What You Remember When I Ask
1104 Words
I ask you to meet me in the morning.
Not because I’m brave.
Because if I wait any longer, I will convince myself last night didn’t happen. I will start calling it a stress dream. A lapse. Another harmless trick of a tired mind. I’m very good at that, at sanding the edges off things that could ruin me.
You choose a place that feels neutral. Public. Safe. A café with too much light and not enough privacy. The kind of place where nothing terrible is supposed to happen, where trauma looks out of place and therefore easier to deny.
You are already there when I arrive, sitting by the window, hands wrapped around a cup you are not drinking. The steam has long since disappeared. Whatever was in it is cold now.
You look up the second you see me.
Like you have been waiting for permission to breathe.
That almost breaks me.
For a moment, I consider turning around. Walking back out into the street and letting the noise swallow me whole. But my body keeps moving, like it’s already chosen sides.
“I remembered your name,” I say instead of hello.
It’s not dramatic. I don’t soften it. I don’t prepare you.
Your shoulders drop. Just a little. But I see it. I see how tightly you have been holding yourself together, how much weight that one fear carried.
“Yeah?” you ask carefully, like you are afraid this might be a trick. Like you’re afraid that if you celebrate too soon, it will be taken back.
“I remembered the way you say mine too.”
That’s what does it.
Your eyes close for half a second. When they open again, they are wet, not overflowing, not messy. Just honest. Like grief that never learned how to be loud.
“I hoped you would,” you say. “I just didn’t know how much it would cost.”
Neither did I.
I sit across from you. The chair scrapes softly against the floor. The table wobbles the second I rest my elbows on it. Same stupid uneven leg from my dream. That shouldn’t mean anything.
It does anyway.
The universe has a sick sense of humour like that.
“Tell me,” I say.
You stiffen immediately. Your spine goes straight, your hands tightening around the cup as if it might anchor you.
“Tell you what?”
“Everything,” I reply. “Not the version you think I can handle. The version you’ve been protecting me from.”
You stare at me for a long moment. Your eyes search my face, like you’re checking for cracks, for signs I will shatter if you touch the wrong truth.
“You don’t want this,” you say quietly.
“I already have it,” I tell you. “I just don’t have context.”
That’s what finally breaks you.
You look away, out the window, jaw tight, like you’re bracing against something that’s been chasing you for years and finally caught up.
“You weren’t the first,” you say.
The words land wrong. Heavy. Dense. Like they are spoken underwater.
My fingers curl into fists beneath the table, nails biting into my palms. I don’t interrupt. I’m afraid that if I do, you will stop.
“The door,” you continue. “The house. It wasn’t the first time someone crossed a line with you. It was the first time you understood what it meant.”
My chest tightens. Not panic. Recognition.
“You were a child,” you say. “And no one protected you.”
Your voice doesn’t shake. That’s worse.
“So when it happened again, when you were older, your brain did the only thing it knew how to do.”
“Erase,” I whisper.
“Rearrange,” you correct gently. “You didn’t lose everything. You just… stored it where you couldn’t reach it without breaking.”
I swallow hard. My throat feels raw, like I have been screaming for years and only just noticed.
“And you?” I ask.
You hesitate.
“I found you after,” you say. “You were sitting on the floor, staring at the wall like you’d left your body somewhere else.”
A memory punches through me without warning, fluorescent lights too bright, your jacket around my shoulders, your hands shaking even though mine weren’t. I remember thinking it was strange that you were the one trembling.
“You begged me not to make you remember,” you continue. “You said you couldn’t survive knowing you’d trusted the wrong people twice.”
I close my eyes.
I believe you. That’s the terrifying part.
“And I believed you,” you say. “So I helped you disappear.”
“By leaving,” I say.
You flinch like I struck you.
“By staying long enough to make sure you were stable,” you correct softly. “Then yes. By leaving.”
The café feels too loud suddenly. Too alive. Plates clink. Someone laughs. A barista calls out an order like the world hasn’t just cracked open in front of me.
“You didn’t abandon me,” I realise slowly. “You sacrificed yourself.”
You don’t answer that.
Because sacrifices aren’t meant to be thanked. They are meant to be endured.
“I don’t hate you,” I say.
Your head snaps up. “You should.”
“I hate what happened,” I reply. “I hate that I was alone. I hate that forgetting felt safer than living.”
I meet your eyes and don’t look away this time.
“But I don’t hate you for loving me the only way you knew how.”
Your breath shudders. You press your lips together like you are holding something back that might ruin us both if it escapes.
“I’m remembering now,” I continue. “And it hurts. God, it hurts. But it also feels like I’m finally standing in my own body again.”
You nod slowly. “That’s the danger.”
I tilt my head. “And the freedom.”
For a long moment, we just sit there, two people shaped by the same night, carrying it differently. The past sits between us like a third presence, quiet but demanding.
“I don’t know what we are now,” I admit.
You give a sad, familiar smile. One I remember. One that used to mean I’m staying even when this is hard.
“We are honest,” you say.
And somehow, that feels scarier than forgetting ever did.
- Writer
