Chapter 46 Unforgettable Memories
Unforgettable Memories
Harlee
The world used to feel impossible.
Now it’s six colors, thirty-two moves, and his thumb brushing peanut butter into my mouth.
I’m cross-legged on August’s kitchen island, wearing nothing but my robe and a pineapple puff. The ceramic under me is cold, but his body heat cancels it out as he stands between my legs—barefoot, half-dressed, and determined to find the cinnamon he swore I moved, but not really looking for.
“I’m not saying you hid it,” I murmur, twisting the Rubik’s cube in my hand, “but I distinctly remember it being on the second shelf yesterday.”
He peeks over my shoulder into the cabinet, then back at me, squinting like I’m the puzzle. “You realize you’re out here solving a damn Rubik’s cube before eight a.m., right?”
“Helps me focus.”
“And the peanut butter?”
“Helps me tolerate you.”
August grins and dips the spoon again, offering another bite like I’m his spoiled prize. I take it slow, dragging my lips over the metal just to hear him groan.
God, I love him like this—a little scruffy and deliciously annoyed.
Behind us, a slow afrobeat hums from the speaker he never turns off.
It's the same vinyl he spun the night he pulled me off the couch for a study break and taught me to samba, barefoot and giggling, forty floors up.
I was stiff and stubborn at first. Fighting the rhythm.
Fighting him. But he kept twirling me, hands guiding my hips like he already knew where I was soft.
I never made it back to the textbook.
He presses a kiss to the inside of my knee now, soft and barely there. “You remember when you said you weren’t the domestic type?”
“Vaguely,” I say, dragging the final row into place. “Back when I was a liar.”
Spring in Chicago feels like a dare.
The light's warmer but the breeze still bites. Tulips show up early like they’ve got something to prove. And even the city seems quieter in the mornings—like it's letting us have this, whatever this is.
I used to think love looked like chaos. A high, a spiral. Something wild enough to prove it was real.
Turns out, it's a man who knows how I take my coffee before I do. Who memorized the exact brand of oat milk I like but still argues about it in the grocery aisle just to make me laugh.
The kind of man who stops mid-meeting to text me a video of someone’s dog in a birthday hat. Who picks out my snacks like he's studying for an exam. Who makes me feel like peace isn’t boring—it’s sacred.
He brushes his hand over my curls like he’s smoothing time itself. Not rushed. Not needy. Just present.
“This weekend,” he says, setting my mug back in place, “you still want to drive out to Michigan?”
I blink. “That’s this weekend?”
“Yeah. I booked the cabin already. Just us. No Wi-Fi. One bed. Snow if we’re lucky.”
My body says yes before my mouth does, my toes curling into the edge of the counter. “You tryna trap me in the woods, Mr. James?”
He shrugs like it’s not exactly what he’s doing. “You like quiet now. I figure I should give you more of it.”
I smile into my coffee. “Like Santo Domingo for Valentine’s.”
He pauses, eyes flicking to mine. “Hmm?”
“That’s what this feels like. Peace. Like that morning, we woke up to the sound of roosters and ocean spray and your mouth on my shoulder.”
He hums low in his throat, like he remembers every second of it. “Damn, you were glowing that whole weekend.”
“I still am,” I whisper. “Just different now.”
He brushes his hand over my curls like he’s smoothing time itself. Not rushed. Not needy. Just present.
August’s hand lingers on my thigh. Not possessive—just tethering. Like he needs to touch me to stay real. I know the feeling.
He leans in, pressing his forehead to mine. “You nervous?”
“About?”
He pauses, eyes searching mine. “Graduation. The interview this week.”
I blink, caught off guard by how gently he’s holding the question.
“A little,” I admit. “It’s not the work, it’s… the shift. The letting go.”
He nods, quiet for a beat, like he’s already seen the ending I haven’t spoken out loud. His thumb presses into the soft space above my knee, then rests there, still.
“You’re not gonna miss me?” I ask.
He frowns slightly. “Where are you going?”
I smile, but it doesn’t quite reach. “Technically? Just across the city. But… leaving James Wilde? That’s a whole era. We won’t see each other every day. I won’t be around to pretend I’m just dropping off reports when I really just wanted to see your face.”
He leans in, forehead grazing mine. “You act like I won’t find excuses to see you anyway.”
“Still.” I exhale. “It’s the end of something.”
“Or the start,” he says. “Depends how you want to frame it.”
I let the silence sit there for a second, his hand still warm on my skin.
“Okay,” I say finally. “Then let’s call it what it is.”
“Which is?”
I nudge my mug toward him, eyes soft.
“New rules. Same love.”
Two weeks later, the silence hits different.
It’s not the peaceful kind—the one August and I have been learning to share. This one feels hollow. Echoed. Like the space left behind when a tooth is pulled too clean.
I knew it was coming. Her new spot in Cali. Her schedule. Her rising star. But still—the echo in this apartment doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like something just left me.
My mind drifts back to the day the movers took the last box out of Wynter’s bedroom. The memory still sits in me like a bruise I keep bumping.
“Girl, I can’t believe this is really happening,” she’d said, voice thick with emotion.
I nodded, too choked up to speak. We stood there wrapped around each other, faces streaked with mascara-tinged tears, saying goodbye to more than just a shared lease.
That apartment held our realest memories: movie marathons, dance breaks after she nailed a hook, one unforgettable night where we got high and tried to bake weed cookies at 2 a.m. and nearly burned the place down.
“Promise me we’ll FaceTime every day,” I’d finally managed.
“Every damn day,” she said, squeezing me tighter.
And we meant it. But FaceTime isn’t presence. It’s not hearing her humming through walls, or walking into the kitchen and finding her in a bonnet, barefoot, dancing with a spoon. The stillness in the apartment now isn’t peaceful—it’s hollow.
Wynter moved out before the snow finished melting. Twelve tracks in two months. A whole studio team is waiting in Torrance. I was proud. I am proud. But pride and ache can exist in the same room.
I feel her absence most in the mundane moments. Like now.
Later that week, I’m curled on the couch, hoodie sleeves pulled over my hands, the heating pad I finally found barely taking the edge off. I’d thugged through it for hours. Cramps hitting like a slow-moving truck, and of course, the giant bottle of ibuprofen she kept on her nightstand? Gone.
I shuffle to the living room and stop just short of her empty doorway. For days it’s been half-cracked, shifting with the heat like it’s breathing on its own.
Tonight, it’s just open. Still. Quiet.
“Fuck,” I whisper, pressing a palm to my lower abdomen.
The pain pulses with every heartbeat. I turn and stumble back to my bed, curling in tight. The silence presses against me.
I unlock my phone, half-scrolling delivery apps, half fighting tears. There’s nothing open. Nothing that can get here soon enough.
Thirty minutes later, I’m deep in a TikTok rabbit hole when my phone vibrates, and his name pops up.
Bae: Open your door.
My heart stutters. I blink, check the time, check the text again.
I peel myself out of bed, wincing with each step toward the front door. Of course I’m not wearing pants. Of course he’s going to see me like this.
When I finally open the door, August’s standing there in grey joggers, a thermal, and that same easy stillness he carries into every room. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Just holds up a CVS bag and nods toward the kitchen.
“I brought Midol. And peanut M&Ms. And those ginger chews you swear don’t work.”
I blink. “Did I text you?”
“Nope.”
“Then how’d you—”
“You sent three texts today. All one-word answers. No emojis. And I haven’t seen your forehead in 36 hours.”
I touch my scarf self-consciously.
He steps past me, already unpacking his peace offering on the counter like we’ve done this a hundred times.
“Also,” he adds, holding up the microwave popcorn like it’s gourmet, “I know what the silence means now.”
I cross my arms, leaning against the doorway like I’m not about to melt. “And what’s that?”
He turns, a smile playing at his mouth. “You miss her. And you’re in pain.”
“Babe… don’t you have a flight to catch in, like, six hours?”
That damn smile of his appears, slow and warm. “You said you had cramps. And I knew that meant that you didn’t have the stuff you needed. So, I brought them to you.”
I lean on the doorframe, wincing from the cramps and the guilt. “You could’ve just DoorDashed it. You didn’t have to drive across town to bring it to me. You have your own shit.”
He raises an eyebrow, dark eyes dancing. “And have some random dude deliver you drugs and ice cream at 2 a.m. when you’re dressed like that?” His gaze dips to my bare legs. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
A half-groan, half-laugh escapes me. He’s ridiculous. And unfairly fine. And the literal only person I’d want to see right now.
“Now stop hovering in the doorway,” he says, voice all velvet command. “Come here.”
I move without thinking.
Later, we’re curled on the couch with popcorn between us and my heating pad tucked awkwardly across my abdomen.
August doesn’t talk much. Just hands me a ginger ale and rubs slow circles on the top of my thigh while the movie plays in the background.
At some point, I murmur, “I didn’t think it would feel so empty without her,” I admit, voice barely above the flicker of the screen.
August doesn’t look away. “She’s your person. That kind of space echoes.”
My throat tightens.
“I miss my best friend.”
“I know.”