I guess it’s time to come clean. “I don’t remember you.”
She recoils like I smacked her.
“I have a history of taking bad hits during games and getting concussions. From what I can piece together, I met you, then I got concussion and lost a few days of my memory.”
Her face is twisted by emotions. Anger, suspicion and heartbreak all flicker across her beautiful features.
She leans toward me. “You don’t remember me?”
A shake of my head is all I can manage in response.
“At all?” Her voice is loaded with grief, like I reached into her chest and gripped her heart with scissors.
Another shake.
She opens her purse and pulls out her phone. While she searches for something—probably a news article about my face colliding with the plexi glass—Megan brings our pies, but I can’t stomach a single bite until we figure this out.
“Th-that’s the day after…” Her voice is quiet. Her face falls as she reads. Her chin trembles, and before I can blink, tears stream down her face. She pushes back from the table, grabbing her purse as she does. She’s going to bolt.
Not gonna happen. If I have a chance of connecting with this woman it needs to be now, while she’s emotional, showing something other than repugnance toward me.
I bounce out of my chair and onto my feet. “Please don’t run, Victoria.”
Her eyes flex wide as I open my arms. I’m not letting her run. She’s a stranger, but we have history. There’s a pull in my chest when I’m near her that tells me I can’t just let her leave.
She presses against my chest with both palms flat, but I don’t relent. I curl her against my chest and just hold her.
She falls apart. Heaving sobs wrack her entire body, so I hold her tighter. Her bag drops to the floor with a thud and Megan steps out from behind the counter to see if she needs to help somehow.
Or at least that’s what I think she’s mouthing over Victoria’s head. I mouth back that it’s okay, but from the downturned lips and the frown she’s sporting, I’m not sure whether she believes me or not.
“Easy, hey, come on, you’re going to pass out if you keep this up. Can you take a slow breath for me, please?”
Victoria shakes her head against my body, so I squeeze even tighter. After a few long moments, her shaking shoulders slow to a stop, and when she eventually lifts her head and meets my eyes, hers are watery and red-rimmed.
“Don’t leave.”
She nods, but it’s shaky, and her focus is on the door behind me.
“I mean it. We’ll figure this out.”
“You forgot me. You didn’t ghost me.”
Her words drive ice picks through my chest. “Victoria.” My thumbs brush tears from her red, blotchy cheeks. “I would never, in a million years, ghost anyone. Let alone someone as beautiful as you.”
She casts her eyes at the floor, and my heart splinters. What’s going through her head? What misbeliefs about herself has she held onto for the past couple years that are untrue all because I hit my head and forgot who she is?
“He’s mine, isn’t he?”
Wide eyes flicker back to my face. “H-how?”
“Saw you with a kid that looks very much like me at Maid-Rite. He’s mine?”
She sniffs, reaching around me to a napkin on the table to blow her nose. “Wyatt. But I didn’t know who you were.” She shrugs. “To be honest even if I did I thought you ghosted me, so I probably would have kept your name off the paperwork.”
I have a son named Wyatt.
“I’m not ready for you to meet him.” She shakes her head. “This is a lot. Too much. I-I need to process.”
