I suggested we go on a ski trip alone. Initially, she refused to go without ‘her people’, but I think she caught a whiff of engagement ring in the air and quickly changed her tune. The ski trip was a month away when I panicked. It wasn’t an inner, hidden panic either. It was a drinking binge panic in which I jogged six miles a day listening to Eminem and Dre, and Google searched Olivia’s name by night with Coldplay on repeat. I found her. She was working as a secretary at a law firm. I didn’t have the chance to find her; I got into a car accident and told my first life-altering lie.
The day I saw her, I was already two months deep in my amnesia lie and just hanging out in the general vicinity hoping to run into her. I’d never actually go into her job — Olivia took herself way too seriously to take that well, but I considered ambushing her in the parking lot. And I might have, had she not walked into the Music Mushroom that day. I was going to tell her the truth; how I’d lied to my friends and family, how it had all been because I couldn’t leave her in my past like I was supposed to. And in that split second when I asked her about the damn CD in her hand, she looked so panicked, so stricken that I fell deeper into my lie. I couldn’t do it. I watched the whites of her eyes expand, her nostrils flaring as she tried to decide what to say. At least she wasn’t swearing at me. That was good.
“Ummm.” That’s what she decided to say to me. I heard her voice for the first time and I couldn’t keep my smile. It rose at the corners of my mouth and ran right into my eyes like it hadn’t been lost for the last three years. She was holding a cello-wrapped boy band in her hand. She looked helluva confused.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.” It was cruel to play on her surprise, but I wanted to keep her talking.
“Er, they’re okay,” she said. “They’re not really your style.” I could feel her mentally retreating at that point. Her hand was already placing the CD back on its shelf, her eyes darting toward the door. I had to do something. Say something. I’m sorry. I was a fool. I’d marry you today, on this very day if you agreed to it…
“They’re not my style?” I repeated her words while I tried to formulate my own. She looked so forlorn in that moment that I smiled at her beauty more than anything else.
“What exactly do you think my style is?” I immediately recognized my mistake. This was the way we used to flirt. If I wanted to make any headway in her forgiving me, I had to cut the shit and-
“Umm, you’re a classic rock kind of guy … but I could be wrong.”
She was right, so right. She was breathing through her mouth, her full lips parted.
“Classic rock?” I repeated. She knew me. Leah probably would say my style was Alternative. Not that she knew anything about music; she listened to the top 100 like it was full of Biblical truths instead of clichés. I dragged my bitter thoughts away from Leah and back to Olivia. She looked scared. I saw her expression and it hit me. She wasn’t dragging anger around. She was dragging regret. Same as me.
There was a chance for us. Away from the old.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And then the lie came. I’d been telling the same one for two months. It came easily, pouring off my tongue like relationship poison.
You’re protecting her, I told myself.
I was protecting myself.
I was the same selfish f**k that pushed her too hard in the past. I started to walk out. To run from what I’d just done, when I heard her call after me. That was it. She was going to tell me that she knew me, and I’d tell her that I didn’t have amnesia. That the whole f**king charade had been about her. Instead, she took off down an aisle. I watched her dark hair bob as she weaved past people who were in her way.
My heart was beating fast. When she came back, she had a CD in her hand. I glanced at it: Pink Floyd. It was my favorite of their albums. She’d bought my lie and she’d brought me my favorite CD.
“You’ll like this,” she said. She tossed it to me. I waited for her to tell me that she knew who I was. But, she didn’t. I was overcome by every goddamn thing I had ever done to her, every lie, every betrayal.
Here she was trying to heal me with music, and I was lying to her. I walked. Walked. Right out.
I had no intention of ever seeing her again. That was it. I had my chance and I blew it. I went back to my condo and put that CD on, turning the volume all the way up. Hoping it could remind me of who I was. Who I definitely wanted to be again. Then I saw her again. That wasn’t planned. That was kismet. I couldn’t help myself. It was like every second, minute, hour I’d spent away from her over the last three years came to slap me in the face as I watched her knock over a display of ice cream cones. I bent down to help her pick them up. Her hair was short, barely reaching her shoulders. It was cut at an angle, the front longer than the back. The very tips looked like they could slice your fingers if you touched them.
She wasn’t the Olivia I remembered with her long, wild hair and the untamed look in her eye. This Olivia was smoother, more in control. She weighed what she said rather than letting it spill out. Her eyes didn’t have the same light they used to. I wondered if I’d taken that from her. That hurt me. God — so much. I wanted to put the light back in her eyes.
I went straight to Leah’s. Told her I couldn’t do what we’d been doing. She took it as me saying I couldn’t be in a relationship with someone I didn’t remember.
“Caleb, I know you feel lost right now, but when your memory comes back everything will make sense,” she said.
When my memory came back, nothing made sense. That’s why I lied.
I shook my head. “I need time, Leah. I’m sorry. I know this is a mess. I don’t want to hurt you, but I need to take care of some things.”
She looked at me like I was a knock-off purse. I’d seen her do it a million times. Disgust, confusion at how someone could settle. Once she’d made a snide remark in the grocery store while we stood behind a woman sifting through a stack of coupons. She’d had a Louis Vuitton purse slung over her shoulder.
“People who can afford Louis don’t clip coupons,” she’d said loudly. “That’s how you can tell it’s a knock-off.”
“Maybe people who clip coupons save enough money to be able to afford name brand purses,” I’d snapped back. “Stop being so shallow and judgmental.”