After leaving the party, I had to ask the driver to pull over once so I could throw up again, then promised a large tip for him to make a stop at Jenny’s. As quickly as I could, I retrieved my overnight bag and left Jenny a note apologizing for bailing early on her. Alex had called, I jotted down, begging me to house-sit for a few days. I suspected Jenny wouldn’t believe my excuse—the most expensive thing Alex owned, the only thing of value, really, was her camera and it was always with her—but I no longer cared. I wanted to be alone. Somewhere I couldn’t disappoint people...or where they couldn’t disappoint me.
I texted Alex once I got back into the cab, asking if I could crash at her place for a couple of nights. As long as you want, she responded right away. She’d decided to extend the trip she was on by a few days (something about another photographer with an all-access pass and killer legs) so wouldn’t be back until Thursday, Friday at the latest. Relieved for the buffer time, I figured by then I’d be able to come up with another plan for where to stay.
It was hard to believe only a couple of months ago my life looked completely different—I’d had a boyfriend whom I adored, a great job, a best friend I could count on and zero desire to have anything to do with Daniel London. Using Alex’s extra key on my chain, I let myself into her place and chugged a large glass of water before crashing into bed.
When I woke Sunday morning, I was expectedly hungover. A disheveled, sick and sweaty mess on Alex’s bed—which was directly in front of a floor-to-ceiling window that let in far too much light so early in the morning. She lived in a converted loft in Parkdale, half a block from a strip club Alex liked for the “gritty realness” it brought to her neighborhood. Though with a new Starbucks and a trendy bakery that made only incredibly expensive (but delicious) doughnuts across the road, signs of gentrification were popping up, which Alex hated. She loved the neighborhood as it was, said there was endless inspiration for her photography living in such an eclectic part of town.
Once I was certain moving wasn’t going to make me throw up, I padded into the kitchen, which was only five steps from the small ladder that led to the platform and bed. Opening the fridge, I found a couple of past-their-prime oranges, a small bag of apples, a can of coconut whipped cream, a few take-out containers I didn’t dare open and a half wheel of Brie cheese. Grabbing the cheese and a knife, I unearthed a box of crackers at the very back of a narrow cupboard by the sink, and a jar of strawberry jam, and sat on the bed eating over my lap while I watched the flow of both human and automobile traffic outside the front window. After polishing off half the cheese, I brushed the cracker crumbs from my lap and stood, stretching my arms high over my head. My muscles contracted and complained, and I realized how out of shape I was. I had a sudden urge to go for a run, and after digging around Alex’s clothes, I pulled together a pair of black leggings that could work as running tights, a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt over which I threw on a too-large sweatshirt. Luckily Alex and I wore the same-size shoes, so I shoved my feet into a pair of her running shoes and went outside.
It was still early and the sun wasn’t at full strength yet, so my ears and fingertips were somewhat chilly. But the wind invigorated me as I ran, and I started to sweat as I pushed back against the effects of my hangover. My body seemed to know what to do, and my legs pumped harder and faster as I turned down a side street full of dilapidated gingerbread-roofed houses, all lined up in a row. They had probably been pristine and beautiful in their prime, and I felt a sense of solidarity as I ran past them. I think I used to be like those houses—once new and fresh and holding great promise—but was now much more like the current versions. Run-down and imperfect but somehow still functioning if not sagging a little to the left.
I knew I had been a runner, before the accident. Both Matt and Jenny had told me how I always, regardless of weather or schedule, squeezed in a seven-miler on Sundays. But despite my memory telling me I hadn’t jogged a lap since high school gym class, as I turned down another side street, the houses on this one in much better shape than the last, I noted I wasn’t out of breath. My legs, which I had expected to cramp up not long after I started running, felt strong. My gait was surprisingly smooth as I ran one street, then another, then another. Even if my mind didn’t remember me being a runner, my feet and muscles and lungs sure did.
It was around the forty-minute mark of the run when it happened. There was no explanation for why it came back to me so clearly—Dr. Kay had explained when memories returned it was often because of a trigger, like a person or place or experience, and this had none of those hallmarks—but regardless, there it was. A memory about Matt I knew was real without even having to question it.
It stopped me like a brick wall, sucked all the breath out of my lungs so dramatically I doubled over to try to keep from falling to the ground.
* * *
There were candles on the mantel, remnants of a mostly eaten steak dinner littering the kitchen table and two bottles of wine open and empty. A regular Saturday night for us. We were in bed, postsex, and Matt had me spooned against him. I was too hot, a bit woozy from the wine, but didn’t want to move because the moment was perfection. I was warm and safe and loved. “I wish we could stay here, like this, forever and ever,” I said, sighing with contentment and snuggling against the heat of his body.
I may have been relaxed, but Matt was restless. Shifting his body every few seconds like he had an itch he couldn’t quite reach. “I’m seconds from sleep here,” I murmured, eyes closed. “But not if you keep twitching.” I was used to Matt’s inability to stay still—he was always doing something active, like cycling or swimming laps, or doing push-ups on our living room floor. But generally some wine and sex calmed the restlessness—allowed him an uncommon stillness.
“Sorry,” he replied, his lips and breath brushing my earlobe. I shivered and snuggled a bit closer. “Lucy, can I ask you something?”
“Mmm-hmm,” I said, eyes still closed, thinking nothing of the question. Wishing he would hurry up and ask whatever it was so we could go to sleep. “You have about a minute before I pass out.”
He cleared his throat, shifted away from me so a draft of cool air painted my back and turned on the bedside lamp. With a grunt of unhappiness I turned my head to look at him, squinting with the sudden brightness. “What are you doing?”
He jumped out of bed, throwing on a pair of plaid pajama bottoms. The ones I had given him for Christmas. “Just a sec,” he said, lunging into the closet and fumbling with something in its depths. I sat up, watched the muscles in his back contracting and releasing as he moved stuff around. “Matt, what are you doing?” A prickle of irritation moved through me because now I was fully awake and didn’t want to be.
When he didn’t immediately answer, I lay back and pulled the duvet up to my chin, sinking my body into our memory foam mattress. Contented and comfortable, I started to drift off again, but then Matt was on the bed, sitting cross-legged beside me. He looked nervous.
I raised an eyebrow, waited for him to explain the grin on his face, along with his forage through our closet and why he looked like he was hiding the best secret ever. “What if we could stay here, forever and ever?” he asked.
“Here? Like, in bed?” I yawned. “Yes, please.”
He tapped at his knees like his thumbs were mini drumsticks. “Right. Definitely. Here, in bed. You. Me. Us,” he said, a slightly manic look in his eyes as he stumbled over his words. That part was definitely out of character—he was masterful with words, always getting his point across succinctly. It was a skill he’d honed as a consultant and one that had made him successful with the firm and his clients. “But that’s not exactly what I meant.”
I came up on my elbow and rested my head in my palm, giving him a quizzical look. “What’s wrong with you?”
He pulled something out from behind him, a small box, which he held in his hands. I glanced at the box, recognized it immediately. It held the mocha-flavored energy gels Matt consumed regularly during his training rides, which I thought were disgusting. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m okay. More than okay,” he said, lifting the box’s lid.
“Are we about to do something requiring extra stamina?” I asked, gesturing to the box, not seeing what he was looking at inside it because the opened lid was blocking my view.
But before I could ask again what he was doing, he pulled a small black box out of the energy gel box and settled it onto his knees. A moment later he opened the black box and held something out toward me. It happened so fast I didn’t immediately register the magnitude of the moment—was shocked by the ring he extended, slow on the uptake.
My eyes moved from his face to the ring. “Where did all your gels go?”
He laughed hard then, tilted his head back as he did, and a nervous giggle bubbled out of me. I was on my knees now, too, facing him, naked. “Lucy Ann Sparks,” Matt said. “Will you do me the absolute honor of spending every night for the rest of our lives, forever and ever, in bed with me?”
I was laughing and crying, mumbling something about how I couldn’t believe he proposed to me while I was naked.
“You’re sort of leaving me hanging here.” He chuckled nervously, his face bright and hopeful.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! I love this bed. I love you!” I let him slide the diamond band on my finger and marveled at how perfectly it settled there. Like my finger had been waiting for this exact ring. “Of course I’ll marry you. Yes!”
He grabbed me then, wrapped me in his arms and kissed me, our teeth gnashing together as we kept kissing through our grins.
* * *
Doubled over on a side street nearly back at Alex’s place, I tried to catch my breath while the memory cascaded over me. Matt had proposed. I had accepted. I pulled my left hand up to my face and stared at my ring finger. It was bare, like it had been ever since I woke up in the hospital, no indentation in the skin to prove a ring ever circled it.
The ring I had thought graced that finger when I woke up from the coma was a diamond solitaire—from Daniel—not a diamond band. Now I wondered if the heaviness I had felt on my finger wasn’t because of the imagined jewelry from my nonexistent wedding to Daniel, but because that finger knew a different ring all along.
“You okay, lady?” A young guy with a backpack and a tight-fitting beanie cap came up beside me and bent over, peering at my face as he removed his headphones.
“I’m fine,” I said, righting myself and taking a breath. “Ran a bit too hard today.”
He looked dubious but then shrugged, said, “If you say so,” and carried on.
“Thanks for asking,” I called out after him, though he didn’t glance back, likely because his headphones were now back on.
I’m not sure how long I stood on the sidewalk, replaying the memory over and over. And each time I did I felt it again—a shot of absolute conviction this was real. Matt had proposed; I had said yes.
But with each replay the questions grew. Why hadn’t Matt said anything about this? And why had no one else mentioned the engagement? Despite the memory of the proposal so clearly formed, I couldn’t grasp on to anything else—had no idea what had happened next. There was no memory of telling my parents our happy news. I recalled nothing about a wedding at all—except, of course, the confabulated one I had with Daniel.
I held my hand up again, stared in disbelief as I pictured the diamond band. If Matt had put a ring on my finger, where was it now?