Say You'll Remember Me

by Abby Jimenez

This is why I hated humans. They were the worst animals on the planet.

I did like dogs, though. I liked all animals, but especially dogs. We didn’t deserve them—and some people deserved them less than others.

I never get why white men are grumpy. Like, we’re living in a patriarchy. You’re the most privileged class on the face of the earth. You’re not walking to your car with your keys through your fingers like wolverine and you’ve got bodily autonomy, why the bad mood?”

“What did he look like?” she asked. “Like if Rhysand from the ACOTAR series were a real person,”

damn!

I NODDED AT the cherry in my glass. “You want mine?” “You don’t like them?” she asked. I did like them. I handed her the toothpick anyway. I liked her more.

I wasn’t an introvert so much as people just irritated me. I didn’t like dealing with humans I didn’t know. I didn’t like parties unless they were intimate and I knew everyone there. I hated mingling, I hated networking even more.

You know what? No. I wasn’t falling down this rabbit hole. I was allowing myself some grace to focus on what I actually needed to focus on, which was Mom and my new old life and mustard.

“Ewww, I don’t want men to talk to me.”

“I don’t wear it twenty-four seven!” I said, literally wearing it.

IT’S AMAZING HOW cathartic destroying things can be.

SHE SPUN IN my arms, her hands slid up my chest, and I got to do the thing I’d been wanting to do since the second she opened the door five hours ago. I got to kiss her.

I couldn’t act like I didn’t remember what being with her felt like and that it hadn’t changed me.

Even bad memories are sacred in their own way.

The best moments don’t have to be big to be forever.

“Because if you were my wife you would be my world. Everything starts with you and ends with you. Anything else is just the stuff that happens in the middle.”

Something about it made my chest ache. Maybe because I really could see it. Decades into the future, Christmases with her, our parallel line. I could see it like it was a memory, not a vision. I never felt like I belonged anywhere or to anyone. But I belonged to her.

“Some things are worth remembering, Samantha. No matter how much they hurt.”

“I think I couldn’t forget you because I remember you from a different lifetime. And I loved you then too.”