Say You'll Remember Me

by Abby Jimenez

I held the lava lamp he made her give me in my lap the whole way back to my apartment.

The promise of something can be so vibrant. And everything feels so dull after it’s gone.

Memories were like that, sometimes they bent reality.

And then you get to a point where you’re so far in, you can never replace that person. Not really. No one else can ever be the same kind of witness because you’ve lived through so much. It really is a once in a lifetime thing.”

I’d been taken by the riptide.

The gnawing discontent of the last two months was finally quiet, and all I could think in this moment of relief was that I was kissing my wife.

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

It’s amazing how easily I knew this. How quickly I’d leave everyone and everything behind for her.

You think that it’s the big memories you should be chasing—and it is in a way. Birthdays and vacations and special occasions. But the small memories are the fabric of your life, the ones so inconsequential that you don’t even remember them. You just remember how you felt when you were making them.

Anyway. No matter how I ended up here, I think it was because I was supposed to see how you turned out.” He smiled. “And look at you. Look at everything you did.”

I think I would have been good at being a dad, in my opinion. And on that note, for what it’s worth, I want you to know that I am proud of you. You’re a good man. You did well.

“All I’ve got left are memories. You still have a chance to make them. I’ll be disappointed if you don’t.”

“No. Being without you is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m sorry I put you through it. I should have ended up here sooner, but I had to come to it on my own.”

“I want to stop living one flight to California at a time. I want to wake up every day and be alone in a room with you. I want to witness your life and have you witness mine. I want a parallel line and the fantasy world we talked about to be real. I want us to make memories.”

She was beaming from ear to ear. She knew. Something ingrained that told her she was seeing true love. Her heart remembering even though her brain had forgotten. She didn’t know who I was or who he was. But she still knew what love was.

Love is the brightest color in a gray world.

Hank was a ripple in the ocean of our love story.

And my mother sat there in full color with her eyes closed, the wind in her hair, smiling.