For a few more minutes, there was silence. A tattoo had made him remember? After the doctors had tried everything to make him remember before deciding that he might never get his memory back. I never saw him in the hospital because when he woke up, I hadn't been there, and the doctors had already realized the extent of his memory loss, so when I got there, I couldn't go in. So I had stayed away, and my last memory of him was him still unconscious. That had haunted me for the eight years I didn't get to see him. Now he remembered? I couldn't believe it. "Seriously?" was the only thing I could say.
Grinning he pulled me into a deep kiss that left me breathless. He pulled away, resting his forehead against mine. "Yes, beautiful, this is real. I can't believe it either, but I'm so glad that it happened. I can't believe I forgot you. I'll never be able to make it up to you, but I'll spend the rest of our lives trying to. I promise you that, and I'm going to start right now, by making love to you," he said, giving me another amazing kiss, which I could tell he wanted to lead to more. I decided that we could talk later and just followed his lead. There was always time to talk. We had forever, and I was absolutely sure of that now, even though I always had been. There wouldn't always be time to have sex, due to the fact that we would be old together eventually, and I was sure we'd get a lot less time for sex when we were married and started having children. They'd take up a lot of our time when I was pregnant and they were young.
Afterwards, we were lying in the afterglow. Juan was rubbing my back and I was lying with my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. He paused in his rubbing and I knew it was time to talk. "Do you remember the first time we met?" I asked, as I lifted my head, looking at him. I was curious to see how much exactly he did remember. It was intriguing to find out exactly far back he could recall. I didn't know the extent of his memory regain. So I wanted to find out.
Smiling, he answered me. "Of course I do. You were walking home from the high school with Crystal. You had just dropped her off at her house, and were on your way home. You were wearing a cute red tank top and jeans and your red Converse. Your hair was straightened and in a ponytail, and black. I had seen you a few times, and you were intriguing, so I walked up to you, and we talked for a while as we continued walking to your house. When we got to your house I asked you out on impulse. You said yes. I didn't know you were fifteen. You didn't tell me yet," he had to pause to take a breath.
After a moment, he went on, because I was speechless. I couldn't say anything if I tried. "Our first date was May 4th, 2007. We went to dinner and a movie. We ate dinner at Applebee's, which is one of your favorite places. You ate a bacon cheeseburger and fries, and I had a steak and mashed potatoes. We saw Spiderman 3 at Galaxy theaters. You were wearing a short jean skirt and a tunic length off-the-shoulder black shirt. You also had on knee high, high heel boots. Your hair was sprunched and down and reached halfway down your back," he paused again, perhaps giving me a chance to respond.
When I still couldn't respond, he kept going, "Our second date was May 18th, 2007. Again, we went to dinner and a movie. We went to Golden Corral for dinner this time, because you love it, too. Then we went to Galaxy theaters again to see Shrek the Third. You were wearing a camo skirt and black boots and a camo tee-shirt. Your hair was sprunched again, in a bun and you had a headband on," he took a breath, maybe thought I would say something, anything, but I was just staring at him in awe.
Once he realized I still couldn't find my voice, he continued, "You finally told me you were 15 on our second date. I said I was 18. We probably should have ended it, but we mutually decided we liked each other too much to end it then. So we continued seeing each other. We kept it a secret from everyone for two years. We finally told people we were dating when you were 17 and I was 20. We thought it was best if people thought we were dating a year before we disappeared together without telling anyone. We were planning on leaving after you graduated. The day we were supposed to go, I was in my accident, and everything changed. Need I go on, or can you tell me what's happened to you since my accident, like how you lost your virginity?" he asked.
Blown away, that's what I was. I couldn't believe he remembered that much. That was better than I even expected. He remembered what I was wearing and everything? That was amazing. He even remembered the extent of our whole relationship. How the hell did he manage that? I finally found my voice. "You know, I would have been happy with, you were walking home from school. I approached you, and walked you home, then asked you out. But you are amazing, love, and I couldn't love you more if I tried," I told him, and decided to answer his question. After all, he remembered that much, I should fill him in on the details on my life without him.
After I had paused for a moment, I blew out a sigh and went on. "Okay, so, after your accident, I pretty much lost my way. I was depressed again, doing bad things. I did end up moving, to North Dakota, with my brother and his wife. I got a job as a waitress at a place called Sue's Café, but I lost it after a few months. I got a job at Subway not too long after that, which I quit after about a month or two, it was October 17th. I went on vacation to Cali, and when I got back, I moved to Iowa," I paused because this was where the story got even harder, as if it wasn't hard enough.
It took me a moment, but I continued. "I had met a guy online, and thought I loved him. He lived with his mother and he was 11 years older than me. We fought all the time, he started beating me. I stayed because no one would help me move. I got pregnant. He basically raped me every time, because I never wanted sex with him. That was why we fought. And that's why I don't count him as the guy I lost my virginity to. I don't count the sex with him at all. Anyway, back to the pregnancy. I never told him. He was beating me one night when I was about eight weeks along. It went far enough that I ended up in the hospital for the first time and I lost the baby. So I decided I had to leave without telling him. I only told his mother because I needed her help. I sold my car that I had bought from Shannon, to his mother, and took a bus home, back to Cali. This was in February," I paused, sighing at the memory.
This was when he could stay silent no longer. "I'm so sorry, babygirl. I can't believe this happened to you. That's awful. I really hope it doesn't get any worse for you. I wish I had been around. It never would have happened if I was there. You wouldn't have moved to North Dakota, or Iowa, or even started going online to meet people. I'll never be able to tell you how sorry I am that this happened, but I'll try to make it up to you by spending the rest of our lives trying to keep you happy," he said, and I smiled at him for that. I really appreciated it.
Reaching over to hug and kiss him, I whispered, "Thank you, I really appreciate that," in his ear. He murmured a 'you're welcome,' and I pulled away, ready to continue with my story. "It was alright being at home again, I guess. I was a little depressed about losing my baby, but not horribly. I was more relieved to be out of there. And the bus ride took three days, so all my bruises and other evidence of my beatings were gone. My mom was glad to have me home," I smiled at that, taking a moment to remember how glad my mom was to have me move back in with her.
It took me a moment, but I went on. "I turned 19 not long after I was home, as you know. I kept going online, because the only friends I had here were Crystal and Julia, and Julia moved to Tennessee to live with her mom not long after I moved back. Crystal was always busy, so we didn't get to hang out much, maybe once or twice a month, pretty much. So I was back online a lot. I was kinda feeling depressed again, so that's probably why I spent so much time online. I couldn't bring myself to go do anything," I paused, thinking about my next boyfriend and trying to decide if I was going to tell him about that.
Sighing, I decided I might as well tell him everything. "I met a guy named Weston on Yahoo. I had a crush on him. Or at least the person he pretended to be. I'll explain that in a bit. Anyway, I told him about me liking him in December. He said he didn't know if he felt the same way because he didn't know me well enough. That was true. I've always had trust issues, but after the guy from Iowa, whose name was Luciano, by the way, my trust issues were even worse. So I didn't let many people in on Yahoo, telling them just the basics. I decided that if I wanted him to like me, I'd have to let him in a bit, so I told him we could play Questions, basically meaning that we take turns asking questions until one of us refuses to answer. It can be anything from favorite color, to anything deep," I said, and Juan nodded. I had forgotten that we had played it once.
Thinking about whether or not I was going to go on, I decided I would. "He ended up asking me out on January 14th. I said yes, obviously. We had our first fight, a few days before Valentine's Day, which should have told me something, because we hadn't been together a month yet, but I'd already fallen for him, so we ended up getting back together. We ended up getting in fights a lot, breaking up, then getting back together, but I stayed with him for a year. The last time we fought, he stopped talking to me, deleting me off everything. I can't even remember what it was about, what any of them were about," I paused again, because this was where Matthew came in.
Deciding to explain what I meant about the person he pretended to be, I thought about how to word it. "One of the main reasons we broke up was because he catfished me twice. And then he didn't even tell me his real age or show me a picture of him until we'd been together eight months. Not long after he showed me his picture, he admitted he was trans. He thought it would change things for me. It didn't, though he always brought it up in fights like it did. Around that time, I was learning more about the LGBT community, and I learned what pansexual meant. I came out as pansexual on my facebook, taking a big risk, but he always took me coming out as gay after he told me he was trans, a slap in the face to him. I tried to explain my reasoning, but he never listened. That's another big reason we broke up," I paused.
When he yawned, I decided story time could continue tomorrow. We should get some sleep anyway. We'd been talking for a while, and it was pretty late. I was getting tired, too. "Alright, babe, it's time for bed. We can finish talking tomorrow. I want to know more about what happened to you while we were apart, too," I said, and he nodded, apparently he really was tired. I wanted sex, but I guessed we could just go to bed. We lay down, and said good night to each other. We were spooning; I was the little spoon of course. It was only a few minutes before we both were asleep.
A/N: So I couldn't wait any longer to post this. I'm already about halfway through this one. I think it's going to have 20 chapters too. I think all the parts in this series will. I hope you guys like this! Please review!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.