“We were engaged.” My tone was matter-of-fact so it was clear I wasn’t asking a question. It was late Sunday night and Matt had, moments earlier, walked in the door from his trip to California, back from visiting his family. I wondered what he told them about me, about us. I hoped it helped him, seeing them, having people to talk to who would always look out for him first.
Still in his coat, his overnight bag strap slung across his chest, Matt stood in the front hallway looking stunned to see me there as my words hung between us in the room.
“You’re here,” he finally said. Then with a sigh he took his bag from his shoulder and set it down against the wall, but he left his coat on. I was impatient for him to respond to my statement and repeated myself. Matt was silent for another long moment as he watched my face. I wondered what he saw there. “Yes, we were engaged.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. It was like I was swimming and drowning all at once. I now knew for sure my memory hadn’t completely failed me. Matt had put a ring on my finger and I had been happy about it. All that was good head-above-water kind of stuff. But what I didn’t know was why we had kept it a secret? Why hadn’t Matt said anything about it after I came out of the coma? That was the part dragging me down below the depths.
He shrugged, his face haggard. “At first I didn’t want to overwhelm you. You were having such a hard time keeping things straight and obviously didn’t realize we were...engaged.” He didn’t need to mention Daniel; we were both thinking about him and I hated how he was still right here between us. “But then everything happened, and I wasn’t sure if you would ever...” He paused, cleared his throat and looked away. “I didn’t know what would happen with us, so I decided not to make things harder for you.”
Then he looked at me, surprise registering on his face. “Wait...how did you find out?” When I didn’t answer immediately, he kept talking. “You remember.” He said it quietly, reverently. “No one else knows, so you must have remembered on your own.”
I nodded, my arms tightly crossed over my chest. One of the save-the-date engagement party cards I’d found was in hand, tucked up under my armpit.
In a rush he was in the living room and standing in front of me, the space between us gone. “Oh, my God, Lucy, it’s finally happening. I thought maybe, maybe if we went back to the beginning, started over, it might help you... Luce, this is exactly what I’ve been waiting for—”
I took a small, but telling, step back and his face registered confusion and then hurt. “Wait. Matt, I need to explain something. I do remember the proposal, everything about that night. But that’s where it ends.”
He tilted his head slightly, his confusion deepening. I hated what I had to say next, but it needed to be said.
“It’s hard to explain, because I know how important it is that I had this memory,” I began, stalling. He nodded for me to continue. “And I do remember it happening and I remember how happy I was in the moment, but my feelings for...” I paused and looked away, unable to hold his gaze.
He knew what I was trying to say; I could tell from how his face changed when I looked up at him again. Hardened against the hurt I was inflicting. I wasn’t trying to be cruel, but I needed him to fully understand that while getting my memory back was significant, it was still complicated. “You remembered it, but not me, right? Not how you felt about me?”
“I know in that moment I was the happiest I’d ever been, Matt. But the person who said yes to you, well, I don’t know her anymore. I only remember the versions of her that came...before. Am I making any sense?” I was trying to be gentle, but I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.
“I see,” he continued, grasping the full picture now. “Do you love Daniel, Lucy?” His words were blunt and he was frowning, any joy at hearing I remembered his proposal long gone now.
“I’m still...confused about how I feel,” I replied, being as honest as I could. Matt deserved more, but it was all I could offer. “Yes, my memories of Daniel haven’t disappeared. But I don’t want to have those feelings, Matt. Believe me.”
“So you feel something for him you don’t feel for me. Is that it?”
“I never wanted to hurt you.” It was answer enough, and he acknowledged it as such. “I’m trying to figure things out, I am.”
He seemed to be sorting out his response but then pressed his lips together and sat down hard on a kitchen table chair. “But Daniel’s married, Lucy. So tell me. How does that work? You know, with this whole figuring things out piece.”
I didn’t want to talk about Daniel anymore. It was a conversation that would get us nowhere, and Matt was too hurt and angry to have a rational discussion about things—rightfully so, even if I’d never meant to hurt him, that was exactly what I had done.
I uncrossed my arms and held out the card. “I found this.” He looked at it but didn’t say anything.
“The date is only four weeks after my accident,” I said. “So I have to ask. Why hasn’t anyone said anything? Not my parents, or Alex, or Jenny, who told me she had no idea we were even engaged.” I expected him to say this was yet another case of them trying to protect my now-delicate nature, not wanting to overwhelm me with details of a life I no longer recognized.
“It wasn’t an engagement party, Lucy,” he said, his voice low and slow, as though the effort to speak was too much.
With a frown I looked at the card, which clearly stated it was, in fact, an engagement party. Then I looked at the wording more carefully. We’re getting engaged! Not We got engaged!
He shook his head. “I know that’s what it says, but we were...” He stopped, lowered his face into his hands and rubbed at his cheeks and forehead. “We were going to get married.”
Still I stared, frown in place. “I know. I remember the proposal.”
“No,” Matt said, looking up at me. “We were getting married that day.” He gestured to the card. “It wasn’t a party to celebrate our engagement. It was our wedding day.”
My legs started to tingle and I had to sit down, too, worried I would collapse if I didn’t. Now we faced one another at the table. “What?”
“The reason no one knows we were engaged is because we didn’t tell anyone. Your mom had started dating Carl and your dad was struggling a bit, and Alex was still fairly anti-wedding after what happened with Paolo, and Jenny was frustrated by her single status, and you said you didn’t want to ‘rub our perfect happiness’ in their faces.” He used air quotes and smiled, but it wasn’t on his face for long.
“Plus, having done the whole engagement thing before, you said you wanted to skip the year of fussing and fawning before the wedding. You didn’t even want the white dress. You were going to wear the same dress from my parents’ anniversary party.” The canary yellow A-line I had looked so cheerful in.
I glanced at the card, which was now crumpled on one side from me squeezing it too hard. I released it onto the table, where it unfurled.
“It was your idea, and it was superspontaneous. Like, you came up with it the morning after I proposed before we had the chance to tell anyone. But I loved it. The plan was for me to mail these cards out with a note saying the party was a surprise—I was going to tell you it was an anniversary dinner or something to get you there—and I would propose in front of all our friends and family.”
I tried to wrap my head around the idea that if everything had continued on as expected, Matt and I would now be married. We would be newlyweds, and ecstatic about it—in stark contrast to how we felt right now, both of us with sagging shoulders and long faces.
No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t see the line leading from where Matt and I were now back to the couple we had been. Too much was different, even if much had stayed the same: Matt loving me, Matt wanting to marry me, Matt believing we could make it work if we tried hard enough. My accident broke us right down the middle, with no apparent way to stitch the frayed ends back together.
“But of course you were in on it, though no one else would know that. And then when everyone showed up for the ‘Matt is popping the question’ party, we were instead going to exchange vows.” He sighed deeply, leaned back in his chair. “That was the plan.”
“We were so, so close,” I whispered.
“We were.”
Sadness engulfed me as my fingers smoothed the creases on the save-the-date card’s crumpled edge. “And then I hit my head.”
“And then you hit your head,” he said.