When I arrived at the restaurant, Brian waited for me outside. Everyone was staring at him, including those who walked past us and those who could see him through the window. It wasn’t every day you saw a professional football player in the streets, and Brian was the star player. I doubted there was anyone who wouldn’t recognize him.

It wasn’t only that he was a star, of course. It was also that he was sexy, sure of himself, and any woman would be more than happy to be on his arm. So why was I so nervous?

I was ready to see him as a man that I knew, someone familiar. When he hugged me, his body didn’t feel familiar. There was something I wanted to remember, but it had slipped away from me again, and suddenly, I couldn’t remember the dream. I knew it had been about him, but I didn’t know what it was anymore.

“You doing okay?” he asked.

I nodded, forcing a smile. I wasn’t okay. I was beginning to realize that the worst part about getting flashes of the past was the way they floated away again. Brian smiled at me, and he was handsome, but he was a stranger.

We walked into the restaurant, and I felt uncomfortable and out of place. The doctor had said that this would happen. That if my memories ever came back at all, that I shouldn’t be surprised if they flew away again because it wasn’t impossible for memories to come and go. He didn’t mention that it would be jarring, or that it would feel like someone gave me a gift, only to take it back again.

He didn’t mention that it would make me feel like crying.

Blue Collar was a nice place. The walls were partially painted a deep aqua. The rest of it was beige with a dark wooden trim dividing the colors. Light brown tables with white bucket chairs stood in neat rows with a chalkboard over the counter at the back, displaying the day’s specials.

Brian was perfectly nice. He made polite conversation and didn’t push for anything about the past. He stuck to the present, asked me what I did for a living, who I was. It was like he was trying to get to know me. Not who he expected to know from back then, but like he was genuinely interested in who I was now.

The nicer he was, the more it upset me. My head hurt, and it felt like the past was nagging at me, begging me to revisit it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe, the walls closed in on me, and he was too close. Not physically, but emotionally.

I needed to get out of the restaurant, but I couldn’t look like a crazy person and run out as if something was wrong.

Brian had paid for everything like a perfect gentleman. By the time we were done, though, I was about ready to scream. I couldn’t deal with this.

“Brian,” I said when we stepped out onto the curb again. “I can’t do this.”

He looked at me, and the smile drained from his face. Those sky-blue eyes turned serious when he looked at me.

“I’m not expecting you to do anything,” he said.

I nodded. “I know that. But this thing that happened. It’s too hard for me to deal with. I don’t know who to be, and you’re being so nice about everything. I just can’t.”

I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I couldn’t be the person he needed me to be. The person I once was, whom he had known me as— and who was gone. I wanted to apologize for everything I’d forgotten, for everything I can only assume he’d lost as a result.

But I couldn’t say I was sorry because I didn’t know him. I didn’t owe this stranger anything, and I was the one who was lost, not him. I was the one who didn’t know who I used to be. He knew exactly. And that was part of what was freaking me out— to be standing here with someone who knew the old me when I didn’t even know the old me. 

“I’m sorry,” I said, not for all the million things in the past, but because I didn’t have what it took to try again.

Brian nodded. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His face was carefully expressionless.

“All I wanted was to spend some time with you,” he said. “I appreciate the fact that you were willing to try. Thank you for coming to see me.”

I nodded. He leaned in and gave me a hug again. I breathed in deeply, smelling his cologne, trying to find something trapped in my mind.

Nothing.

“Thank you for brunch,” I said.

Brian nodded and turned his back on me, walking away. I watched him go, with his confident swagger still intact, his wide shoulders swinging slightly. Even at his weakest point, since my cancellation of our brunch had obviously affected him, he still looked strong. How could I turn away such a strong and kind man? I had the inexplicable urge to cry.

I wished I had written down my memory. I wished I could remember. I had masturbated to it, for God’s sake.

I wished I had told Lorraine about the other memory. I couldn’t remember that, either. At least Lorraine would have been able to tell me what it was about, or she probably would have had some amazing tips to remember it or draw it back out. But now, I had nothing and no way to retrieve anything.

I felt awful for not holding onto the few flashes of memory I had been able to get back. I had known they could leave just as quickly as they had come, and had failed to preserve them.

Another thing bothering me was how unsure I felt about everything now. In a world of uncertainty about everything—including who I even was—I had managed to power through what had happened to me by being resolute and focused. I was not an indecisive person. Not the “new me,” anyway. And yet, I had let myself get swayed by one simple request from Brian for dinner.

What the hell had gotten into me? And how can I get it back out?

I was right back where I’d started, with nothing to hold onto. The very few memories I thought I had found were lost once again. It was worse than if I had never found them in the first place.

It hurt more than usual. It felt like I’d lost something special, something rare, all over again. But I guess that’s what I got for opening my mind and heart to the possibility that anything could ever be any different for me than things have been for the past five years of my life, which were the only five years I’ve ever even known I existed.

How foolish of me. I was determined not to make that mistake again, because I didn’t want to open up my heart just to have it be torn out by life and fate all over again.