Chapter Thirty
Thirty
Marcus texts me after he leaves.
Marcus: I’m really sorry Zadie
Marcus: I’ll keep thinking about it, see if anything comes up
Marcus:…
Marcus: Please call me if you need me
I shouldn’t respond.
What’s left to say?
I’ve gone crazy. No, not crazy, but my memories are all false. I imagined them. I was unconscious the whole time.
Everything was not real.
But for some reason, I text back. I feel like I’m in a bad dream
Marcus: Yeah, it sounds like a nightmare honestly
Marcus:
Me: We made a lot of dream puns
Marcus:…
Marcus: What else did we do?
I tell him.
I text him things I remember, random moments from the dreams.
I keep them friendly, though. Keep out all talk of the kissing, the hugs. We were friends in the dreams.
We’re just friends now, as we text back and forth throughout the days.
After all, I’m still with Jason. I couldn’t break up with him right after the coma. Everyone would call me out for being erratic, accuse me of going crazy after all. I can’t deal with a whiff of drama right now, so I haven’t even confronted him.
* * *
“I thought,” Jason says, pulling out containers of Chinese from a brown paper bag as we sit at a picnic table at the lake on this abnormally warm fall day, “that we could just have a chill date.”
I started back at school this week and am still trying to get into the swing of things. People have been gracious and patient.
Jason has been gracious and patient.
I say nothing as he pulls out forks. He hands me a can of soda then attempts to clink his with mine. “Bon appétit.”
“Bon app…” I don’t think Jason notices that I don’t finish the sentence. Which is for the best. How else would I explain that I just keep reliving all the days and nights, all the half days that were spent with Marcus?
“So, uh, what did you and Marc discuss?” he asks, chewing, and it’s like he’s read my mind. We both look over at a couple playing with their toddler in the grass. “Did you like compare notes on your comas?” Jason chuckles at his own joke.
“Something like that,” I say half-heartedly.
Finally, Jason sighs and sets down his food. “Zadie,” he says gently, “I get it. You’re upset about the breakup.”
“The breakup,” I say. “Who broke up?”
Jason’s brows basically vanish into his hairline. “Us,” he says. “You and me.”
“The breakup happened?” I ask dully.
I really had thought we were just going to pretend none of it ever happened.
“Of course it did,” he says. He stands and comes over to sit on the same side of the table as me. “I was so upset from it that I pretty much caused the accident.”
I frown, because that’s not how I remember it at all.
“But anyway, I broke up with you and it was a pretty crappy thing to do and you’re hurt,” he says. He takes my hands and looks right in my eye. “Let me explain why.”
“Why?” I ask.
This is it. The moment I’ve waited for. The moment I’ve searched countless dreams and memories for. He’s finally going to tell me when and how he fell out of love with me. Maybe he’ll tell me who the other girl is, the one he cheated with.
“I love you,” he says.
I stare at him. Then I guffaw. “You love me? That’s why you broke up with me?”
Jason nods. “It’s true…Why are you laughing?”
“Because that’s the biggest pile of horseshit I’ve ever heard,” I say, giggling despite being so far outside of this moment that I might as well be across the lake. Lately, around Jason, I feel like I’m not myself but rather an actor playing myself.
He frowns as a light wind picks up around us. “Zadie, stop laughing. That’s so disrespectful.”
“No, what’s disrespectful is dumping me, in public, on our anniversary when you knew I thought you were going to do something else,” I say, untangling my hands from his. “What’s disrespectful is you acting like nothing happened when I woke up and expecting me to go along with it.”
I have gone along with it, but now I am angry and confused.
“What’s disrespectful is you cheating on me with some girl and then having the audacity to say you…”
Jason’s eyes are as big as footballs. Then he groans. “Zadie,” he says, “please don’t tell me you think I cheated on you.”
I blink. “You did.”
“And where did you get that from, this ‘dream’ you had that lasted a month? Where you thought I was in a coma and you were fine?” he asks, then takes my hands again.
“Y-yes,” I say, but it sounds more like a question.
“Babe, please. Listen to yourself.”
“Hand me your phone,” I demand.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes,” I say. With a heavy sigh, Jason pulls his phone out of his pocket and hands it to me. I search for Alana Duncan, but she’s not in his phone. I find Jason’s thread with Mo. They barely have a thread.
I shut my eyes. “You’re saying I…”
“Made it up?” Jason says, taking his phone back. “I don’t want to make you doubt everything you think, but yeah. You kind of did. You definitely did.”
I stare at him, trying to see if he’s telling the truth, if there are any signs of deceit. And I see absolutely nothing.
I have apparently never been able to tell whether Jason has a secret or not.
“You think I…I dreamt it?”
“Yeah,” he says, a look of apology on his face. “And it kind of sucks that you’d go by some dream rather than completely trust me. That you’d let go of everything we were just because you imagined something.”
“I didn’t imagine…”
But I did.
“I didn’t think…” I knead my thumbs into my temples. This is officially the first headache I’ve had since I woke up, and part of me is waiting for the world to shake then dissolve away, waiting for Marcus to show up.
Shit.
Shit shit shit, I think as my eyes fill up.
In what version of reality could that ever have been true? That doesn’t happen.
Worlds don’t just dissolve, give way to memories.
Why did I start to believe, start to accept, that they did?
Because I was unconscious.
Because I had something wrong with my head, a traumatic brain injury as Mo calls it. Mo, who is definitely still speaking to me and remembers nothing about some random fight on the porch of her house. Because that was also a dream.
I swipe at my tears. “But you did still break up with me,” I say, defensive. “That really happened.”
Jason nods, somber. “It did,” he says, then looks ashamed. “I did it because I was afraid. Zadie, I’m in love with you. More than I should be at eighteen. More than anyone should be at eighteen. And I was terrified.”
I’m speechless but finally manage to ask, “Why?”
“Because then we’re it. We’re forever. From now until the end,” he says, taking my hands again.
Forever is scary, I want to say. It’s so many more memories and versions of me and him.
I can’t even comprehend forever, but he touches his lips to my hands.
“And I started off so afraid of that, but nearly losing you…
it showed me what a stupid fear it is to love someone too much.
“The fact is,” he says, “we are a perfect match. We make sense. Everybody knows it.”
I’ve waited so, so long to hear him say these words.
“I was wrong. Stupid,” he says. “And I’m sorry.”
Jason stands, then seems to feel for something in his jacket. When he starts to pull out a box, I panic.
“No, Jason,” I say. “Stop. Don’t.”
But he ignores me. He drops to one knee. “Zadie Cartwright.”
Oh my God.
The couple are looking over.
A few walkers on the path have stopped to watch us. Someone pulls out their phone.
“Jason, get up.”
“I can’t,” Jason says. “Because I’ve fallen deeply, mercilessly, irrevocably in love with you. And I’m not afraid of forever, just as long as you’re in it.”
He opens the small green box in his hand.
“Ugh, Jason,” I say, unable to meet his eyes. This is horrible.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “it’s not an engagement ring. But it is a commitment, and I think we’re ready for it.”
In the corner of my eye, I can see a small crowd gathering. I can’t say no in front of all these people. Embarrass Jason. Embarrass myself.
Besides, before the accident, I was so sure.
Surely that certainty is still alive. Somewhere deep inside me.
“Jason, please get up,” I whisper, but somehow he hears me.
“All right,” he says, and then to my horror, he hops up on the bench and then on top of the table. He asks it again, standing, ring held out grandly to me, “Zadie, love of my life, will you swear to wear this promise ring?”
Jason is very rarely this exuberant, and I feel my horror giving way. I feel both mortified and unable to help laughing.
“Yes, fine, sure,” I say. “Just get down from there.”
“She said yes, folks!” he yells, then hops down from the table and kisses me. It’s a familiar kiss. Not too long or too short. Controlled, audience-appropriate, no tongue.
The ring is emerald-green, different from the one in the dream.
“We’re the best together,” Jason tells me, repeating the words I’ve thought a dozen times. I nod, because I’m trying to believe it’s true. It used to be true, anyway, and maybe can be again.
“I know,” I say.