The Stella I Remember

24| Every Little Piece of Me

Of all the fucking things I thought she was going to confess, Stella being engages was not one of them. 

I mean, the possibility of her having a boyfriend crossed my mind, but not—fuck. Not this.

"Elliot? Elliot, did you hear what I said?" 

Yeah, I heard you. 

I heard every goddamn word. But I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't do a damn thing. 

"Please say something," she begged.

Like what? I knew if I opened my mouth right now, nothing good would come out of it. 

The fucked up part was, I couldn't blame her. Not really. She had no idea who I was before I found her again a few days ago. 

But I still felt like I just got hit by a freight train. 

"Elliot, talk to me." 

Something in my expression must have changed, because Stella started to tear up. 

She sat her coffee cup down on the counter, and when she took a step towards me, I turned and walked away. 

I heard the pitter patter of her feet as she followed behind me. "Wait! Elliot, wait!" 

There was desperation in her voice. And pain. She was hurting, too. Like me.

God, I was going to be sick. 

I sat on the edge of her bed, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. 

"Elliot, please," she whispered from the direction of the doorway. "We need to talk—"

"I've been in love with you for twenty years, Stella. Twenty goddamn years." I turned my head to look at her. "And this whole time...you've been with another guy?" 

"Of course not! We haven't been together that long." 

I knew what I said wasn't fair. But this was too much. It was way too fucking much to handle. 

"Why didn't you look for me?" she blurted."

My eyes met hers again.

"You say that you loved me—that you've been in love with me for all these years. So why didn't you come look for me?"

"I did look for you." I raked my hands through my hair and pulled at the ends. "Even though everybody I knew thought I was crazy, I looked for you. I've been looking for you—waiting for you—for twenty years, Stella."

She kept her gaze on me.

"Now I finally found you and you tell me you're engaged? Are you kidding me?" I got up from the bed. "I can't be here. I need some air."

"Stop," she bit out. "You don't get to walk out of here, Elliot. You have no idea what this has been like for me. I woke up in a hospital bed only to find out that my life has been leveled. I didn't remember anything. Not my parents. Hell, not even my own name. I had to relearn who I was. And according to this," she picked up that light blue journal, "I have no idea who that girl is. My best friends were in that car with me, and now they're dead. It's obvious that my parents didn't know the real me."

She took a deep breath before she continued. "Ever since I woke up in the hospital, I've felt like something has been missing from my life. For twenty years I've been trying to find it. To find you. But I couldn't remember. I would have dreams, or hear that damn song on the radio, and I would get this pain in my chest. I couldn't stand it. So I tried to live my life like everyone else. I met a nice guy, we dated, then we got engaged."