ache to ask him what he felt when he typed those clipped responses.
I reread his answers once more, then move to the chat. But I don’t get very far. Wow…
The Rowan I know now, the quiet man down the hall, careful and contained, barely exists here. This version of him is playful, teasing, confident in an effortless way.
Still reserved, yes, but not withdrawn. I can see it now, how I must have coaxed him open day by day, message by message, until those short replies began to breathe.
I close my eyes, my head falling back against the cushioned headboard, and try to imagine how it’d have felt. The flutters when I’d see his name. The anticipation while waiting for his reply. Words alone must have felt enough.
God. Amnesia sucks.
I don’t just miss the memories. I miss the feelings.
The worst part is realizing that this is only one of the many relationships I’ve lost and forgotten. The loneliness rushes in hard and fast, pressing at my ribs until my throat burns and my eyes sting.
My phone vibrates and I tremble.
There’s only one person who has this number, and he’s two doors down.
It isn’t a text, but a message in the FYS chat.
SilenceInMidnight: Hey, Purple. How is my girl?
My girl.
My heart stutters like it’s forgotten how to beat.
This isn’t Rowan.
This is Night.
It takes me a second to process everything and frame a reply.
ChaosInPurple: I read our responses to the questionnaire.
SilenceInMidnight: And…?
I can almost hear it, the smile in that single word. Where Rowan’s silence holds tension, Night’s brevity feels light, unburdened.
ChaosInPurple: Wow.
SilenceInMidnight: You’ll have to give me more than that. Wow could mean a lot of things.
Something eases inside me and my shoulders drop. Did his messages always make my stomach flutter while calming my heart?
ChaosInPurple: This wow is indeed for a lot of things.
SilenceInMidnight: Tell me.
ChaosInPurple: The questions, for one. Wow. How did they think they could understand anyone from those? I can’t believe I wrote half a page just answering whether I’m the prologue, the middle, or the ending :-)
SilenceInMidnight: I almost quit filling it out. It made no fucking sense. But I’m really glad I didn’t.
ChaosInPurple: Me too.
SilenceInMidnight: What else is wow?
My fingers hover.
ChaosInPurple: You. Me. Our match.
SilenceInMidnight: I know. Sometimes it felt unreal. Now tell me, what didn’t you like?
I bite my bottom lip. Should I really risk puncturing this gentle bubble?
And before I can decide…
SilenceInMidnight: If there’s one thing we don’t do here, it’s second-guess ourselves, Purple. This is our safe space. I want you to see it that way.
I so badly want a safe space.
ChaosInPurple: I wish there was more in your answers. More words, to be precise. I’d have loved to feel what you were feeling when you wrote them.
I send it before I can retreat.
SilenceInMidnight: Hmm. Let me see what I can do about that. ;-)
What, exactly, could be done now?
SilenceInMidnight: Since it’s past midnight… have you thought about how you’re going to spend today? A little forecast, in case it helps your planning—it’s going to snow.
Snow. The word shifts inside me like a key turning.
Not a memory, not really, but a sensation.
The soft, weightless rush of white drifting down.
Cold brushing against my skin. I close my eyes, and there’s a blur of standing by a window, watching flakes tumble down and settle into a beautiful carpet.
I don’t remember where I was. I don’t remember when. I only remember how it felt.
ChaosInPurple: I remember snow.
SilenceInMidnight: You remember something?
ChaosInPurple: Not a personal memory. Just… the feeling of it.
The doctor explained this consequence of dissociative amnesia.
I’ll remember things—how to walk, read, speak.
I’ll even have memory of the sensory echoes, the smell of books, the sound of rain, and also apparently the way snow quiets everything it touches.
What I won’t remember are the personal moments tied to them.
I won’t remember the me inside them.
SilenceInMidnight: And how does snow feel to you?
ChaosInPurple: Calm and peaceful.
ChaosInPurple: I think I’d like to sit outside and watch it fall. Maybe it’ll feel like the first time.
And in every way that matters, it will be.
ChaosInPurple: I don’t really know what else I’m supposed to do. What I used to do on a snowy day before.
The confession slips out before I can stop it.
So far, I’ve been told I’m a gossip columnist. But the words sit inside me like they’re someone else’s truth. Just another fact handed to me, waiting for me to believe it.
SilenceInMidnight: I can tell you what you used to do. But I think it might help to talk to your friends too. They know that part of your life better than I do.
There’s no jealousy in his words, no possessiveness, just consideration.
ChaosInPurple: Did we really not talk about our jobs?
SilenceInMidnight: Not much. We both wanted to preserve our anonymity and FYS guaranteed it. We kind of skipped the usual date talk and went straight for the heart and stuff.
My lips curl.
ChaosInPurple: Heart and stuff?
SilenceInMidnight: You know what I mean.
I do. Somehow, I really do.
SilenceInMidnight: Okay, I’m not keeping you up any longer. You’ll need to be rested if you don’t want to miss the snowfall.
ChaosInPurple: Yeah. I don’t want that.
Not at all.
SilenceInMidnight: Good night, Purple.
My fingers hover for half a second before replying.
ChaosInPurple: Good night, Night.
Even though I told Rowan I’d fall asleep, sleep circles me, teases me, and then slips out of reach. So I do the only thing that feels right—I open the FYS app and let myself fall back into us.
ChaosInPurple and SilenceInMidnight unfold like the early chapters of a romance novel, where everything is still charged with possibility, and every message feels like a step closer to the inevitable falling in love.
It’s thrilling and tender and dangerously tempting, and it sends soft flutters through my stomach.
I pause on one exchange that makes me laugh out loud.
I’m animatedly telling him about a real-life article I’d recently read—about a female tourist who fell in love with a small-town rancher.
Apparently, cowboys are having a moment, not just in fiction but in real life too.
The way I’d written it, playfully and enthusiastically, makes me suspect this wasn’t just something I read.
It feels like I’d lived, tracked, and investigated this story, which possibly took place in Cherrywood.
I’m still smiling at the memory of a version of myself who sounded so alive, when there’s a knock on the door and my heart skips a beat.
I slip out of bed and take my phone with me, curling my fingers around it. I have a feeling this phone and I are going to be inseparable from now on. It is no longer just a device. It’s an indispensable bridge between Rowan and me. It’s how we meet each other halfway.
I open the door and Rowan stands in the doorway looking faintly sheepish, a crooked grin tugging at his mouth. Gone is the tailored suit I’ve grown used to. Tonight, he’s dressed down, black track pants slung low on his hips and a plain white T-shirt that has no business fitting him that well.