Calum POV
"Hello?" A groggy voice answered the phone on the 4th ring.
"Hey," I awkwardly replied.
"Who is this?" She groaned.
"It's... uh... Calum."
"Oh..." she trailed off.
"Sorry if I woke you up."
"No, you didn't. What kind of sane person is asleep at 3 in the morning?" She joked. It was great hearing her sarcasm. I really missed that.
"I'm gonna be leaving back to Australia in the morning. I just really need to talk to you. Can-Can I come over? Please?" I asked, nervously tapping my foot.
"Oh, um, I don't think that would be a good idea."
I instantly felt stupid. She was right. It's not a good idea, for either of us. I don't know why I called her. I should have just deleted her number, and tried to move on. But of course I had to get my hopes up, and convince myself that if I saw her, she would come back to Australia with me. I thought that if she came back, I could drive her around to all the places we would hang out. I thought if she saw those places, her memory would come back.
"You're right. I'm sorry. I don't know why-"
"But I can meet you somewhere."
And the feeling I thought I would never feel again came back: hope.
*
"You did your makeup," I laughed, sitting down next to her.
"Yeah, I did." She nodded her head.
"Why? It's just me. Not like I haven't seen-" I closed my mouth, deciding not to finish that thought.
"So you wanted to see me?"
"Oh, uh, right. I just thought that you should come back to Australia. Maybe seeing your home will jog your memory," I said, "forgetting" to mention that I was trying to get her to remember me.
"You don't want me to come back just so that I'll be with you and away from Jack, right?" She asked, with a knowing look.
"That could have something to do with it." I shrugged my shoulders, trying to seem innocent.
"Calum," she sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "I don't know what was going on between us, but I don't know who you are. I can't go back to Australia with you."
"How do you not remember? I just can't understand this. How can you just forget the best thing that has ever happened to you? It's like what we had wasn't even real! I can't wrap my mind around the fact that you're the one that got in a car crash, and you're fine. But me... I'm not fine at all, Ava. This is tearing me apart from the inside out. I can't handle this much longer," I whispered the last part, as tears welled up in my eyes. This whole amnesia thing is turning me into a crybaby.
"I'm so sorry," she reached up to wipe a tear from my cheek, causing her jacket to slide up her arm a bit. My eyes grew wide, when I noticed the obvious black and purple bruise on her arm. It was hard to miss. It was huge, and looked swollen.
"Ava! How did this happen?"
"Nothing," she said, covering it back up. I'm not really sure how that was an answer to my question, but I decided to ask an other one... one that I already knew the answer to.
"Ava, did Jack do this to you?"
She furiously shook her head 'no', but the tears came rolling down her cheeks like a broken faucet.
"He didn't mean to. He was just mad at me," she sobbed, wrapping her arms around me. I pulled her close to my chest.
"I can take you away from this. I can keep you safe. I will never hurt you. Come back to Australia with me. We can hide from him, just come with me." I finally felt like I had the upper hand in this discussion.
"I can't," she choked out, pulling away. "I love Jack."
"No, Ava. You don't love Jack. You love me. You were my girlfriend."
"I believe you." She was still crying, and I wished that I could kiss all of the tears off her face.
"Then come back with me," I practically begged.
"I can't. Whatever was between us, is over now. I'm sorry, but I can't come back with you. I can't keep having you try to convince me that I'm your girlfriend. Just consider this as me leaving." She stood up and started to walk away, but she turned around one last time. I took this as an opportunity to memorize her features, but I quickly looked away. I didn't want to see the makeup running down her face.
I didn't want to remember her crying. I don't want to remember why she was crying. I don't want to remember that I'm flying back to Australia in a couple of hours to cry for two months that she doesn't know who I am, while she stays in New York, and gets the crap beaten out of her by a man she "loves."
"I wish that I could wake up with amnesia," I screamed after her. "I wish I could forget you, like how you forgot me!"
*
Michael gave me an unsurprised look. I had just got done telling him what happened earlier this morning. We were standing in the airport, and I could barely keep myself together.
"There's something I didn't tell you," Michael whispered, after a few long seconds of silence. "When I went to visit her..." he looked like he couldn't get the words out, like it actually hurt him to talk. "Jack said some things to her. It was rude. He basically told her that nobody cares about her. I know that isn't the first time he's talked to her like that. She didn't seem surprised at all by the way he was speaking to her."
I opened my mouth to reply, but the words were caught in my dry mouth. Jack disgusted me. He really needed to learn how to treat women. He is a jerk. He isn't good for Ava.
As they gave the last call for my flight, I waved to Michael, and walked towards my plane. I couldn't help, but feel like I'm leaving my heart here, along with Ava.
"Goodbye happiness," I whispered, as my plane took off.
