“Paparazzi?” I asked Aston as he drove us home. He seemed extra cautious as he drove, constantly checking the rearview mirror to make sure no one was following us.
“Sorry,” he sighed.
“They took pictures of us? How did you even notice?” I was a bit panicked by this. It hadn’t crossed my mind that this would be a regular thing for me now.
“We’ve been dealing with it for years,” he replied, “I know how to spot them.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You never have,” he said.
“Good.”
“You broke up with me less than twenty-four hours after agreeing to be my girlfriend because they put you in the papers.”
“Seems about right,” I said, a wry smile crossing my face at how I was having the same feelings now as I did four years prior.
We drove in silence for the rest of the journey and then back in the house I resumed my seat at the kitchen table as Aston emptied out our shopping bags.
“How did you get me back?” I asked.
“What?”
“You said I broke up with you right after we got together… But clearly we got back together if we’re married now. What did you do?”
“Well,” he said, passing me a cup of tea I hadn’t even asked for, “You broke up with me by text. Something like, ‘You’re a great guy, but I can’t be your girlfriend.’ I remember reading it and being completely taken aback because things had been fine that morning. I had no idea where it had come from or why and I was sort of freaking out that I’d done something wrong. I tried to call you but you didn’t answer so I text back and just asked ‘Why?’”
“Just the word ‘Why’?” I asked, a bemused expression on my face. Something like that would have probably pissed me off.
“I didn’t know what else to put!” he laughed, sitting down across from me with his own cup of tea. “It took you like half an hour but eventually you responded with something about how you didn’t feel comfortable being in the papers and it wasn’t going to work out, so we might as well end if before someone gets hurt.”
“Kinda harsh,” I said, “I didn’t even try!”
“It knocked me for a six for sure.”
“Then what?”
“Well I couldn’t go over to yours that night because I was tied up doing promotion and stuff with the band, but the next morning I went to the piano shop.”
“And…” I prompted.
“I pretty much begged you to give me a chance,” he shrugged, “I brought a bouquet of flowers and promised you that no matter what the papers put about you I’d always set them right.”
“And it worked?”
“Well I refused to leave the store until you agreed to go to dinner with me that night. A fancy dinner, not like the other meals we’d had at quiet pubs and cafes,” Aston said, “It took you three hours to agree.”
“You sat in the piano store for three hours?!” I asked, trying not to laugh at the dramatics of it all.
“And I missed a radio interview. First and only time ever… Well, until last week.”
My heart dropped by this statement. I hadn’t asked him about the accident… it seemed to bother him and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about it yet. Or if he did.
“I told you, it was love at first sight,” Aston explained, “I wasn’t giving up with out a fight, and to be honest, getting you to go for that meal was way more important to me than anything else.”
It was the kind of thing that probably would have pissed me off, Aston sitting at one of the pianos as I stood at the counter and tried to ignore him, knowing he was purposefully missing something important by doing it. Of course I’d have given into the standoff eventually.
I tried imaging the moment, frowning when it hit me that it should be in my memory already, and wasn’t.
“You ok?” Aston asked.
“Yeah sorry,” I replied, forcing a smile, “Just trying to remember.”
“Don’t force it,” he said, “It’ll just make you frustrated.”
“But what if things don’t come back to me?” I asked, “What if I’m stuck like this forever?”
“Then I’ll have to make you fall in love with me all over again,” he winked.
I sat and stared at him, a bit shocked by his cheekiness. I was in an emotional state and he was saying things like this?
“Sorry!” he said quickly, “I didn’t mean to freak you out. Sometimes my brain just ignores the current situation…”
“It’s ok,” I muttered, staring into my cup of tea.
“Jess, don’t worry about your memory,” Aston said quietly, “It’s early days, no one expects it to be so easy.”
“I’m just scared.”
“We all are,” he said, “Me, your parents, your sister, your friends…”
“My friends…” I sighed, “I forgot to ask you about them.”
“What about them?”
“There were a lot of cards from names I didn’t recognize.”
“Oh, right,” Aston said, “I guess when we got together you fell into my circle of friends a bit.”
“I didn’t have very many friends before. I was happy to spend my time with my piano.”
“You’re still like that,” Aston said, “But you’ve gotten close to a few of the girls. It’s nice for you to have people to spend time with when the boys and I are busy.”
“Right.”
“I’ll plan something to get everyone over if you want,” Aston said, “If you want them to know.”
“They should know,” I nodded, “If they’re my friends they should know.”
“How about early next week?” Aston asked, “Gives you some time to relax and wrap your head around things a bit more.”
“Sure,” I replied, “Maybe just dinner here? Drinks?”
“I’ll sort something out,” he said, standing up to rinse out his mug. I watched him move about the kitchen for a few minutes and then he excused himself for a bit to make some work calls. The whole while I sat at the table and tried to wrap my brain around everything that he’d told me, and really everything that had happened.
But there was one thing that I kept getting stuck on. The accident. I’d heard I was riding my bike, but that was it. I wanted details. Maybe if I started from the most recent thing that had been lost from my memory and worked backwards?
That evening Aston cooked as I sat in silence and watched him, and then we ate quietly in the kitchen. When we were finished we started in on one of the bars of dark chocolate and then Aston washed the dishes.
“I’m going to go watch the football, if you want…” he said, nodding towards the front room. It was an invitation to join him, but I really wasn’t interested in football.
“No thanks.”
“You ok?”
“I want to know about the accident,” I said quietly but firmly.
“Oh.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it…”
“No we can,” he sighed, sitting back down at the kitchen table.
“I don’t want to make you upset,” I told him, staring across the table as he fidgeted a bit.
“You need to know what happened,” he said, “It’s just hard. No one wants to relive the worst day of their life.”
I sat and stared at him, tears pricking my eyes. I may have broken up with him less than twenty-four hours after he asked me out, but now we were bound for life. And watching him try to explain what happened on that fateful day was one of the most heartbreaking things I’d ever seen. And I didn’t even know him.