Say You'll Remember Me

by Abby Jimenez

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.

“Are you keeping it?” I asked. She leaned on the exam table. “I mean, yeah. You don’t turn down the cat distribution system.”

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,” I

“You need someone who will argue with you,” Maggie said. “And loosen you up.” “Someone nice but not like, too nice,” Tina said. “You’re too scary for too nice.”

“Is my face really this much of a problem?” They both sucked air through their teeth. “Sort of?” Tina said. “Like, conceptually it’s fine? In a romance novel you’d be an alpha-male vampire,” Tina said, matter-of-factly. “That’s really good.”

You’re other things. You’re dependable and loyal. You’re stable and hardworking and kind. You always do the right thing, and you have a ton of integrity. That’s the stuff that matters.”

Just lean into the smoldering romance hero thing you have going on. Embrace your inner Rhysand.”

You know how when someone dies, all anyone cares about is how? Somehow the moment that takes them out is more interesting than decades worth of life and accomplishments and living. I hated it.

I’d lived in Minnesota for four years and I hadn’t met one guy who even remotely touched Xavier and in the wee hours before I leave…

I didn’t get to shut my brain off very often. Most women don’t. The constant situational awareness that we have to practice is exhausting.

They say that you won’t remember what someone said, but you’ll always remember how they made you feel. I don’t think this moment would be the same if it wasn’t for how it felt. Ocean or no.

“You didn’t remember to forget me,” I said, quietly.

“That there is nothing more beautiful than being a witness to someone’s life. To know them inside and out and be with them through everything, share the same memories. Memories are everything. I want that.”

“It’s the result of a parallel life. A shared collection of experiences, like a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger as it goes. 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.”

“Not seeing you is terrible,” he said quietly. “And I don’t want to do it anymore.”

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.

I squeezed my eyes shut and let myself feel it. I wanted to feel how it felt to come home. So this was going to be my life now. Long droughts without him, with short bursts of this. This was worth it.

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

“Well, my dream woman is a glass-half-full kind of person. She fights for what she wants and believes in the humanity of others—and she’s usually right. She makes the most of bad situations, deeply dislikes heights. She’s funny. Smells great. A fan of seashells and mustard, hates chorizo. And she never brings the right jacket.”

“My perfect man can speak to animals. He’s very principled. Not a big talker, but is paying more attention than anyone in the room. He became an animal doctor as part of a hero-arc-slash-revenge plot, which is an energy I can get behind. Hates people, loves pets. Wonderful with rambunctious pre-teen kids and frightened memory care patients. Really good at sex. He doesn’t like compliments but he’s gonna have to muscle through that one, it’s too important not to bring up.”

“The same thing I always want you to do. I want you to look at me the way you look at mustard.”

That’s what apologies and perspective does. It changes how you feel about what happened.”

“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.”

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.

People need people. Just pay it forward one day.

“Because life wouldn’t be worth living if I didn’t remember you.”

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

“I know. I’ve always loved you,” he said simply. “I think I couldn’t forget you because I remember you from a different lifetime. And I loved you then too.”

“You know how when you see a movie or read a book you really like, and you haven’t seen it in a few years and you start to lose the details?” she said quietly. “You forget some of the great lines or the subplots, the names of side characters? After a while all you remember are the main characters, the broad strokes, the big things. And you can’t even remember how those happened, just that they did. When someone asks you to tell them about it, all you can recall is it’s a Western or a drama or an action flick.”

“I’d like to look back on my life and remember every single thing. But if I don’t, I hope I remember that it was a love story. And that the love story was about you.”

“Sometimes the way we love someone changes with the seasons of our lives,” Dad said. “Sometimes love and commitment looks like caring for the person you’re married to by feeding them and putting on their pajamas and brushing their teeth. I will love your mother until the day I die. I will whisper her name with my last breath.”

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.”

Maybe that’s the last thing we forget. Or we never forget it at all. Not really. We lose the words to say it. We lose the ability to show it. But we never lose the ability to feel it or recognize it when we see it. Love is the brightest color in a gray world.